The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - Lafayette College - The Mill Series

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00:00:30.000 Hey, everyone. Real quick before you skip,

00:00:33.700 I want to talk to you about something serious and important.

00:00:36.660 Dr. Jordan Peterson has created a new series that could be a lifeline

00:00:40.280 for those battling depression and anxiety.

00:00:42.920 We know how isolating and overwhelming these conditions can be,

00:00:46.280 and we wanted to take a moment to reach out to those listening who may be struggling.

00:00:50.280 With decades of experience helping patients,

00:00:52.480 Dr. Peterson offers a unique understanding of why you might be feeling this way in his new series.

00:00:58.140 He provides a roadmap towards healing.

00:01:00.000 Showing that while the journey isn't easy,

00:01:02.340 it's absolutely possible to find your way forward.

00:01:05.480 If you're suffering, please know you are not alone.

00:01:08.680 There's hope, and there's a path to feeling better.

00:01:11.960 Go to Daily Wire Plus now and start watching Dr. Jordan B. Peterson

00:01:15.560 on depression and anxiety.

00:01:17.640 Let this be the first step towards the brighter future you deserve.

00:01:21.220 Welcome to the Jordan B. Peterson podcast.

00:01:29.960 You can support these podcasts by donating to Dr. Peterson's Patreon,

00:01:33.920 the link to which can be found in the description.

00:01:37.000 Dr. Peterson's self-development programs, self-authoring, can be found at selfauthoring.com.

00:01:42.180 Thank you all for coming.

00:01:57.640 I'm going to begin by introducing Jordan Peterson,

00:02:03.360 and then I will talk a little bit about how this event is going to work,

00:02:07.740 and then we'll get underway.

00:02:08.740 So Jordan Peterson has been called, quote,

00:02:11.200 one of the most important thinkers to emerge on the world stage for many years by The Spectator.

00:02:16.600 He has been a dishwasher, gas jockey, bartender, short order cook, beekeeper,

00:02:21.520 oil derrick, bit re-tipper, plywood mill laborer, and railway line worker.

00:02:26.460 He's taught mythology to lawyers, doctors, and businessmen,

00:02:30.360 consulted for the U.N. Secretary General's high-level panel on sustainable development,

00:02:35.260 helped his clinical clients manage depression, obsessive compulsive disorder, anxiety, and schizophrenia,

00:02:41.180 served as an advisor to senior partners of major law firms,

00:02:44.880 identified thousands of promising entrepreneurs on six different continents,

00:02:48.780 and lectured extensively in North America and Europe.

00:02:51.780 He has flown a hammerhead role in a carbon fiber stunt plane,

00:02:55.260 piloted a mahogany racing sailboat around Alcatraz Island,

00:02:59.860 explored an Arizona meteorite crater with a group of astronauts,

00:03:03.920 built a Native American longhouse on the upper floor of his Toronto home,

00:03:08.060 and been inducted into the coastal Pacific Kwakwaka'wak tribe.

00:03:12.100 Malcolm Gladwell discussed psychology with him while researching his books.

00:03:18.160 Norman Doidge is a good friend and collaborator.

00:03:21.140 Thriller writer Greg Hurwitz employed several of his, quote,

00:03:24.420 valuable things as a plot feature in his number one international bestseller, Orphan X,

00:03:29.620 and he worked with Jim Balsilli, former RIM CEO, on a project for the U.N. Secretary General.

00:03:36.720 With his students and colleagues, Dr. Peterson has published more than 100 scientific papers,

00:03:41.680 transforming the modern understanding of personality,

00:03:44.620 and revolutionized the psychology of religion with his now classic book,

00:03:48.840 Maps of Meaning, the Architecture of Belief.

00:03:51.600 As a Harvard professor, he was nominated for the prestigious Levinson Teaching Prize,

00:03:55.680 and is regarded by his current University of Toronto students as one of three truly life-changing teachers.

00:04:02.640 Dr. Peterson is a core, most-viewed writer in values and principles and parenting and education.

00:04:08.220 He has innumerable Twitter followers and Facebook followers.

00:04:12.220 His YouTube channel now has about a million subscribers.

00:04:15.920 And his classroom lectures on mythology were turned into a popular 13-part TV series on TV Ontario.

00:04:22.780 Dr. Peterson's online self-help program, the self-authoring suite,

00:04:27.480 has been featured in O! The Oprah Magazine, on CBC Radio, and on NPR's national website.

00:04:33.800 It has helped over 150,000 people resolve the problems of their past and radically improve their future.

00:04:40.100 Without further ado, please join me in welcoming Dr. Jordan Peterson to Lafayette County.

00:04:44.820 So the way this is going to work is that I'm going to have a conversation with Dr. Peterson for 90 minutes,

00:05:00.920 and then there is going to be a 90-minute Q&A.

00:05:03.980 This event is being video recorded and will be published online for non-commercial, non-advertising purposes.

00:05:09.940 During the Q&A session, when you are handed a microphone, please speak directly into it.

00:05:16.220 Our viewers on YouTube will appreciate it.

00:05:18.680 And finally, I am a moderator between Professor Peterson and the audience,

00:05:23.120 but also a biased participant in this conversation.

00:05:26.740 Okay.

00:05:28.360 Well, it's a relief that's all over.

00:05:32.700 Okay, so I thought we would start things off with this.

00:05:37.520 I assume that many in the audience are curious but relatively unfamiliar with you

00:05:42.680 or have heard a lot about you without ever reading or listening to you.

00:05:46.800 So I thought we might start with you introducing yourself to the audience

00:05:50.640 and maybe telling them some of the main things that you think they might be interested in knowing about you.

00:05:56.460 Well, I guess the most relevant detail is that I spent about 15 years writing this

00:06:15.880 and I worked on it about three hours a day, every day during that period of time.

00:06:26.440 At the same time, I was finishing off my doctorate and I started lecturing at Harvard,

00:06:32.180 but I was doing that continually and thinking about it continually

00:06:36.960 and reading the material that I needed to read in order to write the book continually as well.

00:06:43.580 And I didn't realize until more recently that what I was doing

00:06:49.560 was at the heart of the postmodern conundrum, I would say.

00:06:54.760 I was very much obsessed by the events of the Cold War for reasons I don't exactly understand.

00:07:03.260 I had a lot of dreams about nuclear annihilation for years on end.

00:07:07.600 I mean, it wasn't that uncommon to be obsessed by that when I grew up.

00:07:11.240 I mean, because it was a preoccupation of everyone who was my age, I suppose.

00:07:16.180 There were lots of years, probably between 1962, I would say, probably in 1985,

00:07:22.440 where people were pretty convinced that the probability of a nuclear war was high,

00:07:28.560 much higher than people consider now.

00:07:34.600 And I was curious about this.

00:07:37.060 I was curious about why everyone wasn't obsessed about this all the time, first of all,

00:07:40.700 because it seemed like the fundamental issue that two armed camps were pointing

00:07:45.580 something in excess of 25,000 hydrogen bombs each at each other.

00:07:51.040 I couldn't understand how anybody could concentrate on anything other than that,

00:07:55.340 since it seemed so utterly insane.

00:07:59.720 And I was curious.

00:08:03.680 What was going on exactly?

00:08:07.480 Was this...

00:08:08.600 One explanation was that there's a very large number of ways that human beings could organize themselves in society,

00:08:14.380 like, a large number of games that we could hypothetically play,

00:08:17.420 and they're all equally arbitrary in an equally arbitrary universe,

00:08:21.460 and that the communists had decided to play one kind of game,

00:08:24.940 and the Western free market democratic types had decided to play another game,

00:08:31.180 and it was all arbitrary in some sense.

00:08:33.140 And so that's what I was trying to figure out, was

00:08:37.080 what the hell was going on with this conflict?

00:08:40.380 And was it merely a battle between two hypothetically equally valid interpretations of the world

00:08:47.180 drawn from a set of extraordinarily large potential interpretations,

00:08:51.740 which I think would be essentially a postmodernist take on it.

00:08:55.080 And I think I went into the problem neutrally in that I didn't think I knew what the answer was.

00:09:04.080 You know, so lots of times when you talk to people who think or when you talk to people who write,

00:09:09.180 they have an idea and it's right, and then they write whatever they're writing to justify the idea.

00:09:13.980 That's how they look at it.

00:09:15.280 But it's not a good way to write.

00:09:16.920 A good way to write and think is to have a problem, and then try to solve it, right?

00:09:22.680 To actually solve it, not to demonstrate that your a priori commitment is true.

00:09:27.480 And, you know, one of the signs I would say that my a priori commitments weren't the purpose for the writing,

00:09:35.820 was that I walked away from that 15-year project with a view of the world that was completely different

00:09:42.520 than the view that I had going in and learned all sorts of things,

00:09:46.860 especially about the role of narrative and religious thinking in life that I had no idea was possible when I started.

00:09:57.080 And a lot of that was a consequence of reading the great people who I read deeply.

00:10:01.580 You know, I read, well, all the great works of Friedrich Nietzsche and the great works of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy

00:10:10.080 and most of Jung's collected works, everything that had been published up to that point,

00:10:14.320 and a very large swath of the relevant clinical literature, the great clinicians of the 20th century,

00:10:20.740 and a huge stack of neuroscience and etc., etc., because I was reading constantly during this time.

00:10:26.420 And I realized some things that I think are true.

00:10:32.480 The communists were wrong.

00:10:35.340 They weren't, and not just a little bit wrong, and not wrong in some arbitrary way.

00:10:39.240 They were playing a game that human beings cannot play without descending into a murderous catastrophe.

00:10:46.100 And there's something about what we've done in the West that's correct. 1.00

00:10:50.540 And it's complicated because our cognitive structures, that's one way of thinking about it, or our socio-political arrangements,

00:10:59.400 they actually parallel one another in an important way, are grounded in a strange set of axioms.

00:11:09.400 And the axioms aren't rational precisely, it's more like their narrative, their narrative axioms, their stories.

00:11:17.260 And the story of the West is that the individual is sovereign over the group, and that that's the solution to tribalism.

00:11:24.260 And I think that's the correct solution.

00:11:27.120 Now, what that means metaphysically, because it's also embedded in our religious doctrines, right?

00:11:33.120 Because, especially in Christianity, although not exclusively to Christianity, the individual is sovereign.

00:11:39.120 The suffering individual is sovereign.

00:11:41.120 And there's something about that that's true at least psychologically.

00:11:45.120 And I don't know what that might mean metaphysically, because who the hell knows what anything means metaphysically, right?

00:11:52.280 I mean, your knowledge runs out at some point.

00:11:55.980 Anyways, I worked all these ideas out, and then I taught for a long time courses that were based on the ideas.

00:12:02.720 And the courses were very impactful, I would say.

00:12:05.820 They had the same impact on the people that I was teaching as walking through the material had on me.

00:12:11.820 And, well, it was out of that that all this political controversy arose.

00:12:18.380 I mean, I was never focused on political controversy, even though I'm interested in politics, and I thought at many points in my life about a political career.

00:12:29.480 I always put it aside for a psychological and philosophical career, I would say.

00:12:35.120 And, but things started to shift badly in Canada over the last five years.

00:12:41.680 And our government dared to implement legislation that compelled speech.

00:12:47.680 And one of the things that I had learned when I was doing all this background investigation was that there isn't a higher value than free speech.

00:12:55.680 It isn't free speech, it's not the right way of thinking about it, because it's free thought.

00:13:00.240 And even that's not the right way of thinking about it, because thought is the precursor to action and life.

00:13:06.640 So there's no difference between free speech and free life.

00:13:10.240 And I was just not willing to put up with restrictions on my free life.

00:13:16.240 And so I made some videos pointing out the pathology of this doctrine and the fact that the government had radically overreached its appropriate limits.

00:13:27.200 And, well then, you know, well, and maybe you don't know, but I've been enveloped in continual scandal since for 18 months as a consequence. 0.97

00:13:37.680 Which to me, as a clinician, indicates that I got my damn diagnosis right. 0.98

00:13:43.440 Right? It's not about pronouns. 0.98

00:13:45.840 It's about something a lot deeper than that.

00:13:49.440 And I stand by that. I believe that it's the case.

00:13:52.320 And I don't think that we would all be here tonight if that wasn't the situation.

00:13:55.920 So.

00:13:56.880 So I wanted my first or my next question to be about Lafayette.

00:14:05.600 And so I thought I would read a couple of Facebook posts that certain students who are critical of you read in the lead up to this event and just ask you to respond to them.

00:14:16.400 Okay.

00:14:17.360 So this is a student writing,

00:14:20.160 Lafayette College, I am utterly disappointed that you're allowing this to take place on our campus.

00:14:24.960 I thought we went through this last semester with Roaming Millennial.

00:14:28.880 Inviting hateful speakers who make wildly unsubstantiated claims is not going to fly with the student body.

00:14:35.040 I get it. The Mill Series events are private and not endorsed by the college.

00:14:39.280 But you absolutely have the power to make a statement on this.

00:14:42.720 The fact that you're not is an embarrassment to our community.

00:14:45.840 If you believe this man is a legitimate source of knowledge because he has a degree in clinical psychology,

00:14:52.560 feel free to ask our psychology department faculty and counseling center staff about the validity of his claims.

00:14:59.120 I'm certain they would not endorse this speaker.

00:15:01.920 Do better in all caps.

00:15:04.800 For those of you unfamiliar, Jordan Peterson is known for denouncing the Me Too movement,

00:15:10.240 claiming that women are in no way marginalized in the West,

00:15:14.080 arguing against the existence of gender neutral pronouns,

00:15:17.760 arguing against gun control in the US,

00:15:20.480 and claiming that identity politics and social justice movements are part of a devious Marxist agenda.

00:15:27.040 And then another student responded, and this is briefer.

00:15:30.000 College conservatives know that if they bring in a speaker who is willing to blatantly insult a portion of the audience,

00:15:36.560 and the libs get angry enough about this for good reason, 0.97

00:15:40.080 then they may get an op-ed written about them in the New York Times.

00:15:43.600 As a result, there are a whole group of hacks, like Milo and Peterson,

00:15:48.240 who get famous and invited purely for their promise to misgender trans students 0.98

00:15:53.600 and advocate provocative but ultimately toothless arguments about social Darwinist race theory.

00:16:00.160 What I'm saying is that you have every right to be pissed. 1.00

00:16:02.720 Jordan Peterson is a harmful moron, 0.99

00:16:05.120 but know that you being pissed is also 100% at the point of why he was invited. 1.00

00:16:12.640 He's not a conservative.

00:16:14.000 He's just a guy who's mildly racist enough to offend college liberals,

00:16:18.880 and therefore secure wins for the cultural right.

00:16:27.120 Comparatively mild stuff.

00:16:28.720 It's the chattering buzz of ideologically possessed demons.

00:16:36.000 So there's nothing in it that's not entirely predictable.

00:16:40.880 That's one of the things you notice when you're talking to people.

00:16:44.240 If you want to find out whether the person is there or the ideology is there,

00:16:48.880 you listen to see if you're hearing anything that someone else of the same ideological mindset

00:16:55.680 couldn't have told you.

00:16:56.400 You know, like I've had thousands of conversations with people because I've spent 20 years as a clinical psychologist.

00:17:02.400 And one of the things I've learned about people is that they're unbelievably interesting.

00:17:06.560 If you get someone to sit down and you move past the superficial, which you can actually do quite rapidly,

00:17:13.920 they'll tell you all sorts of things that only they know that are unbelievably enlightening

00:17:19.680 about their own peculiar problems, about the way they look at the world, about their idiosyncratic familial dynamics.

00:17:27.600 Like, just fascinating personal stuff.

00:17:30.080 It's the stuff of great novels, you know, and just, and this is ordinary people.

00:17:35.200 I don't really think there is an ordinary person, exactly.

00:17:38.400 There's the facade of ordinariness, but behind that people are very rarely ordinary.

00:17:44.000 And so the conversations are almost instantaneously fascinating.

00:17:48.160 And one of the guidelines that I used in my clinical practice constantly was, like I had this sense,

00:17:54.160 I probably learned this mostly from Carl Rogers, was that if the conversation wasn't really interesting,

00:18:00.240 then we weren't doing anything that was therapeutically useful.

00:18:03.520 But the interesting, all of the interesting elements of it were very, very personal.

00:18:09.040 And so to replace this, and I learned this mostly from Alexander Solzhenitsyn in his detailed analysis of

00:18:15.600 what I would call ideological possession, he talked about people he met in the Gulag camps,

00:18:21.840 who were under the sway of rigid communist orthodoxy, and noted very clearly that

00:18:28.880 it was like there was a crank, in some sense, on the side of their head.

00:18:31.680 And you could just crank the crank, and out would come the ideological dogma.

00:18:37.200 And it's all entirely predictable, and people who are in a situation like that don't understand

00:18:42.080 that they're possessed by an idea, right?

00:18:44.400 Carl Jung said, people don't have ideas, ideas have people.

00:18:48.240 And it's like, so there's nothing in that that's anything other than exactly what you would predict.

00:18:54.880 And then there's a deeper issue too, and this is one that I think has bedeviled me ever since I

00:18:59.840 made my initial videos, which is it's impossible for those on the radical left to admit that anyone

00:19:08.080 who opposes what they're doing might be reasonable. Because what that would mean would be that you

00:19:13.440 could be reasonable and oppose the radical left, and that would imply that what the radical left was

00:19:18.240 doing wasn't reasonable. And so instead of dealing with the fact that I actually happen to be quite

00:19:23.760 reasonable, the attempt is to assume that anyone who objects must be part of the radical right.

00:19:31.840 It's like, well, actually, no. There's lots of space between the radical left and the radical right.

00:19:38.960 There's the moderate reasonable left, for example, and then there's the center, and then there's the

00:19:44.480 moderate reasonable right, and then there's the far right, and then there's the extreme right.

00:19:48.640 All of that exists in opposition to the radical left, but it's very convenient for the radicals

00:19:53.520 on the left to say, oh, well, you don't buy our doctrine, and then to immediately make the

00:20:00.800 presupposition that you must be the most highness example of that entire array of potential objections.

00:20:07.120 It's like, yeah, well, whatever, you know. It's just not a viable stance. And so,

00:20:13.680 but it's convenient, and it's a bad thing because it drives polarization, and that's a bad thing.

00:20:22.960 But it also, it doesn't address the issue. So one of the things that I've been thinking about deeply

00:20:29.600 over the last couple of weeks and plan to write about, here's a mystery for all of you.

00:20:33.600 I don't care what your political background is, and it isn't like I'm anti-left.

00:20:37.840 I've made videos documenting this. I know why there's a left wing. There's a left wing because

00:20:44.240 inequality is a problem. It's a way worse problem than the radical leftists like to admit,

00:20:49.440 because you can't lay it at the feet of capitalism and the free market. Inequality is a way worse

00:20:54.320 problem than that, but it's definitely a problem. And because inequality is a problem, you need part

00:20:59.280 of the political structure to speak up for the people who end up arrayed at the bottom of hierarchies.

00:21:05.360 It's crucial. Someone has to speak for them. That's the place of the left.

00:21:10.480 But then consider this. So we can state that. The right speaks for hierarchy and the left

00:21:17.040 speaks on behalf of those who are oppressed by inequality. Good. We need that dialogue.

00:21:22.240 The radical left. Okay. We know from 20th century history that things can go too far on the right.

00:21:29.760 No one disputes that. And that things can go too far on the left. And we also know that when

00:21:34.400 things go too far, it's seriously not good. Right? So when things went too far on the right,

00:21:40.800 then we had 120 million people die in the Second World War. And when things went too far on the left,

00:21:45.920 we had God only knows how many people murdered as a consequence of internal repression. At least

00:21:52.240 100 million. And we risk putting the entire planet... We risk putting the planet into flames.

00:21:59.680 Okay. So that's the consequence. All right. So now, in the aftermath of World War II, let's say we've

00:22:06.000 come to some sort of sociological agreement, I would say, that you can identify the radical right-wingers.

00:22:11.360 When people make claims of racial superiority, you put them in a box and you say, well, you're outside of

00:22:16.720 acceptable political discourse. And so you saw that with William F. Buckley in the 60s when he started

00:22:22.400 his conservative review. He dissociated himself from the David Duke types. And you saw it more recently

00:22:26.960 with people, for example, like Ben Shapiro, who immediately distanced himself from the Charlottesville types.

00:22:32.240 Okay. So now we kind of have a sense of where you've crossed the damn line in your ethno-nationalism. 0.97

00:22:39.200 Right? As soon as you move into the racial superiority domain, ethnic superiority domain, it's like, no, 0.96

00:22:45.440 you've got to be dangerous. All right. Here's a question. Where the hell do you cross the line on the left?

00:22:52.960 Exactly. Well, the answer is, who knows? Well, that's not a very good answer. I would say it's incumbent.

00:23:00.640 It's incumbent on people in the center and in the moderate left to say, look,

00:23:06.240 things can go too far on the left. And here's how we know that's happened. And that hasn't happened

00:23:13.440 at all. Now, I think there's a reason for that. I think there's a technical reason as well as a

00:23:18.480 motivational reason, two technical reasons. It's harder for people on the left to draw boundaries

00:23:24.720 because people on the left aren't boundary drawing types. They're boundary dissolving types,

00:23:30.240 temperamentally speaking. So that's a problem. The second problem is it doesn't look to me like there is a

00:23:35.600 smoking pistol on the left. That's as obvious as racial superiority doctrines. You know, it's like 0.72

00:23:41.760 there in Canada, there's a lot of push for this triumvirate of radical ideas, diversity,

00:23:47.040 inclusivity, and equity, which diversity, it's like, well, who's against that? It's like being against

00:23:52.240 poverty. Inclusivity? Well, yes, of course, we want people included. Equity? That's a more bitter pill to

00:24:00.080 swallow because that's equality of outcome. And for me, that's a marker. It's like, if you're talking

00:24:04.240 about equality of outcome, you've gone too far. And if you're talking about diversity,

00:24:10.160 inclusivity, and equality of outcome, equity, then you've gone too far. And you might disagree.

00:24:16.560 You might disagree. That's fine. Disagree. If that isn't the marker for going too far, then

00:24:23.120 what's the marker? Because obviously you can go too far. And obviously that's not good. And to close on

00:24:30.480 that, I would also say to the people on the moderate left, if you want your doctrines to have

00:24:36.480 purchase and to continue to speak for the, for those who stack up at the bottom of inevitable

00:24:42.880 hierarchies, then you owe it to yourself to dissociate yourself from the dangerous radicals because

00:24:49.200 otherwise they invalidate your ideas. And that doesn't seem to be, you'd think the Democrats might

00:24:54.880 have learned that in the last election, but they haven't. They haven't learned that. So,

00:25:02.400 well, so that's my spiel about those comments, I guess.

00:25:08.240 Okay, so you've changed the lives of many young people and adults in this country,

00:25:13.360 in the Anglosphere, in the West, in the world. You have a massive following. My girlfriend's parents

00:25:19.120 call you Uncle Jordan, for example. On the other hand, and this is just a fact, tons of people on the

00:25:25.440 left, as we've just seen, because of your power and also your frontal attack on a lot of their views,

00:25:31.680 hate you and viciously caricature you. Then there are these other figures, like Jonathan Haidt and Robbie

00:25:38.160 George. They have a lot in common with you. They are respected academics. They are at least relatively

00:25:43.760 well-known outside academia. They share your critiques of the humanities, of student activists,

00:25:50.080 of trends in Western culture. They don't have nearly the following that you do, but they also aren't as

00:25:55.760 hated or viciously caricatured. Moreover, they may have changed the minds of more people on college

00:26:03.120 campuses. That is, people on campuses who have some sympathy for left activists or who may agree with

00:26:09.600 much of what you say, but react negatively to confrontation and harsh criticism. Haidt has

00:26:14.800 appealed to such individuals by taking the Dale Carnegie, Win friends, and influence people approach.

00:26:21.200 So my questions are, first, do you agree with this dichotomy? Second, did you consciously choose one

00:26:27.200 path over the other? And if so, why? Well, I mean, with Haidt, for example, there's more power to him,

00:26:34.960 as far as I'm concerned, you know. He has a different temperament than me. He's more introverted.

00:26:41.840 He's less volatile, I would say. He's probably more agreeable or more polite, anyways. And I think

00:26:49.120 that what he's doing is extremely effective, especially from the perspective of very carefully

00:26:54.800 documenting the empirical facts about the ideological, the increasingly left-leaning ideological tilt

00:27:05.200 of campuses, which is something that needs to be explored on empirical grounds. So, like I said,

00:27:12.880 more power to him, and there's nothing wrong with being reasonable, I guess. And then you asked,

00:27:20.000 well, is that the right pathway for me? It's like, well, apparently not.

00:27:30.160 What happened when I made my initial videos was that, you know, I had, I had spoke, I talked to

00:27:37.520 people a lot. I've worked with people a lot about negotiation. It's one of the things that I

00:27:42.640 specialized in, I would say, in my clinical and consulting practice, was teaching people how to

00:27:46.480 negotiate. And I can tell you some things about negotiating that you might find interesting and

00:27:51.040 useful. The first is, you can't negotiate from a position of weakness. So all of you who are going

00:27:56.000 to be developing your careers in the future, you need to understand that if you want to push your

00:28:00.480 career forward, well, first of all, that you do, in fact, have to push it forward, because if you're

00:28:06.400 competent and silent, you will be ignored. And, you know, that's rough, because you might think,

00:28:13.280 well, people should reward you because you're competent. And yes, of course they should. But

00:28:18.080 if you're competent and silent, then you're just not, you're not a problem. You're just part of the

00:28:23.280 background that's keeping everything functioning. And so if you want to develop your career in terms

00:28:28.400 of promotion, say, and salary, it's like, you have to be competent and you have to be strategic.

00:28:33.840 And to be strategic, when you negotiate for a new position or for a new salary, you have to be able to

00:28:39.280 say, if you don't give me what I want, then something you don't like will happen to you.

00:28:46.240 And what that means, it's not a physical threat, it's that you have an option.

00:28:50.720 You know, so you have your CV, your resume in order, right? You're educated and competent and

00:28:56.480 desirable to people outside of your immediate job. You're willing to instantly put yourself in the job

00:29:02.560 market and undergo the stress of finding a new position and undergoing interviews and all of that.

00:29:07.040 And you have that all planned out so that when you go talk to the person that you're negotiating

00:29:11.760 with, with regards to your salary, you're credible. And you see, because they, it's very seldom that

00:29:17.040 you're talking to the person who's at the top of the pecking order, let's say. What you need to do

00:29:21.920 that with them is to tell them a story that they can tell to their boss to make you not a problem.

00:29:28.000 And one, a good story is, look, we really need this person because they're hyper-competent

00:29:32.160 and they have a better offer. It's like, well, then you're going to win the negotiation.

00:29:36.240 But if you go in there with no power, well, you're going to lose, obviously.

00:29:42.960 So the first thing that you need to know if you're going to negotiate is that you have to be able to

00:29:46.800 say no. And what no means is that you're not going to do it. And when I made the videos about Bill C-16,

00:29:55.840 I thought it through. And I thought, there's no damn way I'm following this law. I don't care what

00:30:02.480 happens. And I didn't say that lightly. I thought it through. I thought, okay, well, let's assume the

00:30:08.480 worst case scenario. And the worst case scenario would be that a student would report me to the

00:30:12.880 Ontario Human Rights Commission. And then they would do an investigation. Then they would find me guilty

00:30:17.600 because the Ontario Human Rights Commission finds 99% of the people brought to it guilty

00:30:23.520 because that's what totalitarians do. And then I would refuse to pay the fine or cooperate with 0.51

00:30:29.040 whatever the re-education they would put me through would be. And then that would move to civil court.

00:30:33.680 And then I would be fined for contempt. And then it would, you know, then the whole legal catastrophe

00:30:38.080 would unfold. And I thought, well, I could either do that or I could allow the government to regulate

00:30:44.000 my speech. It's like, nope, that's not happening. So you might think about that as confrontational.

00:30:51.040 And it is confrontational. It's like, there isn't a goddamn thing that can be done to me to make me 0.96

00:30:58.400 allow the government to compel my speech. That's not happening. And the reason for that, 0.93

00:31:04.080 I believe the reason for that, is because I spent decades studying totalitarianism. It's not good.

00:31:13.680 And the way that totalitarian states develop is that people give up their right to be, their right to

00:31:20.640 exist with their own thoughts. They lie. That's what happens, is that individuals, the individuals

00:31:27.840 sacrifice their own souls to the dictates of the state. And then everything goes badly sideways.

00:31:35.520 It's like, and you think, well, how much evidence for that do we need?

00:31:39.680 You know, you're looking at a quarter of a billion deaths. It's like, isn't that enough?

00:31:45.520 Well, the people that I read who were profound, Viktor Frankl's a good example for beginners,

00:31:50.320 if you want to read about this sort of thing, he wrote a book called Man's Search for Meaning.

00:31:54.960 And Frankl, and also Solzhenitsyn, and a variety of other commentators as well, who really looked into what

00:32:00.720 happened in both in Nazi Germany and in the communist states. Their conclusion was universal.

00:32:09.200 Is that the lies of the state, the lies and tyranny of the state are aided and abetted by the moral

00:32:14.720 sacrifice of the individual. It's not top-down. The Nazis are telling you what to do and you're all innocent and obeying.

00:32:23.440 That's not how it works, is you falsify your being bit by bit and you end up where you don't want to be.

00:32:35.280 And that's a bad idea. And if you're interested in that, there's a great book called Ordinary Men.

00:32:42.080 You read that and you won't be the same person afterwards. So I would beware of reading it.

00:32:46.640 But it's a story about these policemen in Germany. So they were middle-aged guys, you know, and they'd been,

00:32:52.640 they grew up and were socialized before the Nazis came to power. So they're just your typical middle-class

00:32:58.320 policemen. And they were brought into Poland after the Nazis had marched through and charged with

00:33:06.320 keeping order in the occupied state. And they knew, their commander knew that it was going to be brutal

00:33:14.960 because they were in war, wartime. And they regard the Jews, for example, as enemies. And so there was

00:33:20.320 going to be a fair bit of rounding up with all of that, with all of what that implied. And the commander

00:33:25.440 told the policemen that they could go home if they wanted to, that they didn't have to participate in

00:33:30.000 this. And then what ordinary men does is document their transformation from ordinary policemen,

00:33:37.840 the sort of people that you know, to guys who were taking naked pregnant women out into the middle of 0.60

00:33:42.480 fields and shooting them in the back of the head. And it documents, one step at a time, how an ordinary

00:33:49.440 person turns into someone like that. You think, well, we don't want that sort of thing to happen anymore.

00:33:55.680 Well, then you don't want to be that sort of person. That's how it's fixed.

00:34:00.000 And if you're not going to be that sort of person, then you don't take the first steps.

00:34:05.200 Because the first steps lead you down a pathway that, at least in principle, you don't want to go.

00:34:11.040 So, well, I think part of what makes me combative, say, compared to someone like height, is that

00:34:16.080 I've spent years looking at the worst things there are to look at. And I've learned from that. And I've

00:34:23.440 learned, certainly learned things that I won't do. And one of them is, I won't let the government

00:34:28.400 regulate my speech. It's a mistake. I don't care what compassionate principles hypothetically motivate

00:34:36.080 that move. It was unprecedented in English common law, that move. And it was all buried under this

00:34:43.760 leftist compassion, which is mostly, it's mostly a lie.

00:34:51.040 So, I have reasons, I think, other than those that motivate someone like Jonathan Haidt to be

00:34:59.360 particularly passionate about this issue.

00:35:04.000 So, on the subject of totalitarianism, I wanted to do something very quickly. So,

00:35:16.400 I'm guessing that even though most people in the room have negative views of both men,

00:35:20.960 they have a more intensely negative view of Hitler than of Stalin.

00:35:28.080 I'm guessing almost everyone in the room has a far more negative visceral reaction

00:35:33.280 to the swastika than to the hammer and sickle.

00:35:37.760 Some of the protesters at your event at McMaster University stood behind a banner with a hammer

00:35:43.600 and sickle. You've said that a hammer and sickle is no funnier than a swastika.

00:35:48.480 That, quote, the reprehensible ideologies that are based in fundamental Marxism

00:35:53.360 killed at least 100 million people in the 20th century, unquote. I've discussed this proposition

00:35:58.720 with numerous people in recent months, and almost no one seems to buy it.

00:36:03.760 No one disputes the body count under socialist regimes. Few dispute that Stalin was a vicious

00:36:10.320 murderer, roughly on par with Hitler in moral terms. Most think that communism should not be tried again.

00:36:19.440 In other words, they share your critique of the argument that previous communist experiments

00:36:24.400 did not represent proper communism and that proper communism should be tried.

00:36:30.880 Nevertheless, they still disagree with you

00:36:34.320 that we should react as negatively to the hammer and sickle as we do to the swastika. 0.78

00:36:39.520 Why? Because they say the two ideologies are not morally comparable. National socialism is much worse

00:36:48.160 morally than Marxism or Marxism-Leninism. So what do you say to this?

00:36:56.880 Well, I would say the first thing is that it's highly probable that you were talking to intellectuals.

00:37:01.280 Students. Well, we'll call them budding intellectuals.

00:37:17.520 It is a mystery, you know. It is a mystery because it is the case that there is something about the

00:37:26.000 Nazi doctrine that seems to have a visceral impact that the communist doctrine doesn't have.

00:37:35.360 And I said when I opened my remarks tonight that it might be the issue of racial superiority.

00:37:44.000 You know, it's something single that you can put your finger on.

00:37:48.080 Whereas what's happening on the left that's horrifying is murky. It might even be multi-dimensional.

00:37:53.440 Like maybe there isn't a single radical leftist idea that's murderous like the racial superiority doctrine.

00:37:59.200 Maybe it's a combination of three or maybe it's some set of four out of ten. Who knows?

00:38:04.560 So, and because of that it doesn't seem as repugnant. And there was also a universalizing tendency among the communists

00:38:11.920 that seemed to be less morally reprehensible than the ethno-nationalism of the Nazis.

00:38:17.520 So, you know, you think, if you go back to 1914, it's complicated. But if you go back to, say, 1918,

00:38:24.720 at the time of the Russian Revolution, it's not like the communists knew that their attempts to bring

00:38:31.120 about the socialist utopia would be doomed to absolute murderous catastrophe, right? They were,

00:38:36.160 they were working in ignorance. Now it's not that simple. Because by that time Dostoevsky had already

00:38:42.800 written, the devils, the possessed. And he outlined very, very clearly what he thought would happen if

00:38:49.040 people like that got the reins of power. And Nietzsche had done the same thing in his writing. So

00:38:53.760 people knew that there was something toxic, let's say, and deadly about the doctrine. But it hadn't been

00:38:59.200 played out on the world stage. But now it's like, well, this is why I said what I said at the beginning.

00:39:06.960 Fine. You know, if, I don't know exactly how to make the moral distinction.

00:39:17.680 But it's a distinction that has to be made. I think that people who apologize, who say something,

00:39:23.200 like I think, I think that, that it's virtually, I don't know if it's as reprehensible to say that

00:39:32.720 a given ethnic group should be consigned to the fire and to say that wasn't real communism. But they're 1.00

00:39:39.680 damn close. And when I hear someone say that wasn't real communism, I know what they mean.

00:39:46.800 What they mean was, if I was the dictator in Stalin's shoes, I personally would have brought in the utopia.

00:39:55.360 That's what that statement means. Or it means an ignorance of history that's so utterly appalling that

00:40:07.760 that any political statement made on behalf of that person whatsoever should immediately be followed

00:40:14.000 by a paroxysm of extreme embarrassment. May I say one, just, I just want to be clear that

00:40:21.600 that these students were conceding that they don't agree, that they share your critique of the-

00:40:29.200 They don't share it enough.

00:40:30.560 Oh, okay. Fair enough. I just wanted to make that clear.

00:40:32.880 So they would more or less agree with what you just said, I think, about it's not okay to say

00:40:38.880 those regimes weren't proper communism and that proper communism should be tried. They still dispute,

00:40:43.120 though, that socialism as an ideology is on par with Nazism. So I just wanted to make that clear.

00:40:47.680 Well, we could say communism, let's say. We could say radical leftist ideology. As I said already,

00:40:54.000 there are reasons for the left and the right wing, right? The right wing stands for hierarchy and the

00:40:59.040 left wing stands for the, for those who are displaced by hierarchy, right? An endless problem.

00:41:05.920 But that doesn't mean, that still leaves it in the camp of the people speaking on behalf of

00:41:12.240 egalitarianism to figure out just what the hell went wrong and to take some responsibility for it.

00:41:18.800 You know, it's no joke. And we see these things play out continually. Still, look at what happened

00:41:23.600 to Venezuela. Here's a fun story. Do you know that it is now illegal for physicians to list

00:41:30.560 list starvation as the cause of death for a Venezuelan child in a hospital? That's how they're dealing with the

00:41:38.240 fact of starvation, right? You just make it illegal to have that diagnosed as your cause of death.

00:41:44.560 That'll solve the problem. It's like, you know, we have a group of, of well-meaning socialists in Canada

00:41:52.080 who just produced something called the Leap Manifesto a couple of years ago. And it's a pretty radical,

00:41:58.000 it's a pretty radical document. They're trying to move our socialist party, the NDP, New Democratic Party,

00:42:03.520 towards the acceptance of this Leap Manifesto, which doesn't look like it's going to happen.

00:42:08.320 But they were all radical promoters of the Venezuelan government before everything went,

00:42:13.360 like, badly sideways. You know, I think the average Venezuelan now has lost 17 pounds. 0.86

00:42:19.760 And that's not because they were put on a voluntary dieting program, right? It's not good. And so,

00:42:26.480 if you're tilting towards the left, and you're temperamentally inclined that way, and half the

00:42:31.440 population is, then you have an ethical problem on your, on your hands. Which is, how do you segregate

00:42:37.920 yourself from the radical policies that produce the catastrophes of the 20th century? And you can't just

00:42:43.360 say, well, that's not my problem. It's like, well, okay, if it's not your problem now, it certainly

00:42:49.520 might become your problem in the future. So, and I would say it's actually everybody's problem. In the

00:42:54.960 aftermath of the 20th century, it's everybody's problem. So, so it's, it's, it's, it's complicated.

00:43:04.400 Like, there is a genuine desire, like, I worked for a socialist party for quite a while when I was a kid.

00:43:11.280 You know, and I saw both sides of it. I saw some very, very admirable people. I, I was privy for,

00:43:18.320 for a variety of chance reasons to the leadership of the socialist party in Canada at the provincial

00:43:24.720 and the national level. I met the people who ran the provinces, some of the provinces, and who ran

00:43:28.960 the party. And a lot of them were really admirable people. Like, they'd spent their whole life,

00:43:33.120 I would say, working on behalf of the working class, you know. So they were genuine labor leaders. And,

00:43:38.400 and, and, and there was also a lot done in Canada on the left that looks like it was actually pretty

00:43:44.000 good. Standard work week, the, you know, the, the establishment of, of pensions, the introduction

00:43:49.920 of our healthcare system, which I would say probably overall works better than the American system,

00:43:56.640 although not at the upper end. And they were working hard on behalf of people who had

00:44:03.280 working class lives. But then I also encountered the sort of low level activist types. And I didn't

00:44:10.240 have any respect for them at all. I just thought they were peevish and resentful and irritable. And

00:44:14.400 that those two things exist in a very uneasy coalition on the West. There's care for the poor

00:44:20.160 and hatred for the successful. And those two things aren't the same at all. And it looks to me like one

00:44:25.520 of the things that really happened when the communist doctrines were brought into play. And it also, by the

00:44:30.800 way, we did the multinational experiment, right? It doesn't matter where you put these policies into

00:44:35.440 play, the same bloody outcome occurred. Didn't matter whether it was Russia or China or Cambodia or Vietnam or,

00:44:42.080 to pick a random African country or Cuba or Venezuela for that matter. It was an unmitigated catastrophe.

00:44:49.040 And so to me that's experiment plus replication. Enough. Enough. Well, that has to be dealt with.

00:44:57.200 And it's not, and the intellectual left in the West has been absolutely appalling in their silence

00:45:03.440 on the communist catastrophe. Like, for my students, a lot of my students really haven't heard about

00:45:08.240 anything that happened in the Soviet Union in any detail until they take my personality

00:45:12.960 class in the second year of university. It's like, well, what the hell? Why are they learning

00:45:17.200 about that in a personality class in the second year of university? That's not, that should be

00:45:23.040 first and foremost in, in their, in their historical knowledge what happened in the 20th century. I mean,

00:45:28.720 it was almost fatal what happened. And we still haven't completely recovered from it, right? I think,

00:45:34.240 isn't your president Donald Trump going to talk to like insane totalitarian number one sometime here

00:45:41.120 in the near future? But that's still a Soviet era state. Those people are armed to the teeth. 0.89

00:45:47.280 You know, they have the weapon, they have weaponry that could easily take you out.

00:45:52.000 And so we're not, I don't know if you know, do you know what happens if you blast a single 0.96

00:45:56.160 hydrogen bomb a hundred miles above the United States? Just one. You lose all your electronics.

00:46:03.200 Right, they're all done. Tractors, cars, trains, subways, computers, phones, all of them. Burnout.

00:46:12.960 And that's it. So we're not done with this yet. And the Korean state, North Korea, is an emblematic 0.92

00:46:20.960 representative of the communist catastrophe. And everyone there starves. There's millions of people

00:46:27.440 died 20 years ago. It's not got any better. So it's not like, it's not like we solved this problem.

00:46:34.800 And there's a deafening silence on the intellectual side of the spectrum with regards to what happened

00:46:40.800 on the egalitarian left. And there's no excuse for it. So.

00:46:50.560 So somewhat relatedly, I think it's fair to say that even though you have criticized segments of both

00:46:56.160 the left, social justice warriors, and the right, the alt-right, your critical commentary over the last

00:47:02.880 year and a half has focused significantly more on the left than on the right. A lot of people I've talked

00:47:09.040 to here at Lafayette, at Lafayette, take issue with that. They say that we're so far from a Marxist

00:47:15.520 takeover of our culture and political institutions that to suggest otherwise is to engage in a classic

00:47:22.080 kind of right-wing exaggeration and hysteria that we've seen before in Western countries in the early

00:47:27.520 to mid-20th century. They also say, and this is important to them, that the nationalist authoritarian

00:47:34.080 right poses more of a threat to freedom of the individual than the left does today, as it has in

00:47:40.560 the West since the early 20th century. They argue that the left may have sway in the academy and large

00:47:46.240 segments of the media, but nationalist right parties, figures, and movements with authoritarian

00:47:52.000 tendencies have risen, become potent, and often been victorious in recent years. And they point to Trump,

00:47:59.280 Brexit, the national front. Pointing to Trump is rather pointless. I mean, I don't know what Trump

00:48:05.520 is, but to think of him as a figure of the radical right is a little on the absurd side. So, I mean,

00:48:12.800 we are polarizing. And so, who God only knows where the ultimate danger will come from. If it's the

00:48:18.880 ethno-nationalists on the right, or if it's the radical leftists on the left, who knows, right?

00:48:23.760 I suspect to some degree that's a matter of happenstance. I mean, that's what you'd expect if

00:48:29.120 you looked at 20th century history. But I emerged out of the academy, and the academy, like, there

00:48:35.920 aren't right-wing people in the academy, not to speak of. That's completely, that's thoroughly documented.

00:48:42.720 And it's certainly not the case in a country like Canada. There's no threat whatsoever in Canada from,

00:48:48.800 from the radical right. It's like, I don't know if you rounded up everybody who was in the radical right

00:48:53.600 in Canada, you might be able to scrape up, like, what, three or four thousand people. If you really,

00:48:58.960 like, if you really worked at it. You know, so, I just don't see that, at least in my own country,

00:49:04.800 that's just a non-issue. It's a non-starter. I mean, the last time there was any kind of radical

00:49:11.120 right-wingers in Canada was probably in Quebec in the 1950s, and maybe from the 1930s to the 1950s,

00:49:17.520 but it's never been a political issue. What about the AFD, or the Italian, I can't remember the name of

00:49:22.880 the Italian party, the national front in France? Where would you put, would you...

00:49:27.680 Oh, well, I mean, in Europe, it's more, there's more polarization, I would say,

00:49:32.560 but the Europeans also have problems that we don't have. You know, they've been, they've been 0.98

00:49:37.680 struggling with the consequences of non-ending violence in the Middle East, and the wave of 0.96

00:49:43.040 refugees that has emerged as a consequence of that, and so the situation in Europe is different,

00:49:48.000 and I would say, there is more movement and activity on the right. So, but...

00:49:55.440 And, you know, I'm not a admirer of identity politics. Well, and that's for the reasons I brought up to begin

00:50:02.800 with. I think that you have to decide, conceptually, psychologically, familially, and socially,

00:50:12.080 what your vision of a human being is. And if your vision of a human being is essentially tribal,

00:50:18.960 so that you're defined by your collective identity in some manner, then you're going to play identity

00:50:24.160 politics on the left, you're going to play identity politics on the right. It's like, well, I think the

00:50:28.800 identity politics types on the left pose a bigger threat in my country. It's not so obvious in your

00:50:34.160 country, because you guys, your political landscape is more balanced, I would say, than ours. If the

00:50:40.560 radical right posed a threat to the academy, which they most decidedly do not, then I would be just

00:50:46.560 as upset about that. And so, I think, again, it's part and parcel of the radical left's failure to take,

00:50:54.080 or the left's in general, failure to take responsibility for the radicals. It's like, oh, well, why aren't you

00:50:58.960 criticizing equally on both sides? Well, the threat doesn't exist equally on both sides, not in my

00:51:06.640 country. So, I think identity politics is murderous game, no matter who plays it, you know. And on the

00:51:14.320 left, it's, well, we've already talked about that, so what's wrong on the right? Well, you stand up and

00:51:20.080 wave your flag and talk about your ethnic identity, or your racial identity, and you take pride in that. 1.00

00:51:24.800 It's like, what the hell did that have to do with you, you goddamn loser? You know? It's like, you're 1.00

00:51:30.560 one of the great heroes of the past, are you? That's why you're standing up and waving your flag. It's,

00:51:34.640 no, you're not. You're identifying with your group because you don't have anything of your own to offer,

00:51:40.000 and so it's pathetic. And I've said that many times, and in my lectures too, and people know this if they've 0.97

00:51:45.680 actually watched my university lectures, I spend a tremendous amount of time, and have for 30 years,

00:51:52.720 convincing my students that if they had been in Nazi Germany, there was a very high probability

00:51:57.680 that rather than being Oscar Schindler and rescuing the Jews, they would have been a Nazi persecutor,

00:52:03.440 because there's like five Oscar Schindlers and like many million Nazis, so you can do the math for

00:52:10.480 yourself. And if you don't think that, if you think that you would have been one of the few heroes, then

00:52:15.600 you're either someone truly remarkable, or you're unbelievably deluded. And so I would suspect that

00:52:24.640 you're in the unbelievably deluded camp, because truly remarkable people are rare. And I've really,

00:52:30.000 I've really seen this in the last year or two, because one of the things I have noted, like I knew that

00:52:34.480 people were timid, you know, and I knew why. It's dangerous to stick your head up above the rest. I mean,

00:52:40.320 it's predator avoidance strategy to keep your head down. And I mean that technically, it truly is. To

00:52:46.240 blend in with the crowd is a predator avoidance strategy. That's what fish do in schools of fish.

00:52:52.240 Like, it's very low-level behavior. And if you stick your head up, there's some real danger. And

00:52:57.120 the advantage to that is that people are pretty civilized, and they go along with the group, and that's

00:53:01.440 a good thing, because, you know, we should be civilized and go along with the group, but it's a really bad

00:53:05.760 thing when the group goes sideways. And I've had many people, colleagues, but many other people,

00:53:11.520 too, say, well, really, we agree with what you're doing, but we can't really take the risk of standing

00:53:17.040 up and saying so. It's like, well, now and then, so most people fall into that camp. When I went to

00:53:22.320 Queen's University a month ago and was subject to that chilling demonstration, I would say, where the

00:53:28.960 radicals climbed up into the stained glass window wells and pounded, you know, unendingly for 90

00:53:36.480 minutes while we were all inside, I had a professor write me the day before and say, look, my wife and

00:53:42.160 I work at the university. We really support what you're doing, but we can't even risk coming to the

00:53:47.360 talk, because what if the students see and complain? It's like, well, yeah, there's courage for you, man.

00:53:53.440 There's courage for you, you know. And so, but that's par for the course, and it's unsurprising to some

00:53:59.200 degree. But, well, but anyways, on the right, it's like, it's an excuse by people on the left not to take

00:54:10.000 the things that I'm saying seriously. That's what it is. It's like, well, he's not attacking the right

00:54:14.960 as much. It's like, well, they're not after me. They're not trying to close down my speech.

00:54:20.800 So, I took that personally. So, had it been right wingers coming after me, well, it would have been

00:54:28.080 the same thing. So, it's a foolish objection, I think. 0.99

00:54:40.560 For decades, ethnic groups have, on average, scored significantly differently on IQ tests. 0.92

00:54:46.800 According to psychology professor Richard Heyer, whom you interviewed on your channel,

00:54:51.280 YouTube, there is no scientific consensus on the causes of these average differences in IQ test

00:54:56.400 scores. Yet, according to Heyer, psychologists do generally agree that general intelligence exists,

00:55:03.440 that IQ measures it well and in a non-culturally biased way, that IQ is highly predictive of success

00:55:10.560 in educational and professional terms, and that for decades, ethnic groups have, on average,

00:55:15.760 scored significantly differently. So, assuming this is true, should we talk about it? Sam Harris raised

00:55:22.480 this question in a podcast conversation with Charles Murray. Some argue that we should not talk about this,

00:55:29.040 as doing so could fuel the racial supremacist movements that you mentioned, with potentially

00:55:34.320 horrific consequences. Others, mainly on the intellectual dark web, and to a very limited

00:55:40.720 extent in academia, think we should talk about this topic. Because average differences in IQ scores have

00:55:46.640 existed for decades. They may have played a role in generating the disparate educational and professional

00:55:53.200 outcomes that we observe and care about, and thus that we cannot properly analyze these disparate

00:55:59.360 outcomes unless we do talk about this subject openly. Geneticist David Reich recently argued in the New York

00:56:06.240 Times that if scientists do not openly discuss the biological basis of race, pseudoscientists could fill the

00:56:13.600 vacuum with dangerous consequences. Furthermore, you, Professor Peterson, are highly critical of the

00:56:20.480 oppression narrative that permeates segments of the academy and activist left. And knowledge about

00:56:27.360 average differences in IQ scores between ethnic groups, while tough to assimilate, could puncture this

00:56:33.840 narrative. So the question is, what is your view on all that I've just said? Jesus, you guys already did

00:56:40.640 take a long time to prepare these questions, didn't you? All right, so when I went to Harvard, I came from McGill,

00:56:53.440 and I had spent a lot of time with my advisor there and a research team that he had trying to understand the

00:57:02.240 genesis of antisocial behavior. And among adolescents mostly. So well, as kids as well, antisocial behavior is very persistent. So if you have a child whose conduct

00:57:14.400 disordered at the age of four, the probability that they will be criminal at the age of 15 or 20 is extremely high. It's unbelievably stable. It's a very dismal literature because you see these early onset aggressive kids

00:57:29.120 and it's persistent. And then you look at the intervention literature and you throw up your hands because no interventions work. And believe me, psychologists have tried everything you could possibly imagine,

00:57:41.520 and a bunch of things that you can't, in order to ameliorate that. So we were really interested in trying to understand, for example,

00:57:49.280 if you're antisocial by the age of four, then there isn't an intervention that seems to be effective.

00:57:54.720 So, and the standard penological theory is really quite horrifying in this regard, because what you see is that male aggression peaks around the age of 15,

00:58:04.560 and then it declines fairly precipitously and sort of normalizes again by the age of 27. And standard penological theory essentially is this cold-hearted.

00:58:14.560 It's like, if you have someone who's a multiple offender, you just throw them in prison until they're 27.

00:58:19.920 And then they age out of it. And that's all there is to it. That's what we've got. Now there's some downside to that,

00:58:27.840 because there's a corollary literature that suggests that the worst thing that you can do with antisocial people

00:58:32.400 is to group them together, which is what we do in prisons. So that's a whole mess. Anyways, one of the things

00:58:39.280 we were doing was trying to see if there might be cognitive predictors of antisocial behavior. And so we used

00:58:45.360 this battery of neuropsychological tests that was put together at the Montreal Neurological Institute,

00:58:50.560 took about 11 hours to administer, and hypothetically assessed prefrontal cortical function.

00:58:56.320 We computerized that, reduced it to about 90 minutes, and then assessed antisocial adolescence in

00:59:03.600 Montreal, and found out that they did show deficits in problem-solving ability that we associated with

00:59:09.360 prefrontal ability. When I got to Harvard, I thought, well, that's interesting. We could use the

00:59:17.520 neuropsych battery to predict negative behavior. Perhaps we could use it to predict positive behavior.

00:59:24.560 So I thought, well, what if we turned the neuropsych battery over and thought, well, can we predict grades,

00:59:31.040 for example, because, you know, that's a decent thing to predict. So we ran a study that looked at

00:59:37.600 Harvard kids, University of Toronto kids, line workers at a Milwaukee factory, and managers and

00:59:43.920 executives at the same factory. And what we found was that the average score across these neuropsychological

00:59:51.280 tests, they were kind of like games. They were game-like, you know. So in one test, there were five

00:59:57.440 lights in the middle of the screen, and a box was associated with each light, and you had to learn

01:00:02.400 by trial and error which box was associated with each light. That was one of the tests.

01:00:08.640 So we took people's average score across the tests because they seemed to clump together into a single

01:00:15.760 structure. You can find that out statistically. If you take a bunch of tests, you can find out how

01:00:20.960 they clump together statistically by looking at their patterns of correlations, and you might get

01:00:24.960 multiple clumps, which is what happens with personality research, where you get five, or you might get a

01:00:29.600 singular clump, which is what happens in cognitive research. And we got a single clump, essentially.

01:00:35.840 And then we were trying to figure out if, at the same time, I was reading the literature on performance

01:00:41.120 prediction, and there's an extensive literature on performance prediction, a lot of it generated by the

01:00:46.000 armed forces, by the way, indicating that IQ is a very good predictor of long-term life success.

01:00:52.000 And so here's the general rule. If your job is simple, which means you do the same thing every

01:00:58.960 day, then IQ predicts how fast you'll learn the job, but not how well you do it. But if your job is

01:01:04.640 complex, which means that the demands change on an ongoing basis, then the best predictor of success

01:01:10.160 is general cognitive ability. And I learned that the general cognitive ability tests clumped together

01:01:16.880 into a single factor. That's fluid intelligence or IQ. And then we didn't know if the factor that we

01:01:22.320 had found was the same factor as IQ. And we still haven't really figured out whether or not that was

01:01:28.400 the case, because it kind of depends on how you do the analysis. But anyways, I got deeply into the

01:01:33.440 performance prediction literature, and I found out, well, if you wanted to predict people's performance

01:01:37.600 in life, there's a couple of things you need to know. You need to know their general cognitive

01:01:41.520 ability if they're going to do a complex job. You need to know their trait conscientiousness.

01:01:47.120 Some of you might have heard that rebranded as grit in a very corrupt act, by the way,

01:01:52.960 because it's a good predictor of long-term life success.

01:01:56.560 Freedom from negative emotion. Low neuroticism is another predictor, but it's sort of third on the

01:02:01.680 hierarchy. And then openness to experience, which is a personality trait, is associated with expertise

01:02:07.360 in creative domains. The evidence that, now I should tell you, this is such a complicated question,

01:02:13.520 I should tell you how to make an IQ test, because it's actually really easy. And you need to know this

01:02:18.160 to actually understand what IQ is. So imagine that you generated a set of 10,000 questions, okay, about

01:02:26.000 anything. They could be math problems, they could be general knowledge, they could be vocabulary,

01:02:30.720 they could be multiple choice. It really doesn't matter what they're about as long as they require

01:02:34.480 abstraction to solve, so they'd be formulated linguistically, but mathematically would also

01:02:39.760 apply. And then you have those 10,000 questions. Now you take a random set of 100 of those questions

01:02:47.280 and you give them to 1,000 people and all you do is sum up the answers, right? So some people are going

01:02:52.800 to get most of them right and some of them are going to get most of them wrong. You just rank order the

01:02:56.720 people in terms of their score. Correct that for age and you have IQ. That's all there is to it.

01:03:03.600 And what you'll find is that no matter which random set of 100 questions you take,

01:03:08.160 the people at the top of one random set will be at the top of all the others,

01:03:12.160 and with very, very, very high consistency. So one thing you need to know is that

01:03:17.680 if any social science claims whatsoever are correct, then the IQ claims are correct.

01:03:26.160 Because the IQ claims are more psychometrically rigorous than any other phenomenon that's been

01:03:32.240 discovered by social scientists. Now the IQ literature is a dismal literature. No one likes it.

01:03:38.000 Here's why. Here's an example. So here's a little, here's a fun little fact for you,

01:03:43.040 for liberals and conservatives alike. Because conservatives think there's a job for everyone

01:03:46.720 if people just get off their asses and get to work. And liberals think, well, you can train 0.99

01:03:50.720 anyone to do anything. It's like, no, there isn't a job for everyone. And no, you can't train everyone

01:03:56.720 to do everything. That's wrong. And here's one of the consequences of that. So as I mentioned,

01:04:02.560 the Armed Forces has done a lot of work on IQ and they started back in 1919. And the reason they did

01:04:08.080 that was because, well, for obvious reasons. Let's say there's a war and you want to get qualified

01:04:14.720 people into the officer positions as rapidly as possible or you'll lose. So that's a reason.

01:04:20.960 Now the Armed Forces has experimented with IQ tests since 1919. And in the last 20 years, a law was

01:04:29.360 passed as a consequence of that analysis, which was that it was illegal to induct anyone into the

01:04:34.160 Armed Forces who had an IQ of less than 83. Now the question is why? And the answer was,

01:04:41.440 all of that effort put in by the Armed Forces indicated that if you had an IQ of 83 or less,

01:04:46.240 there wasn't anything that you could be trained to do in the military that wasn't positively

01:04:50.080 counterproductive. Now you've got to think about that, eh? Because the military is chronically

01:04:55.440 desperate for people, right? Then it's not like they're, it's not like people are lining up to

01:05:00.160 be inducted, right? They have to go out and recruit and it's not easy. And so they're desperate to get

01:05:05.360 their hands on every body they can possibly manage. And then, especially in wartime, but also in peacetime,

01:05:11.600 but then there was another reason too, which was the Armed Forces was also set up from a policy

01:05:15.680 perspective to take people in the underclass, let's say, and train them and move them up at least into the

01:05:22.080 working class or maybe the middle class. So there's a policy element to it too. And so even from that

01:05:26.720 perspective you could see that the military is desperate to bring people in. But with an IQ of 83

01:05:33.040 or less it's not happening. Okay, so how many people have an IQ of 83 or less? Ten percent.

01:05:42.720 Now, if that doesn't,

01:05:43.920 if that doesn't hurt you to hear, then you didn't hear it properly. Because what it implies is that

01:05:52.800 in a complex society like ours, and one that's becoming increasingly complex, there isn't anything

01:05:59.040 for ten percent of the population to do. All right, well what are we going to do? Are we going to ignore

01:06:04.640 that? Are we going to run away from that? And believe me, we have every reason to. Or are we going to contend with

01:06:10.560 the fact that we need to figure out how it is, how it might be possible to find a place for people on

01:06:19.280 the lower end of the general cognitive distribution to take their productive and worthwhile place in

01:06:25.520 society. And that isn't just going to be a matter of dumping money down the hierarchy. Because giving

01:06:31.360 people who have nothing to do money isn't helpful. It doesn't work. It's not that simple.

01:06:36.640 Well, so that's kind of an answer to the question of whether or not we should deal with the, with IQ

01:06:43.360 forthrightly. It's like, if you can find a flaw in that logic, like just go right ahead. It's not like

01:06:49.600 I was thrilled to death to discover all of this. By no, by no stretch of the imagination was that the case.

01:06:55.840 So, so what? So IQ is reliable and valid. That's the first thing. It's more reliable and valid than any

01:07:03.920 other psychometric test ever designed by social scientists by a factor of about three.

01:07:10.720 That's fact number one. Fact number two is it protects long-term life outcome at about 0.3, 0.4,

01:07:18.400 which leaves about 85%, 70 to 85% of the story unexplained, but it's still the best thing that we

01:07:24.880 have. Well, it's also the case that in places like Great Britain, when IQ tests were first introduced,

01:07:31.760 they were actually used by the socialists and they were used to identify poor people who had

01:07:38.320 potential, cognitive potential, and to move them into higher, into institutes of higher education.

01:07:44.000 So there's an upside, you know, a social upside as well. Ethnic differences. 0.91

01:07:49.760 Ethnic differences. This is something you can't say anything about without immediately being killed. 1.00

01:07:57.920 So I'm hesitant to broach the topic. But I'll tell you one thing that I did in the last week that's

01:08:03.840 relevant to this. So the, and this just shows you how complex the problem is. First of all,

01:08:09.040 we should point out that race is a very difficult thing to define because racial boundaries aren't tight,

01:08:13.600 right? So, and so when you talk about racial differences in IQ, you're faced with the thorny

01:08:19.440 problem of defining race. And that's a big problem from a scientific perspective. But we'll leave that

01:08:24.240 aside. And I wrote an article this week. Somebody stood up at one point in one of my talks, and Vice

01:08:33.680 blessed their hearts, took this particular question and used it as an indication of the quality of the

01:08:39.600 people who are my so-called followers. And by the way, the quality of my so-called followers is pretty

01:08:44.800 damn high. And you can find that out quite rapidly just by going looking at the YouTube comments,

01:08:50.080 which are head and shoulders above the standard set of YouTube comments, I can tell you that.

01:08:56.160 So someone asked me about the Jewish question, right? And the implication, it was actually someone 0.89

01:09:03.120 Jewish, and the implication was that Jews are over-represented in positions of authority and power.

01:09:09.280 And I had just spoken for like an hour and a half, and you know, this guy had an axe to grind, 0.89

01:09:17.040 and I thought, there's no goddamn way I'm getting into this at the moment. And so I said, I can't answer

01:09:23.360 that question. But that's not a very good answer. So I wrote a blog post this week, and I said, look,

01:09:28.320 here's the situation. All right. Jews are over-represented in positions of power and authority. But then,

01:09:36.080 let's open our eyes a little bit, eh? And think for like two or three seconds, and think, hey,

01:09:40.400 guess what? They're also over-represented in positions of competence. And it's not like we have

01:09:45.840 more geniuses than we know what to do with. And if the Jews happen to be producing more of them, 1.00

01:09:50.880 which they are, by the way, then that's a pretty good thing for the rest of us. So let's not confuse

01:09:56.240 competence with power and authority, even though that's a favorite trick of the radical leftists,

01:10:00.400 who always fail to make that distinction. Well, why does this over-representation occur?

01:10:06.720 Because it does. It also, there's also over-representation in political movements,

01:10:12.000 including radical political movements. Okay, why? Well, answer one, Jewish conspiracy. 0.86

01:10:18.640 Okay, that's not a very good answer. We've had, we've used that answer before.

01:10:23.600 All right, but do we have an alternative? Well, here's an alternative.

01:10:28.480 The average Ashkenazi IQ is somewhere between 110 and 115, which is about one standard deviation

01:10:35.440 above the population average. And so what that means is that the average Ashkenazi 0.97

01:10:40.800 slash European Jew has an IQ that's higher than 85% of the population. 0.99

01:10:47.760 That's a lot higher. Now, that doesn't make that much difference in the middle of the distribution,

01:10:53.120 okay? But geniuses don't exist at the middle of the distribution. They exist at the tails of the 0.98

01:10:58.400 distribution. And you don't need much of a move at the mean to produce walloping differences at the

01:11:05.040 tails. And the tails are important because a lot of where we draw, we draw exceptional people from the

01:11:11.680 exceptions. Right? So here's an example, here's another example of the same thing. Most engineers

01:11:18.160 are male. Why? Because men are more interested in things and women are more interested in people. 1.00

01:11:25.600 And you might say, well, that's sociocultural. It's like, no, it's not. And we know that because

01:11:31.280 if you stack up countries by their, by their egalitarian social policies, which you can do quite

01:11:37.760 effectively, and then you look at the over-representation of men in STEM fields,

01:11:43.200 the over-representation increases as the countries become more egalitarian.

01:11:48.960 So it's not sociocultural. Okay. Now, men aren't that much more interested in things than women. 0.53

01:11:56.080 It's one standard deviation, which is about the same difference, by the way, between the population

01:12:00.560 norm and the Ashkenazi Jews. But if you're looking at the person, the one person in 20, or the one person 0.64

01:12:06.480 in 50, who's most, who's hyper-interested in things, and thus likely to become an engineer, then most of

01:12:14.160 them are men. Here's another example of the same thing. Men are more aggressive than women. 1.00

01:12:21.360 Now, you might ask, how much? And the answer to that is best place to look at that is in Sweden,

01:12:27.040 where the egalitarian policies have been laid out for a long period of time, and you can,

01:12:31.520 you can get a more direct inference about biology. If you took a random man and a random woman out of

01:12:37.120 the population, and you had to bet on who was more aggressive, and you bet on the man, you'd be

01:12:42.080 right 60% of the time. So that's not that much, right? It deviates from 50-50, but it's not like 90-10,

01:12:49.120 it's 60-40. Okay. So? So what does that mean? Well, we've got a tail problem here again. Let's say that

01:12:56.960 now you decide to go out onto the extremes of aggression, and you identify the most aggressive

01:13:02.480 one in a hundred persons. They're all men. Guess who's in prison? Those people. That's why most of the

01:13:11.920 people in prison are men. And so this is elementary. Part of the problem in our society is that we don't

01:13:18.640 understand statistics. We don't understand that you can have relatively small differences at the

01:13:24.320 population level that produce walloping consequences at the tails of the distribution.

01:13:30.400 Okay, so back to IQ.

01:13:34.320 One final thing to say about IQ.

01:13:36.160 The ethnic differences are difficult to dispense with.

01:13:42.800 It's not easy to make them go away. You can say, well, the tests aren't culture fair. Well, here's a test of that.

01:13:49.280 So imagine you test group A with an IQ test, and you test group B with an IQ test,

01:13:55.280 and then you look at their actual performance in whatever you're predicting.

01:13:59.600 If the test was biased against ethnic group A, then it would under-predict their performance,

01:14:05.760 and that doesn't happen. Now you could say, well, there's systemic bias in the performance measures

01:14:11.200 and the potential measures, and that's a possibility. All right.

01:14:17.040 Now, one other thing about that.

01:14:20.160 There's a real danger in the ethnicity IQ debate, and the danger is that we confuse intelligence with

01:14:27.920 value, or that we include, we confuse intelligence with, yeah, with human value. That's a better way of thinking about it.

01:14:36.400 And one of the things that we're going to have to understand here is that that's a mistake.

01:14:41.680 is that being more intelligent doesn't make you a better person. That's not the case. It makes you more

01:14:47.680 useful for complex cognitive operations. But you can be pretty damn horrific as a genius son of a 0.88

01:14:54.400 bitch. Right? It's morally neutral. And we also know that from the psychometric data, by the way. 1.00

01:14:59.200 There doesn't seem to be any relationship whatsoever between intelligence and virtue.

01:15:03.200 And so, if it does turn out that nature and the fates do not align with our egalitarian

01:15:09.280 presuppositions, which is highly probable, we shouldn't therefore make the mistake of assuming that

01:15:14.240 if group A or person A is lower on one of these attributes than group B or person B, that that is

01:15:21.360 somehow reflective of their intrinsic value as human beings. That's a big mistake.

01:15:32.000 I don't have anything else to say about that.

01:15:35.760 Okay. So, I had three more questions, and so maybe slightly shorter answers to these three,

01:15:43.440 like maybe around... Well, hopefully they're simpler questions.

01:15:46.320 You know, average five minutes, maybe, and then we will open it up. So, another taboo is to

01:15:56.480 celebrate European culture. Multiculturalists get pretty unhappy when Europeans start expressing 0.99

01:16:04.240 pride in their culture or heritage. Many, especially on the left, do not draw much of a distinction,

01:16:10.880 at least in practice, between European pride and white supremacy.

01:16:15.760 You care about freedom of the individual, the individual's freedom to think, to speak,

01:16:20.960 to associate, in short, to act as he sees fit without external compulsion, as long as he doesn't

01:16:27.360 infringe on the similar liberties of others. Professor Ricardo Duchesne, a historical sociologist

01:16:34.080 and professor at the University of New Brunswick, argues that, quote, individualism is a unique

01:16:39.680 attribute of European peoples. Quote, it has been exported to some degree to other nations,

01:16:46.480 but in my view, it is not something that comes to them naturally.

01:16:50.000 So, he continues, quote, you can't play the game of we're all individuals. We have to affirm

01:16:58.240 and be proud of our ethnic identity and heritage to preserve the West's curious individualism.

01:17:05.760 If Europeans become minorities in the West, he argues, the founding idea of the West, that no entity,

01:17:13.360 not an individual, not a community, not the state, can justly deprive an individual of life, liberty,

01:17:19.120 or property by force, no matter what the individual's race, class, or religion.

01:17:25.520 I wouldn't be surprised if Duchesne, when he made this statement, had you in mind.

01:17:30.320 Look, the medieval Europeans identified seven deadly sins for a reason, and one of them was pride. 0.89

01:17:43.040 It's like, let's make the presumption. I do believe that, for reasons that aren't obvious,

01:17:52.000 that the West has got some things right. We've got the sovereignty of the individual right.

01:17:57.920 That's the most fundamental thing we've got right. We've articulated that, I think, in a remarkable way,

01:18:03.360 not only theologically, philosophically, in our body of laws, in our societies. And one of the

01:18:09.920 consequences of that, as it's had its effect on the rest of the world, is that everyone is getting

01:18:15.360 richer quite fast, and that's a really good thing. Okay, having said that, it's like, am I proud of that?

01:18:22.080 It's like, I didn't do that. What the hell? Pride. What's that? That's not the right response.

01:18:30.960 How about responsibility for that? How would that be? It's like, you're part of this great

01:18:38.320 and unlikely set of propositions, this strange set of propositions that says that in some

01:18:44.880 ineffable manner, the poorest person is as valuable as the king.

01:18:51.120 It's like, how the hell did we ever figure that out? That's an impossible thing to think,

01:18:55.520 and yet that's the bedrock of our legal system. That's nothing to be proud of. That's something

01:19:01.040 to tremble before, to take on as an ethical burden, and not to wave a flag for how wonderful you are that

01:19:08.640 you happen to have the same skin color as some of the people who thought that up. It's not the right 1.00

01:19:14.080 response. It's like, it's to open your eyes and recognize that as a miracle, and a relatively new

01:19:22.160 miracle on the world stage, and to participate in the process of upholding that in your personal and

01:19:28.080 your public life. That's not pride in European tradition. Like, when I go to Europe, and I love going

01:19:34.880 to Europe, and the European cities are, they're unbelievable masterpieces, which is why they're

01:19:39.920 completely flooded by pilgrims, tourists, pilgrims, who go there to look at the beauty. It's like,

01:19:46.320 I don't feel pride about that. I feel like I have something to live up to. That's not the same thing,

01:19:53.520 man. And so these right-wingers in this, it's like, look what we've done. It's like, no, it's not you

01:19:59.520 that did that. That's something, man. You gotta have your act together before you would dare to say,

01:20:05.840 well, that was me. It's like, yeah, sure, sure it was you. Yeah, right. No, that's hard to stand up and

01:20:13.600 take your place in that, in that kind of historical process, that unlikely miraculous historical process.

01:20:20.800 Not to just feel ashamed at the way that you're presently constituted. In the face of that means

01:20:26.640 that you're deluded, and you're using your great fortune at being a beneficiary of that system.

01:20:36.480 Look at what we've got here, this great peace that we're inhabiting right now. You're using your unearned,

01:20:47.200 the unearned gift that's been granted to you as a source of personal pride in your accomplishments due to

01:20:54.400 your skin. It's like, no, not good, not a good argument. So, and that doesn't mean that, 0.98

01:21:02.720 well, there's nothing valuable about European culture. There's plenty, there's plenty about it

01:21:08.560 that's valuable. It's not even so clear to what degree it's European. I mean, it came out of the

01:21:12.560 Middle East, you know. I mean, who, it's so muddle-headed that you hardly know where to start. 1.00

01:21:19.360 So, hopefully that was less than five minutes. There we go. Dispensed with the radical right-wingers

01:21:27.040 in four minutes.

01:21:27.680 I've heard a number of interesting things about Islam from you and one of your intellectual soulmates,

01:21:33.920 Camille Paglia. Paglia says that men and women benefit in many ways from living in largely separate

01:21:41.120 worlds, as they did in traditional European societies and obviously as they do in much of the Muslim world

01:21:47.200 today. Relatedly, Paglia considers passionate masculinity a critical force for defending,

01:21:53.920 sustaining, and advancing civilization. And she argues that passionate masculinity, while virtually

01:21:59.680 moribund in the Western middle and upper classes, is alive and well in the Muslim world. 0.97

01:22:06.080 You have expressed some sympathy for the Muslim critique of the West, its godlessness, its spiritual 1.00

01:22:12.160 void, its materialism, its technology-induced removal from life's elemental realities.

01:22:19.040 You've said, it is extraordinarily naive to believe that the differences between European culture

01:22:24.640 and Islamic culture are not about anything fundamental. You've expressed concern that Islam is a totalizing

01:22:32.400 system. And in a quote that stood out to me, you said in a Patreon chat on YouTube that in your view,

01:22:39.600 quote, the only countries in the world that are essentially worth living in, in any real sense,

01:22:45.280 are the ones that are predicated on the Judeo-Christian tradition and manifested in the Western body of

01:22:50.720 laws, unquote. So an open-ended question. How would you synthesize your perspective on Islam and the fact

01:22:57.840 that the Muslim populations of Europe and Canada, a product of recent immigration, are growing and

01:23:03.520 reproducing much faster than the European-descended populations in these countries?

01:23:10.080 Man, you guys really did spend a lot of time coming up with troublesome questions, didn't you?

01:23:18.880 We can, we can end with that. 0.98

01:23:19.600 See, the problem is, the problem, one of the problems is, is that I'm an ignorant man. 0.95

01:23:25.280 And there's lots of things that I don't know. You know, and I don't know, I don't understand Islam. 0.83

01:23:31.760 I don't know enough about it to be an intelligent commentary on it. I've done my best to

01:23:38.400 peck away at the edges. But, you know, it would require multiple years of study to understand the

01:23:46.240 similarities and differences between the two viewpoints. It looks to me like what Islam did was take 1.00

01:23:56.480 a group of radically disparate tribes and unite them under a single ethos. Of course, the Muslim 1.00

01:24:06.080 civilization expanded more rapidly than any other civilization ever had and occupied a very large

01:24:12.960 part of the world. Which, of course, it still does. Perhaps there's something to be said for that unifying tendency.

01:24:31.680 There's a problem. And maybe this is at the core of the problem. There's no distinction between church 0.51

01:24:40.400 and state in Islam. And there is a distinction between church and state in the West.

01:24:49.520 It isn't obvious to me, if it's the case that our culture is grounded in an underlying,

01:24:58.080 let's call it literary metaphysics, something like that, a religious metaphysic.

01:25:04.320 Part of the bedrock of our culture is the idea of the separation between church and state.

01:25:10.400 And as far as I can tell, that idea doesn't exist in the Muslim world. And so I cannot understand how 1.00

01:25:17.280 that faith is commensurate with the institutions of the West. It doesn't seem to me that there's any

01:25:24.320 evidence that it's commensurate. Because the number of Islamic democracies is, let's call it, finite. 1.00

01:25:32.240 The best example has probably been Turkey. And Turkey, as far as I can tell, isn't doing that well at the

01:25:39.120 moment on the democratic front. And it looked like the great shining hope. And a lot of that was a

01:25:44.400 consequence of secularization.

01:25:55.200 You know, I've spent a lot of time, when I was writing Maps of Meaning, for example,

01:25:59.520 looking for commonalities among religious viewpoints. And I was able to find deep commonalities,

01:26:05.360 I thought, between Buddhism and Christianity, and Daoism and Christianity, and Hinduism and Christianity,

01:26:10.640 for that matter, was a lot harder when it came to Islam. It's not a faith that's opened itself up to me. 1.00

01:26:16.320 I don't understand it well. But I hope that people of goodwill can build a bridge between the two cultures.

01:26:36.000 And finally, you've stated, quote, women are more agreeable by nature than men. And agreeable people are

01:26:54.480 compassionate toward those they see as suffering. And that seems to include any minority, especially when

01:27:01.040 you combine that with a kind of neo-Marxist doctrine, that claims that anyone who has an advantage,

01:27:06.960 swiped it. Unquote. Women have been voting for a century now. And this, you suggested in a Patreon 0.98

01:27:14.000 chat, may help to explain why, in the West, we've collectively decided that, quote, egalitarianism and

01:27:21.520 conflict avoidance constitute the two highest virtues, and trump everything else, including free speech. Unquote.

01:27:29.200 Unquote. Unquote.

01:27:30.880 You've said that in the West today, we are, perhaps, for the first time in history,

01:27:35.840 seeing on the political left or on segments of the political left, quote,

01:27:40.320 what a female totalitarianism would look like, unquote. Elaborate. 1.00

01:27:50.720 I did a research project with one of my students. We haven't published it, unfortunately, for a variety of reasons.

01:27:56.560 she's been quite ill and I've been quite preoccupied, so those are the two barriers at the moment.

01:28:02.920 But the first thing we wanted to do was to find out whether there was actually such a thing as political correctness.

01:28:09.620 You can actually do that technically as a social scientist, so what you do is, this is what we did,

01:28:14.120 is we got a group of people together and we collected a whole bunch of statements

01:28:17.740 that seemed to be vaguely associated with the idea of political correctness.

01:28:21.320 So maybe you could think, well, it's a media construct, and that's fine.

01:28:24.140 You can go analyze media statements, and then you can collect ideas that seem to be associated with whatever political correctness is.

01:28:31.640 We collected about 400 of those.

01:28:34.120 And then we asked, we turned them into questions, and we asked a thousand people for their opinions.

01:28:39.040 Then you can do this statistical process called a factor analysis,

01:28:42.820 and it's the same thing that pulls out a single factor of IQ from a group of questions, for example.

01:28:47.180 It's the same thing that produced the Big Five personality model.

01:28:49.760 And what the factor analysis does is tell you if questions group together.

01:28:56.440 So let's say you have Opinion A.

01:28:58.940 Well, if you have Opinion A, if there's a hundred of you, everyone who has Opinion A also has Opinion B and Opinion C.

01:29:05.180 And if that's the case, then those clump together.

01:29:08.180 There's something about them that's the same.

01:29:10.320 Now, what we could have found was that when we analyzed these 400 questions, there was like 50 clumps.

01:29:16.400 And so that would have blown the, there's such a thing as political correctness hypothesis out of the water.

01:29:22.260 But that isn't what happened.

01:29:23.520 We found two clumps, one of which looked like something like moderate leftism,

01:29:28.200 and the other that looked very much like totalitarian political correctness.

01:29:32.060 And it was a very, very robust finding, and we replicated it as well.

01:29:37.240 She did this for her master's thesis, by the way.

01:29:41.200 And then we looked at what predicted these beliefs.

01:29:44.300 First of all, the correlation between the moderate leftist clump of questions and the radical leftist clump of questions actually wasn't very high.

01:29:52.140 And so one of the things that we surmise is that there's an actual division on the left between the moderates and the radicals.

01:29:58.380 And that's just not played itself out.

01:30:00.620 And I think you can actually see that happening by the proclivity of the radical leftists to devour themselves, right?

01:30:06.760 So which happens on a very regular basis.

01:30:08.720 Or perhaps you can see it in the proclivity of the radical leftists to go after the moderates when the moderates criticize the radicals, whatever.

01:30:17.340 So there's two clumps to political correctness.

01:30:19.840 Both of them were predicted by trait agreeableness, which is one of the traits that women score higher on than men.

01:30:26.700 And it's the antithesis of aggression, by the way, and by also by being female, which was a real shock to us because most of the so let's say females and males differ with regards to some outcome.

01:30:37.740 You try to figure out why that is might be just because they're female, but there's all sorts of welcome to the Jordan B. Peterson podcast.

01:30:46.700 You can support these podcasts by donating to Dr. Peterson's Patreon, the link to which can be found in the description.

01:30:53.580 Dr. Peterson's self-development programs, self-authoring, can be found at selfauthoring.com.

01:31:00.020 Thank you all for coming.

01:31:17.340 I'm going to begin by introducing Jordan Peterson, and then I will talk a little bit about how this event is going to work, and then we'll get underway.

01:31:26.280 So Jordan Peterson has been called, quote, one of the most important thinkers to emerge on the world stage for many years by The Spectator.

01:31:34.620 He has been a dishwasher, gas jockey bartender, short order cook, beekeeper, oil derrick bit re-tipper, plywood mill laborer, and railway line worker.

01:31:44.280 He's taught mythology to lawyers, doctors, and businessmen, consulted for the UN Secretary General's high-level panel on sustainable development,

01:31:52.560 helped his clinical clients manage depression, obsessive compulsive disorder, anxiety, and schizophrenia,

01:31:58.180 served as an advisor to senior partners of major law firms, identified thousands of promising entrepreneurs on six different continents,

01:32:06.180 and lectured extensively in North America and Europe.

01:32:09.180 He has flown a hammerhead roll in a carbon fiber stunt plane, piloted a mahogany racing sailboat around Alcatraz Island,

01:32:17.180 explored an Arizona meteorite crater with a group of astronauts, built a Native American longhouse on the upper floor of his Toronto home,

01:32:25.180 and been inducted into the coastal, Pacific Kwaukwaukwaukwauk tribe.

01:32:33.180 Malcolm Gladwell discussed psychology with him while researching his books.

01:32:36.180 Norman Doidge is a good friend and collaborator.

01:32:39.180 Thriller writer Greg Hurwitz employed several of his, quote, valuable things as a plot feature in his number one international bestseller,

01:32:46.180 Orphan X, and he worked with Jim B제가, former RIM CEO, on a project for the UN Secretary General.

01:32:54.180 With his students and colleagues, Dr. Peterson has published more than a hundred scientific papers, transforming the modern understanding of personality, and revolutionized the psychology of religion with his now classic book, Maps of Meaning, The Architecture of Belief.

01:33:09.440 As a Harvard professor, he was nominated for the prestigious Levinson Teaching Prize and is regarded by his current University of Toronto students as one of three truly life-changing teachers.

01:33:20.460 Dr. Peterson is a Quora Most Viewed Writer in Values and Principles and Parenting and Education.

01:33:26.240 He has innumerable Twitter followers and Facebook followers.

01:33:30.040 His YouTube channel now has about a million subscribers.

01:33:33.360 And his classroom lectures on mythology were turned into a popular 13-part TV series on TV Ontario.

01:33:41.560 Dr. Peterson's online self-help program, The Self-Authoring Suite, has been featured in O! The Oprah Magazine on CBC Radio,

01:33:48.600 and on NPR's national website.

01:33:51.700 It has helped over 150,000 people resolve the problems of their past and radically improve their future.

01:33:57.940 Without further ado, please join me in welcoming Dr. Jordan Peterson to Lafayette County.

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01:36:58.400 So the way this is going to work is that I'm going to have a conversation with Dr. Peterson for 90 minutes,

01:37:06.200 and then there is going to be a 90-minute Q&A.

01:37:09.200 This event is being video recorded and will be published online for non-commercial, non-advertising purposes.

01:37:16.620 During the Q&A session, when you are handed a microphone, please speak directly into it.

01:37:21.420 Our viewers on YouTube will appreciate it.

01:37:23.940 And finally, I am a moderator between Professor Peterson and the audience,

01:37:28.380 but also a biased participant in this conversation.

01:37:32.000 Okay.

01:37:33.640 Well, it's a relief that's all over.

01:37:37.940 Okay, so I thought we would start things off with this.

01:37:42.780 I assume that many in the audience are curious but relatively unfamiliar with you

01:37:47.940 or have heard a lot about you without ever reading or listening to you.

01:37:52.060 So I thought we might start with you introducing yourself to the audience

01:37:55.780 and maybe telling them some of the main things that you think they might be interested in knowing about you.

01:38:01.740 Well, I guess the most relevant detail is that I spent about 15 years writing this

01:38:21.140 and I worked on it about three hours a day, every day during that period of time.

01:38:31.700 At the same time, I was finishing off my doctorate and I started lecturing at Harvard,

01:38:37.460 but I was doing that continually and thinking about it continually

01:38:42.220 and reading the material that I needed to read in order to write the book continually as well.

01:38:48.640 And I didn't realize until more recently that what I was doing

01:38:54.820 was at the heart of the postmodern conundrum, I would say.

01:39:01.940 I was very much obsessed by the events of the Cold War

01:39:05.660 for reasons I don't exactly understand.

01:39:08.500 I had a lot of dreams about nuclear annihilation for years on end.

01:39:12.860 I mean, it wasn't that uncommon to be obsessed by that when I grew up.

01:39:16.420 I mean, because it was a preoccupation of everyone who was my age, I suppose.

01:39:21.440 There were lots of years, probably between 1962, I would say, probably in 1985,

01:39:28.060 where people were pretty convinced that the probability of a nuclear war was high,

01:39:33.800 much higher than people consider now.

01:39:37.540 And I was curious about this.

01:39:42.340 I was curious about why everyone wasn't obsessed about this all the time,

01:39:45.460 first of all, because it seemed like the fundamental issue

01:39:47.880 that two armed camps were pointing something in excess of 25,000 hydrogen bombs each at each other.

01:39:56.980 I couldn't understand how anybody could concentrate on anything other than that,

01:40:00.560 since it seemed so utterly insane.

01:40:04.980 And I was curious.

01:40:08.960 What was going on exactly?

01:40:12.780 Was this...

01:40:13.880 One explanation was that there's a very large number of ways

01:40:17.080 that human beings could organize themselves in society,

01:40:19.820 like a large number of games that we could hypothetically play.

01:40:22.700 And they're all equally arbitrary in an equally arbitrary universe.

01:40:27.020 And that the communists had decided to play one kind of game, 0.56

01:40:30.380 and the Western free market democratic types had decided to play another game,

01:40:36.540 and it was all arbitrary in some sense.

01:40:39.540 And so that's what I was trying to figure out,

01:40:42.180 was what the hell was going on with this conflict?

01:40:45.340 And was it merely a battle between two hypothetically equally valid interpretations of the world,

01:40:52.560 drawn from a set of extraordinarily large potential interpretations,

01:40:57.000 which I think would be essentially a post-modernist take on it.

01:41:00.780 And I think I went into the problem neutrally,

01:41:06.000 in that I didn't think I knew what the answer was.

01:41:10.100 You know, so lots of times when you talk to people who think,

01:41:12.960 or when you talk to people who write,

01:41:14.420 they have an idea, and it's right,

01:41:16.440 and then they write whatever they're writing to justify the idea.

01:41:19.460 That's how they look at it.

01:41:20.740 But it's not a good way to write.

01:41:22.680 A good way to write and think is to have a problem,

01:41:26.080 and then try to solve it, right?

01:41:28.000 To actually solve it,

01:41:29.000 not to demonstrate that your a priori commitment is true.

01:41:33.720 And, you know, one of the signs I would say

01:41:37.420 that my a priori commitments weren't the purpose for the writing

01:41:41.060 was that I walked away from that 15-year project

01:41:44.320 with a view of the world that was completely different

01:41:47.780 than the view that I had going in

01:41:50.200 and learned all sorts of things,

01:41:52.260 especially about the role of narrative

01:41:54.520 and religious thinking in life

01:41:57.560 that I had no idea was possible when I started.

01:42:02.740 And a lot of that was a consequence of reading

01:42:04.740 the great people who I read deeply.

01:42:06.980 You know, I read, well,

01:42:09.400 all the great works of Friedrich Nietzsche

01:42:11.620 and the great works of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy

01:42:15.300 and most of Jung's collected works,

01:42:17.700 everything that had been published up to that point

01:42:19.580 and a very large swath of the relevant clinical literature,

01:42:24.280 the great clinicians of the 20th century

01:42:26.000 and a huge stack of neuroscience

01:42:28.100 and et cetera, et cetera,

01:42:29.880 because I was reading constantly during this time.

01:42:31.900 And I realized some things that I think are true.

01:42:37.500 The communists were wrong.

01:42:40.340 They weren't, and not just a little bit wrong

01:42:42.480 and not wrong in some arbitrary way.

01:42:44.520 They were playing a game

01:42:45.460 that human beings cannot play

01:42:47.060 without descending into a murderous catastrophe.

01:42:51.240 And there's something about what we've done in the West

01:42:53.680 that's correct.

01:42:55.980 And it's complicated because

01:42:57.980 our cognitive structures,

01:43:01.220 that's one way of thinking about it,

01:43:02.520 or our sociopolitical arrangements,

01:43:04.700 they actually parallel one another in an important way,

01:43:08.360 are grounded in a strange set of axioms.

01:43:14.860 And the axioms aren't rational precisely.

01:43:17.920 It's more like they're narrative.

01:43:19.680 They're narrative axioms.

01:43:21.600 They're stories.

01:43:23.020 And the story of the West

01:43:24.080 is that the individual is sovereign over the group

01:43:26.380 and that that's the solution to tribalism.

01:43:30.100 And I think that's the correct solution.

01:43:33.060 Now, what that means metaphysically,

01:43:36.080 because it's also embedded in our religious doctrines, right?

01:43:38.840 Because especially in Christianity, 0.71

01:43:41.120 although not exclusively to Christianity,

01:43:43.440 the individual is sovereign.

01:43:45.000 The suffering individual is sovereign.

01:43:47.580 And there's something about that

01:43:48.660 that's true at least psychologically.

01:43:51.280 And I don't know what that might mean metaphysically.

01:43:54.440 Because who the hell knows

01:43:55.680 what anything means metaphysically, right?

01:43:57.520 I mean, your knowledge runs out at some point.

01:44:00.620 Anyways, I worked all these ideas out

01:44:04.320 and then I taught for a long time

01:44:06.020 courses that were based on the ideas.

01:44:08.060 And the courses were very impactful, I would say.

01:44:11.160 They had the same impact on the people that I was teaching

01:44:13.280 as walking through the material had on me.

01:44:17.320 And while it was out of that

01:44:19.720 that all this political controversy arose,

01:44:23.580 I mean, I was never focused on political controversy,

01:44:28.820 even though I'm interested in politics

01:44:30.900 and I thought at many points in my life

01:44:32.960 about a political career.

01:44:34.720 I always put it aside for a psychological

01:44:37.460 and philosophical career, I would say.

01:44:40.780 And...

01:44:40.980 But things started to shift badly in Canada

01:44:45.340 over the last five years.

01:44:47.320 And our government dared

01:44:49.060 to implement legislation that compelled speech.

01:44:53.660 And one of the things that I had learned

01:44:55.020 when I was doing all this background investigation

01:44:56.940 was that there isn't a higher value

01:44:59.860 than free speech.

01:45:01.920 It isn't free speech.

01:45:03.000 It's not the right way of thinking about it

01:45:04.360 because it's free thought.

01:45:05.740 And even that's not the right way of thinking about it

01:45:07.780 because thought is the precursor to action and life.

01:45:11.800 So there's no difference between free speech

01:45:14.140 and free life.

01:45:15.680 And I was just not willing to

01:45:17.760 put up with restrictions on my free life.

01:45:22.060 And so I made some videos

01:45:23.760 pointing out the pathology of this doctrine

01:45:27.120 and the fact that the government

01:45:28.340 had radically overreached its appropriate limits.

01:45:32.720 And well then, you know,

01:45:35.440 well, and maybe you don't know,

01:45:36.680 but I've been enveloped in continual scandal

01:45:39.980 since, for 18 months as a consequence.

01:45:43.300 Which to me, as a clinician, 0.99

01:45:46.040 indicates that I got my damn diagnosis right. 0.99

01:45:49.280 Right? 0.99

01:45:49.740 It's not about pronouns.

01:45:52.400 It's about something a lot deeper than that.

01:45:55.100 And I stand by that.

01:45:56.380 I believe that it's the case.

01:45:57.680 And I don't think that we would all be here tonight

01:45:59.720 if that wasn't the situation.

01:46:01.980 So...

01:46:02.380 So I wanted my first

01:46:05.980 or my next question

01:46:07.920 to be about Lafayette.

01:46:11.240 And so I thought I would read

01:46:12.840 a couple of Facebook posts

01:46:15.760 that certain students who are critical of you

01:46:18.220 read in the lead-up to this event

01:46:20.080 and just ask you to respond to them.

01:46:21.840 Okay.

01:46:23.640 So this is a student writing,

01:46:25.460 Lafayette College,

01:46:26.420 I am utterly disappointed

01:46:27.580 that you're allowing this

01:46:28.520 to take place on our campus.

01:46:30.100 I thought we went through this last semester

01:46:32.040 with Roaming Millennial.

01:46:34.160 Inviting hateful speakers

01:46:35.420 who make wildly unsubstantiated claims

01:46:37.740 is not going to fly with the student body.

01:46:40.280 I get it.

01:46:41.040 The Mill Series events are private

01:46:42.700 and not endorsed by the college.

01:46:44.440 But you absolutely have the power

01:46:46.240 to make a statement on this.

01:46:47.960 The fact that you're not

01:46:48.940 is an embarrassment to our community.

01:46:51.040 If you believe this man

01:46:52.420 is a legitimate source of knowledge

01:46:54.920 because he has a degree in clinical psychology,

01:46:57.800 feel free to ask our psychology department faculty

01:47:00.460 and counseling center staff

01:47:01.860 about the validity of his claims.

01:47:04.380 I'm certain they would not endorse this speaker.

01:47:07.280 Do better, in all caps.

01:47:10.100 For those of you unfamiliar,

01:47:11.540 Jordan Peterson is known for

01:47:13.160 denouncing the Me Too movement,

01:47:15.580 claiming that women are in no way

01:47:17.300 marginalized in the West,

01:47:19.480 arguing against the existence

01:47:20.880 of gender-neutral pronouns,

01:47:23.120 arguing against gun control in the U.S.,

01:47:24.960 and claiming that identity politics

01:47:27.600 and social justice movements

01:47:29.220 are part of a devious Marxist agenda.

01:47:32.400 And then another student responded,

01:47:33.860 and this is briefer,

01:47:35.280 college conservatives know

01:47:36.800 that if they bring in a speaker

01:47:38.260 who is willing to blatantly insult

01:47:40.180 a portion of the audience

01:47:41.440 and the libs get angry enough about this 0.93

01:47:44.220 for good reason,

01:47:45.400 then they may get an op-ed written about them

01:47:47.480 in the New York Times.

01:47:48.860 As a result,

01:47:50.020 there are a whole group of hacks,

01:47:51.880 like Milo and Peterson,

01:47:53.140 who get famous and invited

01:47:55.200 purely for their promise

01:47:56.560 to misgender trans students

01:47:58.540 and advocate provocative

01:48:00.260 but ultimately toothless arguments

01:48:02.120 about social Darwinist race theory.

01:48:05.120 What I'm saying is that

01:48:06.420 you have every right to be pissed. 1.00

01:48:08.140 Jordan Peterson is a harmful moron, 1.00

01:48:10.600 but know that... 1.00

01:48:11.280 But know that you being pissed

01:48:14.560 is also 100% at the point

01:48:16.360 of why he was invited.

01:48:17.980 He's not a conservative.

01:48:19.420 He's just a guy who's mildly racist enough 0.83

01:48:21.880 to offend college liberals

01:48:23.580 and therefore secure wins

01:48:25.820 for the cultural right.

01:48:32.620 Comparatively mild stuff.

01:48:35.980 It's the chattering buzz 1.00

01:48:37.920 of ideologically possessed demons.

01:48:41.460 So there's nothing in it

01:48:43.700 that's not entirely predictable.

01:48:46.120 That's one of the things you know,

01:48:48.000 you notice when you're talking to people.

01:48:49.720 If you want to find out

01:48:51.420 whether the person is there

01:48:52.920 or the ideology is there,

01:48:55.000 you listen to see

01:48:56.320 if you're hearing anything

01:48:57.460 that someone else

01:48:58.800 of the same ideological mindset

01:49:00.780 couldn't have told you.

01:49:02.700 You know, like,

01:49:03.280 I've had thousands of conversations

01:49:04.840 with people

01:49:05.480 because I've spent 20 years

01:49:06.860 as a clinical psychologist.

01:49:08.200 And one of the things

01:49:09.040 I've learned about people

01:49:10.000 is that they're unbelievably interesting.

01:49:11.880 If you get someone to sit down

01:49:14.040 and you move past

01:49:16.340 the superficial

01:49:17.100 which you can actually do

01:49:18.180 quite rapidly

01:49:18.940 they'll tell you

01:49:19.900 all sorts of things

01:49:20.800 that only they know

01:49:22.600 that are unbelievably enlightening

01:49:24.740 about their own

01:49:25.940 peculiar problems

01:49:27.460 about the way

01:49:28.000 they look at the world

01:49:28.780 about their

01:49:29.320 their idiosyncratic

01:49:31.260 familial dynamics

01:49:32.540 like just fascinating

01:49:34.280 personal stuff.

01:49:35.580 It's the stuff

01:49:36.160 of great novels

01:49:37.140 you know

01:49:37.480 and just

01:49:37.780 and this is

01:49:38.520 ordinary people.

01:49:40.400 I don't really think

01:49:41.280 there is an ordinary person

01:49:42.740 exactly.

01:49:43.880 There's the facade

01:49:45.100 of ordinariness

01:49:45.960 but behind that

01:49:46.960 people are very rarely ordinary.

01:49:49.500 And so

01:49:49.740 the conversations

01:49:50.940 are almost instantaneously

01:49:52.860 fascinating

01:49:53.460 and one of the

01:49:54.280 guidelines that I used

01:49:55.920 in my clinical practice

01:49:57.060 constantly was

01:49:57.960 like I had this sense

01:49:59.340 I probably learned this

01:50:00.380 mostly from Carl Rogers

01:50:01.540 was that

01:50:02.140 if the conversation

01:50:03.580 wasn't really interesting

01:50:05.100 then we weren't doing

01:50:06.480 anything that was

01:50:07.160 therapeutically useful.

01:50:09.000 But the interesting

01:50:10.020 all of the interesting

01:50:10.920 elements of it

01:50:11.720 were very very personal

01:50:13.700 and so

01:50:14.800 to replace this

01:50:16.320 and I learned this

01:50:16.980 mostly from

01:50:17.560 Alexander Solzhenitsyn

01:50:19.120 in his detailed analysis

01:50:20.420 of what I would call

01:50:21.660 ideological possession

01:50:22.760 he talked

01:50:24.140 he talked about

01:50:25.540 people he met

01:50:26.260 in the Gulag camps

01:50:27.180 who were

01:50:27.540 under the sway

01:50:28.620 of rigid

01:50:30.140 communist orthodoxy

01:50:32.080 and noted very clearly

01:50:33.440 that

01:50:33.760 it was like

01:50:34.700 there was a crank

01:50:35.360 in some sense

01:50:36.000 on the side of their head

01:50:37.040 and you could just

01:50:37.680 crank the crank

01:50:38.700 and out would come

01:50:39.620 the ideological dogma

01:50:42.260 and it's all entirely predictable

01:50:44.220 and people who are

01:50:45.500 in a situation like that

01:50:46.500 don't understand

01:50:47.340 that they're possessed

01:50:48.300 by an idea

01:50:49.180 right

01:50:49.520 Carl Jung said

01:50:50.600 people don't have ideas

01:50:51.800 ideas have people

01:50:53.240 and it's like

01:50:54.040 so

01:50:54.260 there's nothing in that

01:50:56.680 that's anything other

01:50:58.300 than exactly

01:50:58.980 what you would predict

01:50:59.820 and then there's

01:51:00.740 a deeper issue too

01:51:01.760 and this is one

01:51:02.560 that I think

01:51:03.020 has bedeviled me

01:51:03.880 ever since I

01:51:04.560 made my initial videos

01:51:06.400 which is

01:51:06.880 it's impossible

01:51:10.120 for those

01:51:10.820 on the radical left

01:51:12.020 to admit

01:51:12.800 that anyone

01:51:13.380 who opposes

01:51:14.160 what they're doing

01:51:15.000 might be reasonable

01:51:16.140 because

01:51:16.900 what that would mean

01:51:18.040 would be

01:51:18.440 that you could be reasonable

01:51:19.500 and oppose the radical left

01:51:20.960 and that would imply

01:51:22.200 that what the radical left

01:51:23.380 was doing

01:51:23.840 wasn't reasonable

01:51:24.980 and so

01:51:25.940 instead of dealing

01:51:27.000 with the fact

01:51:27.560 that I actually

01:51:28.240 happened to be

01:51:28.840 quite reasonable

01:51:29.600 the attempt

01:51:30.780 is to

01:51:31.720 assume that

01:51:33.120 anyone who objects

01:51:35.020 must be part

01:51:36.100 of the radical right

01:51:37.080 it's like

01:51:37.640 well

01:51:37.980 actually no

01:51:39.420 there's lots of space

01:51:41.700 between the radical left

01:51:42.960 and the radical right

01:51:44.080 there's the moderate

01:51:45.100 reasonable left

01:51:46.340 for example

01:51:47.060 and you

01:51:47.720 and then there's the center

01:51:48.980 and then there's the moderate

01:51:50.200 reasonable right

01:51:51.160 and then there's the far right

01:51:52.420 and then there's the extreme right

01:51:53.760 all of that

01:51:54.580 exists in opposition

01:51:55.620 to the radical left

01:51:56.800 but it's very convenient

01:51:58.000 for the radicals

01:51:58.860 on the left

01:51:59.280 to say

01:51:59.640 oh well

01:52:00.060 you don't buy

01:52:01.440 our doctrine

01:52:02.140 and then

01:52:03.980 to immediately

01:52:05.480 make the presupposition

01:52:06.840 that you must be

01:52:07.640 the most

01:52:07.980 highness example

01:52:09.140 of that entire array

01:52:10.700 of potential

01:52:11.440 objection

01:52:12.320 it's like

01:52:12.900 yeah well

01:52:13.760 whatever

01:52:14.580 you know

01:52:15.260 it's just not

01:52:16.300 a viable

01:52:17.180 stance

01:52:18.160 and so

01:52:19.060 but it's convenient

01:52:21.440 and it

01:52:22.600 it

01:52:23.180 it's a bad thing

01:52:25.120 because it drives

01:52:25.720 polarization

01:52:26.340 and that's a bad thing

01:52:28.120 but it also

01:52:28.960 it doesn't address

01:52:30.380 the issue

01:52:30.960 so one of the things

01:52:33.060 that I've been thinking

01:52:34.160 about deeply

01:52:34.880 over the last couple

01:52:35.820 of weeks

01:52:36.180 and plan to write about

01:52:37.120 here's a mystery

01:52:37.960 for all of you

01:52:38.740 I don't care what

01:52:39.700 your political background is

01:52:41.020 it isn't like

01:52:42.200 I'm anti-left

01:52:43.120 I've made videos

01:52:45.540 documenting this

01:52:46.620 I know why

01:52:47.540 there's a left wing

01:52:48.380 there's a left wing

01:52:49.280 because inequality

01:52:50.080 is a problem

01:52:50.840 it's a way worse problem

01:52:52.600 than the radical leftists

01:52:53.800 like to admit

01:52:54.580 because you can't lay it

01:52:55.860 at the feet of capitalism

01:52:56.980 and the free market

01:52:57.940 inequality is a way worse

01:52:59.600 problem than that

01:53:00.640 but it's definitely

01:53:01.760 a problem

01:53:02.320 and because inequality

01:53:03.420 is a problem

01:53:03.980 you need part of the

01:53:04.860 political structure

01:53:05.520 to speak up

01:53:06.240 for the people

01:53:07.180 who end up arrayed

01:53:08.940 at the bottom

01:53:09.580 of hierarchies

01:53:10.480 it's crucial

01:53:11.720 someone has to speak

01:53:13.000 for them

01:53:13.380 that's the place

01:53:14.460 of the left

01:53:15.060 but then

01:53:16.280 but then consider this

01:53:17.740 so we can get

01:53:18.900 we can state that

01:53:20.020 the right speaks

01:53:20.920 for hierarchy

01:53:21.600 and the left speaks

01:53:22.700 on behalf of those

01:53:23.660 who are oppressed

01:53:24.200 by inequality

01:53:24.900 good

01:53:25.420 we need that dialogue

01:53:26.720 the radical left

01:53:28.680 okay

01:53:30.020 we know from

01:53:31.320 20th century history

01:53:32.520 that things can go

01:53:33.860 too far on the right

01:53:34.800 no one disputes that

01:53:36.200 and that things can go

01:53:37.380 too far on the left

01:53:38.320 and we also know

01:53:39.360 that when things

01:53:40.060 go too far

01:53:40.980 it's seriously

01:53:42.140 not good

01:53:42.960 right

01:53:43.720 so when things

01:53:45.120 went too far

01:53:45.680 on the right

01:53:46.160 then we had

01:53:46.680 120 million people

01:53:47.860 die in the second

01:53:48.580 world war

01:53:49.180 and when things

01:53:50.040 went too far

01:53:50.580 on the left

01:53:51.100 we had

01:53:51.720 god only knows

01:53:53.080 how many people

01:53:53.920 murdered as a

01:53:55.020 consequence of

01:53:55.660 internal repression

01:53:56.780 at least 100 million

01:53:58.300 and we risk

01:53:59.360 putting the entire

01:54:00.100 planet

01:54:00.540 we risk

01:54:02.340 putting the planet

01:54:03.760 into flames

01:54:04.600 okay

01:54:05.220 so that's the

01:54:05.960 consequence

01:54:06.640 all right

01:54:08.120 so now

01:54:08.680 in the aftermath

01:54:09.720 of world war ii

01:54:10.680 let's say

01:54:11.120 we've come to

01:54:11.660 some sort of

01:54:12.300 sociological agreement

01:54:13.500 i would say

01:54:14.060 that you can identify

01:54:14.980 the radical right-wingers

01:54:16.220 when people make

01:54:17.500 claims of racial superiority

01:54:19.080 you put them in a box

01:54:20.800 and you say

01:54:21.220 well you're outside

01:54:21.900 of acceptable political discourse

01:54:23.440 and so you saw that

01:54:25.200 with William F. Buckley

01:54:26.580 in the 60s

01:54:27.220 when he started

01:54:27.720 his conservative review

01:54:28.820 he dissociated himself

01:54:30.160 from the David Duke types

01:54:31.280 and you saw it

01:54:31.780 more recently

01:54:32.280 with people

01:54:32.860 for example

01:54:33.580 like Ben Shapiro

01:54:34.480 who immediately

01:54:35.080 distanced himself

01:54:35.920 from the Charlottesville types

01:54:37.160 okay

01:54:37.920 so now we

01:54:38.900 we kind of have a sense

01:54:40.040 of where you've 0.99

01:54:41.060 crossed the damn line 0.99

01:54:42.420 in your ethno-nationalism 1.00

01:54:44.460 right

01:54:44.840 as soon as you move

01:54:45.880 into the racial superiority

01:54:47.080 domain

01:54:47.680 ethnic superiority 0.57

01:54:48.580 domain

01:54:49.080 it's like

01:54:49.780 no

01:54:50.320 you've got to be dangerous

01:54:52.220 all right

01:54:52.940 here's a question 0.92

01:54:54.100 where the hell

01:54:55.420 do you cross the line

01:54:56.440 on the left

01:54:57.300 exactly

01:54:58.900 well

01:55:00.140 the answer is

01:55:01.600 who knows

01:55:02.180 well that's not

01:55:03.220 a very good answer

01:55:04.020 i would say

01:55:04.520 it's incumbent

01:55:05.180 it's incumbent

01:55:06.640 on people

01:55:07.320 in the center

01:55:08.080 and in the moderate left

01:55:09.680 to say

01:55:10.680 look

01:55:11.640 things can go

01:55:13.880 too far

01:55:14.340 on the left

01:55:14.880 and here's how

01:55:15.920 we know

01:55:16.280 that's happened

01:55:17.060 and that hasn't

01:55:18.340 happened

01:55:18.740 at all

01:55:19.260 now i think

01:55:20.500 there's a reason

01:55:21.140 for that

01:55:21.560 i think

01:55:22.120 there's a technical reason

01:55:23.300 as well

01:55:23.660 as a motivational reason

01:55:24.840 two technical reasons

01:55:26.340 it's harder

01:55:27.360 for people on the left

01:55:28.400 to draw boundaries

01:55:29.340 because people on the left

01:55:31.180 aren't boundary drawing types

01:55:33.280 they're boundary dissolving types

01:55:35.560 temperamentally speaking

01:55:36.580 so that's a problem

01:55:37.460 the second problem

01:55:38.680 is

01:55:38.900 it doesn't look to me

01:55:40.220 like there is a smoking pistol

01:55:41.960 on the left

01:55:42.680 that's as obvious

01:55:43.500 as racial superiority doctrines

01:55:45.460 you know

01:55:46.140 it's like

01:55:46.520 in Canada

01:55:47.960 there's a lot of push

01:55:48.920 for this triumvirate

01:55:50.000 of radical ideas

01:55:51.500 diversity

01:55:52.180 inclusivity

01:55:53.100 and equity

01:55:53.680 which

01:55:54.180 diversity

01:55:54.980 it's like

01:55:55.540 well who's against that

01:55:56.640 it's like being against poverty

01:55:58.020 inclusivity

01:55:58.980 well yes

01:55:59.860 of course

01:56:00.360 we want people included

01:56:01.620 equity

01:56:02.700 that's a more bitter pill

01:56:05.280 to swallow

01:56:05.780 because that's equality of outcome

01:56:07.260 and for me

01:56:07.800 that's a marker

01:56:08.580 it's like

01:56:08.960 if you're talking about

01:56:09.820 equality of outcome

01:56:10.780 you've gone too far

01:56:13.060 and if you're talking about

01:56:14.600 diversity

01:56:15.340 inclusivity

01:56:16.220 and

01:56:16.780 equality of outcome

01:56:18.200 equity

01:56:18.780 then you've gone too far

01:56:20.480 and you might disagree

01:56:21.560 you might disagree

01:56:22.600 that's fine

01:56:23.380 disagree

01:56:23.800 if that isn't the marker

01:56:25.660 for going too far

01:56:26.620 then

01:56:26.960 what's the marker

01:56:29.180 because

01:56:30.400 obviously

01:56:31.140 you can go too far

01:56:32.240 and obviously

01:56:33.180 that's not good

01:56:34.160 and

01:56:34.720 to close on that

01:56:36.060 I would also say

01:56:36.820 to the people

01:56:37.360 on the moderate left

01:56:38.360 if you want

01:56:39.820 your doctrines

01:56:40.720 to have

01:56:41.340 purchase

01:56:42.320 and to continue

01:56:43.640 to speak

01:56:44.220 for the

01:56:44.680 for those

01:56:45.820 who stack up

01:56:46.620 at the bottom

01:56:47.180 of inevitable hierarchies

01:56:48.960 then

01:56:49.540 you owe it

01:56:50.360 to yourself

01:56:50.920 to dissociate

01:56:52.060 yourself

01:56:52.540 from the dangerous

01:56:53.460 radicals

01:56:54.220 because otherwise

01:56:54.920 they invalidate

01:56:56.300 your ideas

01:56:57.120 and that doesn't

01:56:58.320 seem to be

01:56:58.820 you'd think

01:56:59.360 the democrats

01:57:00.000 might have learned

01:57:00.620 that in the last election

01:57:01.700 but they haven't

01:57:03.120 they haven't learned

01:57:03.920 that

01:57:04.240 so

01:57:05.320 well

01:57:07.980 so that's my spiel

01:57:09.040 about those comments

01:57:10.420 I guess

01:57:10.940 okay

01:57:13.840 so

01:57:14.220 you've changed

01:57:15.620 the lives

01:57:16.100 of many young people

01:57:17.260 and adults

01:57:17.820 in this country

01:57:18.540 in the anglosphere

01:57:19.600 in the west

01:57:20.460 in the world

01:57:21.100 you have a massive following

01:57:22.740 my girlfriend's parents

01:57:24.400 call you uncle jordan

01:57:25.400 for example

01:57:26.300 on the other hand

01:57:28.420 and this is just a fact

01:57:29.720 tons of people

01:57:30.480 on the left

01:57:31.140 as we've just seen

01:57:32.340 because of your power

01:57:33.760 and also your frontal attack

01:57:35.280 on a lot of their views

01:57:36.660 hate you

01:57:37.440 and viciously caricature you 0.97

01:57:39.560 then there are

01:57:41.000 these other figures

01:57:41.820 like jonathan height

01:57:42.960 and robbie george

01:57:43.920 they have a lot

01:57:44.860 in common with you

01:57:45.700 they are respected academics

01:57:47.300 they are at least

01:57:48.500 relatively well known

01:57:49.740 outside academia

01:57:50.780 they share your critiques

01:57:52.500 of the humanities

01:57:53.340 of student activists

01:57:54.980 of trends

01:57:55.920 in western culture

01:57:56.780 they don't have

01:57:57.880 nearly the following

01:57:58.900 that you do

01:57:59.540 but they also

01:58:00.680 aren't as hated

01:58:01.440 or viciously caricatured

01:58:03.340 moreover

01:58:04.080 they may

01:58:05.160 have changed the minds

01:58:06.860 of more people

01:58:07.580 on college campuses

01:58:08.860 that is

01:58:09.840 people on campuses

01:58:10.960 who have some sympathy

01:58:12.140 for left activists

01:58:13.200 or who may agree

01:58:14.760 with much of what you say

01:58:15.880 but react negatively

01:58:17.060 to confrontation

01:58:17.760 and harsh criticism

01:58:18.960 height has appealed

01:58:20.500 to such individuals

01:58:21.380 by taking the

01:58:22.240 dale carnegie

01:58:23.040 win friends

01:58:24.060 and influence

01:58:24.800 people approach

01:58:26.040 so my questions are

01:58:27.600 first do you agree

01:58:28.740 with this dichotomy

01:58:29.740 second

01:58:30.400 did you consciously

01:58:31.560 choose one path

01:58:32.920 over the other

01:58:33.700 and if so why

01:58:34.540 well

01:58:36.460 I mean

01:58:37.280 with height

01:58:38.500 for example

01:58:39.180 there is more power

01:58:39.960 to him as far

01:58:40.620 as I am concerned

01:58:41.280 you know

01:58:41.680 he has a different

01:58:42.760 temperament than me

01:58:43.820 he is more introverted

01:58:46.660 he is less volatile

01:58:48.220 I would say

01:58:49.000 he is probably

01:58:50.020 more agreeable

01:58:51.040 or more polite

01:58:52.060 anyways

01:58:52.560 and I think

01:58:54.540 that what he is doing

01:58:55.200 is extremely effective

01:58:56.300 especially from

01:58:57.300 the perspective

01:58:57.940 of very carefully

01:58:59.880 documenting

01:59:00.860 the empirical facts

01:59:02.320 about the

01:59:03.560 the ideological

01:59:04.640 what the

01:59:06.880 the increasingly

01:59:08.640 left-leaning

01:59:09.440 ideological tilt

01:59:10.560 of campuses

01:59:11.160 which is something

01:59:11.820 that needs to be

01:59:12.600 explored on empirical

01:59:14.340 grounds

01:59:14.760 so

01:59:15.020 so like I said

01:59:18.260 more power to him

01:59:19.100 and there is nothing

01:59:19.860 wrong with being

01:59:20.480 reasonable

01:59:21.000 I guess

01:59:22.040 and then you asked

01:59:25.420 well is that

01:59:27.040 the right pathway

01:59:27.940 for me

01:59:28.540 it's like

01:59:29.160 well apparently not

01:59:31.540 what happened

01:59:36.060 when I made

01:59:36.560 my initial videos

01:59:37.540 was that

01:59:38.140 you know

01:59:39.380 I had

01:59:40.100 I had spoke

01:59:41.920 I had talked

01:59:42.700 to people a lot

01:59:43.540 I had worked

01:59:44.240 with people a lot

01:59:45.000 about negotiation

01:59:46.000 it's one of the things

01:59:47.400 that I specialized in

01:59:48.760 I would say

01:59:49.160 in my clinical

01:59:49.700 and consulting practice

01:59:50.760 was teaching people

01:59:51.580 how to negotiate

01:59:52.300 and I can tell you

01:59:53.480 some things

01:59:53.920 about negotiating

01:59:54.720 that you might find

01:59:55.540 interesting and useful

01:59:56.740 the first is

01:59:57.820 you can't negotiate

01:59:58.600 from a position

01:59:59.600 of weakness

02:00:00.120 so all of you

02:00:00.920 who are going to be

02:00:01.580 developing your careers

02:00:02.500 in the future

02:00:03.100 you need to understand

02:00:04.200 that if you want to

02:00:05.340 push your career forward

02:00:06.600 well first of all

02:00:07.480 that you do in fact

02:00:08.700 have to push it forward

02:00:10.040 because if you're

02:00:11.400 competent and silent

02:00:13.020 you will be ignored

02:00:15.180 and you know

02:00:17.140 that's rough

02:00:17.820 because you might think

02:00:18.680 well people should reward you

02:00:20.100 because you're competent

02:00:20.900 and yes

02:00:21.720 of course they should

02:00:22.960 but if you're competent

02:00:24.060 and silent

02:00:24.600 then you're just not

02:00:25.740 you're not a problem

02:00:27.020 you're just part of the background

02:00:29.060 that's keeping everything

02:00:30.060 functioning

02:00:30.580 and so if you want to

02:00:31.540 develop your career

02:00:32.800 in terms of promotion

02:00:34.360 say and salary

02:00:35.220 it's like

02:00:35.660 you have to be competent

02:00:36.880 and you have to be strategic

02:00:38.520 and to be strategic

02:00:40.200 when you negotiate

02:00:41.140 for a new position

02:00:42.320 or for a new salary

02:00:43.180 you have to be able to say

02:00:44.920 if you don't give me

02:00:46.560 what I want

02:00:47.380 then something you don't like

02:00:49.780 will happen to you

02:00:50.940 and what that means

02:00:52.420 it's not a physical threat

02:00:53.660 it's that you have an option

02:00:55.460 you know

02:00:56.380 so you have your CV

02:00:57.900 your resume in order

02:00:59.160 right

02:00:59.860 you're educated

02:01:00.920 and competent

02:01:01.580 and desirable

02:01:02.340 to people outside

02:01:03.280 of your immediate job

02:01:04.460 you're willing to

02:01:05.620 instantly put yourself

02:01:07.020 in the job market

02:01:08.240 and undergo the stress

02:01:09.380 of finding a new position

02:01:10.500 and undergoing interviews

02:01:11.560 and all of that

02:01:12.320 and you have that

02:01:13.100 all planned out

02:01:13.980 so that when you go

02:01:15.200 talk to the person

02:01:16.060 that you're negotiating with

02:01:17.340 with regards to your salary

02:01:18.520 you're credible

02:01:19.720 and you see

02:01:20.480 because they

02:01:21.120 it's very seldom

02:01:22.180 that you're talking

02:01:22.900 to the person

02:01:23.420 who's at the top

02:01:24.160 of the pecking order

02:01:25.380 let's say

02:01:25.940 what you need to do

02:01:27.260 with them

02:01:28.380 is to tell them

02:01:29.040 a story that they can

02:01:29.840 tell to their boss

02:01:30.860 to make you not a problem

02:01:32.560 and a good story is

02:01:35.200 look we really need

02:01:35.900 this person

02:01:36.380 because they're hyper competent

02:01:37.420 and they have a better offer

02:01:38.620 it's like

02:01:39.380 well then you're going

02:01:40.060 to win the negotiation

02:01:41.060 but if you go in there

02:01:42.500 with no power

02:01:43.760 well

02:01:44.460 you're going to lose

02:01:46.000 obviously

02:01:47.160 so the first thing

02:01:49.200 that you need to know

02:01:49.940 if you're going to negotiate

02:01:50.760 is that you have to be able

02:01:51.920 to say no

02:01:53.080 and what no means

02:01:55.560 is that you're not

02:01:56.560 going to do it

02:01:57.760 and when I made the videos

02:01:59.500 about Bill C-16

02:02:00.960 I thought it through

02:02:03.440 and I thought 0.79

02:02:04.280 there's no damn way

02:02:05.580 I'm following this law 0.92

02:02:06.780 I don't care what happens

02:02:08.220 and I didn't say that lightly

02:02:09.840 I thought it through

02:02:10.920 I thought okay

02:02:11.620 well

02:02:11.940 let's assume

02:02:13.640 the worst case scenario

02:02:15.080 and the worst case scenario

02:02:16.300 would be

02:02:16.740 that a student

02:02:17.320 would report me

02:02:18.080 to the Ontario Human Rights Commission

02:02:19.620 and then they would

02:02:20.380 do an investigation

02:02:21.160 then they would find me guilty

02:02:22.880 because the Ontario Human Rights Commission

02:02:24.840 finds 99% of the people

02:02:27.280 brought to it guilty

02:02:28.540 because that's what

02:02:29.680 totalitarians do

02:02:31.020 and then I would refuse

02:02:32.480 to pay the fine

02:02:33.360 or cooperate

02:02:34.080 with whatever the re-education

02:02:35.680 they would put me through

02:02:36.600 would be

02:02:37.060 and then that would move

02:02:38.180 to civil court

02:02:38.960 and then I would be fined

02:02:40.020 for contempt

02:02:40.600 and then it would

02:02:41.300 you know

02:02:41.740 then the whole legal

02:02:42.660 catastrophe would unfold

02:02:44.100 and I thought

02:02:45.200 well I could either do that

02:02:46.540 or I could allow the government

02:02:48.540 to regulate my speech

02:02:50.020 it's like

02:02:50.460 nope

02:02:50.980 that's not happening

02:02:52.380 so you might think about that

02:02:55.100 as confrontational

02:02:56.180 and it is confrontational

02:02:57.840 it's like 0.98

02:02:58.280 there isn't a goddamn thing 0.96

02:03:00.960 that can be done to me 0.98

02:03:02.360 to make me allow the government

02:03:04.800 to compel my speech

02:03:06.320 that's not happening

02:03:07.740 and the reason for that

02:03:09.400 I believe

02:03:09.980 the reason for that

02:03:10.820 is because I spent

02:03:12.060 decades

02:03:13.920 studying

02:03:14.960 totalitarianism

02:03:16.140 it's not good

02:03:17.860 and the way

02:03:19.500 that totalitarian states

02:03:20.920 develop

02:03:21.460 is that people

02:03:22.240 give up their right 0.85

02:03:23.560 to be

02:03:24.280 their right to

02:03:25.440 to exist

02:03:26.480 with their own thoughts

02:03:27.720 they lie

02:03:28.800 that's what happens

02:03:30.440 is that individuals

02:03:31.480 the individuals

02:03:33.000 sacrifice

02:03:33.740 their own souls

02:03:35.160 to the dictates

02:03:36.400 of the state

02:03:37.120 and then everything

02:03:38.400 goes badly sideways

02:03:40.260 it's like

02:03:41.200 and you think

02:03:41.640 well how much evidence

02:03:42.940 for that

02:03:43.380 do we need

02:03:44.120 you know

02:03:45.300 you're looking at

02:03:45.880 a quarter of a billion deaths

02:03:47.780 it's like

02:03:48.540 isn't that enough

02:03:49.400 well the people

02:03:51.480 that I read

02:03:52.120 who were profound

02:03:53.180 Viktor Frankl

02:03:54.080 is a good example

02:03:54.760 for beginners

02:03:55.500 if you want to read

02:03:56.340 about this sort of thing

02:03:57.260 wrote a book called

02:03:58.280 Man's Search for Meaning

02:03:59.300 and Frankl

02:04:01.000 and also Solzhenitsyn

02:04:02.560 and a variety

02:04:03.540 of other commentators

02:04:04.520 as well

02:04:04.840 who really looked

02:04:05.680 into what happened

02:04:06.480 in both

02:04:08.420 in Nazi Germany

02:04:09.160 and in the

02:04:10.060 communist states

02:04:11.280 their conclusion

02:04:12.280 was universal

02:04:13.700 is that

02:04:14.960 the lies of the state

02:04:16.440 the lies and tyranny

02:04:17.520 of the state

02:04:18.040 are aided and abetted

02:04:19.180 by the moral

02:04:20.100 sacrifice of the individual

02:04:22.160 it's not top down

02:04:24.760 the Nazis are telling

02:04:26.560 you what to do

02:04:27.300 and you're all innocent

02:04:28.160 Nintendo being

02:04:28.920 that's not how it works

02:04:30.560 is you

02:04:31.700 you falsify your

02:04:33.640 your being

02:04:34.820 bit by bit

02:04:37.100 and you end up

02:04:38.760 where you don't want to be

02:04:40.220 and that's a bad idea

02:04:42.140 and if you're interested

02:04:43.380 in that

02:04:43.800 there's a great book

02:04:44.780 called Ordinary Men

02:04:46.200 you read that

02:04:48.160 and you won't be

02:04:48.700 the same person afterwards

02:04:49.940 so I would beware

02:04:51.060 of reading it

02:04:51.760 but it's a story

02:04:52.880 about these policemen

02:04:54.040 in Germany

02:04:54.660 so they were

02:04:55.220 middle-aged guys

02:04:56.180 you know

02:04:56.460 and they'd been

02:04:57.360 they grew up

02:04:58.660 and were

02:04:59.060 socialized

02:05:00.260 before the Nazis 0.59

02:05:01.060 came to power

02:05:01.840 so they're just

02:05:02.400 your typical

02:05:02.980 middle-class policemen

02:05:04.120 and

02:05:05.120 they were brought

02:05:06.480 into Poland

02:05:07.040 after the Nazis

02:05:07.900 had marched through

02:05:08.700 and

02:05:09.120 and charged

02:05:11.460 with keeping order

02:05:12.340 in the occupied state

02:05:13.840 and

02:05:14.580 they knew

02:05:16.160 their commander

02:05:17.720 knew that

02:05:18.300 it was going to be brutal

02:05:19.720 because

02:05:20.600 they were

02:05:21.400 in war

02:05:22.180 wartime

02:05:22.980 and they regard

02:05:23.500 the Jews

02:05:23.940 for example

02:05:24.500 as enemies

02:05:25.020 and so there was going to be a fair bit of rounding up

02:05:27.420 with all of that

02:05:28.160 with all of what that implied

02:05:29.800 and the commander told the policemen

02:05:31.840 that they could go home if they wanted to

02:05:33.500 that they didn't have to participate in this

02:05:35.580 and then

02:05:36.440 what ordinary men does 0.97

02:05:37.780 is document

02:05:38.460 document their transformation

02:05:40.400 from ordinary policemen

02:05:42.840 the sort of people that you know

02:05:44.540 to guys who were taking naked pregnant women out 0.57

02:05:47.200 into the middle of fields 1.00

02:05:48.080 and shooting them in the back of the head 0.99

02:05:49.560 and it documents 0.99

02:05:51.200 one step at a time

02:05:52.940 how an ordinary person

02:05:55.120 turns into someone like that

02:05:56.620 you think

02:05:57.840 well we don't want that sort of thing

02:05:59.260 to happen

02:05:59.760 anymore

02:06:00.480 well then

02:06:01.580 you don't want to be that sort of person

02:06:03.280 that's how it's fixed

02:06:04.840 and if you're not going to be that sort of person

02:06:07.040 then you don't take the first steps

02:06:09.340 because the first steps

02:06:11.520 lead you down a pathway

02:06:12.720 that

02:06:12.980 at least in principle

02:06:14.180 you don't want to go

02:06:15.200 so

02:06:16.660 well I think part of what makes me combative

02:06:19.220 say compared to someone like height

02:06:20.800 is that

02:06:21.260 I've spent

02:06:22.140 years

02:06:23.360 looking at the worst things

02:06:25.340 there are to look at

02:06:26.500 and I've learned from that

02:06:28.460 and I've learned

02:06:29.040 certainly learned things

02:06:30.040 that I won't do

02:06:30.980 and one of them is

02:06:32.320 I won't let the government

02:06:33.620 regulate my speech

02:06:34.940 it's a mistake

02:06:36.340 I don't care what

02:06:37.340 compassionate

02:06:38.280 principles

02:06:39.580 hypothetically motivate

02:06:41.260 that move 0.94

02:06:42.060 it was

02:06:42.660 unprecedented

02:06:43.740 in English common law

02:06:45.700 that move 0.94

02:06:46.660 it was all buried under

02:06:48.240 this leftist

02:06:49.800 compassion

02:06:51.000 which is

02:06:51.820 mostly

02:06:52.900 it's mostly a lie

02:06:56.420 so

02:06:58.040 I have reasons

02:06:59.880 I think

02:07:00.320 other than those

02:07:01.080 that motivate

02:07:01.780 someone like Jonathan Haidt

02:07:03.440 to be

02:07:04.280 particularly

02:07:05.280 passionate

02:07:06.720 about this issue

02:07:07.880 so

02:07:09.540 on the subject

02:07:12.560 of totalitarianism

02:07:13.940 I wanted to do

02:07:17.240 something very quickly

02:07:18.260 so

02:07:18.860 I'm guessing

02:07:22.200 that even though

02:07:22.760 most people

02:07:23.380 in the room

02:07:24.080 have negative views

02:07:25.160 of both men

02:07:26.020 they have a more

02:07:27.020 intensely negative view

02:07:28.220 of Hitler 0.92

02:07:28.620 than of Stalin

02:07:29.440 I'm guessing

02:07:33.880 almost everyone

02:07:34.620 in the room

02:07:35.340 has a far more

02:07:36.460 negative

02:07:36.900 visceral reaction

02:07:38.000 to the swastika 0.66

02:07:39.560 than to the hammer

02:07:40.440 and sickle

02:07:40.960 some of the

02:07:43.580 protesters

02:07:44.060 at your event

02:07:45.020 at McMaster University

02:07:46.800 stood behind

02:07:47.620 a banner

02:07:48.060 with a hammer

02:07:48.740 and sickle

02:07:49.500 you've said

02:07:50.520 that a hammer

02:07:50.980 and sickle

02:07:51.420 is no funnier

02:07:52.160 than a swastika

02:07:53.000 that quote

02:07:54.360 the reprehensible

02:07:55.080 ideologies

02:07:56.680 that are based

02:07:57.240 in fundamental

02:07:57.780 Marxism

02:07:58.420 killed at least

02:07:59.260 100 million people

02:08:00.160 in the 20th century

02:08:01.020 unquote

02:08:01.480 I've discussed

02:08:02.740 this proposition

02:08:03.580 with numerous people

02:08:05.080 in recent months

02:08:05.980 and almost no one

02:08:07.340 seems to buy it

02:08:08.260 no one disputes

02:08:10.000 the body count

02:08:10.860 under socialist regimes

02:08:12.800 , few dispute

02:08:14.200 that Stalin 0.72

02:08:14.920 was a vicious murderer 0.82

02:08:16.080 roughly on par 0.97

02:08:18.580 with Hitler 0.84

02:08:19.120 in moral terms

02:08:20.160 most think

02:08:21.620 that communism

02:08:22.500 should not

02:08:23.300 be tried again

02:08:24.160 in other words

02:08:25.400 they share your critique

02:08:26.400 of the argument

02:08:27.120 that previous

02:08:28.340 communist experiments

02:08:29.560 did not represent

02:08:30.680 proper communism

02:08:31.720 and that proper

02:08:32.840 communism

02:08:33.420 should be tried

02:08:34.700 nevertheless

02:08:36.540 they still disagree

02:08:37.960 with you

02:08:38.520 that we should react

02:08:40.680 as negatively

02:08:41.380 to the hammer

02:08:42.180 and sickle

02:08:42.860 as we do

02:08:43.880 to the swastika 0.66

02:08:44.760 why?

02:08:46.240 because they say

02:08:47.240 the two ideologies

02:08:48.460 are not morally

02:08:50.180 comparable

02:08:50.720 national socialism

02:08:52.080 is much worse

02:08:53.100 morally

02:08:53.940 than Marxism

02:08:55.180 or Marxism-Leninism

02:08:56.760 so what do you

02:08:57.920 say to this?

02:09:01.880 well I would say

02:09:02.900 the first thing

02:09:03.580 is that it's highly

02:09:04.340 probable

02:09:04.840 that you are talking

02:09:05.700 to intellectuals

02:09:07.940 students

02:09:11.320 well

02:09:13.560 we'll call them

02:09:14.620 budding intellectuals

02:09:15.940 it is a mystery

02:09:24.480 you know

02:09:24.940 it is a mystery

02:09:26.640 because

02:09:27.200 it is the case

02:09:28.660 that

02:09:28.960 there is something

02:09:30.820 about the Nazi doctrine

02:09:32.100 that seems to have

02:09:33.240 a visceral impact

02:09:34.900 that

02:09:35.620 that the

02:09:36.800 communist doctrine

02:09:38.500 doesn't have

02:09:39.400 and I said

02:09:41.420 when I opened

02:09:42.460 my remarks

02:09:43.480 tonight

02:09:43.820 that it might be

02:09:44.980 the

02:09:46.180 issue

02:09:47.680 of racial superiority

02:09:48.900 you know

02:09:49.620 it's something

02:09:50.600 single

02:09:51.120 that you can

02:09:51.640 put your finger on

02:09:52.600 whereas

02:09:53.660 what's happening

02:09:54.340 on the left

02:09:54.960 that's horrifying

02:09:55.860 is murky

02:09:56.820 it might even

02:09:57.660 be multidimensional

02:09:58.660 like maybe

02:09:59.160 there isn't a single

02:10:00.080 radical leftist

02:10:01.140 idea that's murderous

02:10:02.380 like the racial

02:10:03.080 superiority doctrine

02:10:04.260 maybe it's a

02:10:05.180 combination of

02:10:05.980 three

02:10:06.440 or maybe it's

02:10:07.280 some set of

02:10:07.900 four out of ten

02:10:09.000 who knows

02:10:09.940 so

02:10:10.220 and because of that

02:10:11.520 it doesn't seem

02:10:12.400 as repugnant

02:10:13.060 and there was also

02:10:13.680 a universalizing tendency

02:10:15.380 among the communists

02:10:16.900 that seemed to

02:10:18.080 be less morally

02:10:19.840 reprehensible

02:10:20.580 than the ethno-nationalism

02:10:22.120 of the Nazis 0.77

02:10:22.780 so

02:10:23.100 you know

02:10:23.580 you think

02:10:24.000 if you go back

02:10:24.820 to 1914

02:10:25.700 it's complicated

02:10:27.080 but if you go back

02:10:27.860 to say 1918

02:10:29.380 at the time

02:10:30.620 of the Russian Revolution

02:10:31.580 it's not like

02:10:33.020 the communists

02:10:33.880 knew

02:10:34.860 that their attempts

02:10:36.020 to bring about

02:10:36.780 the socialist utopia

02:10:38.060 would be doomed

02:10:38.820 to absolute

02:10:39.620 murderous catastrophe

02:10:40.700 right

02:10:41.100 they were working

02:10:42.200 in ignorance

02:10:43.420 now it's not

02:10:44.240 that simple

02:10:45.120 because by that time

02:10:46.880 Dostoevsky had already

02:10:48.120 written

02:10:48.460 The Devils

02:10:49.100 The Possessed

02:10:49.740 and he outlined

02:10:50.700 very very clearly

02:10:51.680 what he thought

02:10:53.120 would happen

02:10:53.720 if people like that

02:10:55.300 got the reins of power

02:10:56.600 and Nietzsche had done

02:10:57.360 the same thing

02:10:57.920 in his writing

02:10:58.520 so people knew

02:10:59.680 that there was something

02:11:00.480 toxic let's say

02:11:01.840 and deadly

02:11:02.560 about the doctrine

02:11:03.460 but it hadn't been

02:11:04.520 played out

02:11:05.160 on the world stage

02:11:06.740 but now

02:11:08.080 it's like

02:11:09.000 well this is why

02:11:10.940 I said what I said

02:11:11.680 at the beginning

02:11:12.200 fine

02:11:13.820 you know

02:11:14.860 if

02:11:15.420 I don't know

02:11:18.500 exactly how to make

02:11:19.480 the moral distinction

02:11:20.480 but it's a distinction

02:11:23.900 that has to be made

02:11:24.860 I think that people

02:11:26.020 who apologize

02:11:27.160 who say something

02:11:28.520 like I think

02:11:29.080 I think that

02:11:29.960 that it's virtually

02:11:33.600 I don't know

02:11:35.400 if it's as reprehensible

02:11:36.680 to say that

02:11:37.940 a given ethnic group

02:11:39.380 should be consigned 0.91

02:11:40.240 to the fire

02:11:40.920 and to say

02:11:42.000 that wasn't real communism

02:11:43.960 but they're damn close

02:11:45.940 and when I hear someone say

02:11:48.620 that wasn't real communism

02:11:50.140 I know what they mean

02:11:51.400 what they mean was

02:11:53.180 if I was the dictator

02:11:55.820 in Stalin's shoes

02:11:57.320 I personally would have

02:11:59.280 brought in the utopia

02:12:00.420 that's what that statement means

02:12:02.400 or it means

02:12:04.380 an ignorance of history

02:12:06.700 that's so utterly appalling

02:12:09.020 that

02:12:10.020 that any political statement

02:12:14.600 made on behalf of that person

02:12:16.860 whatsoever

02:12:17.460 should immediately be followed

02:12:19.280 by a paroxysm

02:12:20.520 of extreme embarrassment

02:12:22.000 may I say one

02:12:24.340 I just want to be clear

02:12:26.640 that these students

02:12:28.540 were conceding

02:12:29.880 that they don't agree

02:12:31.560 they share your critique

02:12:33.660 they don't share it enough

02:12:35.860 oh okay

02:12:36.320 fair enough

02:12:36.720 I just wanted to make that clear

02:12:37.760 so they would

02:12:38.940 more or less agree

02:12:39.800 with what you just said

02:12:40.720 I think about

02:12:41.380 it's not okay to say

02:12:43.960 those regimes

02:12:44.880 weren't proper communism

02:12:45.920 and that proper communism

02:12:46.900 should be tried

02:12:47.540 they still dispute though

02:12:48.720 that socialism

02:12:49.600 as an ideology

02:12:50.480 is on par with Nazism 0.94

02:12:51.780 so I just wanted to make that clear

02:12:52.980 well we could say

02:12:53.700 communism

02:12:54.400 let's say

02:12:55.260 we could say

02:12:56.140 radical leftist ideology

02:12:57.980 as I said already

02:12:59.240 there are reasons

02:13:00.100 for the left

02:13:00.740 and the right wing

02:13:01.600 right

02:13:02.220 the right wing

02:13:02.860 stands for hierarchy

02:13:03.900 and the left wing

02:13:04.900 stands for the

02:13:05.680 for those who are

02:13:07.080 displaced by hierarchy

02:13:08.580 right

02:13:09.020 an endless problem

02:13:10.300 but that doesn't mean

02:13:12.340 that still

02:13:13.080 leaves it in the camp

02:13:14.980 of the people speaking

02:13:16.280 on behalf of egalitarianism

02:13:18.600 to figure out

02:13:19.220 just what the hell

02:13:20.280 went wrong

02:13:21.000 and to take some

02:13:21.860 responsibility for it

02:13:23.200 you know

02:13:24.460 it's no joke

02:13:25.380 and we see these things

02:13:26.780 play out continually

02:13:27.800 still

02:13:28.280 look at what happened

02:13:28.980 to Venezuela

02:13:29.540 here's a fun story

02:13:31.120 do you know that

02:13:32.560 it is now illegal

02:13:34.120 for physicians

02:13:35.020 to list

02:13:35.840 list starvation

02:13:37.200 as the cause of death

02:13:38.520 for a Venezuelan child

02:13:39.780 in a hospital

02:13:40.540 that's how

02:13:41.680 they're dealing with

02:13:42.720 the fact of starvation

02:13:44.840 right

02:13:45.920 you just make it illegal

02:13:47.100 to have that diagnosed

02:13:48.400 as your cause of death

02:13:49.600 that'll solve the problem

02:13:51.220 it's like

02:13:52.220 you know

02:13:52.720 we have a group of

02:13:54.180 of well-meaning

02:13:55.520 socialists in Canada

02:13:57.040 who just produced

02:13:58.240 something called

02:13:58.860 the Leap Manifesto

02:14:00.020 a couple of years ago

02:14:01.060 and it's a pretty radical

02:14:02.060 it's a pretty radical document

02:14:04.820 they're trying to move

02:14:05.720 our socialist party

02:14:06.740 the NDP

02:14:07.340 New Democratic Party

02:14:08.600 towards the acceptance

02:14:10.480 of this Leap Manifesto

02:14:11.740 which doesn't look like

02:14:12.620 it's going to happen

02:14:13.380 but they were all

02:14:14.440 radical promoters

02:14:15.740 of the Venezuelan government

02:14:17.380 before everything went

02:14:18.540 like badly sideways

02:14:20.780 you know

02:14:21.800 I think the average

02:14:22.500 Venezuelan now

02:14:23.220 has lost 17 pounds

02:14:24.940 and that's not because

02:14:25.940 they were put on

02:14:26.620 a voluntary dieting program

02:14:28.560 right

02:14:29.340 it's not good

02:14:30.240 and so

02:14:31.300 if you're

02:14:32.380 tilting towards the left

02:14:33.940 and you're temperamentally

02:14:35.260 inclined that way

02:14:36.040 and half the population is

02:14:37.780 then you have

02:14:38.560 an ethical problem

02:14:39.440 on your

02:14:39.900 on your hands

02:14:41.220 which is

02:14:41.960 how do you segregate

02:14:43.260 yourself

02:14:43.700 from the radical policies

02:14:45.060 that produce

02:14:45.680 the catastrophes

02:14:46.460 of the 20th century

02:14:47.420 and you can't just say

02:14:48.920 well that's not my problem

02:14:50.180 it's like

02:14:50.600 well okay

02:14:51.360 if it's not your problem

02:14:53.660 now

02:14:54.060 it certainly might become

02:14:55.560 your problem

02:14:56.100 in the future

02:14:56.800 so and I would say

02:14:58.520 it's actually

02:14:58.980 everybody's problem

02:14:59.980 in the aftermath

02:15:00.720 of the 20th century

02:15:01.840 it's everybody's problem

02:15:03.340 so

02:15:04.560 so it's

02:15:06.900 it's

02:15:07.620 it's complicated

02:15:09.620 like

02:15:09.980 there is a

02:15:11.300 genuine desire

02:15:13.020 like I worked for

02:15:13.880 a socialist party

02:15:14.660 for quite a while

02:15:15.280 when I was a kid

02:15:16.020 you know

02:15:16.920 and I saw

02:15:17.320 both sides of it

02:15:18.180 I saw

02:15:18.700 some very

02:15:19.840 very

02:15:20.280 admirable people

02:15:21.500 I was privy

02:15:22.880 for

02:15:23.240 for a variety

02:15:24.320 of

02:15:24.560 chance reasons

02:15:26.080 to the leadership

02:15:27.380 of the socialist party

02:15:28.720 in Canada

02:15:29.240 at the provincial

02:15:29.940 and the national level

02:15:30.920 I met the people

02:15:31.720 who ran the provinces

02:15:32.840 some of the provinces

02:15:33.760 and who ran the party

02:15:34.720 and a lot of them

02:15:35.640 were really admirable people

02:15:36.980 like they'd spent

02:15:37.580 their whole life

02:15:38.300 I would say

02:15:38.980 working on behalf

02:15:39.940 of the working class

02:15:41.020 you know

02:15:41.380 so they were

02:15:42.060 genuine labour leaders

02:15:43.520 and

02:15:43.780 and

02:15:44.360 and

02:15:44.820 and there was also

02:15:45.700 a lot done

02:15:46.380 in Canada

02:15:46.860 on the left

02:15:47.520 that looks like

02:15:48.420 it was actually

02:15:49.020 pretty good

02:15:49.620 standard work week

02:15:50.840 the inco

02:15:51.620 you know

02:15:52.140 the establishment

02:15:52.980 of pensions

02:15:54.260 the introduction

02:15:55.180 of our health care system

02:15:56.360 which

02:15:56.600 I would say

02:15:57.640 probably

02:15:58.560 overall

02:16:00.120 works better

02:16:00.840 than the American system

02:16:01.960 although not

02:16:02.500 at the upper end

02:16:03.360 and

02:16:04.240 they were working hard

02:16:06.620 on behalf of people

02:16:07.600 who had

02:16:08.080 working class lives

02:16:09.800 but then

02:16:10.580 I also

02:16:11.460 encountered

02:16:12.300 the sort of

02:16:13.200 low level activist types

02:16:14.640 and I didn't have

02:16:15.820 any respect for them

02:16:16.660 at all

02:16:16.920 I just thought

02:16:17.440 they were peevish

02:16:18.260 and resentful

02:16:18.980 and irritable

02:16:19.560 and those two things

02:16:21.080 exist in a very uneasy

02:16:22.600 coalition on the west

02:16:23.860 there's care for the poor

02:16:25.480 and hatred for the successful

02:16:27.080 and those two things

02:16:28.300 aren't the same at all

02:16:29.340 and it looks to me

02:16:30.540 like one of the things

02:16:31.340 that really happened

02:16:32.180 when the communist doctrines

02:16:33.980 were brought into play

02:16:34.880 and it also

02:16:35.800 by the way

02:16:36.380 we did the multinational

02:16:37.800 experiment

02:16:38.380 right

02:16:38.720 it doesn't matter

02:16:39.300 where you put these policies

02:16:40.520 into play

02:16:41.060 the same bloody outcome

02:16:42.200 occurred

02:16:42.700 didn't matter

02:16:43.520 whether it was Russia

02:16:44.300 or China

02:16:44.940 or Cambodia

02:16:45.700 or Vietnam

02:16:46.280 or

02:16:46.680 to pick a random

02:16:48.320 African country

02:16:49.260 or Cuba

02:16:49.880 or Venezuela

02:16:50.740 for that matter

02:16:51.660 it was an

02:16:52.380 unmitigated catastrophe

02:16:54.080 and so to me

02:16:55.120 that's experiment

02:16:56.260 plus replication

02:16:57.420 enough

02:16:58.420 enough

02:16:59.680 well

02:17:00.800 that has to be dealt with

02:17:02.600 and it's not

02:17:03.040 the intellectual left

02:17:04.860 in the west

02:17:05.440 has been absolutely

02:17:06.300 appalling

02:17:07.020 in their silence

02:17:08.400 on the communist

02:17:09.580 catastrophe

02:17:10.200 like for my students

02:17:11.620 a lot of my students

02:17:12.520 really haven't heard

02:17:13.340 about anything

02:17:13.900 that happened

02:17:14.420 in the Soviet Union

02:17:15.380 in any detail

02:17:16.700 until they take

02:17:17.420 my personality class

02:17:18.700 in the second year

02:17:19.380 of university

02:17:19.940 it's like

02:17:20.340 well what the hell

02:17:21.200 why are they learning

02:17:22.560 about that

02:17:23.100 in a personality class

02:17:24.620 in the second year

02:17:25.420 of university

02:17:26.080 that's not

02:17:26.800 that should be

02:17:27.600 first and foremost

02:17:29.500 in their

02:17:30.620 in their historical knowledge

02:17:32.100 what happened

02:17:32.700 in the 20th century

02:17:33.680 I mean

02:17:33.980 it was almost fatal

02:17:35.200 what happened

02:17:36.180 and we still haven't

02:17:37.000 completely recovered

02:17:38.140 from it

02:17:38.580 right

02:17:38.780 I think

02:17:39.400 isn't your president

02:17:40.560 Donald Trump

02:17:41.260 going to talk to

02:17:42.220 like 0.97

02:17:42.480 insane totalitarian

02:17:44.800 number one

02:17:45.620 sometime here

02:17:46.480 in the near future

02:17:47.300 but that's still

02:17:48.000 a Soviet era state

02:17:49.880 those people

02:17:50.620 are armed

02:17:51.280 to the teeth

02:17:52.280 you know

02:17:52.940 they have the weapon

02:17:53.720 they have weaponry

02:17:54.880 that could easily

02:17:55.780 take you out

02:17:56.680 and so we're not

02:17:58.080 I don't know

02:17:58.660 if you know

02:17:59.340 do you know

02:17:59.720 what happens

02:18:00.260 if you blast

02:18:01.060 a single hydrogen bomb 0.64

02:18:02.280 a hundred miles

02:18:02.980 above the United States

02:18:04.040 just one

02:18:04.980 you lose all

02:18:06.680 your electronics

02:18:07.560 right

02:18:08.800 they're all

02:18:09.340 done

02:18:10.040 tractors

02:18:11.280 cars

02:18:12.200 trains

02:18:13.200 subways

02:18:14.120 computers

02:18:14.880 phones

02:18:15.840 all of them

02:18:17.000 burn out

02:18:17.880 and that's it

02:18:19.240 so we're not done

02:18:21.520 with this yet

02:18:22.360 and the Korean state

02:18:24.120 North Korea

02:18:24.780 is an emblematic

02:18:26.260 representative of the

02:18:27.400 communist catastrophe

02:18:28.600 and everyone there

02:18:29.780 starves

02:18:30.680 there's millions of people

02:18:32.260 died

02:18:33.180 20 years ago

02:18:34.500 it's not got any better

02:18:36.100 so it's not like

02:18:37.600 it's not like

02:18:38.900 we solved this problem

02:18:40.060 and there's a deafening

02:18:41.440 silence on the

02:18:42.580 intellectual side

02:18:43.640 of the spectrum

02:18:44.400 with regards to what

02:18:45.400 happened on the

02:18:46.660 egalitarian left

02:18:48.160 and there's no excuse

02:18:49.620 for it

02:18:50.520 so

02:18:51.000 somewhat relatedly

02:18:57.180 I think it's fair to say

02:18:58.280 that even though

02:18:59.000 you have criticized

02:18:59.780 segments of both

02:19:01.480 the left

02:19:02.160 social justice warriors

02:19:03.640 and the right

02:19:04.560 the alt-right

02:19:05.520 your critical commentary

02:19:07.220 over the last

02:19:08.160 year and a half

02:19:08.940 has focused

02:19:09.560 significantly more

02:19:10.860 on the left

02:19:11.620 than on the right

02:19:12.380 a lot of people

02:19:13.960 I've talked to here

02:19:14.760 at Lafayette

02:19:15.380 at Lafayette

02:19:16.300 take issue with that

02:19:17.460 they say that

02:19:18.660 we're so far

02:19:19.740 from a Marxist

02:19:20.720 takeover

02:19:21.380 of our culture

02:19:22.240 and political institutions

02:19:23.540 that to suggest

02:19:25.080 otherwise

02:19:25.620 is to engage

02:19:26.580 in a classic

02:19:27.300 kind of right-wing

02:19:28.380 exaggeration

02:19:29.280 and hysteria

02:19:30.140 that we've seen

02:19:31.040 before in western

02:19:31.880 countries in the early

02:19:32.840 to mid-20th century

02:19:33.880 they also say

02:19:35.540 and this is important

02:19:36.660 to them

02:19:37.140 that the nationalist

02:19:38.380 authoritarian right

02:19:39.760 poses more of a threat

02:19:41.480 to freedom of the

02:19:42.340 individual

02:19:42.780 than the left

02:19:43.820 does today

02:19:44.500 as it has

02:19:45.540 in the west

02:19:46.180 since the early

02:19:46.880 20th century

02:19:47.640 they argue

02:19:48.880 that the left

02:19:49.440 may have sway

02:19:50.260 in the academy

02:19:50.980 and large segments

02:19:51.900 of the media

02:19:52.580 but nationalist

02:19:53.820 right parties

02:19:54.760 figures

02:19:55.480 and movements

02:19:56.220 with authoritarian

02:19:57.140 tendencies

02:19:57.780 have risen

02:19:58.860 become potent

02:19:59.980 and often been

02:20:01.020 victorious

02:20:01.520 in recent years

02:20:02.580 and they point

02:20:03.480 to Trump

02:20:04.240 Brexit

02:20:04.960 the national front

02:20:06.160 pointing to Trump

02:20:07.280 is rather pointless

02:20:08.340 I mean I don't know

02:20:10.280 what Trump is

02:20:11.040 but to think of him

02:20:11.880 as a figure

02:20:12.460 of the radical right

02:20:13.480 is a little

02:20:13.900 on the absurd side

02:20:15.060 so I mean

02:20:16.720 we are polarizing

02:20:19.220 and so

02:20:19.780 who God only knows

02:20:21.560 where the ultimate

02:20:22.220 danger will come from

02:20:23.380 if it's the

02:20:24.020 ethno-nationalists

02:20:25.300 on the right

02:20:25.860 or if it's the

02:20:26.600 radical leftists

02:20:27.580 on the left

02:20:28.220 who knows right

02:20:29.100 I suspect to some degree

02:20:30.860 that's a matter

02:20:31.800 of happenstance

02:20:32.840 I mean that's

02:20:33.560 what you'd expect

02:20:34.300 if you looked

02:20:34.820 at 20th century history

02:20:36.140 but I emerged

02:20:38.060 out of the academy

02:20:39.000 and the academy

02:20:40.560 like there aren't

02:20:41.520 right-wing people

02:20:42.480 in the academy

02:20:43.260 not to speak of

02:20:44.320 that's completely

02:20:45.320 that's thoroughly

02:20:46.600 documented

02:20:47.420 and it's certainly

02:20:49.200 not the case

02:20:49.840 in a country

02:20:50.280 like Canada

02:20:50.920 there's no threat

02:20:51.960 whatsoever in Canada

02:20:53.420 from the radical right

02:20:55.400 it's like

02:20:56.080 I don't know

02:20:56.420 if you rounded up

02:20:57.280 everybody who was

02:20:58.120 in the radical right

02:20:58.940 in Canada

02:20:59.400 you might be able

02:21:00.040 to scrape up

02:21:00.900 like what

02:21:01.620 three or four thousand

02:21:02.840 people

02:21:03.380 if you really

02:21:04.000 like if you really

02:21:05.040 worked at it

02:21:06.000 you know

02:21:06.700 so I just don't see that

02:21:08.820 at least in my own country

02:21:10.020 that's just a non-issue

02:21:11.600 it's a non-starter

02:21:13.080 I mean the last time

02:21:14.960 there was any

02:21:15.500 kind of radical

02:21:16.400 right-wingers in Canada

02:21:17.500 was probably in Quebec

02:21:18.500 in the 1950s

02:21:19.880 and maybe from the 1930s

02:21:21.880 to the 1950s

02:21:22.840 but it's never been

02:21:23.440 a political issue

02:21:24.320 what about the AFD

02:21:25.460 or the Italian

02:21:26.960 I can't remember the name

02:21:28.120 of the Italian party

02:21:29.100 the National Front

02:21:31.200 in France

02:21:31.820 where would you put

02:21:32.420 would you

02:21:32.860 oh well

02:21:33.540 I mean

02:21:33.820 in Europe

02:21:34.540 it's more

02:21:35.120 there's more

02:21:36.440 polarization

02:21:37.180 I would say

02:21:37.940 but the Europeans

02:21:38.560 also have problems

02:21:39.540 that we don't have

02:21:40.540 you know

02:21:41.280 they've been

02:21:41.940 struggling

02:21:43.440 with the consequences

02:21:44.700 of non-ending violence

02:21:46.120 in the Middle East

02:21:47.020 and the wave

02:21:47.820 of refugees

02:21:48.880 that has emerged

02:21:49.780 as a consequence

02:21:50.460 of that

02:21:50.920 and so the situation

02:21:51.880 in Europe

02:21:52.760 is different

02:21:53.320 and I would say

02:21:54.060 there is more

02:21:55.080 movement

02:21:55.880 and activity

02:21:56.600 on the right

02:21:57.400 so

02:21:58.320 but

02:21:59.060 and

02:22:01.040 you know

02:22:01.640 I'm not

02:22:02.940 a

02:22:03.600 admirer

02:22:04.860 of identity politics

02:22:06.180 well

02:22:06.420 and that's for the reasons

02:22:07.280 I brought up to begin with

02:22:08.420 I think that

02:22:09.100 you have to

02:22:10.560 decide

02:22:11.720 conceptually

02:22:13.940 psychologically

02:22:14.980 familially

02:22:16.260 and socially

02:22:17.360 what your vision

02:22:19.900 of a human being is

02:22:21.160 and if your vision

02:22:21.900 of a human being

02:22:22.560 is essentially

02:22:23.340 tribal

02:22:24.000 so that you're defined

02:22:25.260 by your collective identity

02:22:26.480 in some manner

02:22:27.340 then

02:22:28.100 you're going to play

02:22:29.060 identity politics

02:22:29.900 on the left

02:22:30.600 you're going to play

02:22:31.180 identity politics

02:22:32.020 on the right

02:22:32.680 it's like

02:22:33.420 well I think

02:22:34.020 the identity politics

02:22:35.180 types on the left

02:22:36.060 pose a bigger threat

02:22:37.040 in my country

02:22:37.800 it's not so obvious

02:22:39.080 in your country

02:22:39.860 because

02:22:40.240 you guys

02:22:41.460 your political landscape

02:22:42.800 is more balanced

02:22:43.760 I would say

02:22:44.300 than ours

02:22:44.840 if the radical right

02:22:46.680 posed a threat

02:22:47.420 to the academy

02:22:48.100 which they most

02:22:49.040 decidedly do not

02:22:50.740 then I would be

02:22:51.740 just as upset

02:22:52.420 about that

02:22:53.140 and so

02:22:54.100 I think again

02:22:55.820 it's part and parcel

02:22:57.220 of the radical left's

02:22:58.700 failure to take

02:22:59.440 or the left's in general

02:23:00.620 failure to take

02:23:01.460 responsibility

02:23:02.080 for the radicals

02:23:03.020 it's like

02:23:03.340 oh well

02:23:03.640 why aren't you

02:23:04.220 criticizing equally

02:23:05.560 on both sides

02:23:06.580 well

02:23:07.180 the threat

02:23:09.240 doesn't exist

02:23:10.080 equally on both sides

02:23:11.400 not in my country

02:23:12.320 so

02:23:13.440 I think

02:23:15.980 identity politics

02:23:16.860 is murderous game

02:23:17.860 no matter who

02:23:18.380 plays it

02:23:18.960 you know

02:23:19.280 and on the left

02:23:19.980 it's

02:23:20.340 well we've already

02:23:21.680 talked about that

02:23:22.500 so what's wrong

02:23:23.220 on the right

02:23:23.760 well you stand up

02:23:25.360 and wave your flag

02:23:26.200 and talk about

02:23:26.820 your ethnic identity

02:23:27.800 or your racial identity

02:23:28.980 and you take pride

02:23:29.880 in that

02:23:30.200 it's like

02:23:30.480 what the hell

02:23:30.860 did that have to do

02:23:31.560 with you 1.00

02:23:32.020 you god damn loser 1.00

02:23:33.360 you know 1.00

02:23:34.840 it's like

02:23:35.400 you're one of the

02:23:36.340 great heroes

02:23:36.860 of the past

02:23:37.520 are you

02:23:37.820 that's why

02:23:38.140 you're standing up

02:23:38.840 and waving your flag

02:23:39.800 it's no you're not

02:23:40.540 you're identifying

02:23:41.780 with your group

02:23:42.600 because you don't have

02:23:43.320 anything of your own

02:23:44.240 to offer 0.99

02:23:44.720 and so it's pathetic 0.97

02:23:46.380 and I've said that 0.98

02:23:47.780 many times

02:23:48.460 and in my lectures too

02:23:49.600 and people know this

02:23:50.620 if they've actually

02:23:51.280 watched my university

02:23:52.840 lectures

02:23:53.260 I spend a tremendous

02:23:54.860 amount of time

02:23:55.700 and have for 30 years

02:23:57.600 convincing my students

02:23:59.220 that if they had been

02:24:00.120 in Nazi Germany

02:24:00.980 there was a very high

02:24:02.060 probability

02:24:02.640 that rather than being

02:24:04.160 Oscar Schindler

02:24:05.200 and rescuing the Jews

02:24:06.460 they would have been 0.85

02:24:07.400 a Nazi persecutor

02:24:08.580 because there's like

02:24:09.560 five Oscar Schindlers

02:24:11.480 and like

02:24:12.020 many million Nazis

02:24:13.900 so you can do the math

02:24:15.580 for yourself

02:24:16.320 and if you don't think

02:24:17.700 that if you think

02:24:18.640 that you would have been

02:24:19.360 one of the few heroes

02:24:20.420 then you're either

02:24:21.420 someone truly remarkable

02:24:23.740 or you're unbelievably

02:24:26.700 deluded

02:24:27.480 and so I would suspect

02:24:29.680 that you're in the

02:24:30.560 unbelievably deluded camp

02:24:32.160 because truly remarkable

02:24:33.420 people are rare

02:24:34.260 and I've really

02:24:35.080 I've really seen this

02:24:36.380 in the last year or two

02:24:37.400 because one of the things

02:24:38.480 I have noted

02:24:39.100 like I knew that people

02:24:40.160 were timid

02:24:40.940 you know

02:24:41.800 and I knew why

02:24:42.720 it's dangerous to stick

02:24:43.840 your head up above the rest

02:24:45.080 I mean

02:24:45.400 it's predator avoidance strategy

02:24:47.440 to keep your head down

02:24:48.560 and I mean that technically

02:24:50.440 it truly is

02:24:51.460 to blend in with the crowd

02:24:52.660 is a predator avoidance strategy

02:24:54.640 that's what fish do 0.95

02:24:55.980 in schools of fish

02:24:57.260 like it's very low level behavior

02:24:59.240 and if you stick your head up

02:25:00.720 there's some real danger

02:25:01.760 and the advantage to that

02:25:03.480 is that people are pretty civilized

02:25:05.080 and they go along with the group

02:25:06.280 and that's a good thing

02:25:07.600 because you know

02:25:08.240 we should be civilized

02:25:09.220 and go along with the group

02:25:10.120 but it's a really bad thing

02:25:11.360 when the group goes sideways

02:25:12.560 and I've had many people

02:25:14.980 colleagues

02:25:15.580 but many other people too

02:25:17.060 say

02:25:17.400 well really

02:25:18.480 we agree with what you're doing

02:25:19.940 but we can't really

02:25:20.940 take the risk

02:25:21.740 of standing up

02:25:22.520 and saying so

02:25:23.260 it's like

02:25:23.740 well now and then

02:25:25.300 so most people fall into that camp

02:25:27.120 when I went to Queen's University

02:25:28.600 a month ago

02:25:29.560 and was subject to that

02:25:31.120 chilling demonstration

02:25:32.480 I would say

02:25:33.340 where the radicals climbed up

02:25:35.520 into the stained glass window

02:25:37.280 window wells

02:25:38.800 and pounded

02:25:39.720 you know

02:25:40.100 unendingly

02:25:41.200 for 90 minutes

02:25:42.200 while we were all inside

02:25:43.360 I had a professor write me

02:25:45.000 the day before

02:25:45.640 and say

02:25:46.040 look

02:25:46.320 my wife and I work at the university

02:25:48.540 we really support what you're doing

02:25:50.440 but we can't even risk

02:25:51.900 coming to the talk

02:25:53.100 because what if the students see

02:25:55.120 and complain

02:25:56.160 it's like

02:25:56.820 well yeah

02:25:57.320 there's courage for you man

02:25:58.760 there's courage for you

02:25:59.840 you know

02:26:00.620 and so

02:26:01.160 but that's par for the course

02:26:02.780 and it's unsurprising

02:26:04.080 to some degree

02:26:04.940 but

02:26:05.840 well

02:26:07.380 but anyways

02:26:07.980 on the right

02:26:08.580 it's like

02:26:09.040 it's an excuse

02:26:12.100 by people on the left

02:26:14.040 not to take the things

02:26:15.820 that I'm saying seriously

02:26:16.920 that's what it is

02:26:18.500 it's like

02:26:18.940 well he's not attacking

02:26:19.920 the right as much

02:26:21.420 it's like

02:26:21.780 well they're not

02:26:22.360 after me

02:26:23.540 they're not trying

02:26:24.700 to close down

02:26:25.480 my speech

02:26:26.220 so I took that personally

02:26:28.640 so had it been right wingers

02:26:30.880 coming after me

02:26:31.820 well

02:26:32.680 it would have been

02:26:33.380 the same thing

02:26:34.180 so 0.94

02:26:35.240 it's a foolish objection 0.98

02:26:37.600 I think 0.94

02:26:38.280 for decades

02:26:46.600 ethnic groups

02:26:47.520 have on average

02:26:48.520 scored significantly differently

02:26:50.080 on IQ tests

02:26:51.380 according to psychology

02:26:53.340 professor Richard Hayer

02:26:54.660 whom you interviewed

02:26:55.480 on your channel

02:26:56.320 YouTube

02:26:56.860 there is no scientific consensus

02:26:58.840 on the causes

02:26:59.520 of these average differences

02:27:00.940 in IQ test scores

02:27:02.080 yet according to Hayer

02:27:03.700 psychologists

02:27:04.740 do generally agree

02:27:06.220 that general intelligence exists

02:27:08.080 that IQ measures it well

02:27:10.340 and in a non-culturally biased way

02:27:12.500 that IQ is highly predictive

02:27:14.800 of success

02:27:15.840 in educational

02:27:16.680 and professional terms

02:27:17.960 and that for decades

02:27:19.440 ethnic groups

02:27:20.160 have on average

02:27:21.120 scored significantly differently

02:27:22.600 so assuming this is true

02:27:24.660 should we talk about it

02:27:26.080 Sam Harris raised this question

02:27:28.440 in a podcast conversation

02:27:29.840 with Charles Murray

02:27:30.760 some argue

02:27:32.360 that we should not

02:27:33.280 talk about this

02:27:34.200 as doing so

02:27:35.260 could fuel

02:27:35.900 the racial supremacist

02:27:37.380 movements

02:27:37.720 that you mentioned

02:27:38.400 with potentially

02:27:39.140 horrific consequences

02:27:40.820 others

02:27:42.000 mainly on the

02:27:43.020 intellectual dark web

02:27:44.240 and to a very limited

02:27:45.960 extent in academia

02:27:47.080 think we should talk

02:27:48.480 about this topic

02:27:49.300 because average differences

02:27:50.960 in IQ scores

02:27:51.820 have existed for decades

02:27:53.040 they may have played

02:27:54.800 a role in generating

02:27:56.140 the disparate educational

02:27:57.600 and professional outcomes

02:27:59.080 that we observe

02:28:00.260 and care about

02:28:01.060 and thus that we cannot

02:28:02.580 properly analyze

02:28:03.860 these disparate outcomes

02:28:05.120 unless we do talk

02:28:06.120 about this subject

02:28:07.000 openly

02:28:07.820 geneticist David Reich

02:28:10.060 recently argued

02:28:11.000 in the New York Times

02:28:12.020 that if scientists

02:28:13.260 do not openly discuss

02:28:14.860 the biological basis

02:28:16.060 of race

02:28:16.700 pseudoscientists

02:28:18.300 could fill the vacuum

02:28:19.280 with dangerous consequences

02:28:21.000 furthermore

02:28:22.380 you Professor Peterson

02:28:23.780 are highly critical

02:28:25.220 of the oppression narrative

02:28:26.820 that permeates

02:28:28.260 segments of the academy

02:28:29.860 and activist left

02:28:31.160 and knowledge

02:28:32.280 about average differences

02:28:33.540 in IQ scores

02:28:34.600 between ethnic groups

02:28:36.040 while tough to assimilate

02:28:37.840 could puncture

02:28:38.900 this narrative

02:28:39.520 so the question is

02:28:41.360 what is your view

02:28:42.240 on all that I've just said

02:28:43.900 Jesus you guys

02:28:45.460 really did take a long time

02:28:46.680 to prepare these questions

02:28:47.860 didn't you

02:28:48.380 all right so

02:28:52.340 when I went to Harvard

02:28:56.020 I came from McGill

02:28:57.980 and I had spent

02:29:00.040 a lot of time

02:29:01.060 with my advisor there

02:29:03.480 and a research team

02:29:04.800 that he had

02:29:05.420 trying to understand

02:29:07.400 the genesis

02:29:08.020 of antisocial behavior

02:29:09.560 and among adolescents

02:29:13.080 mostly

02:29:13.620 so well

02:29:14.480 as kids as well

02:29:15.700 antisocial behavior

02:29:17.120 is very persistent

02:29:18.040 so if you have a child

02:29:19.040 who's conduct disordered

02:29:20.340 at the age of four

02:29:21.720 the probability

02:29:23.280 that they will be criminal

02:29:24.640 at the age of 15 or 20

02:29:26.400 is extremely high

02:29:27.680 it's unbelievably stable

02:29:29.600 it's a very dismal literature

02:29:31.060 because you see

02:29:32.320 these early onset

02:29:33.280 aggressive kids

02:29:34.460 and it's persistent

02:29:37.180 and then you look

02:29:38.200 at the intervention literature

02:29:39.240 and you throw up your hands

02:29:41.060 because no interventions work

02:29:43.060 and believe me

02:29:43.940 psychologists have tried

02:29:44.940 everything you could possibly imagine

02:29:46.740 and a bunch of things

02:29:47.820 that you can't

02:29:48.620 in order to ameliorate that

02:29:50.240 so we were really interested

02:29:51.700 in trying to understand

02:29:53.340 for example

02:29:53.920 if you're antisocial

02:29:55.820 by the age of four

02:29:56.900 then there isn't an intervention

02:29:58.840 that seems to be effective

02:29:59.980 so

02:30:00.940 and the standard

02:30:02.800 penological theory

02:30:03.840 is really quite horrifying

02:30:05.360 in this regard

02:30:06.100 because what you see

02:30:07.320 is that male aggression

02:30:08.320 peaks around the age of 15

02:30:09.800 and then it declines

02:30:10.900 fairly precipitously

02:30:11.960 and sort of normalizes

02:30:14.780 again by the age of 27

02:30:16.120 and standard penological theory

02:30:17.820 essentially is this cold-hearted

02:30:19.800 it's like

02:30:20.260 if you have someone

02:30:22.340 who's a multiple offender

02:30:23.520 you just throw them in prison

02:30:24.380 until they're 27

02:30:25.160 then they age out of it

02:30:27.100 and that's all there is to it

02:30:29.320 that's what we've got

02:30:31.260 now there's some downside to that

02:30:33.180 because there's a corollary literature

02:30:34.580 that suggests that

02:30:35.580 the worst thing that you can do

02:30:36.740 with antisocial people

02:30:37.720 is to group them together

02:30:38.840 which is what we do in prisons

02:30:40.620 so that's a whole mess

02:30:42.500 anyways

02:30:43.060 one of the things we were doing

02:30:45.180 was trying to see

02:30:45.860 if there might be cognitive

02:30:46.980 predictors of antisocial behavior

02:30:49.440 and so

02:30:49.920 we used this battery

02:30:51.380 of neuropsychological tests

02:30:52.920 that was put together

02:30:53.820 at the Montreal Neurological Institute

02:30:55.520 took about 11 hours

02:30:56.960 to administer

02:30:57.660 and hypothetically assessed

02:30:59.220 prefrontal cortical function

02:31:00.720 and we computerized that

02:31:02.860 reduced it to about 90 minutes

02:31:04.420 and then

02:31:04.840 assessed antisocial adolescence

02:31:08.300 in Montreal

02:31:09.300 and found out that

02:31:10.060 they did show deficits

02:31:11.120 in problem solving ability

02:31:13.020 that we associated with

02:31:14.780 prefrontal ability

02:31:16.520 when I got to Harvard

02:31:19.800 I thought

02:31:20.220 well that's interesting

02:31:21.160 we could use the neuropsych battery

02:31:23.800 to predict negative behavior

02:31:26.300 perhaps we could use it

02:31:28.380 to predict positive behavior

02:31:29.840 so I thought

02:31:30.540 well what if we

02:31:31.220 turned the neuropsych battery

02:31:32.640 over and thought

02:31:35.060 well can we predict grades

02:31:36.340 for example

02:31:37.000 because you know

02:31:37.680 that's a decent thing to predict

02:31:39.020 so we ran a study

02:31:40.620 we ran a study

02:31:42.100 that looked at

02:31:42.920 Harvard kids

02:31:43.660 University of Toronto kids

02:31:45.040 line workers

02:31:46.360 at a Milwaukee factory

02:31:47.760 and managers and executives

02:31:49.700 at the same factory

02:31:50.800 and what we found

02:31:51.560 was that

02:31:52.240 the average score

02:31:55.000 across these neuropsychological tests

02:31:56.860 they were kind of like games

02:31:58.080 they were game-like

02:31:59.040 you know

02:31:59.380 so in one test

02:32:01.800 there were five lights

02:32:03.100 in the middle of the screen

02:32:04.160 and a box was associated

02:32:06.000 with each light

02:32:07.040 and you had to learn

02:32:07.780 by trial and error

02:32:08.640 which box was associated

02:32:09.940 with each light

02:32:11.020 that was one of the tests

02:32:12.160 so we took people's average score

02:32:17.140 across the tests

02:32:18.060 because they seemed to clump together

02:32:19.580 into a single structure

02:32:21.600 you can find that out statistically

02:32:23.800 if you take a bunch of tests

02:32:25.140 you can find out

02:32:26.200 how they clump together statistically

02:32:27.720 by looking at their patterns of correlations

02:32:29.560 and you might get multiple clumps

02:32:31.200 which is what happens

02:32:32.020 with personality research

02:32:33.180 where you get five

02:32:34.000 or you might get a singular clump

02:32:35.880 which is what happens

02:32:36.780 in cognitive research

02:32:38.240 and we got a single clump

02:32:39.920 essentially

02:32:40.540 and then we were trying to figure out

02:32:42.820 if at the same time

02:32:44.720 I was reading the literature

02:32:45.700 on performance prediction

02:32:46.920 and there's an extensive literature

02:32:49.060 on performance prediction

02:32:50.120 a lot of it generated

02:32:51.020 by the armed forces

02:32:51.940 by the way

02:32:52.520 indicating that IQ

02:32:54.560 is a very good predictor

02:32:55.760 of long-term life success

02:32:56.960 and so here's the general rule

02:33:00.300 if your job is simple

02:33:02.680 which means you do the same thing every day

02:33:04.620 then IQ predicts how fast you'll learn the job

02:33:07.280 but not how well you do it

02:33:08.920 but if your job is complex

02:33:10.460 which means that the demands change

02:33:12.700 on an ongoing basis

02:33:13.820 then the best predictor of success

02:33:15.380 is general cognitive ability

02:33:16.900 and I learned that the general cognitive ability tests

02:33:21.420 clump together into a single factor

02:33:23.260 that's fluid intelligence or IQ

02:33:25.240 and then we didn't know

02:33:26.700 if the factor that we had found

02:33:28.240 was the same factor as IQ

02:33:30.500 and we still haven't really figured out

02:33:33.060 whether or not that was the case

02:33:34.140 because it kind of depends

02:33:35.080 on how you do the analysis

02:33:36.100 but anyways

02:33:37.040 I got deeply into the performance prediction literature

02:33:40.120 and I found out

02:33:40.940 well if you wanted to predict

02:33:41.900 people's performance in life

02:33:43.360 there's a couple of things

02:33:44.880 you need to know

02:33:45.440 you need to know

02:33:46.000 their general cognitive ability

02:33:47.240 if they're going to do a complex job

02:33:48.860 you need to know

02:33:50.320 their trait conscientiousness

02:33:52.080 some of you might have heard

02:33:53.500 that rebranded as grit

02:33:55.200 in a very corrupt act

02:33:56.720 by the way

02:33:57.320 because it's a good predictor

02:33:59.560 of long-term life success

02:34:00.880 freedom from negative emotion

02:34:03.440 low neuroticism

02:34:04.520 is another predictor

02:34:05.500 but it's sort of third

02:34:06.400 on the hierarchy

02:34:07.620 and then openness to experience

02:34:09.580 which is a personality trait

02:34:10.780 is associated with expertise

02:34:12.540 in creative domains

02:34:13.780 the evidence that

02:34:15.640 now I should tell you

02:34:16.900 this is such a complicated question

02:34:18.900 I should tell you how to make an IQ test

02:34:20.900 because it's actually really easy

02:34:22.400 and you need to know this

02:34:23.400 to actually understand what IQ is

02:34:25.400 so imagine that you generated

02:34:27.400 a set of 10,000 questions

02:34:30.400 about anything

02:34:31.900 they could be math problems

02:34:33.900 they could be general knowledge

02:34:34.900 they could be vocabulary

02:34:35.900 they could be multiple choice

02:34:36.900 it really doesn't matter

02:34:37.900 what they're about

02:34:38.900 as long as they require abstraction to solve

02:34:40.900 so they'd be formulated linguistically

02:34:43.400 but mathematically would also apply

02:34:45.400 and then you have those 10,000 questions

02:34:48.400 now you take a random set

02:34:49.900 of a hundred of those questions

02:34:51.900 and you give them to a thousand people

02:34:54.400 and all you do is sum up the answers

02:34:55.900 right?

02:34:56.400 from

02:34:56.900 so some people are going to get most of them right

02:34:58.900 some of them are going to get most of them wrong

02:35:00.900 you just rank order the people

02:35:02.400 in terms of their score

02:35:03.400 correct that for age

02:35:05.400 and you have IQ

02:35:06.400 that's all there is to it

02:35:08.400 and what you'll find is that no matter which random set

02:35:11.400 of a hundred questions you take

02:35:12.900 the people at the top of one random set

02:35:14.900 will be at the top of all the others

02:35:16.900 and with very, very, very high consistency

02:35:20.400 so one thing you need to know is that

02:35:21.900 if any social science claims

02:35:24.400 whatsoever are correct

02:35:26.900 then the IQ claims are correct

02:35:29.900 because the IQ claims are more psychometrically rigorous

02:35:33.400 than any other phenomenon

02:35:36.400 that's been discovered by social scientists

02:35:38.900 now the IQ literature is a dismal literature

02:35:41.900 no one likes it

02:35:42.900 here's why

02:35:43.900 here's an example

02:35:44.900 so here's a little

02:35:45.900 here's a fun little fact for you

02:35:47.900 for liberals and conservatives alike

02:35:49.900 because conservatives think

02:35:50.900 there's a job for everyone 1.00

02:35:51.900 if people just get off their asses 0.99

02:35:52.900 and get to work 0.99

02:35:53.900 and liberals think

02:35:54.900 well you can train anyone to do anything

02:35:56.900 it's like

02:35:57.400 no, there isn't a job for everyone

02:35:59.400 and no, you can't train everyone to do everything

02:36:02.400 that's wrong

02:36:03.900 and here's one of the consequences of that

02:36:05.900 so as I mentioned

02:36:07.900 the armed forces has done a lot of work on IQ

02:36:09.900 and they started back in 1919

02:36:11.900 and the reason they did that was because

02:36:13.900 well, for obvious reasons

02:36:15.900 let's say there's a war

02:36:17.900 and you want to get qualified people

02:36:19.900 into the officer positions as rapidly as possible

02:36:21.900 or you'll lose

02:36:23.900 so that's a reason

02:36:24.900 now the armed forces has experimented with IQ tests since 1919

02:36:30.900 and in the last 20 years

02:36:33.400 a law was passed as a consequence of that analysis

02:36:36.400 which was that it was illegal to induct anyone into the armed forces

02:36:39.400 who had an IQ of less than 83

02:36:41.400 now the question is why

02:36:44.400 and the answer was

02:36:45.400 all of that effort put in by the armed forces indicated

02:36:49.400 that if you had an IQ of 83 or less

02:36:51.400 there wasn't anything that you could be trained to do

02:36:53.400 in the military that wasn't positively counterproductive

02:36:55.400 now you've got to think about that

02:36:57.900 because the military is chronically desperate for people

02:37:01.900 it's not like people are lining up to be inducted

02:37:05.900 they have to go out and recruit

02:37:07.900 and it's not easy

02:37:08.900 and so they're desperate to get their hands on

02:37:10.900 every body they can possibly manage

02:37:12.900 and then especially in wartime

02:37:14.900 but also in peacetime

02:37:16.900 but then there was another reason too

02:37:17.900 which was the armed forces was also set up

02:37:19.900 from a policy perspective

02:37:21.400 to take people in the underclass 0.92

02:37:24.400 let's say

02:37:25.400 and train them and move them up

02:37:26.400 at least into the working class

02:37:27.900 or maybe the middle class

02:37:28.900 so there's a policy element to it too

02:37:30.400 and so even from that perspective

02:37:32.400 you could see that the military is desperate to bring people in

02:37:35.400 but with an IQ of 83 or less

02:37:38.400 it's not happening

02:37:39.400 ok, so how many people have an IQ of 83 or less?

02:37:43.400 10%

02:37:45.400 now, if that doesn't

02:37:49.400 if that doesn't hurt you to hear

02:37:53.900 then you didn't hear it properly

02:37:55.900 because what it implies is that

02:37:57.900 in a complex society like ours

02:37:59.900 and one that's becoming increasingly complex

02:38:01.900 there isn't anything for 10% of the population to do

02:38:06.900 alright, well what are we going to do?

02:38:08.900 are we going to ignore that?

02:38:09.900 are we going to run away from that?

02:38:11.900 and believe me, we have every reason to

02:38:13.900 or are we going to contend with the fact that we need to figure out

02:38:17.400 how it is

02:38:18.400 how it might be possible

02:38:21.400 to find a place for people on the lower end of the general cognitive distribution

02:38:27.400 to take their productive and worthwhile place in society

02:38:31.400 and that isn't just going to be a matter of dumping money down the hierarchy

02:38:35.400 because giving people who have nothing to do money isn't helpful

02:38:39.400 it doesn't work

02:38:40.400 it's not that simple

02:38:41.900 well

02:38:43.900 so that's kind of an answer to the question of whether or not we should deal with IQ forthrightly

02:38:49.400 it's like

02:38:50.400 if you can find a flaw in that logic

02:38:53.400 like just go right ahead

02:38:54.400 it's not like I was thrilled to death to discover all of this

02:38:57.400 by no stretch of the imagination was that the case

02:39:00.400 so

02:39:01.400 so what?

02:39:03.400 so IQ is reliable and valid

02:39:05.900 that's the first thing

02:39:07.400 it's more reliable and valid than any other psychometric test

02:39:10.900 ever designed by social scientists

02:39:12.900 by a factor of about 3

02:39:15.900 that's fact number 1

02:39:17.400 fact number 2 is

02:39:18.900 it predicts long-term life outcome

02:39:21.400 at about 0.3, 0.4

02:39:23.900 which leaves about 85%, 70-85% of the story unexplained

02:39:28.400 but it's still the best thing that we have

02:39:30.900 well it's also the case that in places like Great Britain

02:39:33.900 when IQ tests were first introduced

02:39:36.900 they were actually used by the socialists

02:39:38.900 and they were used to identify poor people

02:39:41.900 who had potential, cognitive potential

02:39:44.900 and to move them into higher, into institutes of higher education

02:39:48.900 so there's an upside

02:39:50.400 you know, a social upside as well

02:39:52.400 ethnic differences

02:39:55.400 this is something you can't say anything about 0.99

02:39:59.400 without immediately being killed

02:40:02.400 so I'm hesitant to broach the topic

02:40:05.400 but I'll tell you one thing that I did in the last week

02:40:08.400 that's relevant to this

02:40:09.400 so the

02:40:10.400 and this just shows you how complex the problem is

02:40:13.400 first of all we should point out that race is a very difficult thing to define

02:40:16.400 because racial boundaries aren't tight

02:40:18.900 and so when you talk about racial differences in IQ

02:40:22.900 you're faced with the thorny problem of defining race

02:40:25.900 and that's a big problem from a scientific perspective

02:40:27.900 but we'll leave that aside

02:40:29.900 and I wrote an article this week

02:40:32.900 somebody stood up at one point in one of my talks

02:40:36.900 and Vice, bless their hearts

02:40:39.900 took this particular question

02:40:41.900 and used it as an indication of the quality of the people

02:40:44.900 who are my so-called followers

02:40:46.900 and by the way the quality of my so-called followers is pretty damn high

02:40:50.400 and you can find that out quite rapidly

02:40:53.400 just by going looking at the YouTube comments

02:40:55.400 which are head and shoulders above the standard set of YouTube comments

02:40:59.400 I can tell you that

02:41:00.400 so someone asked me about the Jewish question

02:41:04.400 right

02:41:05.400 and the implication

02:41:07.400 it was actually someone Jewish

02:41:08.400 and the implication was that

02:41:10.400 Jews are over-represented in positions of authority and power

02:41:15.900 and

02:41:16.900 and I was

02:41:17.900 had just spoken for like an hour and a half

02:41:20.400 and

02:41:20.900 you know this guy had an axe to grind

02:41:22.400 and I thought 0.89

02:41:22.900 there's no goddamn way I'm getting into this at the moment 0.81

02:41:25.900 and so I said 0.76

02:41:27.900 I said I can't answer that question

02:41:29.900 but that's not a very good answer

02:41:31.400 so I wrote a blog post this week

02:41:32.900 and I said look

02:41:33.900 here's the situation

02:41:35.400 alright

02:41:36.400 Jews are over-represented in positions of power and authority

02:41:40.400 but then

02:41:40.900 let's open our eyes a little bit

02:41:42.400 hey

02:41:42.900 and think for like two or three seconds

02:41:44.900 and think

02:41:45.400 hey guess what

02:41:46.400 they're also over-represented in positions of competence

02:41:49.400 and it's not like we have more geniuses than we know what to do with

02:41:53.400 and if the Jews happen to be producing more of them

02:41:55.900 which they are by the way

02:41:57.400 then that's a pretty good thing for the rest of us

02:41:59.900 so let's not confuse competence with power and authority

02:42:02.900 even though that's a favorite trick of the radical leftists

02:42:05.400 who always fail to make that distinction

02:42:07.400 well

02:42:08.400 why

02:42:09.400 does this over-representation occur

02:42:11.400 because it does

02:42:12.400 it also

02:42:13.400 there's also over-representation in political movements

02:42:16.400 including radical political movements

02:42:18.400 okay

02:42:19.400 why

02:42:20.400 well answer one

02:42:21.400 Jewish conspiracy 0.57

02:42:23.400 okay

02:42:24.400 that's not a very good answer

02:42:25.400 we've had

02:42:26.400 we've used that answer before

02:42:28.400 alright

02:42:29.400 but

02:42:30.400 but do we have an alternative?

02:42:31.400 well here's an alternative

02:42:32.400 the average Ashkenazi IQ is somewhere between 110 and 115

02:42:38.400 which is about one standard deviation above the population average

02:42:42.400 and so what that means is that the average Ashkenazi slash European Jew

02:42:47.400 has an IQ that's higher than 85% of the population

02:42:52.400 that's a lot higher

02:42:54.400 now that doesn't make that much difference in the middle of the distribution

02:42:57.400 okay

02:42:58.400 but geniuses don't exist at the middle of the distribution 0.99

02:43:01.400 they exist at the tails of the distribution

02:43:04.400 and you don't need much of a move

02:43:06.400 at the mean to produce walloping differences at the tails

02:43:10.400 and the tails are important because

02:43:12.400 a lot of where we draw

02:43:14.400 we draw exceptional people from the exceptions

02:43:17.400 right

02:43:18.400 so here's an example

02:43:19.400 here's another example of the same thing

02:43:21.400 most engineers are male

02:43:24.400 why?

02:43:26.400 because men are more interested in things

02:43:28.400 and women are more interested in people 0.99

02:43:30.400 and you might say

02:43:31.400 well that's sociocultural

02:43:32.400 it's like

02:43:33.400 no it's not

02:43:34.400 and we know that

02:43:35.400 because

02:43:36.400 if you stack up countries by their

02:43:38.400 by their egalitarian social policies

02:43:41.400 which you can do quite effectively

02:43:43.400 and then you look at the over-representation of men in STEM fields

02:43:47.400 the over-representation increases as the countries become more egalitarian

02:43:53.400 so it's not sociocultural

02:43:56.400 okay

02:43:57.400 now men aren't that much more interested in things than women 0.91

02:44:01.400 it's one standard deviation

02:44:02.400 which is about the same difference by the way

02:44:04.400 between the population norm and the Ashkenazi Jews 0.77

02:44:07.400 but if you're looking at the person

02:44:08.400 the one person in 20

02:44:10.400 or the one person in 50

02:44:12.400 who's most

02:44:13.400 who's hyper interested in things

02:44:15.400 and thus likely to become an engineer

02:44:18.400 then most of them are men

02:44:20.400 here's another example of the same thing

02:44:22.400 men are more aggressive than women 1.00

02:44:25.400 now

02:44:26.400 you might ask

02:44:27.400 how much

02:44:28.400 an answer to that

02:44:29.400 the best place to look at that is in Sweden

02:44:31.400 where the egalitarian policies have been laid out for a long period of time

02:44:35.400 and you can

02:44:36.400 you can get a more direct inference about biology

02:44:39.400 if you took a random man and a random woman out of the population

02:44:43.400 and you had to bet on who was more aggressive

02:44:45.400 and you bet on the man

02:44:46.400 you'd be right 60% of the time

02:44:48.400 so that's not that much right

02:44:50.400 it deviates from 50-50

02:44:52.400 but it's not like 90-10

02:44:54.400 it's 60-40

02:44:55.400 okay

02:44:56.400 so?

02:44:57.400 so what does that mean?

02:44:58.400 well

02:44:59.400 we've got a tail problem here again

02:45:01.400 let's say that now you decide to go out onto the extremes of aggression

02:45:04.400 and you identify the most aggressive one in a hundred persons

02:45:09.400 they're all men 0.99

02:45:11.400 guess who's in prison?

02:45:13.400 those people

02:45:15.400 that's why most of the people in prison are men

02:45:18.400 and so this is elementary

02:45:20.400 part of the problem in our society is that we don't understand statistics

02:45:24.400 we don't understand that you can have relatively small differences at the population level

02:45:29.400 that produce walloping consequences at the tails of the distribution

02:45:34.400 okay

02:45:35.400 so back to IQ

02:45:38.400 one final thing to say about IQ

02:45:42.400 the ethnic differences are difficult to dispense with

02:45:46.400 it's not easy to make them go away

02:45:49.400 you can say well the tests aren't culture fair

02:45:52.400 well here's a test of that

02:45:54.400 so imagine you test group A with an IQ test

02:45:57.400 and you test group B with an IQ test

02:46:00.400 and then you look at their actual performance in whatever you're predicting

02:46:04.400 if the test was biased against ethnic group A

02:46:07.400 then it would under predict their performance

02:46:10.400 and that doesn't happen

02:46:12.400 now you could say well there's systemic bias in the performance measures

02:46:16.400 and the potential measures

02:46:18.400 and that's a possibility

02:46:19.400 alright

02:46:20.400 now one other thing about that

02:46:23.400 there's a real danger in the

02:46:26.400 ethnicity IQ debate

02:46:28.400 and the danger is that we confuse intelligence with value

02:46:33.400 or that we include

02:46:35.400 we confuse intelligence with human value

02:46:39.400 that's a better way of thinking about it

02:46:41.400 and one of the things that we're going to have to understand here is that that's a mistake

02:46:46.400 is that being more intelligent doesn't make you a better person

02:46:49.400 that's not the case

02:46:51.400 it makes you more useful for complex cognitive operations 1.00

02:46:54.400 but you can be pretty damn horrific as a genius son of a bitch 1.00

02:47:00.400 right? it's morally neutral 1.00

02:47:01.400 and we also know that from the psychometric data by the way

02:47:04.400 there doesn't seem to be any relationship whatsoever between intelligence and virtue

02:47:07.400 and so if it does turn out that nature and the fates do not align with our egalitarian presuppositions

02:47:14.400 which is highly probable

02:47:16.400 we shouldn't therefore make the mistake of assuming that if group A or person A is lower on one of these attributes than group B or person B

02:47:24.400 that that is somehow reflective of their intrinsic value as human beings

02:47:29.400 that's a big mistake

02:47:35.400 that's

02:47:36.400 I don't have anything else to say about that

02:47:39.400 Okay, so

02:47:41.400 I had three more questions

02:47:44.400 and so maybe slightly shorter answers to these three

02:47:47.400 like maybe around

02:47:49.400 Well hopefully they're simpler questions

02:47:51.400 you know

02:47:52.400 average five minutes

02:47:54.400 Okay

02:47:55.400 and then we will open it up

02:47:57.400 so

02:47:58.400 another taboo

02:48:00.400 is to celebrate European culture

02:48:04.400 multiculturalists get pretty unhappy when Europeans start expressing pride in their culture or heritage 1.00

02:48:11.400 many especially on the left

02:48:13.400 do not draw much of a distinction

02:48:15.400 at least in practice

02:48:17.400 between European pride and white supremacy

02:48:20.400 you care about freedom of the individual

02:48:22.400 the individual's

02:48:24.400 freedom to think

02:48:25.400 to speak

02:48:26.400 to associate

02:48:27.400 in short

02:48:28.400 to act as he sees fit

02:48:29.400 without external compulsion

02:48:31.400 as long as he doesn't infringe on the similar liberties of others

02:48:35.400 Professor Ricardo Duchesne

02:48:37.400 a historical sociologist and professor at the University of New Brunswick

02:48:41.400 argues that quote

02:48:42.400 individualism is a unique attribute of European peoples

02:48:47.400 quote

02:48:48.400 it has been exported to some degree to other nations

02:48:51.400 but in my view

02:48:52.400 it is not something that comes to them naturally

02:48:55.400 so he continues

02:48:57.400 quote

02:48:58.400 you can't play the game of we're all individuals

02:49:01.400 we have to affirm and be proud of our ethnic identity and heritage

02:49:06.400 to preserve the West's curious individualism

02:49:10.400 if Europeans become minorities in the West

02:49:13.400 he argues

02:49:14.400 the founding idea of the West

02:49:16.400 that no entity

02:49:17.400 not an individual

02:49:19.400 not a community

02:49:20.400 not the state

02:49:21.400 can justly deprive an individual of life, liberty, or property by force

02:49:25.400 no matter what the individual's race, class, or religion

02:49:28.400 I wouldn't be surprised if Duchesne when he made this statement

02:49:33.400 had you in mind

02:49:34.400 look

02:49:39.400 the medieval Europeans identified seven deadly sins for a reason 1.00

02:49:45.400 and one of them was pride

02:49:46.400 it's like

02:49:49.400 let's make the presumption

02:49:50.400 I do believe that

02:49:52.400 for

02:49:53.400 for reasons that aren't obvious

02:49:56.400 that the West

02:49:58.400 has got some things right

02:50:00.400 we've got the sovereignty of the individual right

02:50:02.400 that's the most fundamental thing we've got right

02:50:05.400 we've articulated that I think in a remarkable way

02:50:07.400 not only theologically, philosophically

02:50:11.400 in our body of laws

02:50:12.400 in our societies

02:50:14.400 and one of the consequences of that

02:50:15.400 as it's had its effect on the rest of the world

02:50:18.400 is that

02:50:19.400 everyone is getting richer quite fast

02:50:21.400 and that's a really good thing

02:50:24.400 okay, having said that

02:50:25.400 it's like, am I proud of that?

02:50:27.400 it's like, I didn't do that

02:50:29.400 what the hell?

02:50:31.400 pride 0.95

02:50:32.400 what's that?

02:50:34.400 that's not the right response

02:50:35.400 how about responsibility for that?

02:50:37.400 how would that be?

02:50:38.400 it's like, you're part of this

02:50:40.400 this great

02:50:41.400 and unlikely

02:50:45.400 set of propositions

02:50:46.400 this strange set of propositions

02:50:47.400 that says that in some

02:50:50.400 ineffable manner

02:50:52.400 the poorest person is as valuable as the king 0.73

02:50:56.400 it's like, how the hell did we ever figure that out?

02:50:58.400 that's an impossible thing to think

02:51:00.400 and yet that's the bedrock of our legal system

02:51:04.400 that's nothing to be proud of

02:51:05.400 that's something to tremble before

02:51:07.400 to take on as an ethical burden

02:51:10.400 and not to wave a flag for how wonderful you are

02:51:13.400 that you happen to have the same skin color

02:51:15.400 as some of the people who thought that up

02:51:18.400 it's not the right response

02:51:20.400 it's like, it's to open your eyes and recognize that as a miracle

02:51:24.400 and a relatively new miracle on the world stage

02:51:28.400 and to participate in the process of upholding that in your personal and your public life

02:51:34.400 that's not pride in European tradition

02:51:37.400 like, when I go to Europe

02:51:39.400 and I love going to Europe

02:51:40.400 and the European cities are

02:51:41.400 they're unbelievable masterpieces

02:51:43.400 which is why they're completely flooded by pilgrims, right?

02:51:46.400 tourists, pilgrims

02:51:49.400 who go there to look at the beauty

02:51:50.400 it's like, I don't feel pride about that

02:51:53.400 I feel like I have something to live up to

02:51:57.400 that's not the same thing, man

02:51:59.400 and so these right-wingers in this

02:52:01.400 it's like, look what we've done

02:52:02.400 it's like, no, it's not you that did that

02:52:06.400 that's something, man

02:52:07.400 you gotta have your act together

02:52:09.400 before you would dare to say, well, that was me

02:52:11.400 it's like, yeah, sure, sure it was you

02:52:13.400 yeah, right

02:52:15.400 no

02:52:16.400 that's hard

02:52:17.400 to stand up and take your place

02:52:19.400 in that kind of historical process

02:52:22.400 that unlikely, miraculous historical process

02:52:25.400 not to just feel ashamed

02:52:27.400 at the way that you're presently constituted

02:52:30.400 in the face of that

02:52:31.400 means that you're deluded

02:52:34.400 and you're using your great fortune

02:52:38.400 at being a beneficiary of that system

02:52:41.400 look at what we've got here

02:52:43.400 this great piece that we're inhabiting

02:52:45.400 right now

02:52:46.400 you're using your unearned

02:52:52.400 the unearned gift that's been granted to you

02:52:54.400 as a source of personal pride in your

02:52:57.400 accomplishments due to your skin

02:53:01.400 it's like, no

02:53:02.400 not good

02:53:03.400 not a good argument

02:53:05.400 so

02:53:06.400 and that doesn't mean that

02:53:07.400 well, there's nothing valuable about European culture

02:53:10.400 there's plenty

02:53:12.400 there's plenty about it that's valuable

02:53:14.400 it's not even so clear to what degree it's European

02:53:16.400 I mean, it came out of the Middle East, you know

02:53:18.400 I mean, who

02:53:21.400 it's so muddle-headed that you hardly know where to start

02:53:24.400 so

02:53:25.400 hopefully that was less than five minutes

02:53:27.400 there we go

02:53:28.400 dispensed with the radical right-wingers in four minutes

02:53:32.400 I've heard a number of interesting things about Islam

02:53:36.400 from you and one of your intellectual soulmates, Camille Paglia

02:53:41.400 Paglia says that men and women benefit in many ways

02:53:44.400 from living in largely separate worlds

02:53:46.400 as they did in traditional European societies

02:53:49.400 and obviously as they do in much of the Muslim world today

02:53:53.400 relatedly, Paglia considers passionate masculinity

02:53:56.400 a critical force for defending, sustaining, and advancing civilization

02:54:01.400 and she argues that passionate masculinity

02:54:03.400 while virtually moribund

02:54:05.400 in the western middle and upper classes

02:54:07.400 is alive and well in the Muslim world

02:54:10.400 you have expressed some sympathy for the Muslim critique of the West 0.84

02:54:15.400 its godlessness, its spiritual void, its materialism

02:54:18.400 its technology-induced removal from life's elemental realities

02:54:22.400 you've said, it is extraordinarily naive to believe that the differences between European culture

02:54:29.400 and Islamic culture are not about anything fundamental

02:54:34.400 you've expressed concern that Islam is a totalizing system

02:54:38.400 and in a quote that stood out to me

02:54:41.400 you said in a Patreon chat on YouTube that in your view

02:54:45.400 the only countries in the world that are essentially worth living in

02:54:48.400 in any real sense are the ones that are predicated on the Judeo-Christian tradition

02:54:54.400 and manifested in the western body of laws, unquote.

02:54:58.400 So an open-ended question, how would you synthesize your perspective on Islam

02:55:02.400 and the fact that the Muslim populations of Europe and Canada

02:55:06.400 a product of recent immigration are growing and reproducing much faster

02:55:10.400 than the European descended populations in these countries?

02:55:13.400 Man, you guys really did spend a lot of time coming up with troublesome questions, didn't you? 0.97

02:55:24.400 See, the problem is, the problem, one of the problems is that I'm an ignorant man 0.91

02:55:30.400 and there's lots of things that I don't know 0.70

02:55:33.400 and I don't know, I don't understand Islam

02:55:36.400 I don't know enough about it to be an intelligent commentary on it

02:55:41.400 I've done my best to peck away at the edges

02:55:45.400 but, you know, it would require multiple years of study

02:55:49.400 to understand the similarities and differences between the two viewpoints

02:55:54.400 It looks to me like what Islam did was take a group of radically disparate tribes 1.00

02:56:03.400 and unite them under a single ethos

02:56:09.400 Of course, the Muslim civilization expanded more rapidly than any other civilization ever had

02:56:15.400 and occupied a very large part of the world, which, of course, it still does

02:56:20.400 Perhaps there's something to be said for that unifying tendency

02:56:25.400 There's a problem

02:56:38.400 And maybe this is at the core of the problem

02:56:42.400 There's no distinction between church and state in Islam 0.94

02:56:47.400 And there is a distinction between church and state in the West

02:56:52.400 It isn't obvious to me

02:56:56.400 If it's the case that our culture is

02:57:00.400 grounded in an underlying, let's call it literary metaphysics, something like that, a religious metaphysic

02:57:07.400 Part of the bedrock of our culture is the idea of the separation between church and state

02:57:15.400 And as far as I can tell

02:57:17.400 That idea doesn't exist in the Muslim world 1.00

02:57:20.400 And so I cannot understand how that faith is commensurate with the institutions of the West

02:57:25.400 It doesn't seem to me that there's any evidence that it's commensurate

02:57:31.400 Because the number of Islamic democracies is, let's call it, finite 1.00

02:57:37.400 The best example has probably been Turkey 1.00

02:57:40.400 And Turkey, as far as I can tell, isn't doing that well at the moment on the democratic front

02:57:45.400 And it looked like the great shining hope

02:57:48.400 And a lot of that was a consequence of secularization

02:58:00.400 You know, I've spent a lot of time, when I was writing Maps of Meaning, for example

02:58:04.400 Looking for commonalities among religious viewpoints

02:58:07.400 And I was able to find deep commonalities, I thought, between Buddhism and Christianity

02:58:11.400 And Taoism and Christianity, and Hinduism and Christianity, for that matter 0.67

02:58:17.400 It was a lot harder when it came to Islam

02:58:19.400 It's not a faith that's opened itself up to me

02:58:22.400 I don't understand it well

02:58:32.400 But I hope that people of good will

02:58:36.400 Can build a bridge between the two cultures

02:58:41.400 Because the alternative is too gloomy to contemplate

02:58:51.400 And finally, you've stated, quote, women are more agreeable by nature than men 0.90

02:58:58.400 And agreeable people are compassionate toward those they see as suffering

02:59:01.400 And that seems to include any minority

02:59:05.400 Especially when you combine that with a kind of neo-Marxist doctrine

02:59:09.400 That claims that anyone who has an advantage swiped it

02:59:13.400 Unquote

02:59:15.400 Women have been voting for a century now 1.00

02:59:17.400 And this, you suggested in a Patreon chat

02:59:20.400 May help to explain why, in the West

02:59:22.400 We've collectively decided that, quote,

02:59:25.400 Egalitarianism and conflict avoidance

02:59:28.400 Constitute the two highest virtues

02:59:30.400 And trump everything else

02:59:32.400 Including free speech

02:59:34.400 Unquote

02:59:36.400 You've said

02:59:38.400 That in the West today

02:59:39.400 We are perhaps for the first time in history

02:59:41.400 Seeing on the political left

02:59:43.400 Or on segments of the political left

02:59:45.400 What a female totalitarianism would look like 1.00

02:59:49.400 Unquote

02:59:50.400 Elaborate

02:59:52.400 I did a research project with one of my students

02:59:58.400 We haven't published it, unfortunately, for a variety of reasons

03:00:02.400 She's been quite ill and I've been quite preoccupied

03:00:05.400 So those are the two barriers at the moment

03:00:08.400 But the first thing we wanted to do was to find out

03:00:11.400 Whether there was actually such a thing as political correctness

03:00:14.400 You can actually do that technically as a social scientist

03:00:17.400 So what you do is, this is what we did is

03:00:18.400 We got a group of people together and we collected a whole bunch of statements that seemed to be vaguely associated with the idea of political correctness

03:00:26.400 So maybe you could think, well, it's a media construct

03:00:28.400 And that's fine, you can go analyze media statements and then you can collect ideas that seem to be associated with whatever political correctness is

03:00:35.400 We collected about 400 of those

03:00:39.400 And then we asked, we turned them into questions and we asked a thousand people for their opinions

03:00:44.400 Then you can do this statistical process called a factor analysis

03:00:48.400 And it's the same thing that pulls out a single factor of IQ from a group of questions, for example

03:00:52.400 It's the same thing that produced the big five personality model

03:00:54.400 And what the factor analysis does is tell you

03:00:58.400 If questions group together

03:01:01.400 So let's say you have opinion A

03:01:04.400 Well, if you have opinion A, if there's a hundred of you, everyone who has opinion A also has opinion B and opinion C

03:01:10.400 And if that's the case, then those clump together

03:01:13.400 There's something about them that's the same

03:01:15.400 Now what we could have found was that when we analyzed these 400 questions there was like 50 clumps

03:01:22.400 And so that would have blown the

03:01:24.400 There's such a thing as political correctness hypothesis out of the water

03:01:28.400 But that isn't what happened, we found two clumps

03:01:30.400 One of which looked like something like moderate leftism and the other that looked very much like totalitarian political correctness

03:01:37.400 And it was a very, very robust finding and we replicated it as well

03:01:41.400 She did this for her master's thesis, by the way 0.97

03:01:45.400 And then we looked at what predicted these beliefs

03:01:49.400 First of all, the correlation between the moderate leftist clump of questions and the radical leftist clump of questions actually wasn't very high

03:01:57.400 And so one of the things that we surmise is that there's an actual division on the left between the moderates and the radicals

03:02:03.400 And that's just not played itself out

03:02:05.400 And I think you can actually see that happening by the proclivity of the radical leftists to devour themselves

03:02:11.400 Right, so which happens on a very regular basis

03:02:14.400 Or perhaps you can see it in the proclivity of the radical leftists to go after the moderates when the moderates criticize the radicals

03:02:22.400 Whatever, so there's two clumps to political correctness

03:02:25.400 Both of them were predicted by trait agreeableness

03:02:29.400 Which is one of the traits that women score higher on than men 1.00

03:02:31.400 It's the antithesis of aggression, by the way

03:02:34.400 And also by being female 1.00

03:02:37.400 Which was a real shock to us because most of the

03:02:39.400 So let's say females and males differ with regards to some outcome

03:02:42.400 You try to figure out why that is

03:02:44.400 It might be just because they're female 1.00

03:02:46.400 But there's all sorts of things associated with being female or male that are like second-order complications

03:02:51.400 What we found almost invariably with the personality literature is if you look at differences between men and women

03:02:56.400 And then you control for personality, the differences go away

03:03:01.400 So they're not differences between men and women per se, they're differences between personality

03:03:05.400 But with political correctness we found an effect of agreeableness, which was a pure personality effect, and an effect of being female 0.98

03:03:12.400 So we also found a pronounced effect of having taken at least one seminar that was politically correct in its orientation

03:03:18.400 So that had a walloping effect

03:03:21.400 So there does seem to be something about political, according to that research, which, you know

03:03:27.400 I try to rely on better research, but none has been done

03:03:32.400 So that's the best that I've got

03:03:34.400 And the woman who did this research is very, very smart 1.00

03:03:37.400 And the study was well done, so I think it's credible

03:03:39.400 So, and one of the things that's interesting to me about that is that it does tie into the Freudian nightmare of the devouring mother, essentially

03:03:49.400 Which was Freud's, I think, signal contribution to psychopathology

03:03:52.400 You know, for most of Freud's clients were people who were struggling to get out of the clutches of their family, right?

03:03:58.400 And part of that is human beings are very dependent, right?

03:04:01.400 Because, well, because we have this incredibly long period of development

03:04:06.400 30 years, maybe, but certainly 18 years

03:04:10.400 So it's hard to struggle up from infancy, mature and leave as an independent creature

03:04:16.400 And lots of people, you see this, if you're a clinician, you see this all the time

03:04:20.400 People are so tangled up in their families that they can't get away from them

03:04:23.400 And that's the Oedipal situation that Freud described so brilliantly

03:04:28.400 And Jung also elaborated on it

03:04:32.400 A lot of that's a consequence of hyper-dependence, right?

03:04:35.400 It's the danger of over-protection

03:04:39.400 Now there's a rule, if you're dealing with elderly people, say, in an elder care institution

03:04:44.400 And the rule is something like, don't do anything for your charges that they can do themselves

03:04:49.400 It's kind of a harsh rule

03:04:51.400 You know, if you see someone struggling with their buttons, maybe they're three years old

03:04:53.400 You want to rush over and help

03:04:56.400 It's like, well, maybe you don't 0.99

03:04:58.400 Because they need to learn how to do up their damn buttons 1.00

03:05:01.400 Or if they're 85 0.98

03:05:03.400 They need to maintain their independence as much as possible without your compassion stealing it from them

03:05:10.400 Okay, well, we could hypothesize that there would be no pathology as a consequence of the female rise to political power 1.00

03:05:17.400 But given that females are human beings too, and we're pretty much rife with pathology 1.00

03:05:23.400 The probability that there'll be a downside is like there is to male participation 0.88

03:05:29.400 Which would be more aggressive and hyper-compet... aggressiveness and hyper-competition

03:05:33.400 The probability that there would be a downside is extraordinarily high

03:05:37.400 Well, why wouldn't it be a downside associated with hyper-protectiveness?

03:05:40.400 It's exactly what you'd expect

03:05:41.400 And then what you see playing out in the political landscape, as far as I can tell, and maybe I'm wrong, is

03:05:49.400 Wherever there's an inequality, there's an oppressor-oppression narrative

03:05:53.400 And so anyone who stacks up at the bottom of a hierarchy is a victim-slash-infant

03:06:00.400 And anyone at the top is an oppressor-slash-predator

03:06:02.400 And I think confusing the hierarchical structure, especially when it's based on competence

03:06:09.400 And Western structures of hierarchy are based in large part, although not entirely, on competence

03:06:16.400 Confusing that with a predator-infant or oppressor-oppression relationship is a very bad idea

03:06:24.400 Now, having said that, it's obvious that every social structure has a tyrannical element

03:06:31.400 Like nobody in their right mind is going to say, well, our cultural structures are 100% fair and just

03:06:39.400 Obviously they're not, and every single person in this room, and some far more than others, have been brutalized by the social structure

03:06:46.400 Which takes you around the neck, shakes the hell out of you, and says, you better be like everyone else, or else, right?

03:06:55.400 That's the tyrannical aspect of the social structure

03:06:57.400 So you have to be naive not to think that there's some oppressor-oppression dynamic in a social structure

03:07:05.400 But to make that the only element of the discussion is extraordinarily dangerous

03:07:10.400 I mean, one of the things that looking at terrible things has done for me, is make me a very grateful person

03:07:19.400 Like when I walk out on the street, and I see that people aren't at each other's throats

03:07:24.400 I really think that that's a miracle, like I was just in Manhattan for a week, you know?

03:07:29.400 If your eyes are open, that place is an absolute miracle

03:07:32.400 I mean, there's way too many people there

03:07:34.400 Seven million people come in a day, right?

03:07:35.400 There's way too many people, they're just stacked on top of each other

03:07:40.400 There's all these massive skyscrapers, and they all stand up

03:07:43.400 There they are, all standing up

03:07:45.400 All the traffic lights work, all the electricity works

03:07:48.400 The buildings aren't blowing up one after another because of natural gas leaks

03:07:52.400 They just don't blow up, and people aren't, like, beating each other to death with clubs in the street

03:07:57.400 It's like, so when I go outside in New York, I think, my God, how did we manage this?

03:08:01.400 Because I'm a Hobbesian by nature, you know?

03:08:06.400 I think, and it's not like I'm entirely pessimistic

03:08:10.400 But I think that you're naive if you don't think that the natural state of human beings is one of brutality

03:08:17.400 All you have to do is look at history, and you'd be convinced of that very rapidly

03:08:20.400 And so the fact that, look at us, we can all sit in here, we don't know who, we don't know each other

03:08:26.400 And we're having a contentious political discussion

03:08:29.400 And like, nothing terrible is happening

03:08:32.400 And if you don't see that as a miracle, then you're way too protected for your own good

03:08:37.400 So, well, so back to the, back to the agreeableness issue

03:08:42.400 There are tyrannies of care

03:08:47.400 The psychoanalyst said the good mother fails

03:08:51.400 And what that means is that when your kid is three years old, two years old, and stumbling around, making mistakes

03:08:58.400 You back the hell off, and you let them make mistakes

03:09:02.400 And you don't view the world as infant and predator, and you don't project that onto the political system

03:09:06.400 Because it's not a good idea, especially if those who, especially for those who you're misdiagnosing as predators

03:09:15.400 Okay, so now we are going to open it up for Q&A

03:09:18.400 Alright, so the idea that I've put thought into this is perhaps an optimistic one

03:09:23.400 But, as you might imagine, you've been a topic of conversation on this campus a lot in the past week or so

03:09:28.400 Certainly among a lot of us who discuss politics

03:09:30.400 And one of the things that sort of united people who like and dislike a lot of your ideas is that we appreciate your defense of free speech

03:09:36.400 And we appreciate you coming here to talk about it with us

03:09:39.400 But one of the things I thought was really interesting is Professor Van Dyke addressed the distinction between you and Jonathan Haidt

03:09:44.400 And you mentioned this as sort of a temperamental one

03:09:47.400 And I think, I'm sure that's true to some extent, but I noticed you've made a lot of more sort of substantively inflammatory claims

03:09:53.400 Like in the course of this lecture you called the authors of Facebook posts demons and totalitarians

03:09:59.400 In past events you've called them things like neo-Marxists, cultural Marxists

03:10:04.400 You've called them, I believe, a fifth column that is committing treason against the West

03:10:09.400 And it seems to me that this is more than temperamental, this is a substantive difference

03:10:12.400 It's a substantive difference, yes

03:10:14.400 And another thing you've done is that unlike Haidt you have a more sort of comprehensive political program

03:10:19.400 You've talked a lot in defense of traditional hierarchies, both of gender, of class, so on

03:10:24.400 Though emphatically not of race

03:10:26.400 And so it seems like

03:10:28.400 I haven't talked about defensive traditional hierarchies in terms of gender and class, that's not true

03:10:32.400 Well you've talked about hierarchies in society, you've talked about

03:10:36.400 Yeah, that's true, I have done that

03:10:38.400 But I haven't justified them on the basis of gender and class

03:10:41.400 Or whatever the two categories

03:10:43.400 Not okay, that's an important distinction

03:10:46.400 But you defend hierarchies in society in a way that

03:10:49.400 You talk a lot about the Pareto distribution, yes?

03:10:52.400 That doesn't mean I defend it

03:10:53.400 Well okay, you

03:10:54.400 No, not well okay

03:10:56.400 Yes, yes

03:10:58.400 Well I mean, I think you talk a lot

03:11:01.400 Observing that something exists

03:11:02.400 Yes

03:11:03.400 Is not the same as defending it

03:11:04.400 How in the world

03:11:05.400 Well people attack it, right?

03:11:06.400 What's that?

03:11:07.400 And you don't, people attack it

03:11:09.400 Attack what?

03:11:10.400 Attack the hierarchies of society as inherently unjust, right?

03:11:13.400 Well they're unjust

03:11:15.400 Yes

03:11:16.400 But they're also useful

03:11:17.400 Okay, so you say they're useful

03:11:18.400 Some people would disagree with that proposition

03:11:19.400 Look at it this way

03:11:20.400 Okay, look at it this way

03:11:22.400 You obviously think that it's worthwhile to stand up and ask a question

03:11:27.400 Yes

03:11:28.400 So you think that standing up and asking a question is better than not standing up and asking a question

03:11:33.400 Yes

03:11:34.400 Okay, that's a hierarchy

03:11:35.400 Yes

03:11:36.400 Of values

03:11:37.400 Yes

03:11:38.400 Okay, without the hierarchy of values you couldn't act

03:11:39.400 Of course

03:11:40.400 No, no, not of course

03:11:42.400 Well wait

03:11:43.400 It's partly why I'm defending the hierarchy

03:11:44.400 Without a hierarchy there's no impetus to act

03:11:45.400 No one disagrees about the facts of the hierarchy, right?

03:11:47.400 What's that?

03:11:48.400 In society, right?

03:11:49.400 No, there's multiple hierarchies in society

03:11:50.400 Okay, there are multiple hierarchies in society

03:11:51.400 Okay, there are multiple hierarchies in society, right?

03:11:52.400 Yes

03:11:53.400 And you say that they are based in, you invoke the lobster, right?

03:11:55.400 That they are based in nature

03:11:58.400 I said that they were inevitable

03:11:59.400 Yes

03:12:00.400 Yes, that they were inevitable

03:12:01.400 Some people disagree with that

03:12:02.400 Right, that doesn't mean that they're good

03:12:03.400 But my point is that, this is generally relative to it

03:12:05.400 You have a broader point than free speech

03:12:08.400 This is one of the things you talk about, yes?

03:12:11.400 Yes

03:12:12.400 Okay, whereas I think there are some other activists who focus more exclusively on free speech

03:12:15.400 I'm not an activist

03:12:16.400 There are some other individuals who engage in public political speech

03:12:20.400 Okay

03:12:21.400 Yeah?

03:12:22.400 Who focus more exclusively on free speech

03:12:24.400 Whereas you have other goals in mind

03:12:26.400 But one of the things that your more inflammatory language

03:12:29.400 And it's fair, it's a substantive disagreement

03:12:31.400 Has done, I think, is it's politicized this free speech to an extent that someone like Haidt hasn't

03:12:36.400 I've noticed that when someone hears the term free speech now

03:12:39.400 They associate it with a specific set of thinkers

03:12:41.400 Often as viewed as on the extreme right

03:12:43.400 And I think, I think arguably that's the problem of all factions in society

03:12:47.400 Because free speech should be a universal value

03:12:49.400 Polls certainly suggest that it's coming under increasing threat from both sides

03:12:53.400 But I suppose the heart of my question

03:12:55.400 In addition to, of course, these other observations

03:12:57.400 Is that do you believe free speech is your primary end

03:13:01.400 Or do you believe these other points you're making are important

03:13:03.400 Because I've heard you a bunch of times defend free speech sort of contextually

03:13:07.400 Like you've complained about some of the laws in Canada that you dislike

03:13:10.400 That they institutionalize false facts into the law

03:13:13.400 But it seems to me that an absolutist defense of free speech makes no preference as to true or false

03:13:18.400 The point is that something, you are being forced to say something

03:13:21.400 It would be as bad as if you were forced to say something that it's true

03:13:24.400 Because the point of free speech is that you can say whatever you want, right?

03:13:28.400 No, the point of free speech is so that you can think your way through life

03:13:31.400 Yes

03:13:32.400 Without running like headlong into a brick wall

03:13:34.400 But being told to think position A versus position B is just as bad, right?

03:13:38.400 Even if one is true and the other is not

03:13:40.400 Okay, well there was a bunch of questions

03:13:42.400 Yes

03:13:43.400 Good job, by the way

03:13:44.400 Well, actually, wait, can I just ask one additional addendum

03:13:47.400 Which is, I think the politicization of free speech is by far the biggest threat to free speech

03:13:56.400 Because this has always been

03:13:57.400 No, the radical leftists are the biggest threat to free speech

03:13:59.400 Well, okay, so this is a disagreement

03:14:01.400 But I get your point

03:14:02.400 As the professor alluded to in previous questions

03:14:05.400 The substantive threats to free speech in much of the world, in Europe certainly

03:14:09.400 I think in the United States as well from the government have come from the radical right

03:14:13.400 And I think it's fair to say that on the specific narrow subset of certain departments on liberal arts colleges

03:14:18.400 It's fair to say a threat comes from the left

03:14:20.400 Though its scope is in dispute

03:14:22.400 But my question is, do you think that the way you talk about free speech

03:14:26.400 The way you link it to specific issues

03:14:28.400 The way you use inflammatory language

03:14:30.400 And the way you seem to make it

03:14:31.400 You seem to defend a specific set of free speech

03:14:33.400 There are certainly plenty of instances of free speech attacked on the other side

03:14:36.400 That you don't mention as much

03:14:38.400 Do you think you risk politicizing this?

03:14:40.400 Because it seems to me that

03:14:41.400 Yes

03:14:42.400 Okay, and do you not think that's a far greater threat?

03:14:44.400 Because for example

03:14:45.400 No

03:14:46.400 The NRA is a group in the United States that defends guns rights, right?

03:14:49.400 Okay, hold it

03:14:50.400 Yes

03:14:51.400 We need a question

03:14:52.400 Yes, okay

03:14:53.400 My question is

03:14:54.400 Like I said, you're doing fine

03:14:55.400 But it's just too much

03:14:56.400 Like I can't keep it straight

03:14:57.400 Do you think that your behavior risks politicizing it?

03:15:01.400 And do you think that politicization is justified?

03:15:04.400 I think my behavior risks politicizing it, yes

03:15:07.400 I would rather it not be politicized

03:15:10.400 And I'm doing what I can to manage that risk

03:15:13.400 However, it's become political in my country

03:15:16.400 Because the government implemented compelled speech legislation

03:15:20.400 So I wasn't complaining about that before it became political

03:15:25.400 Now, there is a time

03:15:29.400 Even when you're detached in some sense from the political realm

03:15:33.400 That you can't be detached anymore

03:15:35.400 Well, I'm not happy with the fact that this has become politicized

03:15:39.400 You could say that I haven't done a stellar job in ensuring in every possible manner

03:15:45.400 That this has remained neutrally apolitical

03:15:47.400 Probably true, you know

03:15:50.400 But I'm not particularly unhappy with the way things have gone so far

03:15:56.400 And I'm not happy with the radical left

03:15:59.400 And so if they're irritated at me, so much the better as far as I'm concerned

03:16:04.400 So have I conducted myself perfectly?

03:16:07.400 It's like undoubtedly no

03:16:10.400 So I've got more than my fair share of faults

03:16:15.400 And a temper is one of them

03:16:17.400 But I'm muddling through

03:16:22.400 All right, I'm almost a little hesitant to ask a question now

03:16:28.400 But so one thing I was wondering about was a lot of people I think would argue that

03:16:36.400 Kind of the values of Western civilization, free speech, the right of the individual separation between church and state

03:16:45.400 Have developed through not so much in continuous with the Judeo-Christian morality

03:16:53.400 But almost in their overthrow through such things as the Enlightenment, the scientific revolution

03:16:58.400 And how these values would never have come out of just simply the continuous of the Middle Ages and that Judeo-Christian morality

03:17:09.400 But my understanding of your view would be that those values are inherent in the Judeo-Christian morality

03:17:16.400 And I'm just wondering how you think, just what is the value of Judeo-Christian morality in the modern world?

03:17:23.400 Yeah, it's a great question

03:17:33.400 They're not rational values

03:17:35.400 They're deeper than rational values

03:17:37.400 I mean it was a surprise to me

03:17:40.400 Going back into the past, let's say, to see how deep these values were

03:17:44.400 But I would say that not only are they part of the Judeo-Christian story, let's say

03:17:52.400 But that they're grounded in phenomena that are even deeper than that

03:17:57.400 There's been a fair bit of investigation into the emergence of fair play, let's say, among animals

03:18:04.400 Rats, primates, wolves, and so forth

03:18:08.400 There's an ethos that emerges behaviorally and is then perhaps woven into narrative and then codified

03:18:14.400 That seems to be isomorphic across these different levels

03:18:19.400 And I think it's been well articulated in the narrative sense in the Judeo-Christian corpus of stories

03:18:25.400 And that it's out of that that our legal systems and institutions of rights have emerged

03:18:31.400 People make the case that that was fundamentally an Enlightenment issue

03:18:35.400 And it was certainly the case that the rational clarity that came along with the Enlightenment

03:18:41.400 Increased the degree to which that was articulated and transformed into law

03:18:45.400 But I think to attribute it to that is a great mistake

03:18:50.400 I think it's, I think the time span view is way too narrow

03:18:56.400 That's 500 years ago

03:18:58.400 I'm a biologically minded guy

03:19:00.400 It's like 500 years, that's nothing

03:19:03.400 5,000 years, well, that's starting to register

03:19:07.400 50,000 years, it's worthy of note

03:19:10.400 6 million years, now you're getting somewhere

03:19:13.400 There's, the ethic that we're discussing is way deeper than something conjured up in like 1500 by some Northern Italians

03:19:23.400 So, it's an articulation of a substructure that's much deeper than the articulation itself

03:19:30.400 That's what it looks like to me

03:19:31.400 Now I think there's room for intelligent debate about that

03:19:35.400 But I've looked at the Enlightenment thinkers

03:19:38.400 And at the deeper, at people who I regard as deeper

03:19:43.400 And I think the deeper guys, Nietzsche, Dostoevsky, Jung in particular

03:19:47.400 Solzhenitsyn to some degree, they've got it right

03:19:50.400 So, I don't think it's, I don't think that our rights are an Enlightenment project

03:19:55.400 Their instantiation into codified law, that's more part and parcel of the Enlightenment

03:20:02.400 That would be particularly manifest in a place like the United States, you know, so

03:20:07.400 Yeah, if I can just ask kind of a related question

03:20:10.400 You mentioned Nietzsche, and, because from what I understand of your work

03:20:14.400 You seem to draw from him a lot, and again, you said you agree with him

03:20:17.400 Well, you know, he thinks a lot of things

03:20:20.400 Yeah, so I guess, I'm wondering where you think

03:20:24.400 Because I imagine he went wrong in his interpretation of the Christian morality

03:20:30.400 And how he believes, and how he believes that's kind of a pernicious slave-based morality

03:20:37.400 So what exactly do you think, because you agree with a lot of other things

03:20:41.400 Well, he didn't really critique Christian morality

03:20:43.400 He critiqued Christian dogma and structures

03:20:47.400 That's not exactly the same thing

03:20:49.400 So you would agree with him then?

03:20:51.400 Well, like I said, he's a complicated guy

03:20:53.400 But I think the slave morality idea, the idea that the oppressed are somehow virtuous 1.00

03:21:00.400 Which I don't think is a central Christian idea, by the way

03:21:04.400 It was something that he criticized as part and parcel of what was constructed

03:21:08.400 And concretized in institutional Christianity 0.61

03:21:13.400 And Nietzsche also, and this is a deeper critique, I think

03:21:17.400 Nietzsche really criticized institutional Christianity

03:21:20.400 Particularly the Protestant and Catholic forms, I would say

03:21:23.400 For insufficient attention paid to the imitation of Christ

03:21:27.400 And too much attention paid to the idea that the work of redemption had already been done

03:21:32.400 Which is something that also divides the Orthodox Christian types from the Protestants and the Catholics

03:21:37.400 Because the Orthodox types tend to tilt more towards the moral demand that you imitate Christ in your own life 0.91

03:21:44.400 And so Nietzsche's a very, you can't sum him up very easily

03:21:50.400 And I found him extraordinarily useful in training me how to think

03:21:55.400 To say that you agree with him

03:21:57.400 I don't think that you can say with someone like Nietzsche that you agree with him

03:22:01.400 Because, you know, Nietzsche had, this is one thing that Nietzsche said

03:22:05.400 That I really got a kick out of

03:22:07.400 Because it's the most arrogant statement I've ever heard anyone make

03:22:13.400 He said, I can write in a sentence what it takes other people, a book, to relate

03:22:22.400 And then he said, no, what other people can't even relate in a book

03:22:26.400 And that's exactly right

03:22:28.400 Like if you read Beyond Good and Evil, for example, which is mostly aphorisms

03:22:32.400 Because he was a very sick man and he couldn't write for long periods of time

03:22:36.400 So he would think for long periods of time and then write down a little bomb

03:22:40.400 And Beyond Good and Evil is just sequential pieces of dynamite

03:22:45.400 And he wasn't trying to be systematic precisely

03:22:49.400 And so that's why it's not so easy to agree or disagree with Nietzsche

03:22:53.400 But you can sure let the bombs go off in your brain if you read what he has to say

03:22:58.400 And he was an interesting critic of Christianity 0.93

03:23:02.400 Because, you know, if you're all warped and bent

03:23:06.400 And someone comes along and tells you how you're warped and bent

03:23:09.400 In a manner that might enable you to straighten up

03:23:11.400 It's not obvious that you're their enemy

03:23:14.400 That they're your enemy

03:23:16.400 And I think that's the right way to read Nietzsche with regards to Christianity 0.99

03:23:21.400 So there was plenty of rot

03:23:25.400 And that was part of what was causing, let's say, the death of God

03:23:30.400 Now, it isn't obvious at all that Nietzsche was antithetically opposed to the founding ideas

03:23:39.400 In fact, there's many places where he writes that indicate quite the contrary

03:23:44.400 So...

03:23:46.400 Thank you

03:23:48.400 Okay, so we're gonna go to Alex

03:23:50.400 And then Saeed

03:23:52.400 Is going to distribute the microphone

03:24:02.400 Thank you for being here, I really appreciate it

03:24:05.400 So I was watching a few of your interviews in preparation for this

03:24:08.400 And I heard you speak about religion quite a bit

03:24:11.400 And if you look up what religion means in the Webster Dictionary

03:24:15.400 You get something like a system of faith centered on a supernatural being or beings or something like that

03:24:22.400 But I've heard you use religion to describe things like punk rockers, for example

03:24:26.400 That that's a religious experience

03:24:28.400 So my first question would be, how do you define what is considered religious?

03:24:32.400 And then sort of as a follow-up to that

03:24:35.400 If, say, Sam Harris

03:24:37.400 Religious is what you act out 1.00

03:24:39.400 What's that?

03:24:41.400 Religious is what you act out 1.00

03:24:43.400 Anything you act out

03:24:46.400 Everything you act out is predicated on your implicit axioms

03:24:51.400 And the system of implicit axioms that you hold as primary is your religious belief system

03:24:56.400 It doesn't matter whether you're an atheist or not

03:24:59.400 That's just surface noise

03:25:03.400 So it has nothing to do with divinity or supernatural beings?

03:25:07.400 No, I didn't say that

03:25:08.400 Or it doesn't necessarily have to do with those?

03:25:11.400 No, it probably necessarily has to do with it too

03:25:15.400 But it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with your voluntarily articulated statements

03:25:20.400 About whether or not you believe in something like a transcendent deity

03:25:25.400 So, I mean, what you act out is much more what you are than what you say about yourself

03:25:31.400 And what the hell do you know about what you believe anyways? 0.74

03:25:34.400 You're complicated, man 0.97

03:25:36.400 It's a fair question

03:25:37.400 Well, seriously, people are complicated

03:25:39.400 You know, like, we're not transparent to ourselves at all

03:25:43.400 That's why we have to go to university and study psychology

03:25:46.400 It's like, you know, we're not exactly black boxes

03:25:50.400 But we are the most complicated things there are

03:25:53.400 Right? And we can't even program our VCR clocks

03:25:57.400 So it's like, how the hell can we propose to understand ourselves?

03:26:01.400 You know, I'm existentially oriented

03:26:04.400 Which is to say that I think that what you hold to be true is best determined as a consequence of an analysis of your actions

03:26:13.400 Rather than as a consequence of an analysis of what you purport to believe

03:26:19.400 Now, in order to act, you can't act without a hierarchy of value

03:26:24.400 Which I tortured the other poor questioner about

03:26:27.400 You can't act without a hierarchy of values

03:26:29.400 Because you can't act unless you think one thing is better than another

03:26:33.400 Because why would you act otherwise?

03:26:35.400 So that means that you're embedded within a hierarchy of values

03:26:39.400 Whether you know it or not

03:26:40.400 Or maybe multiple fragmentary and competing hierarchies of value

03:26:43.400 Which is all the worse for you, by the way

03:26:45.400 Because it just makes you very confused

03:26:47.400 That hierarchy of values has an axiomatic

03:26:51.400 It's based on axioms

03:26:53.400 And the probability that you understand them is very low

03:26:56.400 Because generally people don't understand their axioms

03:26:59.400 But that axiomatic system is essentially your religious system

03:27:03.400 And there's no way out of that as far as I can tell

03:27:06.400 And you can say, well, it isn't predicated on conscious belief in a transcendent deity

03:27:12.400 It's like, okay, have it your way

03:27:15.400 But, you know, most people in this room act out a Judeo-Christian ethic

03:27:22.400 And not only do they act it out

03:27:24.400 If they're treated in a manner that's not commensurate with that ethic

03:27:28.400 They get very, very, very annoyed

03:27:31.400 So, for example, if I fail to treat you as if you're an embodiment of a divine fragment, let's say

03:27:39.400 That's characterized by the ability to make free choice

03:27:44.400 And to determine your own destiny in some sense

03:27:47.400 Or if I fail to treat you as if you're a valued member

03:27:51.400 Valued contributing member of the polity as a sovereign individual

03:27:56.400 Then you'll find that very offensive and become angry

03:27:59.400 It's like, okay, then, that's what you believe

03:28:03.400 Well, if I ask you if you believe any of that, well, that's a whole different story 0.85

03:28:07.400 You might give me some radical leftist nonsense

03:28:10.400 But that doesn't take away from what you've... 0.50

03:28:13.400 I try not to

03:28:14.400 That doesn't take away from the fundamentals of your action

03:28:18.400 As one final thing

03:28:20.400 So when you and, say, Sam Harris argue about religion

03:28:23.400 You're arguing about fundamentally different things, it sounds like

03:28:27.400 His conception of what is religious is very different from yours

03:28:30.400 Yeah, well, he tends to think of religious thought the same way that a smart 13-year-old atheist

03:28:38.400 Thinks about a fundamentalist Christian 0.94

03:28:40.400 It's like, yeah, okay

03:28:42.400 That just... you're just not getting to the heart of the matter

03:28:46.400 You know, and I just finished reading all of Sam's books in the last couple of weeks

03:28:51.400 And as far as I'm concerned, he doesn't ever get to the bottom of the issue

03:28:56.400 He doesn't address the fundamental thinkers

03:28:58.400 There are some profound thinkers

03:29:00.400 Dostoevsky's one

03:29:02.400 Tolstoy, Nietzsche, Jung

03:29:05.400 It's like, they're completely absent from... and the same with Dawkins

03:29:08.400 It's completely absent

03:29:09.400 All that conceptualization is completely absent from their corpus of works

03:29:12.400 They don't even have an understanding for the psychological utility of religion

03:29:16.400 And it's a big problem 0.94

03:29:18.400 You know, you don't get to be an atheist when the people you attack are like naive fundamentalists

03:29:25.400 And I have some sympathy for the naive fundamentalists

03:29:29.400 It's like, what they're basically saying is something like this

03:29:32.400 Look, we have an ethos that's valuable

03:29:35.400 You scientist types are casually dismantling it

03:29:40.400 What the hell are we supposed to do?

03:29:42.400 Well, the fundamentalists don't know what to do about that

03:29:44.400 So they say, well, creationism is science

03:29:46.400 It's like, well, no, it's not

03:29:48.400 But that doesn't mean that they don't have a point

03:29:51.400 Their point is there's something valuable here

03:29:54.400 It's like, don't break it casually

03:29:56.400 What are you going to replace it with?

03:29:58.400 The new atheists wish that everybody becomes rational

03:30:02.400 It's like, yeah, sure, that's going to happen

03:30:05.400 Thank you

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03:31:56.400 Thank you Dr. Peterson

03:31:58.400 I'm a student of religious studies

03:32:00.400 And currently I'm writing an owner's thesis on religious imagery

03:32:04.400 In an Indo-Persian literary genre

03:32:06.400 There's a poet philosopher who said the following

03:32:09.400 Which I think you'll like

03:32:10.400 Who by the way was a huge fan of Goita

03:32:12.400 He said that in addressing God

03:32:14.400 He says, he calls him the hidden reality

03:32:17.400 And he asks the hidden reality to reveal itself

03:32:19.400 But using the robe of metaphor

03:32:22.400 Because he thinks that metaphor is the only way

03:32:24.400 Stories are the only way

03:32:26.400 That human beings can comprehend

03:32:28.400 You know, the hidden reality

03:32:30.400 I know you've written a lot

03:32:31.400 You speak a lot about religious stories

03:32:34.400 I just wanted to ask you

03:32:36.400 Although it may be a very broad question

03:32:38.400 What is the place of the religious in stories?

03:32:42.400 And

03:32:43.400 Religious is something like the grammatical structure of stories

03:32:47.400 Like if you go down and you look at what makes a story a story

03:32:51.400 That's religious 0.70

03:32:53.400 Yeah, it's not a story otherwise

03:32:55.400 Like a story is a particular sort of thing

03:32:58.400 Like in its simplest sense

03:32:59.400 A story is an account of how to get from point A to point B

03:33:03.400 It's like a map

03:33:05.400 But there's a value structure inherent in that obviously

03:33:09.400 Because otherwise you wouldn't go from point A to point B

03:33:12.400 So just to make the map means to adopt a value structure

03:33:15.400 But the story is actually more complicated than that

03:33:17.400 Because as you move from point A to point B

03:33:20.400 Processes of radical transformation are often necessary

03:33:24.400 And the deep stories about the processes of radical transformation that occur as you move from point A to B

03:33:31.400 Are basically

03:33:32.400 They're indistinguishable from religious stories

03:33:36.400 Now the reason they

03:33:38.400 I think the reason they tend to become religious let's say 0.74

03:33:41.400 Is because it has something to do with the gap between the finite and comprehensible

03:33:46.400 And the infinite and the incomprehensible

03:33:48.400 It's like we live in the finite and comprehensible

03:33:50.400 But we're surrounded by the infinite and incomprehensible

03:33:53.400 And there has to be a border between those

03:33:55.400 Like a mediating border

03:33:57.400 That's poetry and art

03:33:59.400 That's narrative

03:34:00.400 That's religion 0.65

03:34:01.400 And it's that strange metaphorical reality let's say

03:34:06.400 That's not factual

03:34:07.400 And that's not comprehensible

03:34:09.400 But that's not infinitely incomprehensible either

03:34:12.400 It's a bridge between the two

03:34:14.400 So, and as you move closer to the infinite and incomprehensible

03:34:19.400 Across that bridge

03:34:20.400 You get farther and farther away from what you understand

03:34:24.400 Right?

03:34:26.400 But how could it be otherwise?

03:34:27.400 Given that you're finite

03:34:28.400 You are a finite being

03:34:30.400 Surrounded by infinite

03:34:32.400 What's infinite and incomprehensible

03:34:34.400 And that was his critique of the strict rationalist

03:34:37.400 That they can't

03:34:38.400 That it's hard for them to make this

03:34:40.400 To make this

03:34:41.400 To

03:34:42.400 That's where poets come in

03:34:43.400 And that's where artists come in

03:34:44.400 Yes, exactly

03:34:45.400 Exactly

03:34:46.400 Well this is

03:34:47.400 I learned a lot of this from Jung

03:34:48.400 Because Jung's idea was that

03:34:49.400 Rationality is embedded in a dream

03:34:52.400 Like there's the infinite unknowable

03:34:54.400 And then there's the dream

03:34:55.400 And then inside the dream is the rational domain

03:34:58.400 And I believe that to be the case

03:35:00.400 Why else would we dream?

03:35:02.400 We have to dream

03:35:04.400 We have to dream

03:35:05.400 If we don't dream

03:35:06.400 We go insane

03:35:07.400 It doesn't take very long

03:35:09.400 And so there's an element of poetic conceptualization that grounds us

03:35:17.400 And it has to be taken seriously

03:35:19.400 You know the rational critics of dreams think about them as random neural activity

03:35:25.400 It's like there's nothing

03:35:27.400 When you look at a TV screen that's not on a channel

03:35:32.400 That's random

03:35:34.400 When you dream something complex and sophisticated

03:35:37.400 That's not random

03:35:41.400 So

03:35:42.400 Yeah

03:35:43.400 So the metaphor surrounds us let's say

03:35:45.400 And we can critique it rationally

03:35:47.400 And we can undermine it

03:35:48.400 But there's real danger in that

03:35:50.400 So

03:35:51.400 Thanks

03:35:53.400 Please keep your question short

03:35:55.400 So to get to the point in terms of the salary

03:36:00.400 I'm going to take one question from here

03:36:01.400 Then take one on the other end

03:36:04.400 I think we have a right side of the room by us now

03:36:08.400 I'm trying to figure it out

03:36:09.400 Take one

03:36:11.400 Hi Professor

03:36:13.400 Yeah, thanks for your talk

03:36:14.400 I'd like to find out from you

03:36:16.400 What's your view of institutional racism?

03:36:19.400 Is it a thing?

03:36:21.400 Or is it some other left

03:36:23.400 Radical leftist agenda?

03:36:25.400 Say

03:36:26.400 I didn't quite catch the first part of that

03:36:28.400 What's your view of institutional racism?

03:36:30.400 Or systematic racism as some people may call it

03:36:34.400 Institutional system

03:36:35.400 Yeah, yeah, yeah

03:36:36.400 Yes, yes

03:36:37.400 Yeah

03:36:38.400 Is it a thing?

03:36:39.400 Is it an actual thing?

03:36:40.400 That's a great question

03:36:41.400 Or is it some other agenda that you might attribute to radical leftists?

03:36:46.400 It's a multivariate problem

03:36:49.400 Right?

03:36:50.400 Like no society is without its biases and prejudices

03:36:54.400 And some of them get built into the systems themselves

03:36:58.400 And so when you look at unequal outcomes

03:37:01.400 And you're trying to discover why those unequal outcomes exist

03:37:04.400 If you have any sense then you do a multivariate analysis

03:37:07.400 And you put in prejudice and discrimination as one of the factors

03:37:12.400 One of the factors

03:37:14.400 One of many, many factors

03:37:17.400 And the problem with the radical leftists is that they take

03:37:20.400 The fact that societal structures are tyrannical to some degree and arbitrary

03:37:25.400 Which of course they are because they're imperfect

03:37:27.400 And then they obliterate the rest of the complexity with that claim

03:37:32.400 So there's lots of reasons for inequality

03:37:37.400 Systemic bias is one of them

03:37:40.400 It's an open question to what degree systemic bias plays in

03:37:45.400 In the inequality problem, let's say

03:37:48.400 But it's something that we could hypothetically address

03:37:51.400 With a certain degree of detachment and intelligence

03:37:54.400 So, no system is perfect

03:37:58.400 Not, and certainly not ours 0.55

03:38:04.400 Reasonable?

03:38:05.400 Reasonable answer?

03:38:07.400 Okay

03:38:08.400 That's wise

03:38:12.400 Alright, so

03:38:14.400 I think it's safe to say you're a fervent critic of postmodernism

03:38:18.400 And there are times where I don't think you quite give it a fair shake

03:38:21.400 And I'm no fan of, you know, a good amount of the literature or the theory

03:38:26.400 But if you could point to one or two of the French theorists

03:38:30.400 And some of their pieces

03:38:32.400 Whether it's their literature or their theory

03:38:35.400 And you could point to that's culpable for this sort of cultural rot 1.00

03:38:38.400 That you charge postmodernism with causing

03:38:40.400 Who would it be?

03:38:41.400 What would it be?

03:38:42.400 I would say Foucault and Derrida

03:38:46.400 Lacan, I would also blame him if I could understand him 1.00

03:38:49.400 But I don't actually think he is understandable

03:38:51.400 So I can't blame him

03:38:53.400 So, and I've done my best to read Lacan

03:38:56.400 And I think the reason I can't read it is because it doesn't make any sense

03:39:00.400 So, because I've read some very difficult things and I could understand them

03:39:03.400 So, Foucault, I think, is a tin-pot genius

03:39:08.400 I read Madness and Civilization, for example, it just seems to me to be self-evident

03:39:12.400 Psychiatric diagnostic categories are in part social constructions

03:39:16.400 It's like, great, we've known that since like 1960

03:39:19.400 You know, it's just not that big a revelation

03:39:22.400 And Derrida, well, he's a trickster, you know, and his critique of the West as phalogocentric is dead on point

03:39:29.400 Male-dominated, that's his theory, and logocentric, well, he thinks that's a problem

03:39:35.400 Well, I don't think it's a problem

03:39:38.400 So, and I think as well, it isn't even that

03:39:41.400 And I understand the postmodernist viewpoint

03:39:43.400 Like, look, it is the case that a finite set of entities is subject to an infinite number of interpretations

03:39:50.400 Okay, that's postmodernism in a nutshell

03:39:52.400 The AI guys figured that out in like, from 1960 to 1992

03:39:57.400 It took them that long to wade through that fundamental technical problem

03:40:01.400 A real problem

03:40:02.400 The problem of perception, for example

03:40:04.400 It's been very hard to solve the AI problem of perception

03:40:06.400 Because there are a lot of ways to look at the world

03:40:08.400 Like, the objects aren't just there in any simple sense

03:40:11.400 So, okay, there's an infinite number of interpretations

03:40:14.400 No problem

03:40:16.400 There's not an infinite number of viable interpretations

03:40:19.400 Okay, that's a big problem

03:40:21.400 Okay, and a little bit of thinking through that would have gone a long ways for the postmodernists

03:40:25.400 So that's number one

03:40:27.400 And then

03:40:28.400 What's the other one?

03:40:30.400 Oh, yes

03:40:35.400 Then the other problem is, okay

03:40:37.400 There's an infinite number of interpretations

03:40:39.400 We won't make anyone canonical

03:40:41.400 Alright, well then how the hell are you going to act?

03:40:44.400 Because you have to make a value system canonical if you're going to act

03:40:48.400 Oh, well we didn't solve that problem

03:40:50.400 How about we just slip Marxism in underneath the carpet and not notice the problem?

03:40:54.400 Then that gives us something to do

03:40:56.400 It's like, people come out and criticize me and say

03:40:59.400 Dr. Peterson doesn't understand that postmodernism and Marxism are incommensurate

03:41:03.400 It's like, yeah, actually I do understand that

03:41:06.400 But the postmodern neo-Marxists don't seem to understand that

03:41:10.400 So how can you be a postmodernist and a Marxist at the same time?

03:41:15.400 Well, the answer to that is actually to be found in the historical data

03:41:18.400 The postmodernist types like Foucault and Derrida were Marxists

03:41:22.400 Before Marxists, before they became postmodernists

03:41:25.400 And the postmodern overlay on the Marxism was as far as I can tell 0.99

03:41:29.400 Mostly a cover story for going about the same old murderous idiocy under a new guise

03:41:35.400 Do you think it's possible that there are, I'm sorry, that there are lenses, like postmodern lenses that we can view culture from under that can at times be more powerful and useful than other lenses

03:41:53.400 Like for example, Baudrillard, the idea of the simulacrum and the successive phases of the image

03:41:58.400 Joan Didion

03:42:00.400 Baudrillard could at least think

03:42:02.400 And I mean you can't throw all the postmodernists into the same jug

03:42:06.400 You know, but I would say it's still Derrida and Foucault have had the most pernicious effects

03:42:11.400 Okay, so you would charge them with the worst of the worst

03:42:15.400 Well, the

03:42:17.400 Opening up this can of worms that we hadn't really rebuilt

03:42:19.400 Well, the problem is they didn't deal with it seriously

03:42:21.400 It's like you can't just say no metanarrative

03:42:24.400 It's like, okay, how are we going to unite ourselves then?

03:42:27.400 We're going to use multiculturalism

03:42:30.400 Well, that's really worked to produce a peaceful world, hasn't it?

03:42:33.400 So, you need a uniting narrative

03:42:36.400 We have, if we weren't, didn't have a uniting narrative, we wouldn't all be sitting peacefully in this room

03:42:40.400 It's the uniting narrative that governs our behavior in this room

03:42:44.400 And look, here we are, all peaceful

03:42:46.400 It's like they're not dealing with the fundamental issues

03:42:48.400 And to slip Marxism back in as a backdoor route to having something to do with your life 0.76

03:42:53.400 Is intellectually and morally reprehensible

03:42:58.400 Okay, thank you

03:43:00.400 How are you, sir? My name is Steve

03:43:11.400 I just wanted to ask you about this experience that I had after watching one of your lectures

03:43:15.400 That really profoundly impacted me

03:43:17.400 And I was wondering if you could kind of help me out with understanding this

03:43:20.400 After watching your lecture on Jung and just talking about his life

03:43:24.400 You started talking about the Lion King

03:43:27.400 And kind of connecting what the intro scene was in the Lion King and the idea of archetypes

03:43:33.400 And when I started to understand what you were saying

03:43:35.400 I had this unbelievable feeling, like in my stomach, in my whole body

03:43:39.400 It's just this smack, like this very intense feeling

03:43:44.400 It's a warning never to read Jung

03:43:46.400 Yeah, well I have, I started with Ion

03:43:49.400 Oh good!

03:43:50.400 No!

03:43:51.400 It was just this powerful feeling and I got so emotional

03:43:55.400 Thinking up how to articulate this question to you a few minutes ago

03:44:00.400 I was just getting so emotional

03:44:02.400 It just seems like, it scared the hell out of me, that feeling

03:44:07.400 But it was also a really meaningful, so valuable, amazing feeling

03:44:11.400 And I thought, you know, it's kind of like what, maybe what God is, you know

03:44:16.400 Yeah, it was just so, and I usually get that feeling too of, after listening to a band like the Cro-Mags 1.00

03:44:23.400 Or Black Flag, you know, some hardcore band

03:44:26.400 That music is so important to me like that

03:44:29.400 It's levels of reality stacking on top of each other

03:44:34.400 And just the question that just made me so emotional too

03:44:38.400 Is like, what can my life be, you know, and that was something that

03:44:41.400 I just found myself asking myself, you know, just what

03:44:44.400 And I just, I wonder if you could, you know, give me some extra stuff on that

03:44:48.400 What that really was, you know

03:44:50.400 Yeah, well, you've got to be very careful when you're doing something like reading Jung

03:44:56.400 Because he'll reorganize your cognitive structures

03:45:01.400 And that's, there's deaths and rebirths that go along with that

03:45:05.400 You know, there's, what you're trying to do in part is to, in a sense, is you're trying to bring what you do

03:45:13.400 And how you imagine yourself and how you articulate yourself into alignment

03:45:19.400 So those three things are the same

03:45:21.400 It's very hard because there's more to you in your action than there is in your articulation

03:45:26.400 And there's more to you in your action than there is in your imagination

03:45:29.400 And so, partly what you're experiencing is an expanded sense of self and possibility

03:45:38.400 And you might think, well, that's a wonderful thing

03:45:40.400 But it's also a very daunting thing

03:45:43.400 And it can be a very dangerous thing

03:45:46.400 When I was dealing with all of this material, when I was writing my first book

03:45:51.400 I had to abandon a lot of the things that I was doing that were bad habits

03:45:56.400 Because it was so stressful to move through these systems of ideas

03:46:02.400 That I couldn't afford any additional mental energy being wasted on things I was doing that wasn't, that weren't together

03:46:09.400 So...

03:46:12.400 Hi, Dr. Peterson

03:46:14.400 So on February 13th, you got into a prolonged debate on Twitter with a quote bot

03:46:20.400 A Slava Zizek quote bot

03:46:22.400 And then again on March 9th

03:46:24.400 With a quote bot?

03:46:25.400 Yeah, it was a quote bot

03:46:26.400 Well, that wasn't very bright, was it?

03:46:28.400 No

03:46:29.400 And then again on March 9th, actually

03:46:32.400 With Noam Chomsky

03:46:34.400 Noam Chomsky quote bot

03:46:35.400 And so I want to ask you as like the leading

03:46:38.400 It's because I'm old and don't understand technology

03:46:40.400 Yeah

03:46:41.400 Yeah

03:46:42.400 Yeah

03:46:43.400 So, yeah

03:46:44.400 So, how important do you think it is to like debate these intellectuals

03:46:49.400 And do you think that you won them?

03:46:52.400 Oh God, I always hesitate to claim victory

03:46:58.400 Like to escape without abject defeat is a pretty good ambition

03:47:05.400 So, and plus I think it's rather improbable that I would win a debate with a quote bot

03:47:12.400 Some people thought it was pretty close

03:47:14.400 Yeah

03:47:15.400 Twitter is a weird platform, you know

03:47:21.400 It's complicated, yeah

03:47:22.400 It is a complicated platform

03:47:24.400 And I've modified my approach to Twitter in the last month and a half I would say

03:47:31.400 I've been trying to selectively retweet information

03:47:37.400 I polled a bunch of people and asked them if they knew of credible Twitter sources that were producing valid good news

03:47:45.400 And I found a bunch of sites that were doing that and then winnowed them down

03:47:50.400 I really like humanprogress.org

03:47:52.400 Which has done a lovely job of detailing

03:47:55.400 Well, they had a they had a great tweet the other day

03:47:58.400 I really loved it was a mock-up of a New York Times cover

03:48:01.400 And it said 127,000 people lifted out of abject poverty today

03:48:06.400 You know in like large type

03:48:08.400 And then the tweet was we could have run this every single day for the last 20 years

03:48:13.400 It's like, you know, because some of you know

03:48:17.400 But perhaps some of you don't

03:48:18.400 That between the year 2000 and 2012

03:48:21.400 And this hasn't stopped yet

03:48:23.400 The number of people in abject poverty in the world fell by half

03:48:27.400 Right, it was the most rapid period of economic development ever in the history of the world

03:48:32.400 And there's lots of things like that happening

03:48:34.400 There's several hundred thousand people a day being hooked to the power grid

03:48:38.400 Which is a big deal

03:48:39.400 For those of you those of you have power might also appreciate that

03:48:43.400 Infant mortality has been plummeting

03:48:46.400 You know we're going to plateau in terms of population at about 9 billion

03:48:50.400 And it's going to level off and decline pretty rapidly after that

03:48:53.400 People are getting access to fresh water in record numbers

03:48:57.400 Like there's so many good things happening that it's not even funny

03:49:01.400 And that we that are real cause for celebration

03:49:04.400 And so I've been trying to select

03:49:06.400 Trying to tilt what I've been distributing more in that direction

03:49:09.400 And I've also put a buffer between me and my use of Twitter

03:49:12.400 So because it it does

03:49:16.400 It does reward an impulsivity that isn't always

03:49:21.400 Let's say my impulsivity that isn't always in anyone's best interest

03:49:27.400 I made an agreement with my son

03:49:29.400 To because he's been watching

03:49:31.400 I have lots of people watching what I'm doing

03:49:33.400 And trying to keep me under some degree of control let's say

03:49:37.400 And his comment was that if I was going to

03:49:41.400 If it was serious enough to engage in Twitter combat

03:49:44.400 About it was serious enough to write a blog post about

03:49:47.400 And so I've kind of made this rule

03:49:49.400 Which is I'm not going to comment on anything on Twitter

03:49:53.400 In that sort of manner

03:49:55.400 Unless I feel that writing about it at some length is justifiable

03:49:59.400 And so I started doing that this week

03:50:01.400 I wrote three blog posts

03:50:03.400 And that seems to have gone pretty well

03:50:05.400 So I hope that answered your question

03:50:09.400 Thank you

03:50:11.400 Kind of go on a different topic

03:50:23.400 I have a personality psychology question

03:50:25.400 Okay

03:50:26.400 So when I did the understand myself quiz

03:50:28.400 I was very surprised to find out that I was on the bottom two percentile

03:50:31.400 For conscientiousness

03:50:32.400 Which I thought was

03:50:33.400 Are you high in openness?

03:50:34.400 Yes

03:50:35.400 You're an entrepreneurial type

03:50:36.400 You're going to need to partner with someone who's disciplined

03:50:40.400 Well that's exactly

03:50:43.400 See there seems to be a real tension between openness and especially orderliness

03:50:49.400 You know because open people

03:50:51.400 Well they think laterally and they blow boxes apart

03:50:54.400 And they tend to make a mess when you're transforming things

03:50:56.400 And they're all over the place

03:50:57.400 And they have to be because otherwise they wouldn't be open

03:51:00.400 But it's hard to do that and also be orderly and conscientious

03:51:04.400 And so and corporations suffer from this tension all the time right

03:51:08.400 Because they're started by open people

03:51:10.400 But when they get going and get algorithmized

03:51:14.400 They're run by conscientious people

03:51:16.400 But then the conscientious people can only go down one track

03:51:18.400 And if the environment transforms the whole company disappears

03:51:21.400 So I would say

03:51:22.400 You take a look at the conscientiousness score

03:51:25.400 You see if you can figure out how to discipline yourself a bit more

03:51:28.400 And see if you can figure out how to schedule your time

03:51:31.400 Not like a prison but like a structured set of opportunities

03:51:35.400 And then you understand that in order to be successful in life

03:51:39.400 Likely in the medium to long run

03:51:41.400 You're going to have to find someone

03:51:43.400 Could be someone close to you

03:51:45.400 Could be business partners or whatever

03:51:47.400 That fill in that missing conscientiousness gap

03:51:51.400 Yeah I guess the part B was my boyfriend

03:51:53.400 We've been together for a very long time

03:51:55.400 And we're not that old

03:51:57.400 Is also very high in neuroticism

03:51:59.400 And I feel that's where like our conflict comes

03:52:01.400 And as far as long term

03:52:03.400 What are some things that you know

03:52:05.400 Lowly conscientious and highly neurotic

03:52:07.400 We'll look into that

03:52:13.400 Yeah well

03:52:15.400 I mean the simple

03:52:17.400 I can only

03:52:19.400 High levels of neuroticism

03:52:21.400 Are problematic in a relationship

03:52:23.400 It's probably why 75% of divorces are initiated by women 1.00

03:52:29.400 Because women are higher in neuroticism than men 1.00

03:52:31.400 And I think the reason for that

03:52:33.400 Is that they have to be more sensitive to infant distress

03:52:35.400 And so that makes them more sensitive to distress in general

03:52:39.400 Now I don't know that for sure

03:52:41.400 Supposition

03:52:43.400 But high levels of neuroticism do tend to make a relationship

03:52:45.400 Volatile

03:52:47.400 And to put a fair bit of negative emotion into it

03:52:49.400 Now the question is

03:52:51.400 What the source of the high level of neuroticism is

03:52:55.400 It might be purely temperamental

03:52:57.400 But it also might be indicative of an underlying anxiety disorder

03:52:59.400 Or depression

03:53:01.400 Or a physiological problem

03:53:03.400 Because they can manifest themselves in high levels of negative emotion

03:53:05.400 And so there's always the possibility of

03:53:07.400 Doing something about that

03:53:09.400 What I usually tell my clients who are high in neuroticism is two simple things

03:53:13.400 Number one

03:53:15.400 Get up at the same time in the morning

03:53:17.400 Okay, because that helps stabilize your circadian rhythms

03:53:20.400 Number two

03:53:21.400 Eat a large meal before you stress yourself in the morning

03:53:25.400 And mostly protein and fat based

03:53:27.400 Because if you're high in neuroticism and you stress yourself before you eat

03:53:31.400 You

03:53:33.400 You

03:53:34.400 Disregulate your

03:53:35.400 Your emotional reaction systems essentially

03:53:37.400 And you can't re-regulate them until you sleep again

03:53:39.400 So

03:53:41.400 Other than that

03:53:42.400 Goodwill and understanding is about what you've got

03:53:45.400 Yeah

03:53:47.400 How you doing tonight Dr. Peterson?

03:53:51.400 Not too bad, pretty good questions so far

03:53:53.400 Good

03:53:54.400 Little on the brutal side I might say

03:53:56.400 But that's good

03:53:57.400 I'm incredibly nervous to talk in front of you

03:53:59.400 Because you've got to be one of the most formidable people that I've ever heard of

03:54:03.400 Or ever listened to or ever seen

03:54:05.400 My question is

03:54:07.400 Again, you're one of the best communicators that I've ever listened to

03:54:10.400 If I could be

03:54:12.400 Half as good

03:54:14.400 At you

03:54:15.400 Or at communicating as you are

03:54:17.400 I would be set

03:54:18.400 How can I teach myself to do that?

03:54:20.400 Practice

03:54:22.400 You know, really

03:54:23.400 Like

03:54:24.400 Well, there's a couple of things

03:54:26.400 It helps to read

03:54:28.400 A lot

03:54:30.400 It really helps to write

03:54:32.400 So

03:54:33.400 If you want to make yourself

03:54:35.400 Articulate

03:54:36.400 Which is a very good idea

03:54:38.400 Then

03:54:39.400 Not only should you read

03:54:41.400 But you should write down what you think

03:54:44.400 And if you can do that a little bit every day

03:54:47.400 15 minutes

03:54:48.400 Maybe you could steal 15 minutes and do it every day

03:54:51.400 But if you do that for 10 years

03:54:54.400 You really straighten out your thinking

03:54:56.400 If you're going to speak

03:54:58.400 Effectively

03:55:00.400 You have to know way more than you're talking about

03:55:03.400 You know

03:55:04.400 So if you

03:55:05.400 This is often difficult for beginning lectures at university

03:55:07.400 Because they'll do a lecture on a topic

03:55:09.400 But they only know as much as they're saying in the lecture

03:55:11.400 And they get kind of stuck to their notes because of it

03:55:14.400 But you want to know 10 times as much as you are saying in the lecture

03:55:18.400 And then you can specify a stepping path through it

03:55:22.400 And elaborate with the other things that you know

03:55:24.400 But to do that you have to do a lot of reading

03:55:26.400 But you also have to do a lot of reading

03:55:28.400 Because that's where the synthesizing comes

03:55:32.400 So that's on the input side

03:55:34.400 And then on the output side

03:55:36.400 Well there's some tricks

03:55:38.400 Techniques let's say

03:55:39.400 Like if you're speaking in front of a group

03:55:41.400 You are not delivering a talk to a group

03:55:45.400 That's not what you're doing

03:55:47.400 The talk isn't a packaged thing that you present to a group

03:55:50.400 There isn't a group

03:55:52.400 There's a bunch of individuals

03:55:54.400 And you talk to them

03:55:56.400 So when I talk to a group

03:55:57.400 I always talk to people one at a time

03:55:59.400 And that makes it easier too

03:56:01.400 Because you know how to talk to a person

03:56:03.400 It's like can you talk to a thousand people

03:56:05.400 Well probably not because it's too intimidating

03:56:07.400 But there isn't a thousand people there

03:56:09.400 There's a thousand individuals

03:56:12.400 And so you just look at an individual

03:56:14.400 And you say something

03:56:15.400 And you can tell if they're engaged

03:56:17.400 They look confused

03:56:19.400 Or they look interested

03:56:20.400 Or they look angry

03:56:21.400 Or they look bored

03:56:22.400 Or maybe they're asleep

03:56:23.400 In which case you look at someone else

03:56:25.400 And they give you feedback

03:56:27.400 About how you're doing

03:56:28.400 And so one thing is to have something to say

03:56:32.400 Yeah

03:56:33.400 But the next thing is

03:56:34.400 Pay attention to who you're talking to

03:56:36.400 Because unless you're

03:56:38.400 Very badly socialized

03:56:40.400 And that seems unlikely in your case

03:56:41.400 Because you know

03:56:42.400 You present yourself

03:56:43.400 At least moderately well you know

03:56:45.400 And well I mean I don't know you very well

03:56:48.400 But on first sight

03:56:50.400 You know you're doing fine

03:56:52.400 So the probability that if you pay attention

03:56:54.400 To the individuals that you're talking to

03:56:57.400 That your natural wealth of social skill

03:57:01.400 Will manifest itself is extremely high

03:57:04.400 And so you don't deliver a talk to an audience

03:57:07.400 That's a really bad way of thinking about it

03:57:09.400 You're actually engaged in a conversation with an audience

03:57:11.400 Even if they're not talking

03:57:13.400 They're nodding and shifting position

03:57:16.400 And you know

03:57:17.400 Looking like this

03:57:18.400 Or

03:57:19.400 And you can pull all that in

03:57:21.400 And use it to govern

03:57:23.400 The level at which you're addressing

03:57:26.400 The entire audience

03:57:27.400 So

03:57:28.400 The last thing I would say is

03:57:31.400 Well having the aim to be a good communicator

03:57:33.400 Is a good start

03:57:34.400 And you think well

03:57:35.400 I could buttress that to some degree

03:57:37.400 There isn't anything that you can possibly

03:57:40.400 This is the whole point of a liberal education

03:57:43.400 There isn't anything that you can possibly do

03:57:46.400 That makes you more competent

03:57:48.400 In everything you do

03:57:50.400 Than to learn how to communicate

03:57:52.400 I don't care if you're going to be a carpenter

03:57:54.400 I mean being a carpenter by the way

03:57:55.400 Is very difficult

03:57:56.400 Especially if you're a good carpenter

03:57:57.400 But if you're good at communicating as a carpenter

03:58:00.400 You're like ten times better as a carpenter

03:58:02.400 So

03:58:03.400 The

03:58:04.400 And this is something that

03:58:05.400 The liberal arts colleges

03:58:07.400 I think

03:58:08.400 I don't know if they've forgotten it

03:58:09.400 But they don't do a very good job of marketing

03:58:11.400 It's like

03:58:12.400 What's the use of a bachelor's degree?

03:58:14.400 A bachelor of arts

03:58:15.400 It's like well

03:58:16.400 You can think

03:58:17.400 You can write

03:58:18.400 You can speak

03:58:19.400 You've read something

03:58:21.400 It's like

03:58:22.400 The economic value of that is incalculable

03:58:25.400 The people that I've watched in my life

03:58:27.400 Who've been spectacularly successful

03:58:31.400 Are

03:58:32.400 They have skills

03:58:33.400 Clearly

03:58:34.400 That's a minimum precondition

03:58:37.400 But they're also very, very good at articulating themselves

03:58:41.400 And so whenever they negotiate

03:58:43.400 They're successful

03:58:44.400 Well that's kind of like the definition of success in life

03:58:47.400 Right?

03:58:48.400 You negotiate

03:58:49.400 It doesn't mean you win

03:58:50.400 Because if you're a good negotiator

03:58:51.400 If you're a really good negotiator

03:58:53.400 Everybody walks away from the negotiation thrilled

03:58:56.400 And so then people line up to do things with you

03:59:00.400 So

03:59:01.400 And that's all

03:59:02.400 That's all dependent on your ability to communicate

03:59:04.400 So

03:59:05.400 Practice

03:59:06.400 Thank you very much

03:59:22.400 Thanks

03:59:23.400 Sorry

03:59:24.400 There's a section of the book in here that I just want to talk about here

03:59:29.400 By myself

03:59:30.400 This is a confident young man

03:59:31.400 What's rule 11 of this book here?

03:59:33.400 Don't bother children when you're skateboarding

03:59:36.400 Well

03:59:37.400 The small bone to pick with Lafayette College is that

03:59:39.400 My brother does get stopped skateboarding here

03:59:41.400 But that's not the surmise of my question today

03:59:43.400 Really I have two key questions

03:59:45.400 You said in one lecture that Alexander Solzhenitsyn basically memorized all of his literary work to bring it out

03:59:51.400 And to show the world

03:59:52.400 But I've had professors assert to me

03:59:54.400 And ones that are very studied on Slavic culture and studied on the Gulag

03:59:58.400 Tell me essentially that he was a KGB agent

04:00:00.400 I mean would you agree with that statement?

04:00:02.400 That the only way that he would have been able to get all that stuff out of there

04:00:04.400 Live in there for 20 years and not die or starve to death was from that

04:00:09.400 What do you think?

04:00:10.400 I don't really have anything to say about that

04:00:12.400 I mean anything's possible but probably not that

04:00:15.400 Probably not that

04:00:16.400 No right

04:00:17.400 So KGB agent like I don't know why anyone would tell you that 0.82

04:00:20.400 Like what's their evidence for that?

04:00:22.400 It's impossible for him to have documented that?

04:00:25.400 Not to document that

04:00:26.400 So he must have been a KGB agent?

04:00:27.400 To memorize all that and bring it out of prison

04:00:29.400 Yeah you know

04:00:30.400 I mean was he writing in prison?

04:00:32.400 In Gulag

04:00:33.400 He really couldn't

04:00:34.400 He couldn't

04:00:35.400 How would he have done that?

04:00:36.400 Store anything

04:00:37.400 Yeah

04:00:38.400 You'd be amazed at what people can remember when they have to remember

04:00:41.400 Yeah

04:00:42.400 So people remember very large volumes of material when they're

04:00:45.400 When that's what they have

04:00:47.400 Like pre-literate people you know

04:00:49.400 All they did was remember

04:00:51.400 I have a friend who's not literate and what he can

04:00:54.400 I have two friends that aren't really very literate

04:00:56.400 But one of them is really not literate

04:00:58.400 And what he can remember you just can't believe

04:01:00.400 Our modern people don't remember much because we don't have to

04:01:03.400 We write it down and externalize it

04:01:05.400 But our capacity for memory is far greater than we realize

04:01:09.400 The shake from when the Greeks you know 1.00

04:01:11.400 Switched from an oral culture to a literary culture was very fascinating

04:01:13.400 But my second question before I go sit back down

04:01:15.400 Was how do you feel about the influence of

04:01:17.400 And I'm you know with reading Terence McKenna and things along these lines

04:01:20.400 The influence of psychedelics within our culture

04:01:22.400 And how that and what that does to the human psyche

04:01:25.400 I know that the guy who

04:01:26.400 God only knows

04:01:27.400 I don't think we own I don't think we understand

04:01:31.400 We don't understand psychedelics one bit

04:01:34.400 So

04:01:36.400 And I don't think we understand the force

04:01:39.400 The the what would you play the role that they played in our religious and cognitive evolution

04:01:44.400 So

04:01:46.400 We don't understand them

04:01:48.400 They're an absolute mystery

04:01:50.400 So

04:01:51.400 And

04:01:53.400 Play with them at your peril

04:01:55.400 Carl Jung and the guy who had an acid lived in the same town I believe

04:01:59.400 No one of them knew

04:02:01.400 Yeah, yeah, Swiss a pretty strange place for that to emerge from 1.00

04:02:05.400 But

04:02:06.400 Yeah

04:02:07.400 For future reference the chair isn't for random audience members to say

04:02:11.400 In a lot of your talks you speak about the things that the West did correct

04:02:22.400 And I'm curious yourself being a psychologist

04:02:25.400 What your thoughts are on Edward Bernays and the impact that he had on Western society

04:02:30.400 The

04:02:32.400 The guiding of masses or controlling them and being able to take control in that way

04:02:38.400 I don't know enough about him I'm afraid to give you an intelligent answer

04:02:42.400 So

04:02:43.400 Do you have a do you have another question?

04:02:45.400 Because that's rather disappointing I imagine

04:02:48.400 Sure

04:02:49.400 My other question would be that

04:02:51.400 To my understanding that

04:02:53.400 Worker control and people's control is instrumental in the idea of socialism 0.99

04:02:59.400 And if these countries that we call socialist and communist are totalitarian states ruled by a single party or a single man

04:03:07.400 Why do we continue referring to them as such?

04:03:12.400 As

04:03:13.400 Referring them to as

04:03:14.400 As socialist

04:03:15.400 As when they don't follow the

04:03:18.400 The main heart of it which is

04:03:19.400 That's a good question

04:03:20.400 Worker control

04:03:21.400 It's a good question

04:03:22.400 I don't I don't really know the answer to that

04:03:24.400 It looks like

04:03:26.400 Who knows right

04:03:27.400 Maybe maybe the

04:03:29.400 Maybe the inevitable end product of a collectivist viewpoint is something like a totalitarian state

04:03:34.400 It seems probable because most human governments have been essentially totalitarian states of one degree of severity or another

04:03:44.400 So the tribal tendency might manifest itself in a rigid hierarchy

04:03:49.400 But it is it is a perverse fact right

04:03:51.400 And you think that it's one of the mysteries about the continual apologetics for the radical left

04:03:56.400 It's like well, didn't China just announce that its president is now president for life?

04:04:01.400 Like that's actually a big problem

04:04:03.400 Well, and despite the fact that they've moved quite a distance in the free market direction

04:04:09.400 Obviously that underlying totalitarian impulse is still alive and well and thriving

04:04:17.400 I mean and what the Chinese are doing with electronic surveillance should make everyone's hair stand on end 1.00

04:04:22.400 So

04:04:24.400 Yeah

04:04:25.400 Thank you

04:04:39.400 Yeah

04:04:40.400 Hi, Dr. Peterson

04:04:42.400 Okay

04:04:43.400 It's a

04:04:44.400 Are you out of mic range?

04:04:49.400 It's a pleasure to ask you a question

04:04:53.400 I wrote it down to minimize inarticulability

04:04:57.400 Okay

04:04:59.400 So you put a great emphasis on truth in your work

04:05:03.400 So this is you writing in 12 rules for life

04:05:06.400 And above all don't lie

04:05:08.400 Don't lie about anything ever

04:05:10.400 Lying leads to hell

04:05:12.400 It was the great and the small lies of the Nazi and communist states that produced the deaths of tens of millions of people 0.97

04:05:18.400 And you've also talked about how Nietzsche foresaw the nihilism implicit in European culture in the 1800s

04:05:24.400 That would likely lead to the authoritarianism and death tolls mentioned at the end of the previous quote

04:05:30.400 And I find this interesting for the following reason

04:05:32.400 So here's Nietzsche in the will to power

04:05:35.400 Radical nihilism is the conviction of an absolute untenability of existence when it comes to the highest values one recognizes

04:05:43.400 This realization is a consequence of the cultivation of truthfulness

04:05:47.400 So in other words

04:05:49.400 Nietzsche saw that valuing truth to its fullest undercuts valuation itself

04:05:53.400 Yeah, he meant that specifically within the Christian context by the way

04:05:57.400 Okay

04:05:59.400 One of the things that Nietzsche in his role as Christian critic pointed out was that the death of God

04:06:07.400 Was a consequence in his formulation of the Christian insistence on truth

04:06:11.400 So his his idea was essentially that as Christianity elevated the truth to the position of highest moral virtue

04:06:21.400 And then that truth seeking spirit develop scientific and rational viewpoint

04:06:29.400 That the logical consequence of that was the turning of the spirit of truth on the metaphysical presumptions of Christianity itself

04:06:37.400 Right

04:06:38.400 So that's the context for that

04:06:39.400 Right

04:06:40.400 So what I wanted to ask you is that you appear to care deeply about meaning and the philosophical problem of nihilism

04:06:47.400 So I was just wondering if you could elaborate on this tension between nihilism and valuing truth in light of what you're saying

04:06:54.400 And whether there's a way in which you see your ideas as elaborated in your latest book

04:07:01.400 As a solution to the problem of nihilism or how they fit into the broader scheme

04:07:06.400 Yeah, it's a great question

04:07:08.400 I think really that Jung's work is the answer to that question

04:07:14.400 Because Jung was profoundly influenced by Freud, obviously

04:07:19.400 And if you read the Freudian biographers, let's say

04:07:24.400 It's easy to conceptualize Jung as an acolyte of Freud

04:07:30.400 But it's not really accurate, I wouldn't say

04:07:33.400 Or it's insufficiently accurate

04:07:35.400 Because Freud had a great influence on Jung

04:07:37.400 But Jung was also exceptionally influenced by Nietzsche

04:07:41.400 And Jung, I think

04:07:43.400 You can also view Piaget in this manner, by the way

04:07:45.400 Although not directly as a consequence of the influence of Nietzsche

04:07:48.400 It would be more indirect

04:07:49.400 But Jung really regarded what he was doing as an answer to Nietzsche's question

04:07:56.400 And the question is something like

04:07:59.400 Well, the inquiring Western rational mind has murdered the metaphysical presuppositions of Western society

04:08:10.400 Now what?

04:08:12.400 Now Nietzsche's idea was

04:08:14.400 Well, we would have to invent our own values

04:08:16.400 We would have to become a new type of being

04:08:19.400 But Jung's response to that, especially after World War II

04:08:23.400 Was

04:08:24.400 And after encountering Freud

04:08:26.400 Was something like

04:08:27.400 Well, what makes you think we can invent our own values?

04:08:30.400 So Jung's idea was to rediscover the values of the past

04:08:36.400 To go within

04:08:37.400 That was his hero's journey

04:08:38.400 To go within

04:08:39.400 In the landscape of the imagination

04:08:41.400 And to rekindle the archetypes

04:08:43.400 That isn't necessarily something that has to be done as an internal voyage

04:08:47.400 But

04:08:49.400 That made it

04:08:50.400 That made the process something that was more akin to an archetypal transformation

04:08:54.400 So if it's the father that's dead

04:08:56.400 Then you go into the belly of the beast to revitalize the father

04:09:00.400 That's the pathway forward

04:09:02.400 And that's been the pathway forward for human beings for

04:09:05.400 For as long back as we know

04:09:08.400 For tens of thousands of years

04:09:11.400 Then there's

04:09:12.400 We sort of cycle

04:09:14.400 Yeah, well

04:09:15.400 Mircea

04:09:16.400 I think I'm saying that right

04:09:17.400 Some Romanian wrote me the other day

04:09:18.400 And tried to teach me how to say it

04:09:20.400 Mircea

04:09:21.400 I think that's right

04:09:22.400 Eliade

04:09:23.400 Talked about the

04:09:25.400 The death of God as a recurring phenomenon

04:09:27.400 I mean that's what he

04:09:29.400 That's what he

04:09:31.400 Realized

04:09:32.400 When he did his large-scale surveys of religious belief systems

04:09:35.400 Is that God dies

04:09:37.400 Very frequently

04:09:38.400 And then

04:09:39.400 That's part of a

04:09:40.400 That's part of what you might describe as a developmental process

04:09:43.400 It's very much akin

04:09:44.400 To what happens to you when your dreams die

04:09:46.400 You know

04:09:47.400 When you put forward a

04:09:48.400 Hypothesis about a mode of being that you would like to embody

04:09:52.400 You have a dream

04:09:53.400 A vision

04:09:54.400 An ambition

04:09:55.400 Maybe a love affair

04:09:56.400 Something like that

04:09:57.400 And it collapses on you

04:09:58.400 Well there's a period of death

04:10:00.400 That follows that

04:10:01.400 You could call it psychological death

04:10:03.400 But then there's a reconstruction of the value system and a rebirth

04:10:07.400 And that's

04:10:08.400 That's the eternal human story

04:10:10.400 It really is

04:10:11.400 Now

04:10:12.400 Jung's contribution to Nietzsche's body of thought

04:10:15.400 And this is where I think also Dostoevsky surpassed Nietzsche

04:10:19.400 Was that

04:10:20.400 Jung realized that

04:10:21.400 We didn't invent our own values

04:10:23.400 We rediscovered those values that we always harbored within us

04:10:27.400 Now that doesn't mean that

04:10:29.400 That

04:10:30.400 They still have to be given new form though

04:10:32.400 You see this in an old story

04:10:34.400 The Egyptian

04:10:35.400 There's an old story of Horus and Osiris

04:10:37.400 And Horus goes to rescue his father Osiris

04:10:40.400 Who's basically living like a dead ghost in the underworld

04:10:44.400 He goes to rescue him after defeating his evil uncle

04:10:47.400 He goes to rescue his dead father

04:10:49.400 And when he goes down into the underworld

04:10:51.400 He has an eye in his hand that Seth, the evil one, tore from his head during their combat

04:10:58.400 And instead of putting the eye back in his head he gives it to his father

04:11:02.400 And then his father can see again

04:11:04.400 And then they both go back up to the surface of the world

04:11:07.400 And it's their union that constitutes the spirit of the Pharaoh

04:11:11.400 It's an absolutely unbelievably remarkable story

04:11:14.400 Because the idea is

04:11:15.400 Well

04:11:16.400 You will be damaged in your confrontation with life

04:11:20.400 Particularly if you confront malevolence

04:11:22.400 Because the confrontation with malevolence damages people

04:11:25.400 It will damage your vision

04:11:26.400 But if you take that damaged part of you

04:11:30.400 And you reunite it with the dead spirit of your father

04:11:34.400 Then you can revitalize that

04:11:35.400 That will strengthen you

04:11:36.400 And that will enable you to move forward into the future

04:11:38.400 It's like that's just exactly right

04:11:41.400 And it's one of the deepest religious presuppositions of humanity

04:11:47.400 You see it everywhere, that idea

04:11:49.400 That's what you're doing in university

04:11:50.400 If you take a liberal arts course, degree

04:11:53.400 It's like you're resurrecting your dead ancestors 0.78

04:11:57.400 So they can live again in your form 0.95

04:11:59.400 But in conjoined union with you

04:12:01.400 You're the vision that gives the dead past its vitality and spirit

04:12:06.400 And that's the purpose of being educated

04:12:09.400 That's your initiation

04:12:11.400 And partly what you do when you're initiated properly in that regard

04:12:15.400 Is you develop a comprehensive philosophy of good and evil

04:12:18.400 A deep philosophy of good and evil

04:12:20.400 And that protects you against the confrontation with malevolence

04:12:23.400 And I know that

04:12:25.400 You know, I know that not least

04:12:26.400 Because one of the things that's happened to me

04:12:29.400 As a consequence of putting all these lectures online

04:12:32.400 Is that I've had many military people

04:12:34.400 Write me and come and talk to me

04:12:36.400 Who had post-traumatic stress disorder

04:12:38.400 And that's almost always a consequence

04:12:40.400 Often of them viewing themselves do something dreadful

04:12:44.400 But sometimes viewing that occurring as a consequence of other people's actions

04:12:49.400 Until they have a philosophy of good and evil

04:12:51.400 They can't recover from their post-traumatic stress disorder

04:12:54.400 And, like, if you're naive

04:12:58.400 Metaphysically naive

04:12:59.400 And you come in contact with someone who truly wants to hurt you

04:13:03.400 The probability that that will undo you psychologically is very, very high

04:13:07.400 So you have to be wise as serpents

04:13:10.400 That's the old saying

04:13:11.400 You have to be wise as a serpent

04:13:13.400 Because otherwise you have no protection against serpents

04:13:24.400 Maybe we'll do two more

04:13:26.400 Because I'm starting to get fuzzy minded

04:13:28.400 And I've learned to quit at that point

04:13:30.400 Mostly

04:13:31.400 So we talked a bit before

04:13:34.400 Or, yeah, before you started

04:13:35.400 Don't know exactly how to phrase this

04:13:37.400 And I think that this will be

04:13:38.400 Like, I do want to, like, acknowledge that all of this Q&A has been amazing

04:13:42.400 Because it's basically been a lecture mixed with reality

04:13:45.400 And

04:13:46.400 That's a good combination

04:13:47.400 Yeah, it's a good combination

04:13:48.400 We've all learned something from this

04:13:50.400 And I don't think many speakers I go to actually know how to combine that the way you did

04:13:54.400 So thank you for that

04:13:56.400 But, uh, I guess this question is a bit of a departure from that

04:14:00.400 And it's sort of going to something more of a

04:14:04.400 Something I don't think everyone can relate to

04:14:06.400 Because it's

04:14:07.400 In your book you say don't lie

04:14:09.400 And I think that

04:14:10.400 After living 21 short years

04:14:12.400 I learned that the hard way

04:14:14.400 But

04:14:15.400 You and your life

04:14:16.400 And me and my life

04:14:17.400 I feel like we both had

04:14:19.400 A moment where

04:14:21.400 We've had to confront

04:14:22.400 A self-alienating instance of nature

04:14:25.400 Where

04:14:26.400 There is no path forward

04:14:27.400 That we really

04:14:28.400 Have at our disposal

04:14:30.400 And

04:14:31.400 There was a point where

04:14:33.400 An unnatural amount of growth

04:14:35.400 Had to come out of us

04:14:36.400 So I just wanted to know

04:14:37.400 Where you drew that line

04:14:38.400 At your own

04:14:39.400 Ability to develop as a person

04:14:42.400 To where you didn't become tunnel-visioned

04:14:44.400 With

04:14:45.400 Trying to

04:14:46.400 Face life's problems

04:14:47.400 On your own

04:14:48.400 Or

04:14:49.400 Yeah, well we had talked

04:14:50.400 Just before this

04:14:51.400 The second part of this Q&A

04:14:52.400 About

04:14:53.400 My daughter's illness

04:14:54.400 And about

04:14:55.400 This gentleman's

04:14:56.400 Had illness in his family too

04:14:57.400 So that's kind of

04:14:58.400 The background of this

04:14:59.400 The first part of that is

04:15:00.400 Like

04:15:01.400 If we were going to be

04:15:04.400 Pessimistically realistic

04:15:06.400 About all this

04:15:07.400 I would say that

04:15:09.400 Your best bet is truth

04:15:12.400 But that doesn't necessarily mean

04:15:14.400 That's always going to do the trick

04:15:16.400 Right

04:15:17.400 I mean sometimes

04:15:18.400 You go fight a dragon

04:15:20.400 And it eats you

04:15:21.400 And if

04:15:22.400 The

04:15:23.400 If you being eaten

04:15:24.400 Wasn't a real possibility

04:15:26.400 It wouldn't be a real fight

04:15:28.400 And so you see people

04:15:30.400 Like I've seen people

04:15:31.400 In my clinical practice sometimes

04:15:34.400 I had one client in particular

04:15:37.400 Who was undergoing a particularly vicious divorce

04:15:40.400 With someone who was really

04:15:42.400 Seriously inclined to take him out

04:15:44.400 And would do pretty much everything

04:15:46.400 At her disposal to do so

04:15:48.400 And I strategized with him

04:15:50.400 For about three years

04:15:51.400 And we did everything

04:15:53.400 Like

04:15:54.400 And hyper carefully

04:15:55.400 He was a very conscientious

04:15:57.400 And diligent person

04:15:58.400 And he

04:15:59.400 Put into practice

04:16:00.400 Everything that we discussed

04:16:01.400 And strategized

04:16:02.400 And he still pretty much

04:16:03.400 He got backed into a corner so hard

04:16:05.400 That I didn't know how to help him anymore

04:16:07.400 So

04:16:08.400 I would say however

04:16:10.400 That he

04:16:11.400 Like he was a very truthful person

04:16:12.400 Throughout that

04:16:13.400 And one thing he did do

04:16:14.400 Was

04:16:15.400 Part of it was a custody battle

04:16:17.400 And he did manage

04:16:20.400 Despite his decline

04:16:22.400 In consequence of being repeatedly cornered

04:16:25.400 I would say

04:16:26.400 He did manage to establish

04:16:28.400 What I think

04:16:29.400 Was a lasting relationship

04:16:30.400 With his kids

04:16:31.400 So

04:16:32.400 He might have got

04:16:33.400 Enough

04:16:34.400 Out of

04:16:35.400 What he did

04:16:36.400 To justify it

04:16:37.400 Even though

04:16:38.400 The whole landscape

04:16:39.400 Was pretty

04:16:40.400 Awful

04:16:41.400 I think that

04:16:43.400 Not lying

04:16:44.400 Is your best

04:16:45.400 Bet

04:16:46.400 But

04:16:47.400 Life is hard

04:16:48.400 And people get run over

04:16:50.400 And

04:16:51.400 It doesn't necessarily mean

04:16:52.400 That you're going to emerge

04:16:53.400 In any obvious sense

04:16:54.400 Triumphant

04:16:55.400 But

04:16:56.400 If you take the alternative path

04:16:58.400 Especially when you're

04:17:00.400 Facing severe tribulations

04:17:02.400 Let's say

04:17:03.400 And you complicate those with deceit

04:17:05.400 You can be sure

04:17:06.400 That whatever tragedy

04:17:07.400 That you're confronting

04:17:08.400 Is going to turn into

04:17:09.400 Not only tragedy

04:17:10.400 But something very much

04:17:11.400 Akin to hell 0.97

04:17:12.400 And so 0.99

04:17:13.400 You might be able to

04:17:14.400 At least minimize

04:17:15.400 The degree of suffering

04:17:16.400 Even if you can't

04:17:18.400 Overcome it

04:17:19.400 Or transcend it

04:17:20.400 And that's something

04:17:22.400 You know

04:17:23.400 It's something

04:17:24.400 I'm always reminded

04:17:26.400 In a discussion like this

04:17:27.400 Of what I watched

04:17:28.400 When my

04:17:29.400 My wife's family

04:17:30.400 Were around the deathbed

04:17:31.400 Of her mother

04:17:32.400 She had

04:17:33.400 Frontotemporal dementia

04:17:35.400 Which is like Alzheimer's

04:17:37.400 Quite an awful way to go

04:17:38.400 And

04:17:39.400 Her

04:17:41.400 Husband

04:17:42.400 My father-in-law

04:17:43.400 My father-in-law

04:17:44.400 Really stepped up to the plate

04:17:46.400 Like

04:17:47.400 He was quite

04:17:48.400 The man about town

04:17:49.400 Very extroverted

04:17:50.400 Partier type

04:17:51.400 And quite disagreeable

04:17:52.400 But when his wife

04:17:53.400 Got sick man

04:17:54.400 He was there

04:17:55.400 It was something to watch

04:17:56.400 And so

04:17:57.400 He turned

04:17:58.400 What could have been

04:17:59.400 Absolutely dreadful

04:18:00.400 Into just miserable

04:18:01.400 And then

04:18:02.400 When

04:18:03.400 Their entire family

04:18:04.400 Was gathered around

04:18:05.400 Her deathbed

04:18:06.400 Like

04:18:07.400 And her sister 0.79

04:18:08.400 Had both dealt

04:18:10.400 With dying people

04:18:11.400 Before

04:18:12.400 And the other sister 0.90

04:18:13.400 Was a pharmacist

04:18:14.400 And

04:18:15.400 They

04:18:16.400 Were attentive to their mother

04:18:17.400 And

04:18:18.400 There was no

04:18:19.400 Foolish catastrophes

04:18:21.400 Going 1.00

04:18:22.400 On

04:18:23.400 Between the family

04:18:24.400 And they all pulled together

04:18:25.400 And so

04:18:26.400 Their mother died

04:18:27.400 But

04:18:28.400 What I observed

04:18:29.400 Was that their

04:18:30.400 Bonds were strengthened

04:18:31.400 As a consequence

04:18:32.400 And that

04:18:33.400 They gained something

04:18:34.400 From the tightening

04:18:35.400 Of the remaining relationships

04:18:36.400 That was at least

04:18:37.400 Partial compensation

04:18:38.400 For the loss of their mother

04:18:40.400 And that beat the hell

04:18:41.400 Out of squabbling

04:18:42.400 About everything

04:18:43.400 While she was dying

04:18:44.400 Because that's a real possibility

04:18:46.400 And people certainly do that

04:18:48.400 So

04:18:53.400 One more

04:18:54.400 And maybe we'll call it the night

04:19:00.400 So Dr. Peterson

04:19:01.400 The one thing that

04:19:02.400 Has been kind of going through my mind

04:19:04.400 In this

04:19:05.400 Discussion

04:19:06.400 In general

04:19:07.400 When I've watched her videos

04:19:08.400 Personally one of the most interesting aspects

04:19:11.400 Of neuroscience

04:19:12.400 To me

04:19:13.400 Is neuroplasticity

04:19:14.400 And the brain's capacity

04:19:15.400 To change

04:19:16.400 To be adaptive

04:19:17.400 But

04:19:18.400 I think that

04:19:19.400 A thematic issue

04:19:20.400 In your talks

04:19:21.400 And

04:19:22.400 You know

04:19:23.400 In your arguments

04:19:24.400 Is that

04:19:25.400 People

04:19:26.400 Both on the left

04:19:27.400 And on the red

04:19:28.400 To be

04:19:29.400 You know

04:19:30.400 Possessed by ideologies

04:19:31.400 By

04:19:32.400 E-points

04:19:33.400 That hold them

04:19:34.400 To be stagnant

04:19:35.400 And not to change their opinions

04:19:36.400 And the e-points

04:19:37.400 And they don't really understand them

04:19:38.400 Maybe to the level that they should

04:19:39.400 But

04:19:40.400 They clutch them

04:19:41.400 Right

04:19:42.400 And

04:19:43.400 So my opinion

04:19:44.400 Is that

04:19:45.400 That indicates a little bit of a paradox

04:19:47.400 Because

04:19:48.400 You know

04:19:49.400 We are wired

04:19:50.400 We are hardwired essentially

04:19:51.400 To become

04:19:52.400 A debt to change

04:19:53.400 We are able to

04:19:54.400 Change ourselves

04:19:55.400 To respond to the thing

04:19:56.400 In our environment

04:19:57.400 And

04:19:58.400 Our brain itself

04:19:59.400 Changed

04:20:00.400 Not just our behavior

04:20:01.400 But

04:20:02.400 The actual

04:20:03.400 The haters

04:20:04.400 The derivation

04:20:05.400 Of what's actually changing

04:20:06.400 So your argument is that

04:20:07.400 A lot of people will become

04:20:08.400 You know

04:20:09.400 Attaches

04:20:10.400 And they'll stay stagnant

04:20:11.400 So how do you explain

04:20:12.400 You know

04:20:13.400 What aspects of cultural phenomena

04:20:14.400 Or

04:20:15.400 You know

04:20:16.400 Just social discourse

04:20:17.400 What is so powerful about that

04:20:18.400 That it overcomes

04:20:19.400 Our predisposed conditions

04:20:20.400 To be able to change

04:20:22.400 Well change is

04:20:23.400 Change is

04:20:24.400 Especially if it's

04:20:26.400 The more radical the necessary change

04:20:29.400 The more pain that accompanies it

04:20:31.400 Like the more opportunity as well

04:20:33.400 But

04:20:34.400 And a lot of what we learn

04:20:35.400 We learn painfully

04:20:36.400 And so it's not surprising

04:20:37.400 That people shrink away from learning

04:20:39.400 We learn in pain and anxiety

04:20:41.400 Very frequently

04:20:42.400 Everyone knows that

04:20:43.400 Like the things that really

04:20:45.400 That you really learned in life

04:20:46.400 It's like

04:20:47.400 It was no joy man

04:20:48.400 Like it took you out

04:20:49.400 And so the fact that people

04:20:51.400 Flee from that

04:20:52.400 Is hardly surprising

04:20:54.400 But

04:20:55.400 It doesn't help

04:20:56.400 That's the thing

04:20:57.400 It just stores up

04:20:58.400 The catastrophe for later

04:20:59.400 And so the better

04:21:01.400 The better idea

04:21:02.400 Is to eat a little poison everyday

04:21:04.400 So that you don't have to

04:21:05.400 Overdose in a month

04:21:06.400 It's something like that

04:21:07.400 And

04:21:08.400 It is the case that

04:21:10.400 I think

04:21:11.400 Because

04:21:12.400 You don't

04:21:13.400 You aren't forced

04:21:14.400 First of all

04:21:15.400 You don't learn

04:21:16.400 Unless you're forced to learn

04:21:17.400 I know there's

04:21:18.400 Alternatives to that

04:21:19.400 The voluntary search for knowledge

04:21:21.400 And that's a fine thing

04:21:22.400 And that is an antidote

04:21:23.400 To this

04:21:24.400 But

04:21:25.400 Apart from that

04:21:26.400 Speaking more

04:21:27.400 Practically

04:21:28.400 You tend not to learn

04:21:30.400 Unless you're forced to learn

04:21:31.400 And

04:21:32.400 It's

04:21:33.400 And what you tend to learn

04:21:34.400 By force are difficult lessons

04:21:35.400 And so people are

04:21:37.400 Very prone to

04:21:38.400 Not

04:21:39.400 To not seek that out

04:21:41.400 It's not surprising

04:21:43.400 But it's because

04:21:44.400 They don't understand

04:21:45.400 The consequences very well 0.60

04:21:46.400 You know

04:21:48.400 You

04:21:49.400 It's because

04:21:50.400 Maybe

04:21:51.400 It's because

04:21:52.400 They're convinced

04:21:53.400 That there's some way

04:21:54.400 Of forestalling

04:21:55.400 The necessary learning

04:21:56.400 And

04:21:57.400 There isn't

04:21:58.400 Any way of forestalling it

04:21:59.400 All you do

04:22:00.400 Is make it worse

04:22:01.400 In the future

04:22:02.400 You make yourself smaller

04:22:03.400 And you make the lesson harder

04:22:04.400 And so that's why

04:22:06.400 In so many

04:22:07.400 Religious doctrines

04:22:08.400 There's emphasis on humility

04:22:10.400 You know

04:22:11.400 And humility

04:22:12.400 Isn't to debase yourself

04:22:14.400 It's to understand

04:22:15.400 That

04:22:16.400 You don't know enough

04:22:18.400 So that your life

04:22:19.400 Isn't going to be miserable

04:22:20.400 And so

04:22:21.400 Every chance you get

04:22:22.400 To grab something new

04:22:24.400 That will help you

04:22:25.400 Along your way

04:22:26.400 You should take it

04:22:27.400 As fast as you can

04:22:28.400 But you have to have

04:22:29.400 A very

04:22:30.400 Tragic

04:22:33.400 I would say

04:22:35.400 View of reality

04:22:36.400 And also a harsh one

04:22:37.400 Because it's not just tragedy

04:22:38.400 It's also malevolence

04:22:39.400 You have to understand

04:22:40.400 That those are waiting for you

04:22:41.400 And

04:22:42.400 That makes you desperate

04:22:44.400 Enough to learn

04:22:45.400 And that might make you

04:22:46.400 Desperate enough

04:22:47.400 To fall out of your ideology

04:22:49.400 But

04:22:50.400 That's

04:22:51.400 That's a hard way

04:22:52.400 Of looking at the world

04:22:54.400 It beats living through it though

04:22:56.400 It was very nice talking to all of you

04:23:01.400 Thank you to all of you

04:23:02.400 Thank you

04:23:03.400 Thank you

04:23:04.400 Thank you

04:23:05.400 Thank you

04:23:07.400 Thank you

04:23:08.400 Thank you

04:23:09.400 Thank you

04:23:10.400 Thank you

04:23:12.400 We'll see you next time.

04:23:42.400 She loves being cool.

04:23:44.000 21 degrees is her favorite number.

04:23:46.820 God, she's the coolest, especially at night.

04:23:49.780 So I raise the temp at 10 p.m. because she gets chilly when she sleeps.

04:23:53.960 Maya loves using less energy, and I love Maya.

04:23:57.020 We're basically besties.

04:23:58.920 With SmartFlow from Enbridge Sustain, you won't have to think about your HVAC,

04:24:02.620 but it will always be thinking of you.

04:24:04.500 With smart controls and zero upfront costs,

04:24:06.680 visit EnbridgeSustainSmartFlow.com to learn more.

The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - April 20, 2018

Lafayette College - The Mill Series

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