The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - October 13, 2019


The Crisis of Masculinity


Episode Stats

Length

1 hour and 50 minutes

Words per Minute

173.42302

Word Count

19,157

Sentence Count

283

Misogynist Sentences

38

Hate Speech Sentences

35


Summary

In Season 2, Episode 30 of the Jordan Peterson Podcast, Dr. Jordan B. Peterson delivers a lecture in Manchester, England on the 12 Rules for Life: A 12 Rules For Life Lecture, done by Dr. Peterson on Depression and Anxiety. In this episode, Jordan talks about his recent trip to Manchester and the lessons he learned about masculinity he picked up in the process. He also talks about a recent event he did in the city that changed his perspective on masculinity, and how it can affect the way he thinks about and acts as a leader in the world. To learn more about Jordan and his new series, The Crisis of Masculinity, go to Dailywire.tv/thecrisisofmasculinity and use the promo code LIONDIET to receive a FREE copy of his new book, "The Crisis of masculinity: A Guide to a Better Life." Let s take the first step towards the brighter future you deserve. Subscribe to Daily Wire Plus to get immediate access to all of the latest episodes, and get notified when new episodes are available. If you haven t signed up for ThinkSpot, the social media platform Dad s involved with, please check it out at ThinkSpot.org/LION DIET. You ll be entered into the DAILY WORD contest to be entered in the drawing for a chance to win a FREE gift from Dad's company, LIONDETET! and more! Subscribe, Like, Share, and subscribe to the podcast! Subscribe & Retweet this episode of the podcast on Apple Podcasts, and more ways to help spread the word to your friends and family can be a little bit more like Dad's Dad can be there for you, too! You'll get access to everything Dad does it everywhere. Thank you, Dad's Day! - The Jordan B Peterson Podcast - Subscribe, Subscribe & Share it on social media and more. - Subscribe to the Podcast, Subscribe to his Podcasts: and much more! - The Crisis Of Masculine: How to be a Badass Dad's Guide to the Good Life, Good Relationships, Good Things, Good Times, Good Friends, and Good Things Happier, Good People Say It's a Good Thing, Good Stuff, and Great Things, Bad News, and So Much More! - This Podcast is a Podcast by Jordan Peterson, I'm Working on a Podcast About It's Better Than That, and More!


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Oh, Maya. Maya. She loves being cool. 21 degrees is her favorite number. God, she's the coolest, especially at night. So I raise the temp at 10 p.m. because she gets chilly when she sleeps. Maya loves using less energy. And I love Maya. We're basically besties.
00:00:19.220 With SmartFlow from Enbridge Sustain, you won't have to think about your HVAC, but it will always be thinking of you. With smart controls and zero upfront costs, visit EnbridgeSustainSmartFlow.com to learn more.
00:00:30.000 Hey, everyone. Real quick before you skip, I want to talk to you about something serious and important. Dr. Jordan Peterson has created a new series that could be a lifeline for those battling depression and anxiety.
00:00:42.600 We know how isolating and overwhelming these conditions can be, and we wanted to take a moment to reach out to those listening who may be struggling.
00:00:50.340 With decades of experience helping patients, Dr. Peterson offers a unique understanding of why you might be feeling this way in his new series.
00:00:57.580 He provides a roadmap towards healing, showing that while the journey isn't easy, it's absolutely possible to find your way forward.
00:01:05.540 If you're suffering, please know you are not alone. 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 on depression and anxiety.
00:01:17.640 Let this be the first step towards the brighter future you deserve.
00:01:21.140 Welcome to Season 2, Episode 30 of the Jordan B. Peterson Podcast.
00:01:34.340 I'm Michaela Peterson, Dad's daughter and collaborator.
00:01:37.700 This is a podcast done in Manchester, recorded on October 25th, 2018.
00:01:43.320 If you haven't signed up for ThinkSpot, the social media platform Dad's involved with, please check it out at least.
00:01:49.000 You go to ThinkSpot.com and enter the promo code LIONDIET, one word, to be invited in sooner.
00:01:55.200 It's still in the early stages and will be more informed in January, but it has great functionalities built in.
00:02:00.400 You can annotate podcasts, videos, basically have online book groups, and interact with the content providers you want to interact with.
00:02:07.940 I'm on there, hence LIONDIET code, Dadis, Jocko Willink, Greg Hurwitz, and more.
00:02:13.860 I've named this podcast The Crisis of Masculinity.
00:02:19.000 The Crisis of Masculinity, a 12 Rules for Life Lecture, done by Jordan B. Peterson.
00:02:24.500 Oh, thank you.
00:02:47.000 That was very nice of you.
00:02:52.480 So, I've had an interesting day in Manchester.
00:02:57.760 Not that that's surprising in any way.
00:03:00.620 My wife and I, we had an interesting time getting here, too, because yesterday morning we were in Oslo,
00:03:13.620 and then we flew to Stockholm and did two newspaper interviews and a podcast and then a TV talk show there,
00:03:23.760 and then we made it to the airport to fly to London with, like, 20 minutes to spare.
00:03:30.360 We're supposed to fly in this morning, but we thought that was risking it because my publicists at Penguin had cooperated with BBC to set up a radio interview this morning at 10,
00:03:40.840 and we figured if we flew in, you know, if there was a flight delay, then that would be not good.
00:03:48.040 And so we flew to London last night, and we got in about midnight, and then we drove to Manchester, and that took about three hours, and so that was yesterday.
00:03:56.760 And then this morning we got up and we went to this BBC radio interview, which was very interesting, and I thought I might talk to you about it a little bit.
00:04:07.200 And I'm going to talk to you tonight about three rules.
00:04:10.820 I'm going to talk to you about rule 11, which is don't bother children when they're skateboarding,
00:04:18.020 and rule 10, which is be precise in your speech, and rule 8, which is pursue what is meaningful.
00:04:28.280 Sorry, that's rule 7.
00:04:29.900 Pursue what is meaningful, not what is expedient.
00:04:32.340 And I want to, I want to, what would you say, weave those together, and also do that in a way that's relevant to what happened today,
00:04:42.600 because what happened today was quite cool.
00:04:44.700 So, I went to this boxing club that's in Moss, yes, Moss Side, Moss Side, yes.
00:04:56.440 And it was run by a gentleman named Nigel Travis, and so he's taken part of an old fire station there and turned it into a boxing club.
00:05:06.520 And so, and he did that to help primarily young men in the Moss Side area develop some discipline and to bring their aggression,
00:05:20.960 I wouldn't say under control, I wouldn't say under control, but to learn how to use it in the most appropriate possible way.
00:05:27.240 So, and then at the boxing club, there was nine people, nine people other than me.
00:05:35.160 There was the person who set up the interview, someone that I had talked to a year before.
00:05:46.380 And then there were two young guys, 18-year-old guys, who had learned to box and had ended up doing very well at it.
00:05:55.980 One of them is the current ABA National Youth Champion.
00:06:01.880 Another one was a Somalian kid who has disciplined himself as a consequence of interacting with this group,
00:06:09.980 and is now mentoring young people.
00:06:13.200 And there was a young guy from France, and his name is Kevin Munga.
00:06:18.560 He was an ex-gang member, and he turned his life around and finished his law degree,
00:06:23.800 and he just wrote a book called, Young Black Males Have Potential, Your Color Does Not Determine Your Future.
00:06:31.160 So, that was really interesting.
00:06:33.320 And a guy named Rhodes, who, studying for a PhD from Cyprus,
00:06:38.540 who did military service and learned during his military service that he was not only capable of accepting a certain amount of discipline,
00:06:46.740 but that he was capable of thriving in the chaos that was part and parcel of the military training.
00:06:53.200 And so, we had a really good conversation.
00:06:55.920 There were some other people there as well.
00:06:57.620 I won't mention them at the moment.
00:06:59.460 But it was a really good conversation, you know, because, well, because it was a real conversation.
00:07:07.740 That was the first thing.
00:07:08.700 It was each of these guys had come from a background that was rough in its own way.
00:07:15.340 One of them, I think his name was Niall, had developed type 1 diabetes when he was a kid,
00:07:21.260 and he talked about how he had learned to, I wouldn't say overcome that,
00:07:25.600 because I don't really know if you overcome a very serious illness like that,
00:07:31.760 but you can confront it and do everything you can to accept it without bitterness
00:07:41.080 and to move forward despite the fact that you're impeded in some important way, you know,
00:07:48.100 an important, dangerous, and frightening way.
00:07:51.280 And so, that was good.
00:07:52.720 He started a business, and that's thriving, and so he's pretty happy with that.
00:07:56.300 And so, we were talking about all sorts of things,
00:08:00.780 and so I wanted to sort of weave those together a little bit
00:08:03.160 to think about what we were talking about.
00:08:05.880 You know, a couple of the guys had joined gangs when they were kids and adolescents,
00:08:11.060 and, you know, we're not very happy about young men joining gangs,
00:08:15.480 but actually, here's what's interesting.
00:08:19.360 It's like, it's one thing to join a gang, and maybe that's not the best thing,
00:08:23.420 but it's another thing not to be able to join a gang.
00:08:27.640 You see, that's really a bad thing.
00:08:30.120 Because it means if you're 12 or 13 and you can't find a gang,
00:08:34.000 that means that you haven't become socialized enough so that people will accept you.
00:08:39.700 And so, joining a gang, being able to join a gang,
00:08:42.600 is actually a marker of a certain degree of maturation, you know,
00:08:46.840 and you need a gang if you're male, let's say.
00:08:55.120 And maybe you need a gang if you're female, too,
00:08:57.080 although we don't seem to see roving gangs of females.
00:09:00.060 So, well, right, I mean, that's not something that happens, right?
00:09:02.660 And I would say that's actually worthy of note.
00:09:05.400 There's a reason for that.
00:09:06.580 I think it might have something to do with the fact that because
00:09:10.660 women mature sexually earlier than men,
00:09:14.580 that, you know, girls 13, 14 start going out with guys that are older than that,
00:09:19.400 or maybe 14, 15.
00:09:20.520 They start going out with older guys,
00:09:22.020 and so they don't have that time where they aggregate together
00:09:25.160 in, as I said, roving bands of teenage girls,
00:09:28.280 whereas younger guys, 14, 15, 16,
00:09:32.240 they're not necessarily that attractive as potential mates,
00:09:35.060 and so they have to do something with their time,
00:09:37.220 and maybe what they do is second best
00:09:38.920 and hang around with other losers like them, whatever.
00:09:42.440 I think there's more to it than that.
00:09:44.460 I think that joining a gang is actually a stepping stone
00:09:49.120 to full adult socialization, right?
00:09:51.820 Because what you have to do is move away
00:09:54.500 from your primary dependence on your parents
00:09:58.280 and into a peer group,
00:10:00.640 and then you have to learn how to interact with the peer group
00:10:03.460 in a manner that makes you a desirable part of that group
00:10:06.600 and maybe a respectable part,
00:10:08.280 and then you also have to be able to hold your own in that peer group,
00:10:11.620 right?
00:10:11.880 Because a male gang has a fair bit of contentiousness in it.
00:10:16.000 There's a lot of poking and prodding that goes on,
00:10:18.520 often in humorous guise to see if you can,
00:10:22.180 well, can you take a joke, you know?
00:10:23.920 Can you take some hassle?
00:10:26.520 Are you good for something?
00:10:28.680 Are you at least, you know,
00:10:29.780 are you someone that could be relied on?
00:10:31.500 Are you honest?
00:10:32.220 Are you someone that could be talked to?
00:10:33.780 Can you be relied on in a scrap if necessary?
00:10:38.060 You know, can you take a blow in your life
00:10:42.360 or even an actual blow without falling apart as a consequence?
00:10:46.180 All that testing goes on.
00:10:48.100 And that's all necessary.
00:10:49.420 It's part of, see,
00:10:50.620 because I think the way that human beings develop
00:10:52.760 is that, well, first of all,
00:10:54.480 they're children and they're dependent
00:10:55.720 and they have their childhood friends and so forth,
00:10:58.340 but fundamentally they're within the confines of the familial group.
00:11:02.440 And maybe that's even a matriarchal organization,
00:11:04.740 that initial familial group.
00:11:06.460 Maybe it's not, but maybe it is.
00:11:08.520 Anyways, you're certainly under the primary care
00:11:11.300 of your mother and your father.
00:11:12.980 And if you have only a single parent,
00:11:15.720 and many of these young men did,
00:11:17.660 that's often the mother.
00:11:18.700 And so primarily you're under the care of your mother.
00:11:20.660 And that's fine,
00:11:21.680 except you just don't want that to be the case
00:11:23.840 for your whole damn life, right?
00:11:25.780 I mean, at some point, enough of that.
00:11:28.260 And really that point's got to be somewhere around 12, 13,
00:11:32.720 where, you know, you move out into the world
00:11:35.840 despite the fact that you don't know what the hell you're doing.
00:11:38.260 And you take your risks and you take your blows
00:11:40.280 and you meet your mates and you join a gang.
00:11:43.680 And then, of course, the fundamental question is,
00:11:47.640 well, what sort of gang is it going to be?
00:11:50.080 That's really the fundamental question,
00:11:51.760 not whether or not it's going to be a gang,
00:11:53.400 is what sort of gang is it going to be?
00:11:55.740 And the gentleman who started the boxing club,
00:11:58.740 in some sense, has produced a gang.
00:12:00.560 And he tried to make one that was predicated
00:12:03.260 on the ideals of discipline and respect,
00:12:06.920 at least in part.
00:12:07.940 And that's not so much an antidote to the gang
00:12:12.440 as it is a much better gang.
00:12:15.640 And so what you hope is that as you mature as a male,
00:12:18.900 that the gang that you're part of
00:12:21.260 gets more and more and more sophisticated and worthwhile,
00:12:24.340 not that you don't have a gang.
00:12:26.320 You know, like when I went to university,
00:12:28.080 it was a relief to me to go to university, actually,
00:12:30.520 because I was always interested in intellectual matters.
00:12:33.920 And when I went to university,
00:12:35.780 so were the people at the university,
00:12:38.140 although that seems to have changed substantially since then.
00:12:41.440 And, you know, and I found my gang.
00:12:44.800 And it was twofold.
00:12:46.720 It was other people who had a similar background to me.
00:12:50.560 I come from a working class community.
00:12:52.960 And the friends that I made when I went to college
00:12:55.300 were working class guys.
00:12:56.680 A lot of them had worked on the oil rigs or in lead smelters.
00:12:59.360 They're relatively tough guys.
00:13:00.700 And they decided that, and they were smart, you know,
00:13:03.540 although I wouldn't say necessarily classically intellectual,
00:13:06.260 but they had decided that they were going to go to college
00:13:08.040 or to university and try to educate themselves, you know,
00:13:11.240 because, well, because they had the capacity for it.
00:13:14.100 And so that was part of my gang.
00:13:16.780 But then the other part were the people,
00:13:18.780 some professors I met who were really interested in teaching.
00:13:21.320 I had some great professors,
00:13:22.460 especially at a small community college that I first attended.
00:13:26.120 And they were great mentors, you know.
00:13:28.580 They were actually interested in teaching
00:13:30.760 and interested in opening up the remarkable gang of intellectuals
00:13:37.580 whose work has spanned the last 2,000 years
00:13:40.500 that we've collected and aggregated and put together
00:13:43.720 in university libraries
00:13:44.840 so that people can join that club if they want to.
00:13:48.960 And I really did want to.
00:13:50.880 And so I spent a lot of time at university
00:13:54.220 reading great books,
00:13:56.520 which is what you should do if you go to university.
00:13:58.860 And the reason you should do that
00:14:00.220 is because great books aren't great
00:14:02.460 because some bloody, arbitrary patriarchy
00:14:05.240 decided to elevate those writers above all else
00:14:08.300 for reasons of power and tyranny,
00:14:10.600 but because those books contain information
00:14:12.840 that, if you know,
00:14:14.680 will save you an awful lot of misery and trouble.
00:14:18.520 And maybe everyone else as well
00:14:20.080 because they contain wisdom.
00:14:21.600 And it's not necessarily the case
00:14:23.180 that it's easy to extract the wisdom out.
00:14:25.920 You have to contend and grapple with the books, right?
00:14:28.800 You have to push yourself beyond your current intellectual ability
00:14:32.580 and you have to discipline yourself
00:14:34.260 so that you can do the reading
00:14:35.420 and understand the concepts.
00:14:36.760 But then that enables you to join this amazing gang
00:14:40.020 that's the gang of those who have used books
00:14:43.940 to conduct a conversation
00:14:45.720 about what constitutes civilized reality
00:14:48.400 across the last 5,000 years.
00:14:50.920 And I tell you, man,
00:14:51.920 that's a hell of a gang to join.
00:14:54.480 And so if you can do it,
00:14:56.020 then that's what you're supposed to do
00:14:57.840 if you go to university,
00:14:59.340 especially if you go to university
00:15:00.680 and take a humanities degree.
00:15:02.520 Because that was the whole bloody point.
00:15:04.400 It's like,
00:15:05.000 can you join the gang
00:15:06.460 of those who engaged in this
00:15:08.540 centuries-long civilized discourse
00:15:11.820 about the way the world should be structured?
00:15:15.080 Okay, so we can talk about that.
00:15:17.360 And these guys today,
00:15:19.600 I know they were talking about
00:15:20.560 what elevated them beyond the trouble
00:15:24.140 that was part of their more unsophisticated gangs.
00:15:27.000 The problem with getting young guys together
00:15:28.640 if they're 14 or 15,
00:15:30.180 they all bunch together,
00:15:31.180 is like,
00:15:31.820 well, first of all,
00:15:32.400 what the hell do they know?
00:15:33.700 Not much.
00:15:34.700 And what do they have at their disposal?
00:15:36.320 Like, I'm not putting them down.
00:15:37.640 It's just like,
00:15:38.120 well, what do you know
00:15:38.760 when you're 14 or 15?
00:15:40.700 Your time horizon isn't very long.
00:15:42.900 You haven't got a lot of experience
00:15:44.260 with the world.
00:15:44.920 The probability that you're going to
00:15:46.980 orient yourself
00:15:48.400 in the optimal direction
00:15:51.020 is very low,
00:15:51.680 especially if you're only looking
00:15:53.000 to each other for guidance,
00:15:54.620 you know,
00:15:55.000 and then maybe you're more swayed
00:15:56.860 by the tougher guys,
00:15:58.500 maybe the guys who are more like bullies,
00:16:00.640 and maybe not too.
00:16:01.860 But there is something to be said
00:16:03.280 for being tough over being weak.
00:16:06.440 You know,
00:16:06.680 even if it isn't manifested
00:16:09.060 in its most sophisticated form,
00:16:11.440 you know,
00:16:12.220 there's nothing,
00:16:13.720 there's something to be said
00:16:15.060 about people who can stand up
00:16:16.360 for themselves.
00:16:16.980 You know,
00:16:17.560 and that can all obviously
00:16:19.340 tilt into unfair domination of others,
00:16:22.880 and that's its more
00:16:23.800 unsophisticated manifestation.
00:16:26.200 But that doesn't mean
00:16:27.040 that weakness is to be preferred.
00:16:29.240 It's not to be preferred.
00:16:30.960 And there's a reason for that, too.
00:16:32.520 It's like,
00:16:32.860 well,
00:16:32.980 what's the problem with weakness?
00:16:34.380 Well,
00:16:34.880 here's the bloody problem
00:16:36.060 with weakness,
00:16:36.780 is that
00:16:37.200 there's going to come
00:16:38.800 hard times in your life.
00:16:40.720 And not just your life,
00:16:42.140 but the lives of your family,
00:16:43.740 the people that you might
00:16:44.580 be responsible for.
00:16:45.660 There's nasty things
00:16:47.140 coming your way.
00:16:48.520 And if you're strong,
00:16:49.680 then maybe you can
00:16:50.440 pull your family
00:16:51.580 and yourself together
00:16:52.560 when those terrible times come,
00:16:54.360 and you can get through them
00:16:55.560 with a minimum
00:16:56.680 of absolute destruction.
00:16:58.620 And that's good for you,
00:16:59.600 and it's good for your family,
00:17:00.700 and hopefully it's good
00:17:01.400 for your community.
00:17:02.420 And that's the real core of strength.
00:17:05.120 It's the ability
00:17:05.760 to contend with adversity
00:17:07.440 without it taking you down.
00:17:09.880 Or not only
00:17:10.720 without it taking you down,
00:17:12.340 but without it taking you down
00:17:13.720 and making you bitter
00:17:15.140 and resentful
00:17:16.080 and cruel
00:17:16.780 and troublesome.
00:17:19.060 And so strength
00:17:19.880 is the antidote to that.
00:17:21.200 It's not the ability
00:17:22.160 to dominate someone else,
00:17:23.660 even though those things
00:17:24.680 can be allied
00:17:25.720 because,
00:17:26.560 well,
00:17:26.920 because good things,
00:17:29.920 when they first develop,
00:17:31.400 aren't as sophisticated
00:17:32.600 and differentiated
00:17:33.820 as they might be.
00:17:35.260 You know,
00:17:35.520 and then we talked about
00:17:36.380 the idea that maybe
00:17:37.560 there's a crisis
00:17:38.380 among young men,
00:17:39.600 and they need help.
00:17:40.540 And I didn't really
00:17:41.840 like that idea,
00:17:43.280 either of the crisis
00:17:44.380 or of the help.
00:17:45.500 And the reason
00:17:46.200 I didn't like the crisis idea
00:17:47.660 is because it's like,
00:17:48.860 well,
00:17:49.120 what else is new?
00:17:50.820 You know,
00:17:51.220 like,
00:17:51.520 life's like bloody crisis.
00:17:53.580 And so,
00:17:54.400 I was speaking
00:17:55.140 with some reporters
00:17:56.060 backstage
00:17:56.680 just before
00:17:57.600 I came out here,
00:17:58.800 and they were asking me
00:18:00.840 about the crisis
00:18:01.780 among young men
00:18:02.940 and a crisis of masculinity.
00:18:05.580 I don't like the phrase.
00:18:07.000 There's something about it
00:18:07.780 that sort of puts me off.
00:18:09.540 There's a victim-y thing
00:18:10.720 about it
00:18:11.140 that I don't like.
00:18:12.860 And, I mean,
00:18:13.340 look,
00:18:14.440 young men,
00:18:15.240 it's like,
00:18:16.140 well,
00:18:16.720 you didn't have to go to Europe
00:18:19.140 and spend four bloody years
00:18:21.320 in the trenches,
00:18:22.940 you know,
00:18:23.260 so that was a crisis
00:18:24.760 and you didn't have to go
00:18:26.300 fight the Nazis.
00:18:27.700 Hey,
00:18:28.100 that was a crisis
00:18:28.860 and there was no war in Korea
00:18:31.300 and there was no war in Vietnam
00:18:32.660 and so we've had,
00:18:33.640 you know,
00:18:33.920 a couple of decades
00:18:34.780 of comparative peace
00:18:36.500 and so,
00:18:37.380 by historical standards,
00:18:38.920 it's like,
00:18:39.600 well,
00:18:39.820 really,
00:18:40.160 it's not that much of a crisis.
00:18:41.360 It's like,
00:18:41.720 oh,
00:18:42.060 I've got to play video games,
00:18:43.820 you know,
00:18:44.500 and I'm obviously making light of it
00:18:48.860 not because there isn't
00:18:49.960 something serious going on
00:18:51.280 because there is,
00:18:52.040 but compared to how serious things can be,
00:18:54.640 they can be so serious
00:18:55.780 that it's just bottomless,
00:18:57.540 you know,
00:18:57.900 and so you kind of feel foolish
00:19:00.320 about talking about the crisis of masculinity,
00:19:03.480 you know,
00:19:03.800 compared to,
00:19:05.140 well,
00:19:05.920 God,
00:19:06.360 you know,
00:19:06.600 I read George Orwell's book,
00:19:09.080 Road to Wiggin Pier,
00:19:10.060 which I would highly recommend.
00:19:11.460 It's on my,
00:19:12.100 I have a list of recommended readings
00:19:13.640 on my webpage.
00:19:14.920 Some of you might be interested in that
00:19:16.480 or even know about it,
00:19:17.660 but Road to Wiggin Pier
00:19:18.660 describes the lives of coal miners
00:19:21.020 in the northern UK in the 1930s,
00:19:23.580 and I mean,
00:19:24.260 my God,
00:19:25.240 it was just,
00:19:25.780 just brutal,
00:19:26.700 you know,
00:19:27.620 Orwell,
00:19:28.560 who was no,
00:19:29.280 no weakling,
00:19:31.780 you know,
00:19:32.020 he'd spend a lot of time
00:19:33.060 tramping around,
00:19:34.000 he worked in rough restaurants
00:19:35.500 in the UK and Paris,
00:19:37.420 and like,
00:19:37.880 he did the working class thing
00:19:39.200 even though he wasn't
00:19:40.100 a member of the working class,
00:19:41.640 he'd kind of put himself
00:19:42.660 in that milieu,
00:19:44.040 and he was a reasonably tough guy
00:19:46.580 for an intellectual type,
00:19:48.280 and,
00:19:49.320 you know,
00:19:49.580 he went into the coal mine
00:19:50.940 one day
00:19:51.600 just to see what these guys' lives
00:19:53.380 were like,
00:19:54.480 and they had to,
00:19:55.560 like,
00:19:55.920 walk through a tunnel,
00:19:58.400 I can't remember how long
00:19:59.560 the tunnel was,
00:20:00.180 it was like three miles,
00:20:01.320 it was like some insane,
00:20:03.140 it took them like two hours
00:20:04.540 to,
00:20:05.360 like,
00:20:05.920 walk through the coal tunnel
00:20:08.440 that was way underground
00:20:09.440 just to get to work,
00:20:10.360 and it was only like
00:20:11.020 this high,
00:20:13.540 so not only did they have to walk
00:20:15.500 to get to the coal face
00:20:17.500 to work,
00:20:18.000 but they had to walk like this,
00:20:19.800 and he said,
00:20:20.400 well,
00:20:20.580 he had gone like,
00:20:21.740 you know,
00:20:22.720 half a mile like that,
00:20:24.360 and he was done,
00:20:25.280 that was the,
00:20:25.680 that was the end of him
00:20:26.660 for the day,
00:20:27.700 and that was just where,
00:20:29.000 that was just the morning,
00:20:30.220 that was half the morning commute
00:20:31.900 for the coal miners,
00:20:33.860 and,
00:20:34.120 you know,
00:20:34.320 and by the time they were 30,
00:20:35.640 they were 35,
00:20:36.900 they were pretty much done,
00:20:37.860 they had black lung,
00:20:38.700 they didn't have any teeth,
00:20:39.700 like,
00:20:39.880 they were just done,
00:20:41.700 and of course,
00:20:42.180 they didn't get paid anything
00:20:43.180 for it either,
00:20:43.980 it was absolutely brutal work,
00:20:46.560 and I mean,
00:20:46.940 that was the characteristic
00:20:47.960 of,
00:20:48.460 well,
00:20:48.580 not just men,
00:20:49.980 you know,
00:20:50.300 here,
00:20:50.560 here's another thing
00:20:51.360 that,
00:20:52.020 that's worth thinking about too,
00:20:54.200 you know,
00:20:54.780 and this touches on another issue
00:20:56.400 that just drives me,
00:20:57.960 I don't know,
00:20:59.440 it outrages me,
00:21:00.560 I guess,
00:21:01.080 in a very deep sense,
00:21:02.400 you know,
00:21:02.600 and this also came up today
00:21:04.680 when we were talking about
00:21:05.560 the crisis of masculinity,
00:21:07.900 you know,
00:21:10.600 we have this idea that,
00:21:12.580 that everyone is supposed
00:21:13.500 to accept now,
00:21:14.720 sometimes,
00:21:15.600 I talk to people,
00:21:16.460 and I object to this idea,
00:21:18.020 and they look at me like,
00:21:18.840 there's something wrong with me,
00:21:20.000 it's like,
00:21:20.680 because it's not an idea I accept,
00:21:22.260 and the idea is that,
00:21:24.760 well,
00:21:25.260 what we live in,
00:21:26.040 our culture,
00:21:26.780 Western culture,
00:21:27.720 which you,
00:21:28.380 UK types are,
00:21:30.440 in large part,
00:21:31.260 responsible for creating,
00:21:32.840 and as far as I'm concerned,
00:21:34.280 thank you very much,
00:21:35.940 I sincerely mean this,
00:21:37.760 I think that English common law
00:21:39.200 is God's gift to the world,
00:21:42.020 it's such a remarkable creation,
00:21:44.060 and so much of the idea
00:21:45.860 of individual sovereignty
00:21:47.040 and freedom
00:21:47.620 was established
00:21:48.440 in great difficulty here,
00:21:50.560 and promoted all over the world,
00:21:52.120 and it's an amazing achievement,
00:21:54.080 and I see threats to it
00:21:56.040 emerging in your land
00:21:57.620 that just hurt my heart,
00:21:59.460 I saw yesterday,
00:22:00.760 someone sent me pictures
00:22:02.180 of posters
00:22:02.820 in the Scotland subway,
00:22:05.020 asking citizens
00:22:06.380 to turn each other in
00:22:07.700 for hate crimes,
00:22:08.820 and to see that emerging
00:22:10.060 in the UK,
00:22:10.860 just,
00:22:11.100 it's just so,
00:22:12.280 it's so appalling,
00:22:13.360 it's so horrible
00:22:14.280 to see that happening here,
00:22:15.960 in the closed camera TV systems
00:22:17.720 that are everywhere,
00:22:18.660 and I really hate
00:22:20.060 to see that happening here,
00:22:21.520 because I think
00:22:22.140 this is the center of,
00:22:24.460 the idea of individual sovereignty
00:22:26.180 and democratic rights,
00:22:27.440 that it's the dead center
00:22:28.800 of that throughout the world,
00:22:29.900 and it's been
00:22:30.400 an amazing achievement,
00:22:31.660 and I hate to see
00:22:33.060 that threatened,
00:22:34.200 in any case,
00:22:35.480 we have this
00:22:36.300 misbegotten notion
00:22:38.740 generated by a tiny minority
00:22:41.120 of resentful,
00:22:42.260 and extraordinarily
00:22:43.960 well-organized activists,
00:22:46.200 who have proclaimed
00:22:47.440 very loudly,
00:22:48.700 and with plenty of help
00:22:49.820 from government subsidy,
00:22:51.660 for the last five decades,
00:22:53.400 that the best way
00:22:54.100 to characterize
00:22:54.720 Western society
00:22:55.840 is as a tyrannical patriarchy,
00:22:58.440 and, you know,
00:22:59.320 that is,
00:22:59.980 it's so wrong,
00:23:02.060 you don't even know
00:23:02.780 where to start,
00:23:04.000 I mean,
00:23:04.600 first of all,
00:23:05.320 we could look at it
00:23:06.240 psychologically,
00:23:07.460 so,
00:23:08.300 we'll do that,
00:23:09.080 we have a tendency
00:23:11.260 to view our world,
00:23:13.560 the world we experience,
00:23:14.940 in personified form,
00:23:17.260 and it's a very
00:23:18.240 powerful tendency,
00:23:19.480 we tend to see things,
00:23:20.760 human beings,
00:23:21.340 we tend to see things
00:23:22.100 as if they're animate,
00:23:23.620 which is why,
00:23:24.240 you know,
00:23:24.460 when you read a book
00:23:25.060 to a kid,
00:23:25.860 and it's Thomas
00:23:26.620 the Tank Engine,
00:23:27.960 and Thomas has a big smile on,
00:23:29.800 and the son has a face,
00:23:31.180 and everyone's perfectly
00:23:32.220 happy about that,
00:23:33.140 you read that to your kids,
00:23:34.220 and you don't notice
00:23:35.500 that it's rather absurd
00:23:36.760 that Thomas is an animate character,
00:23:39.300 and part of the reason
00:23:40.180 for that is because
00:23:40.900 we're deeply social primates,
00:23:44.140 deeply social animals,
00:23:46.000 and our cognitive structures
00:23:47.920 have evolved
00:23:48.640 in a primarily social environment,
00:23:51.700 and we tend to see
00:23:52.540 the world first and foremost
00:23:54.220 as if it's characters in motion,
00:23:57.000 and it's been with great difficulty
00:23:58.780 that we could pull ourselves away
00:24:00.520 from that viewpoint,
00:24:02.000 and produce something
00:24:03.260 like an objective science,
00:24:04.820 where we're looking at the world
00:24:05.860 as in some sense
00:24:07.000 as if it's dead material.
00:24:09.040 Now, it's been very useful
00:24:10.000 to do that,
00:24:10.540 but it's not natural for us,
00:24:12.520 which is why we didn't
00:24:13.360 really manage it
00:24:14.160 until like 500 years ago,
00:24:15.880 right?
00:24:16.120 It's a very new,
00:24:17.300 I mean,
00:24:17.500 maybe you could push it
00:24:18.280 back to the Greeks,
00:24:19.180 but they weren't really scientists,
00:24:20.580 even though they laid
00:24:21.540 some of the groundwork
00:24:22.460 for what became science
00:24:23.540 later on.
00:24:24.620 Well, so,
00:24:26.420 it's easy to personify,
00:24:28.940 to see culture personified,
00:24:31.540 and often as male.
00:24:32.660 That's very typical,
00:24:33.700 symbolically.
00:24:34.220 I laid that out a bit
00:24:35.200 in Twelve Rules for Life,
00:24:36.340 and also in Maps of Meaning,
00:24:38.100 drawing primarily
00:24:38.900 from the work of
00:24:39.740 the Jungian types,
00:24:41.140 like, well,
00:24:41.600 Carl Jung himself,
00:24:42.580 and Mircea Eliad,
00:24:43.520 and the great symbolic investigators
00:24:45.760 of the 20th century,
00:24:46.940 Joseph Campbell among them,
00:24:48.680 who laid out quite clearly
00:24:50.080 the idea that,
00:24:51.120 well, culture tends to be
00:24:52.360 symbolized in mythology,
00:24:54.660 and literature,
00:24:55.220 and art,
00:24:55.600 for that matter,
00:24:56.220 as masculine.
00:24:56.960 And there's two elements
00:25:00.540 to the masculine,
00:25:03.180 insofar as it's representative
00:25:05.440 of our cultural hierarchy,
00:25:07.180 and one is the archetype
00:25:09.020 of the wise king,
00:25:10.660 and the other is the archetype
00:25:12.000 of the tyrant.
00:25:13.560 And every society
00:25:14.860 is an amalgam
00:25:15.660 of those two things.
00:25:16.800 Every organization
00:25:17.620 is an amalgam
00:25:18.680 of those two things.
00:25:19.740 And we all know that,
00:25:20.760 because, you know,
00:25:21.740 if you go to work
00:25:23.480 in a small hierarchy,
00:25:24.940 maybe you have a small business,
00:25:25.940 you know,
00:25:26.680 there's some things
00:25:27.440 about the business
00:25:28.200 that are going very well,
00:25:30.100 assuming that it's
00:25:30.840 a thriving enterprise,
00:25:32.760 and people are awake
00:25:35.080 and working hard
00:25:35.880 and interacting
00:25:36.980 with one another honestly,
00:25:38.460 but then there's a tendency
00:25:39.860 for that to go astray,
00:25:42.200 for power to dominate
00:25:43.980 the relationships
00:25:44.860 in the hierarchy
00:25:46.140 instead of confidence,
00:25:47.120 or for crookedness
00:25:49.280 and deceit
00:25:49.960 to enter into it,
00:25:51.220 or for people to steal
00:25:52.600 and become blind
00:25:53.660 or willfully blind.
00:25:54.640 And so, we have this battle
00:25:56.740 in every hierarchy
00:25:57.860 between the wise king
00:25:59.060 and the tyrant.
00:26:00.140 And you see that expressed
00:26:01.500 in popular tropes.
00:26:03.440 So, most of you have seen
00:26:04.620 The Lion King, for example,
00:26:06.700 which is a remarkable thing
00:26:08.540 in and of itself
00:26:09.340 that most of you
00:26:10.120 have actually seen that
00:26:11.280 and worth thinking about,
00:26:12.940 given that it's an animated movie
00:26:14.440 about, like, lions who can talk,
00:26:17.280 and that's all fine with you.
00:26:19.120 So, strangely enough,
00:26:20.820 but, you know, Mufasa,
00:26:22.440 who's the wise king
00:26:23.780 and who's at the top
00:26:26.300 of the hierarchy,
00:26:27.240 perched on top of Pride Rock
00:26:29.640 and master of everything
00:26:30.800 he can survey,
00:26:31.760 has an evil brother.
00:26:33.000 That's Scar.
00:26:34.020 And Scar has obviously
00:26:35.100 been damaged by life,
00:26:37.140 hence Scar.
00:26:39.120 And he's a little bit
00:26:39.960 too intellectual
00:26:40.680 for his own good
00:26:41.640 and not much
00:26:42.220 of a physical specimen.
00:26:43.820 And he's very,
00:26:44.900 so he's a representative
00:26:46.140 of the arrogance
00:26:47.040 of the rational mind,
00:26:48.560 fundamentally,
00:26:49.060 and it's opposition
00:26:50.420 to wisdom.
00:26:51.680 And he's constantly
00:26:52.700 conspiring to take down
00:26:54.380 the king.
00:26:55.440 And that's a very,
00:26:56.340 very old story.
00:26:57.340 It's an unbelievable,
00:26:58.240 well, it's Cain and Abel.
00:26:59.440 It's that old.
00:27:00.620 It's a story
00:27:01.500 that was reflected
00:27:02.180 in Egyptian mythology
00:27:03.640 far before Christianity emerged.
00:27:05.920 When the Egyptians
00:27:06.740 figured out that
00:27:07.680 every hierarchy
00:27:09.380 that emerges
00:27:10.140 as a consequence
00:27:11.340 of natural human activity
00:27:12.780 is threatened
00:27:14.000 by its evil shadow.
00:27:16.620 And that shadow
00:27:17.600 is partly a consequence
00:27:18.760 of the fact
00:27:19.420 that, like,
00:27:20.160 if you make a business
00:27:21.160 and it works
00:27:21.860 and then you don't
00:27:22.980 change it at all
00:27:23.920 for 20 years,
00:27:25.320 then it dies.
00:27:26.800 Right?
00:27:27.080 Because everything
00:27:27.600 around it changes.
00:27:28.920 So even if you produce
00:27:29.980 something of great value,
00:27:31.960 if you're a heroic
00:27:33.500 entrepreneurial type
00:27:34.980 and you produce
00:27:35.460 something of great value
00:27:36.460 and then you allow it
00:27:37.640 to become static
00:27:38.760 and stultified
00:27:39.660 and unchanging,
00:27:40.740 then it will deteriorate
00:27:41.800 and die of its own accord
00:27:42.960 because the environment
00:27:43.820 changes.
00:27:44.800 And so things
00:27:45.460 fall apart
00:27:46.340 of their own accord.
00:27:47.880 One of the great
00:27:48.900 mythological messages.
00:27:50.520 And that's sped along
00:27:51.980 by the blindness of men.
00:27:54.280 That's the next
00:27:55.040 great doctrine.
00:27:56.720 And so that's the doctrine
00:27:57.720 of the flood,
00:27:58.600 for example.
00:27:59.680 You know,
00:27:59.960 that the catastrophe
00:28:00.840 is coming,
00:28:01.860 the flood is on its way,
00:28:03.440 always the case in life,
00:28:04.720 but it's going to be
00:28:05.600 a hell of a lot worse
00:28:06.440 if you're blind
00:28:07.160 and not ready.
00:28:08.360 And so those are
00:28:09.020 mythological truths.
00:28:10.380 You have the wise king,
00:28:12.380 always,
00:28:12.980 always threatened
00:28:14.300 by the evil brother
00:28:16.820 and who's conspiring
00:28:19.080 through deceit
00:28:19.960 and willful blindness
00:28:21.740 and sheer entropy
00:28:23.200 to demolish the state.
00:28:25.700 And so in Egypt,
00:28:27.140 for example,
00:28:27.680 there was a god
00:28:28.420 associated with each
00:28:29.580 of those conceptualizations.
00:28:32.160 The god Osiris,
00:28:33.240 who was god of the state,
00:28:34.560 a great hero in his youth,
00:28:36.280 the founder of the
00:28:37.140 Egyptian state,
00:28:38.500 but old now
00:28:40.300 and willfully blind,
00:28:41.820 willfully blind,
00:28:42.700 will not pay attention
00:28:44.160 to what he should
00:28:44.820 pay attention to
00:28:45.700 and archaic,
00:28:48.580 like things that are old
00:28:49.800 are archaic.
00:28:51.060 And that's our culture,
00:28:52.160 right?
00:28:52.340 Our culture is
00:28:53.120 the construction of the dead,
00:28:55.340 the past, the dead.
00:28:56.820 And so it's blind
00:28:57.740 and it's out of date.
00:28:59.660 And then it's threatened
00:29:00.540 by a malevolent force
00:29:02.380 and the malevolent force
00:29:03.400 is, well,
00:29:03.860 malevolence itself,
00:29:05.060 the willful blindness
00:29:06.200 of people
00:29:06.740 and the desire to do harm.
00:29:08.600 And so it's reasonable
00:29:10.680 to note
00:29:11.400 that any hierarchical
00:29:12.940 organization
00:29:13.600 can be properly
00:29:14.680 conceptualized
00:29:15.520 in these two ways.
00:29:16.680 There's a wise king element
00:29:18.000 and there's an evil tyrant element.
00:29:20.780 And then the question is,
00:29:22.160 well,
00:29:22.520 which has the upper hand?
00:29:24.700 Now,
00:29:25.140 what's happened
00:29:25.820 with the radical types
00:29:27.780 is they've just
00:29:28.640 taken the wise king
00:29:30.580 out of the equation
00:29:31.460 altogether
00:29:31.960 and said,
00:29:33.060 well,
00:29:33.520 what Western culture
00:29:34.920 constitutes
00:29:35.480 is nothing but
00:29:36.500 the evil tyrant.
00:29:38.160 It's like,
00:29:38.660 well,
00:29:38.920 okay,
00:29:39.200 first of all,
00:29:40.300 no,
00:29:41.600 wrong.
00:29:43.180 It's wrong psychologically.
00:29:44.860 It's like,
00:29:45.140 well,
00:29:45.220 you're missing a character there.
00:29:46.720 Where's the wise king?
00:29:48.240 Well,
00:29:48.340 you say,
00:29:48.480 well,
00:29:48.580 there's no evidence
00:29:49.260 for the wise king.
00:29:50.400 It's like,
00:29:51.120 yeah,
00:29:52.160 actually,
00:29:53.100 there's plenty of evidence.
00:29:54.800 And so,
00:29:55.320 what's the evidence?
00:29:56.440 Well,
00:29:56.840 here we are,
00:29:57.640 there's 3,000 of us,
00:29:59.080 none of us know each other.
00:30:00.120 Well,
00:30:00.240 some of you know each other
00:30:01.240 a little bit,
00:30:01.820 but fundamentally,
00:30:02.880 you're among strangers.
00:30:04.720 I mean,
00:30:04.980 they're within your own culture,
00:30:06.260 mostly,
00:30:06.880 but you're among strangers
00:30:07.940 and look at you all.
00:30:09.400 You're all peaceful.
00:30:10.700 You're all sitting down
00:30:11.720 the same way.
00:30:12.560 You're all eyes front
00:30:14.180 the same way.
00:30:15.260 You know what the rules are.
00:30:16.780 You're participating
00:30:17.520 in a complex political discussion
00:30:20.000 that could be contentious
00:30:21.220 with no hint whatsoever
00:30:22.940 of violence.
00:30:24.180 We're in this lovely theater.
00:30:25.920 We don't think the roof will fall
00:30:27.480 because the engineers
00:30:28.400 who built it
00:30:29.400 weren't corrupt
00:30:30.240 and they actually used concrete
00:30:31.740 instead of sand,
00:30:33.300 which is what they tended to use
00:30:34.720 in the Soviet Union,
00:30:36.160 right?
00:30:36.340 If it wasn't radioactive sand,
00:30:38.600 which it often was
00:30:39.660 because that's how you got rid
00:30:41.260 of the radioactive waste,
00:30:43.300 right?
00:30:43.740 And so that's not happening
00:30:45.000 and probably the floor
00:30:46.200 is going to maintain itself
00:30:47.380 while you sit there
00:30:48.240 and your chairs
00:30:48.800 aren't going to collapse
00:30:49.600 and the lights aren't going
00:30:50.880 to go off
00:30:51.400 and the PA system
00:30:52.340 is going to work
00:30:53.160 and all of this
00:30:54.260 and it's warm.
00:30:55.360 It's warm in here
00:30:56.140 and you notice the roof
00:30:57.260 isn't leaking
00:30:57.880 and like there's a lot
00:30:59.260 of really good things
00:31:00.480 happening in this room
00:31:02.300 and most of you,
00:31:03.320 not too many of you,
00:31:04.600 don't look like you're starving.
00:31:06.340 Quite the contrary.
00:31:09.180 Well, you know,
00:31:10.020 there's more overweight people
00:31:11.380 in the world now
00:31:12.140 than there are starving people.
00:31:14.120 It's like there's a reason
00:31:15.440 for a party.
00:31:16.320 We should be having
00:31:16.920 like a two-week party
00:31:18.080 every summer
00:31:18.820 all over the world
00:31:19.660 where the banners say
00:31:21.120 more fat people
00:31:22.680 than starving people
00:31:23.920 because it's such
00:31:24.980 a massive accomplishment
00:31:26.920 that one of our problems
00:31:28.440 now is,
00:31:29.240 oh my God,
00:31:30.100 we have too many
00:31:30.940 good things to eat.
00:31:32.280 You know,
00:31:33.140 and that's unparalleled
00:31:35.540 in human history.
00:31:36.580 That's for sure, man,
00:31:37.660 that that's a problem.
00:31:39.040 You know,
00:31:39.260 and last month,
00:31:40.240 apparently,
00:31:41.400 we hit the point
00:31:42.660 for the first time ever
00:31:44.040 that there are now
00:31:45.440 the majority of people
00:31:46.520 in the world
00:31:46.960 are working class.
00:31:48.460 So it's like,
00:31:49.260 well,
00:31:49.800 that's a good thing
00:31:51.040 and you know,
00:31:51.940 between the year 2000
00:31:53.260 and 2012,
00:31:54.580 we halved
00:31:55.280 the level
00:31:56.100 of absolute poverty
00:31:57.200 across the world.
00:31:58.480 Fastest economic development
00:31:59.920 in the history
00:32:01.040 of the world.
00:32:01.980 You know,
00:32:02.200 and you might say,
00:32:02.800 well,
00:32:02.960 we put the level
00:32:03.760 of privation
00:32:04.700 pretty low.
00:32:05.500 It was the UN
00:32:06.060 that did this,
00:32:06.720 so,
00:32:07.220 you know,
00:32:07.520 now people are making
00:32:08.720 more than a dollar
00:32:09.620 a ninety a day
00:32:10.840 by in today's money
00:32:13.100 and, you know,
00:32:13.940 that's not very much money
00:32:15.360 and, well,
00:32:15.940 fair enough,
00:32:16.660 you know,
00:32:16.980 it's not,
00:32:17.640 but it beats the hell
00:32:19.000 out of starving
00:32:20.000 and it's also the case
00:32:21.280 that in 1895,
00:32:23.120 even in places
00:32:23.820 like the UK,
00:32:25.300 the average human being
00:32:27.020 lived on less
00:32:28.020 than a dollar a day.
00:32:29.460 In today's money,
00:32:31.120 right?
00:32:31.280 And that was only
00:32:31.780 130 years ago
00:32:33.280 and so,
00:32:34.160 you know,
00:32:34.640 we've moved away
00:32:35.700 from that level
00:32:36.360 of privation
00:32:37.060 with unbelievable speed.
00:32:38.800 First in Europe
00:32:39.920 and North America,
00:32:41.420 let's say,
00:32:41.940 first there,
00:32:42.740 but it had to happen
00:32:43.580 first somewhere
00:32:44.820 because everyone
00:32:46.160 wasn't going to get
00:32:46.900 instantly rich
00:32:47.720 all at once.
00:32:48.920 That just can't happen.
00:32:50.520 Some people have to
00:32:51.460 have it happen first
00:32:52.660 and that's something
00:32:53.540 to think about
00:32:54.140 when you're jealous
00:32:54.780 of rich people.
00:32:55.800 It's like,
00:32:56.340 well,
00:32:56.480 someone has to buy
00:32:57.340 the damn new things
00:32:58.440 when they're hyper expensive
00:32:59.700 so that the price
00:33:01.020 can be driven down
00:33:02.040 so that everybody else
00:33:03.020 can afford them.
00:33:03.820 It's like,
00:33:04.420 the good things
00:33:05.140 have to come
00:33:05.740 to some people first
00:33:06.920 and if it's not you
00:33:07.900 and it is you
00:33:08.840 because,
00:33:09.600 by the way,
00:33:10.040 you only need to make
00:33:10.960 $32,000 a year
00:33:13.040 now
00:33:13.700 to be in the top
00:33:15.140 1%
00:33:16.200 of income earners
00:33:17.300 worldwide
00:33:18.000 so you're all
00:33:19.320 in the top 1%
00:33:20.520 or virtually all
00:33:21.520 of you
00:33:21.780 so you should be
00:33:22.700 guilty about that
00:33:23.820 and be ashamed
00:33:26.280 of your privilege
00:33:27.180 regardless of what
00:33:28.040 color you are
00:33:28.780 by the way.
00:33:30.700 And so,
00:33:31.900 none of this
00:33:32.600 speaks to me
00:33:33.360 of a patriarchal tyranny.
00:33:35.920 Not by any
00:33:37.520 real world standards.
00:33:39.060 It's like,
00:33:39.460 okay,
00:33:40.540 compared to what
00:33:41.580 exactly?
00:33:42.320 Is this a patriarchal
00:33:43.700 tyranny?
00:33:44.040 We've already said
00:33:44.760 that you've got
00:33:45.540 to watch the system
00:33:46.520 because it tilts
00:33:47.620 towards blindness
00:33:48.640 and stupidity
00:33:49.620 and corruption
00:33:50.280 but you've got
00:33:51.200 mechanisms for
00:33:52.040 dealing with that,
00:33:52.880 right?
00:33:53.260 Most large companies
00:33:54.680 only last about
00:33:56.020 30 years.
00:33:57.220 They turn over
00:33:57.740 quite quickly.
00:33:58.440 That's the typical
00:33:59.080 lifespan of a
00:34:00.300 Fortune 500 company.
00:34:01.920 Most family fortunes
00:34:03.200 only last three
00:34:04.160 generations.
00:34:05.420 That's not
00:34:05.820 a thousand years.
00:34:07.140 You know,
00:34:07.380 it's really
00:34:08.160 something approximating
00:34:09.920 a single lifespan,
00:34:11.080 a single total
00:34:11.740 lifespan
00:34:12.200 and politically,
00:34:14.260 well,
00:34:14.500 you know,
00:34:15.060 if your politicians
00:34:16.540 sit in office
00:34:17.320 too long,
00:34:18.240 they tend to get
00:34:19.300 corrupt,
00:34:20.320 right?
00:34:20.540 Because their
00:34:21.260 networks of power
00:34:22.360 and influence
00:34:22.920 grow too great
00:34:23.880 and they start
00:34:25.000 to be able to
00:34:25.780 exercise control
00:34:27.080 and power
00:34:27.640 where they shouldn't.
00:34:28.640 And so what do you do?
00:34:30.340 Well,
00:34:30.620 you kill them
00:34:31.340 ritually
00:34:31.900 every four years,
00:34:33.640 right?
00:34:34.160 But you don't
00:34:34.660 actually kill them
00:34:35.580 because you've
00:34:36.100 figured out
00:34:36.520 how to do it
00:34:37.300 ritually
00:34:38.200 and you just
00:34:39.140 defeat them
00:34:39.780 at the polls
00:34:40.520 and you say,
00:34:41.120 well,
00:34:41.620 you know,
00:34:41.920 you guys have
00:34:42.560 done,
00:34:43.640 you've been,
00:34:44.480 what would you say?
00:34:45.980 You've been
00:34:46.540 approximately
00:34:47.440 as stupid
00:34:48.620 on average
00:34:49.700 as we would expect
00:34:51.180 half-decently
00:34:52.560 competent
00:34:53.180 morons like us
00:34:54.640 to manage,
00:34:55.700 but you've had
00:34:56.740 your kick at the cat
00:34:57.700 and now it's time
00:34:58.680 for another pack
00:34:59.460 of imbeciles
00:35:00.180 to make their mistakes,
00:35:01.680 right?
00:35:02.240 And that's democracy,
00:35:13.360 right?
00:35:13.860 I'm dead serious,
00:35:15.460 I'm absolutely
00:35:16.140 dead serious
00:35:16.820 about this.
00:35:17.460 It is not
00:35:18.460 a utopian system.
00:35:20.880 You know,
00:35:21.120 and it's interesting
00:35:22.120 to look at how
00:35:22.760 the Americans
00:35:23.340 managed this
00:35:24.140 and as a Canadian,
00:35:25.620 I regard Americans
00:35:26.880 as Englishmen
00:35:28.600 who more fully
00:35:30.580 articulated what
00:35:31.620 was already
00:35:32.140 implicit in the
00:35:33.300 English common
00:35:34.000 law system,
00:35:34.900 you know,
00:35:35.160 and so because
00:35:35.780 basically the
00:35:37.320 American revolutionaries
00:35:38.520 were Englishmen
00:35:39.300 who were demanding
00:35:40.640 their rights
00:35:41.460 as Englishmen
00:35:42.260 and so,
00:35:43.460 and you know,
00:35:44.200 the Americans
00:35:44.700 tend to look at it
00:35:45.640 slightly different
00:35:46.500 than that,
00:35:47.440 but not so much,
00:35:49.680 you know,
00:35:49.980 they're certainly,
00:35:50.980 they certainly know
00:35:52.000 that their tradition
00:35:52.980 emerged from
00:35:53.880 the broader
00:35:54.480 background tradition
00:35:56.140 that I speak of,
00:35:57.100 you know,
00:35:57.580 and the Americans
00:35:58.400 were very wise
00:36:01.560 and non-utopian
00:36:02.840 in their,
00:36:04.000 in the way they
00:36:04.620 set up their
00:36:05.260 political system.
00:36:06.280 They assumed that
00:36:07.040 they didn't think,
00:36:08.260 well,
00:36:08.520 human beings
00:36:09.040 are perfectible
00:36:09.920 and the perfectible
00:36:11.260 issue is an
00:36:11.780 interesting one.
00:36:12.620 It's like,
00:36:12.940 well,
00:36:13.080 what do you mean
00:36:13.520 perfectible exactly?
00:36:14.960 By whose standards?
00:36:16.600 Well,
00:36:16.820 the answer to that
00:36:17.360 is always,
00:36:17.760 well,
00:36:17.860 by my standards.
00:36:19.360 I'd like to make
00:36:20.040 people perfectible
00:36:21.080 by my standards.
00:36:22.140 I'd like them to be
00:36:23.160 the way I think
00:36:24.060 they should be
00:36:24.840 and then,
00:36:25.480 if I'm political,
00:36:26.140 minded,
00:36:26.600 I can gerrymander
00:36:27.640 the political structure
00:36:28.620 so that we end up
00:36:29.560 with the modern
00:36:30.640 human being
00:36:31.500 of the future.
00:36:32.400 They certainly tried
00:36:33.400 that in places
00:36:33.940 like Nazi Germany
00:36:34.920 and in the Soviet Union
00:36:36.020 and I wouldn't say
00:36:36.960 it went that well
00:36:37.920 and that's mostly
00:36:39.220 because,
00:36:39.800 well,
00:36:40.060 you don't know
00:36:40.540 what the perfect
00:36:41.140 human being is
00:36:41.980 and neither does
00:36:42.460 anyone else
00:36:43.040 and besides that,
00:36:44.180 it changes with time.
00:36:45.520 Like,
00:36:45.680 sometimes you need
00:36:46.740 compassionate people
00:36:47.800 at the helm
00:36:48.320 and sometimes you need
00:36:49.300 dreadfully tough-minded
00:36:51.020 people at the helm
00:36:52.080 and sometimes you need
00:36:53.340 to listen to people
00:36:54.100 who are worried
00:36:54.780 and nervous
00:36:55.260 and sometimes you need
00:36:56.460 to listen to people
00:36:57.180 who are confident
00:36:57.920 and secure
00:36:58.500 and you don't know
00:36:59.740 when because
00:37:00.280 the tide changes
00:37:01.800 and the earth shifts
00:37:02.980 and so what's right
00:37:04.340 one day
00:37:04.840 isn't necessarily
00:37:05.880 right the next
00:37:06.640 which,
00:37:07.300 by the way,
00:37:07.680 does not mean
00:37:08.300 that there's no such thing
00:37:09.400 as right or wrong.
00:37:11.200 That's not a sophisticated
00:37:12.260 way of looking at it.
00:37:13.420 And so what the Americans
00:37:14.780 did in their attempt
00:37:17.200 to regulate their society
00:37:19.460 possible was make
00:37:20.900 the following humble
00:37:22.520 assumptions.
00:37:23.860 Most people are flawed
00:37:26.180 and error prone
00:37:27.920 and we're not really
00:37:29.740 going to be able to do
00:37:30.380 much about that
00:37:31.220 and so what we want
00:37:32.060 to do is produce
00:37:33.120 a political system
00:37:34.060 that idiots
00:37:35.120 as foolish as us
00:37:36.400 can't screw up
00:37:38.080 too badly
00:37:39.080 and so that's what
00:37:40.760 they did.
00:37:41.200 That's why they put in
00:37:41.860 the checks and balances.
00:37:42.920 That's why we have
00:37:43.620 cycling elections.
00:37:45.540 That's even why
00:37:46.020 there's an electoral college
00:37:47.260 and you elect representatives
00:37:48.480 instead of dabbling
00:37:50.580 in direct democracy
00:37:51.900 which is too dangerous
00:37:53.720 perhaps with regards
00:37:54.800 to unbridled rule
00:37:56.580 of the mob.
00:37:57.740 And so it's a very
00:37:58.380 cautious system
00:37:59.260 and it's never been
00:38:00.060 predicated on the idea
00:38:01.160 that we'll make society
00:38:02.920 perfect in some
00:38:03.880 final utopian sense
00:38:05.320 or that we'll bring
00:38:06.440 about the new man.
00:38:08.040 It's more like
00:38:09.000 well,
00:38:10.160 we don't know what to do.
00:38:11.200 We don't want to let
00:38:12.100 anybody get too much
00:38:13.020 of an upper hand.
00:38:14.160 We want to balance
00:38:14.860 the system out
00:38:15.620 and then we want to let
00:38:16.620 all these peculiar
00:38:17.780 creatures that we are
00:38:19.740 go out there
00:38:20.600 and have their kick
00:38:21.700 at the can
00:38:22.340 and more or less
00:38:23.300 see what happens.
00:38:24.600 And of course
00:38:25.100 that's not perfect
00:38:26.000 and it can take
00:38:26.700 a nosedive
00:38:27.360 and it produces
00:38:28.220 a fair bit of inequality
00:38:29.460 like every other
00:38:31.180 social system
00:38:32.440 ever produced
00:38:33.380 on the planet
00:38:34.240 but it does allow
00:38:35.680 people to strive
00:38:36.940 genuinely forward
00:38:38.940 to some degree
00:38:40.620 and that makes it
00:38:42.220 a miraculous system.
00:38:43.840 And one of the things
00:38:44.460 that I actually
00:38:45.180 I absolutely
00:38:46.200 despise
00:38:48.040 about
00:38:48.640 the radical
00:38:49.840 left identity
00:38:50.740 politics
00:38:51.440 collectivist types
00:38:52.520 who generated up
00:38:53.620 this tyrannical
00:38:54.440 patriarchy narrative
00:38:55.480 is that
00:38:56.220 well number one
00:38:57.160 they have no sense
00:38:58.400 of historical proportion
00:38:59.680 whatsoever.
00:39:00.940 Like to think that
00:39:01.720 to think that
00:39:02.760 what we have
00:39:03.800 isn't better
00:39:04.480 than anything else
00:39:05.620 that's ever been produced
00:39:06.780 just means
00:39:07.420 that you don't know
00:39:08.240 anything at all
00:39:09.540 about what history
00:39:10.720 was like.
00:39:11.620 It's like
00:39:11.860 I read an article
00:39:13.160 a while back
00:39:13.980 I don't remember
00:39:15.680 who published it
00:39:16.360 and unfortunately
00:39:16.940 he was comparing
00:39:17.880 the lot of
00:39:18.720 Nelson Rockefeller
00:39:20.220 in like 1915
00:39:22.080 1916
00:39:22.880 to the typical
00:39:24.100 modern middle class
00:39:25.580 person
00:39:26.240 stating
00:39:27.160 quite forthrightly
00:39:28.820 that
00:39:29.420 there's no way
00:39:31.080 if you had any sense
00:39:32.520 you would change
00:39:33.500 that position
00:39:34.380 for that of a billionaire
00:39:35.540 a hundred years ago.
00:39:36.780 I believe one of
00:39:37.660 Rockefeller's kids
00:39:38.580 died of an
00:39:39.440 infectious bacterial
00:39:40.620 disease.
00:39:41.700 It's like
00:39:41.940 well you actually
00:39:42.480 don't have to worry
00:39:43.140 about that
00:39:43.780 well unless we keep
00:39:44.740 abusing antibiotics
00:39:45.880 which we're
00:39:46.460 you know
00:39:46.760 hell bent on doing
00:39:48.500 but right now
00:39:49.640 if you have a
00:39:50.520 potentially fatal
00:39:52.540 infectious disease
00:39:53.600 you can just
00:39:54.340 go to the doctor
00:39:55.420 and take pills
00:39:56.500 for three days
00:39:57.240 and then you're
00:39:58.060 not dead
00:39:58.960 and you know
00:40:00.360 a billion dollars
00:40:01.340 a hundred years ago
00:40:02.180 wasn't going to
00:40:02.700 buy that for you
00:40:03.720 you know
00:40:04.060 and you have
00:40:04.400 amazing technology
00:40:05.560 at your grasp
00:40:06.420 and you have
00:40:06.860 central heating
00:40:07.520 and you have
00:40:07.920 you have plumbing
00:40:08.940 plumbing man
00:40:10.120 plumbing's a really
00:40:11.380 good thing
00:40:12.240 you know
00:40:12.800 and virtually
00:40:13.300 everybody has it
00:40:14.200 refrigeration
00:40:15.200 that's
00:40:15.900 you should
00:40:16.320 every morning
00:40:17.000 when you walk
00:40:17.540 into your kitchen
00:40:18.240 you should bow
00:40:19.360 before your refrigerator
00:40:20.540 I'm serious man
00:40:22.380 because that's
00:40:23.020 a major deal
00:40:24.320 you know
00:40:24.980 you can store
00:40:26.200 food in a refrigerator
00:40:27.600 and then you actually
00:40:28.720 have the food
00:40:29.520 to store
00:40:30.200 and you know
00:40:30.960 you don't notice that
00:40:31.980 because
00:40:32.300 well that's
00:40:33.340 what's even more
00:40:34.060 miraculous
00:40:34.540 is that
00:40:35.080 that's so
00:40:35.680 taken for granted
00:40:36.680 that you don't
00:40:37.320 even notice it
00:40:38.280 and so
00:40:39.160 there's no gratitude
00:40:40.260 in that
00:40:40.900 in that view
00:40:42.060 of our culture
00:40:43.280 and it's not like
00:40:44.560 it's not flawed
00:40:45.640 I mean
00:40:46.180 human history
00:40:47.060 is an absolute
00:40:47.960 bloody nightmare
00:40:48.940 there's no doubt
00:40:49.920 about it
00:40:50.340 and there's no
00:40:51.280 culture that you
00:40:52.660 can
00:40:52.900 whose history
00:40:54.100 you can investigate
00:40:54.980 without just
00:40:55.680 shuddering
00:40:56.580 at what it means
00:40:57.660 to be a human being
00:40:58.780 it's so bloody
00:41:00.460 brutal
00:41:00.920 but you know
00:41:02.360 at least
00:41:02.880 it seems to me
00:41:03.780 that we've
00:41:04.300 struggled forward
00:41:05.600 to some degree
00:41:06.880 modifying misery
00:41:09.440 and suffering
00:41:10.140 to some degree
00:41:11.180 and that we're
00:41:11.580 actually getting
00:41:12.120 better and better
00:41:12.780 at that
00:41:13.260 and so some
00:41:14.200 gratitude for that
00:41:15.120 is clearly in order
00:41:16.600 and the idea
00:41:17.440 that fundamentally
00:41:18.560 what we have
00:41:19.260 is a tyrannical
00:41:20.220 patriarchy
00:41:20.840 is absolutely
00:41:21.920 abhorrent
00:41:22.640 message
00:41:24.140 in my estimation
00:41:25.460 and then
00:41:26.240 with regards
00:41:27.700 to these young men
00:41:28.680 so back to the
00:41:29.780 crisis of masculinity
00:41:31.020 I tried to put it
00:41:32.740 into some
00:41:33.280 historical context
00:41:34.360 so there is a
00:41:35.920 there is a crisis
00:41:36.900 of sorts
00:41:37.780 and I would say
00:41:38.500 it's more of a
00:41:39.020 psychological crisis
00:41:40.120 than anything else
00:41:41.040 that doesn't mean
00:41:41.940 it's trivial
00:41:42.600 one of the guys
00:41:45.040 I was talking to
00:41:45.820 today
00:41:46.160 this was a good
00:41:46.960 he made a good
00:41:47.660 comment
00:41:47.980 he remembered
00:41:48.620 that when he was
00:41:49.700 a kid
00:41:50.020 he was sitting down
00:41:50.840 reading a picture book
00:41:51.900 looking at a picture book
00:41:53.100 when he was very young
00:41:53.960 and his dad
00:41:54.500 took the picture book
00:41:55.860 out of his hand
00:41:56.600 and cuffed him
00:41:57.300 across the head
00:41:58.060 with it
00:41:58.380 and said
00:41:58.700 what the hell
00:41:59.420 do you think
00:41:59.840 you're doing
00:42:00.220 with that
00:42:00.700 and you can imagine
00:42:02.080 what would motivate that
00:42:03.280 like maybe his father
00:42:04.680 hadn't been educated
00:42:06.240 very well
00:42:06.820 or maybe wasn't
00:42:07.640 very prone
00:42:09.340 to education
00:42:10.180 and maybe he had been
00:42:11.220 harshly treated
00:42:11.940 by teachers
00:42:12.660 and maybe he became
00:42:13.780 very skeptical
00:42:14.500 about any kind
00:42:15.340 of intellectual endeavor
00:42:16.380 and was extraordinarily
00:42:17.320 angry about that
00:42:18.420 because of the
00:42:19.260 opportunities
00:42:19.820 that had been
00:42:20.440 denied to him
00:42:21.220 and so he decided
00:42:22.300 that he was going
00:42:22.900 to hate that entire
00:42:24.120 end of the enterprise
00:42:25.460 or maybe he was
00:42:27.060 jealous of his son
00:42:28.060 because he showed
00:42:29.640 some signs
00:42:30.400 that that might
00:42:31.140 be an aptitude
00:42:32.020 whatever
00:42:32.540 and that manifested
00:42:33.720 itself in that
00:42:34.500 little bit of
00:42:35.020 cruel behavior
00:42:35.760 not so little
00:42:37.080 and something
00:42:37.900 this gentleman
00:42:38.640 still remembered
00:42:39.480 25 years later
00:42:40.740 it's like well
00:42:41.680 I mentioned
00:42:43.060 when that came up
00:42:43.980 that the claim
00:42:45.440 by the philosopher
00:42:46.440 Friedrich Nietzsche
00:42:47.300 that if you really
00:42:47.980 want to punish someone
00:42:49.160 you really want
00:42:50.460 to hurt them
00:42:51.020 you think
00:42:51.300 well you want
00:42:52.260 to hurt someone
00:42:53.320 how do you do it
00:42:54.000 you don't wait
00:42:55.120 for them to do
00:42:55.720 something wrong
00:42:56.600 and then punish them
00:42:57.640 that's actually
00:42:58.360 kind of a relief
00:42:59.420 you know because
00:43:00.360 if your conscience
00:43:01.940 is reasonably
00:43:03.140 well constituted
00:43:04.580 and you do
00:43:05.420 something wrong
00:43:06.460 and you don't
00:43:07.420 get caught
00:43:08.060 then that actually
00:43:08.760 kind of destabilizes
00:43:09.900 your whole world
00:43:10.780 because you're
00:43:11.340 kind of hoping
00:43:11.780 the world is a
00:43:12.480 just place
00:43:13.360 at least to some
00:43:14.300 degree
00:43:14.640 and if you can
00:43:15.420 get away with
00:43:16.020 murder
00:43:16.500 let's say
00:43:17.440 well then
00:43:17.900 where's the
00:43:19.180 moral order
00:43:19.880 you know
00:43:20.420 and that's the
00:43:21.660 great theme of
00:43:22.360 Dostoevsky's
00:43:23.160 Crime and Punishment
00:43:23.940 there was a
00:43:24.540 British movie
00:43:25.060 made about
00:43:25.540 20 years ago
00:43:26.320 that dealt
00:43:28.100 with the same
00:43:28.580 theme called
00:43:29.140 Shallow Grave
00:43:30.120 which was an
00:43:30.640 absolutely terrific
00:43:31.580 movie which I
00:43:32.260 would highly
00:43:32.640 recommend
00:43:33.160 showing the
00:43:35.080 negative consequence
00:43:36.060 of doing something
00:43:37.060 criminal and not
00:43:37.980 getting caught
00:43:38.560 for it
00:43:39.020 well in any
00:43:40.140 case
00:43:40.460 punishing someone
00:43:41.660 for their crimes
00:43:42.520 it's like that's
00:43:43.220 like an act of
00:43:43.900 mercy
00:43:44.200 you really want
00:43:45.020 to hurt someone
00:43:45.520 you punish them
00:43:46.160 for their virtues
00:43:46.900 you wait until
00:43:48.280 they do something
00:43:48.860 good and then
00:43:50.000 you nail them
00:43:50.740 right then and
00:43:51.400 there and that's
00:43:52.500 pain
00:43:52.920 that's for sure
00:43:53.600 and that's what I
00:43:54.860 see as the
00:43:55.600 crisis of
00:43:56.700 masculinity
00:43:57.400 and it's not a
00:43:58.480 crisis of
00:43:59.000 masculinity because
00:43:59.840 it hurts women
00:44:00.520 just as much
00:44:01.280 because it turns
00:44:02.200 out that women
00:44:02.760 need men and
00:44:03.900 men need women
00:44:04.820 and that's why
00:44:05.760 there are men
00:44:06.260 and women
00:44:06.680 you know the
00:44:07.320 whole human race
00:44:08.140 is actually
00:44:08.620 well God
00:44:10.420 it's of course
00:44:11.880 you know
00:44:12.260 we're the same
00:44:14.540 creatures
00:44:15.300 we've been
00:44:17.360 cooperating together
00:44:18.700 culturally and
00:44:20.260 biologically for
00:44:21.260 well ever since
00:44:22.180 sex itself was
00:44:23.280 invented which is
00:44:24.200 hundreds of
00:44:24.860 millions of
00:44:25.400 years ago
00:44:25.920 to think of us
00:44:26.820 as separate in
00:44:27.740 some sense in
00:44:28.800 our interests
00:44:29.540 except in the
00:44:30.340 most trivial ways
00:44:31.400 is a very shallow
00:44:32.540 way of looking at
00:44:33.360 the world and so
00:44:34.000 there can't be a
00:44:34.880 crisis of
00:44:35.680 masculinity without
00:44:36.860 there being a
00:44:37.460 corresponding crisis
00:44:38.940 of femininity
00:44:39.900 here's one way it's
00:44:41.220 manifested
00:44:41.880 the Pew Research
00:44:44.380 Foundation has been
00:44:45.880 tracking the desire
00:44:47.380 of young women to
00:44:48.400 enter into stable
00:44:49.600 long-term monogamous
00:44:51.300 relationships
00:44:52.060 that's that enforced
00:44:53.440 monogamy thing
00:44:54.500 that Dave Rubin was
00:44:55.660 talking about
00:44:56.260 marriage for lack
00:44:57.700 of a better word
00:44:58.480 and the desire for
00:44:59.840 marriage among young
00:45:00.780 women has been going
00:45:01.640 up precipitously over
00:45:03.140 the last 25 years
00:45:04.500 at the same time
00:45:05.820 that the desire for
00:45:06.660 marriage has been
00:45:07.260 going down
00:45:08.320 precipitously among
00:45:10.020 young men
00:45:10.740 well that's not
00:45:12.000 what would you call
00:45:13.960 a recipe for
00:45:15.680 peace
00:45:16.460 productivity and
00:45:18.360 happiness
00:45:18.780 it's not good
00:45:19.820 and so there's no
00:45:20.380 such thing as a
00:45:21.120 crisis in masculinity
00:45:22.420 there might be a
00:45:23.880 crisis in relationship
00:45:25.300 between the genders
00:45:26.740 and there is to some
00:45:27.900 degree
00:45:28.220 and there's lots of
00:45:29.200 reasons for that
00:45:29.960 the birth control pill
00:45:31.280 probably being foremost
00:45:32.480 among them
00:45:33.180 but in any case
00:45:34.620 the crisis seems to me
00:45:36.280 to be
00:45:37.160 to the degree that it
00:45:38.180 exists
00:45:38.680 to be
00:45:39.620 fundamentally
00:45:40.720 associated with this
00:45:42.260 viewpoint
00:45:42.960 that I already
00:45:43.540 described
00:45:44.120 and that viewpoint
00:45:44.900 is that
00:45:45.560 fundamentally
00:45:46.720 the west
00:45:48.560 is a
00:45:50.440 patriarchal
00:45:51.720 tyranny
00:45:52.180 okay
00:45:52.880 and so there are
00:45:53.660 implications of that
00:45:55.240 and that's like
00:45:55.780 that's the axiomatic
00:45:57.340 view of the radical
00:45:58.560 left as far as I can
00:45:59.780 tell
00:46:00.020 and the feminist
00:46:01.440 variant of that
00:46:02.200 but more particularly
00:46:03.060 the radical left
00:46:04.040 and by the way
00:46:06.300 that's a view
00:46:06.960 held by a very small
00:46:07.980 minority of people
00:46:08.840 much smaller
00:46:10.220 than
00:46:10.780 was thought
00:46:12.220 there was an article
00:46:13.240 last month
00:46:14.800 in the
00:46:15.120 Atlantic Monthly
00:46:16.220 last week
00:46:16.820 reviewing a new
00:46:18.440 political science study
00:46:19.460 looking at
00:46:20.060 political polarization
00:46:21.140 and viewpoints
00:46:21.940 across the US
00:46:22.800 I suspect it's
00:46:24.040 somewhat similar
00:46:24.600 in Britain
00:46:24.960 it would be
00:46:25.420 in Canada as well
00:46:26.320 showing that
00:46:27.220 about 8% of people
00:46:28.900 held radical
00:46:29.700 leftist viewpoints
00:46:30.780 and a smaller
00:46:31.660 percentage
00:46:32.120 held radical
00:46:33.200 right wing viewpoints
00:46:34.400 so it's a small
00:46:35.400 minority on both ends
00:46:36.440 that are the radicals
00:46:37.340 and then
00:46:37.620 they described
00:46:38.400 everybody in the middle
00:46:39.260 as the
00:46:39.760 what would you call it
00:46:40.760 confused and relatively
00:46:42.520 silent majority
00:46:43.860 sick to death
00:46:45.480 of the polarization
00:46:46.420 and
00:46:48.440 then they also
00:46:49.700 asked
00:46:50.480 the
00:46:51.660 polling group
00:46:53.480 what they thought
00:46:55.640 about political
00:46:56.320 correctness
00:46:57.000 and this was so cool
00:46:58.060 it's so comical
00:46:59.540 it's so deeply comical
00:47:00.800 first of all
00:47:01.900 on average
00:47:03.160 about 80%
00:47:04.240 of Americans
00:47:05.240 believed that
00:47:06.200 political correctness
00:47:07.340 had gone too far
00:47:08.260 and so that's a lot
00:47:09.720 you know because 10%
00:47:11.060 of the people
00:47:11.820 didn't understand
00:47:12.780 the question
00:47:13.380 so 80%
00:47:16.020 is a lot
00:47:16.700 but they also
00:47:18.220 broke it down
00:47:18.960 by race
00:47:20.260 and by age
00:47:21.140 and by gender
00:47:21.980 and so
00:47:23.180 here's what's
00:47:25.180 really funny
00:47:25.780 the
00:47:26.560 people who are
00:47:28.960 most likely
00:47:29.640 to think
00:47:30.260 that political
00:47:31.060 correctness
00:47:31.740 has gone too far
00:47:33.100 are those
00:47:34.580 who have been
00:47:35.520 termed so
00:47:36.560 abysmally
00:47:37.240 people of color
00:47:38.560 so it's the
00:47:39.940 beneficiaries
00:47:41.060 hypothetical
00:47:42.280 beneficiaries
00:47:43.100 of the politically
00:47:44.280 correct identity
00:47:45.180 politics culture
00:47:46.120 who believe
00:47:47.040 most strongly
00:47:48.260 that it's gone
00:47:49.180 too far
00:47:49.620 it rises to
00:47:50.500 almost 90%
00:47:51.540 among American
00:47:52.440 Indians
00:47:52.920 so that's
00:47:54.100 deeply comical
00:47:55.340 deeply comical
00:47:56.500 and what's even
00:47:57.500 more comical
00:47:58.120 is that
00:47:58.620 the most
00:47:59.560 racially
00:48:00.400 homogenous
00:48:01.140 political group
00:48:02.200 in the entire
00:48:02.780 spectrum
00:48:03.280 is the
00:48:03.920 politically
00:48:04.280 correct
00:48:04.840 they're almost
00:48:05.700 all white
00:48:06.460 and not only
00:48:07.820 not only
00:48:08.880 are they
00:48:09.520 almost all
00:48:10.380 white
00:48:10.700 they're
00:48:11.200 disproportionately
00:48:12.000 likely to have
00:48:13.100 a graduate
00:48:13.640 degree
00:48:14.160 and to make
00:48:14.960 more than
00:48:15.300 a hundred thousand
00:48:16.020 dollars a year
00:48:16.820 and so
00:48:17.800 okay
00:48:18.200 and so this is
00:48:18.820 what I think
00:48:19.280 about that
00:48:19.880 so a couple
00:48:20.660 of things
00:48:20.960 the first thing
00:48:21.560 is
00:48:21.760 here's what
00:48:23.020 you want
00:48:23.560 if you want
00:48:24.060 to have your
00:48:24.520 cake
00:48:24.860 and eat it
00:48:25.460 too
00:48:25.780 okay
00:48:26.320 because just
00:48:26.900 having your
00:48:27.380 cake isn't
00:48:27.920 good enough
00:48:28.340 for you
00:48:28.760 and neither
00:48:29.420 is eating
00:48:29.880 it
00:48:30.040 you want
00:48:30.500 both
00:48:31.040 and so
00:48:31.740 what you
00:48:32.060 want to do
00:48:32.500 is you want
00:48:32.940 to be part
00:48:33.800 of the patriarchal
00:48:35.020 elite
00:48:35.460 so let's
00:48:36.140 define that
00:48:36.800 I hate to
00:48:38.140 define it
00:48:38.600 this way
00:48:38.980 but we're
00:48:39.460 going to
00:48:39.640 play the
00:48:40.020 game
00:48:40.320 well you're
00:48:41.000 white
00:48:41.360 you're rich
00:48:43.780 and you're
00:48:45.100 highly educated
00:48:46.240 okay so that
00:48:47.040 really makes
00:48:47.720 you the
00:48:49.380 exemplar of
00:48:50.500 the tyrannical
00:48:51.200 patriarchy
00:48:51.840 now maybe if
00:48:52.780 you're female
00:48:53.220 it doesn't
00:48:53.800 but I can't
00:48:54.420 tell like
00:48:54.920 if you're a
00:48:55.640 successful female
00:48:56.720 in the patriarchal
00:48:58.480 tyranny
00:48:58.880 does that make
00:49:00.160 you a patriarchal
00:49:01.040 tyrant
00:49:01.420 or not
00:49:02.280 I don't know
00:49:03.580 I haven't been
00:49:04.160 able to sort
00:49:04.740 that out
00:49:05.280 so it seems
00:49:06.600 to me
00:49:07.000 that the answer
00:49:08.480 is probably
00:49:09.100 yes if it's
00:49:10.080 the hierarchical
00:49:10.900 structure that's
00:49:11.600 the problem
00:49:12.200 unless it's
00:49:13.040 just the
00:49:13.460 problem that
00:49:14.080 it's men
00:49:14.840 but that doesn't
00:49:15.840 make any sense
00:49:16.540 because if a
00:49:17.480 man and a
00:49:17.920 woman are
00:49:18.240 acting the
00:49:18.760 same way
00:49:19.420 in the same
00:49:20.400 structure
00:49:20.900 then it seems
00:49:21.580 to be the
00:49:21.980 structure not
00:49:22.680 the gender
00:49:23.220 but well
00:49:24.540 but logical
00:49:25.260 consistency and
00:49:26.200 coherence isn't
00:49:26.920 actually part and
00:49:27.940 parcel of the
00:49:29.080 postmodern ethos
00:49:30.480 so those sorts
00:49:31.980 of questions
00:49:32.460 never get asked
00:49:33.440 let alone
00:49:34.180 get addressed
00:49:35.140 so okay
00:49:36.220 so now
00:49:36.820 you're rich
00:49:37.760 and you're white
00:49:38.400 and you're
00:49:39.220 let's say
00:49:39.700 educated beyond
00:49:40.820 your intelligence
00:49:41.660 because I think
00:49:42.360 that's the right
00:49:42.940 way of formulating
00:49:44.140 it and you've
00:49:45.260 decided that
00:49:46.100 that's not good
00:49:47.900 enough for you
00:49:48.500 it isn't good
00:49:49.260 enough for you
00:49:49.760 that you actually
00:49:50.660 occupy a position
00:49:52.040 we'll say of
00:49:52.860 power because
00:49:53.960 there's no
00:49:54.440 authority or
00:49:55.120 competence in
00:49:56.100 the identity
00:49:56.600 politics way of
00:49:57.620 looking in the
00:49:58.020 world it's just
00:49:58.480 power and so
00:49:59.600 you've got that
00:50:00.360 but that's not
00:50:01.100 good enough
00:50:01.620 it isn't
00:50:02.020 you're not
00:50:02.780 satisfied with
00:50:03.660 just being a
00:50:04.540 successful tyrant
00:50:05.720 although you'd
00:50:06.440 think that would
00:50:06.860 be enough for
00:50:07.440 you even if you
00:50:08.040 were narcissistic
00:50:08.860 it's oh no
00:50:09.680 you want another
00:50:10.820 crown
00:50:11.360 you want a crown
00:50:12.700 of the compassionate
00:50:13.740 so not only do you
00:50:15.000 want to be on top
00:50:15.860 of things
00:50:16.420 you want to be a
00:50:17.580 leader of all the
00:50:18.360 people who are at
00:50:18.980 the bottom of
00:50:19.640 things because then
00:50:20.680 you can have it
00:50:21.220 both ways
00:50:21.960 right you can have
00:50:23.200 your cake
00:50:23.920 you can have your
00:50:24.620 position of power
00:50:25.500 and all of that
00:50:26.500 and your position of
00:50:27.340 privilege using your
00:50:28.460 own damn terminology
00:50:29.520 and you can be
00:50:30.760 hyper moral champion
00:50:32.260 of the oppressed
00:50:33.160 it's like no
00:50:34.560 sorry you don't get
00:50:37.280 it both ways and
00:50:38.220 it's one of the
00:50:38.940 things that horrifies
00:50:39.920 me about watching
00:50:40.840 ivy league students
00:50:42.080 complain about the
00:50:43.320 one percent it's
00:50:44.360 like i taught at
00:50:45.240 harvard for six
00:50:46.000 years harvard was
00:50:47.300 an interesting place
00:50:48.240 they treated their
00:50:49.320 undergraduates so
00:50:50.240 well you can't
00:50:51.040 believe it and they
00:50:51.740 had their reasons
00:50:52.660 and one of the
00:50:53.500 reasons were they
00:50:54.540 knew and this was
00:50:55.220 back in 1990 that
00:50:57.340 forty percent of
00:50:58.300 their graduates would
00:50:59.100 have a million
00:50:59.640 dollars by the
00:51:00.380 time they were
00:51:00.880 forty so they
00:51:02.040 didn't have
00:51:02.500 undergraduates they
00:51:04.240 had baby
00:51:05.120 millionaires right
00:51:07.720 and that's how they
00:51:08.500 treated them and the
00:51:09.420 reason they treated
00:51:10.180 them that way well
00:51:11.220 was partly because i'm
00:51:12.400 not going to be
00:51:12.840 cynical about this is
00:51:13.780 because they'd
00:51:14.520 carefully selected
00:51:15.360 these students and
00:51:16.100 most of them were
00:51:16.780 truly outstanding
00:51:17.900 people really they
00:51:19.180 were and so you
00:51:20.640 know to the degree
00:51:21.420 that the the
00:51:22.720 university was wise
00:51:23.780 king and not
00:51:24.680 patriarchal tyrant
00:51:26.680 everyone was
00:51:27.800 working hard trying
00:51:28.620 to educate these
00:51:29.460 people as in the
00:51:31.000 best possible manner
00:51:31.980 but there was
00:51:32.860 something else which
00:51:33.780 was well we're
00:51:34.680 definitely going to
00:51:36.000 make this a
00:51:37.380 worthwhile experience
00:51:38.260 for you because in
00:51:39.300 ten years we're
00:51:40.080 going to come
00:51:40.360 knocking and say
00:51:41.260 well you know got
00:51:42.600 a spare hundred
00:51:43.360 thousand or so and
00:51:45.240 you're very likely to
00:51:46.160 say yes which is why
00:51:47.240 harvard i don't know
00:51:48.500 what their endowment
00:51:49.240 is now but back when
00:51:50.780 i was there it was
00:51:51.440 something like 50
00:51:52.240 billion dollars and
00:51:53.700 so that's very
00:51:54.440 effective and and
00:51:55.720 very and very
00:51:56.700 intelligent but then
00:51:57.940 you see these ivy
00:51:58.760 league students so
00:51:59.460 you go to an ivy
00:52:00.240 league school any
00:52:01.280 top tier university
00:52:02.500 for that matter i
00:52:03.600 don't care which one
00:52:04.300 it is it's like i
00:52:05.420 don't care how old
00:52:06.240 you are or what
00:52:07.260 your political
00:52:07.880 position is you are
00:52:09.200 now part of the
00:52:10.520 patriarchal tyranny
00:52:11.820 now you might not
00:52:12.960 you might be an
00:52:13.760 unsuccessful part but
00:52:16.080 that doesn't redound
00:52:17.000 to your credit but
00:52:18.840 you're certainly on
00:52:19.860 the track forward to
00:52:21.320 being that and the
00:52:22.200 fact that it's going
00:52:23.160 to be delayed for ten
00:52:24.340 years means nothing
00:52:25.680 and so to also take
00:52:27.560 to yourself the
00:52:28.820 moral stance of
00:52:30.080 advocate for the
00:52:31.300 oppressed whom you
00:52:32.540 whom you've already
00:52:33.680 dispossessed by the
00:52:35.440 mere fact of your
00:52:36.520 existence at that
00:52:37.580 institution is a form
00:52:39.360 of moral corruption
00:52:40.320 that's really quite
00:52:41.500 incomprehensible and
00:52:42.840 one would you say
00:52:44.100 what would you say
00:52:44.800 one um encouraged by
00:52:47.740 any number of
00:52:49.460 ideologically corrupt
00:52:51.200 resentful and bitterly
00:52:53.280 underpaid sociology
00:52:54.960 professors for example
00:52:56.940 i've often thought that
00:52:59.140 if you wanted to
00:53:00.020 eradicate political
00:53:01.500 correctness among
00:53:02.280 sociology professors all
00:53:03.900 you'd have to do is
00:53:05.000 quadruple their pay and
00:53:07.040 it would probably be
00:53:07.940 worth it because a
00:53:09.020 tremendous amount of
00:53:09.900 it i've seen the
00:53:10.560 antipathy that
00:53:11.860 university professors
00:53:12.840 has for business
00:53:14.100 people and vice versa
00:53:15.360 by the way because i've
00:53:16.780 worked in both domains
00:53:17.700 and the the university
00:53:19.820 professors are often
00:53:20.820 extremely annoyed although
00:53:22.380 they won't admit it that
00:53:24.060 with their level of
00:53:25.260 intelligence which
00:53:26.160 admittedly is often
00:53:27.340 very high had they
00:53:28.840 been working in the
00:53:29.640 private world they'd be
00:53:30.820 making three four ten
00:53:32.220 times as much money and
00:53:33.820 so their attitude to
00:53:34.760 that is well there must
00:53:35.900 be something corrupt
00:53:36.760 about all those other
00:53:37.620 people that are making
00:53:38.420 that money rather than
00:53:39.740 well i made my choice i
00:53:41.600 have a very secure job i
00:53:43.000 have a tremendous amount
00:53:43.880 of freedom right because
00:53:45.200 as a university professor
00:53:46.320 you have a very optimal
00:53:47.680 balance of security and
00:53:49.620 freedom it's quite unique
00:53:51.100 you're the most protected
00:53:52.420 human being that's ever
00:53:53.800 existed on the entire
00:53:55.220 planet you know and
00:53:56.700 you're supposed to and
00:53:58.000 you're supposed to work
00:53:58.920 diligently what would you
00:54:00.420 say in gratitude for
00:54:01.620 that and many do but not
00:54:03.140 all and to be bitter about
00:54:05.800 the fact that you know
00:54:06.880 that isn't doesn't also
00:54:08.300 accompany the almost
00:54:09.900 unlimited capacity for
00:54:11.420 material success that's
00:54:12.700 characteristic of the
00:54:13.560 business world strikes me
00:54:14.980 as slightly ingenuous just
00:54:16.840 to put it mildly but to
00:54:19.500 see these these ivy league
00:54:21.840 students supported in
00:54:23.640 their endeavor to play
00:54:24.860 both games simultaneously
00:54:26.680 is something that's just
00:54:27.980 beyond comprehension to
00:54:30.000 me okay so back to the
00:54:31.620 young men and i said well
00:54:33.660 you best punish people for
00:54:35.040 their virtues so let's walk
00:54:36.260 this through um oh oh
00:54:38.500 yes i i wanted to finish
00:54:40.520 with the demographics that's
00:54:41.960 right so the atlantic monthly
00:54:43.220 article so it's eight
00:54:44.500 percent radical leftist
00:54:46.420 viewpoint identity politics
00:54:48.060 types thirty percent of
00:54:50.520 those people think political
00:54:51.920 correctness has gone too far
00:54:53.400 so that's down to five
00:54:55.540 percent who don't so that's
00:54:57.120 like one in twenty and
00:54:58.360 that's not very many people
00:54:59.460 they obviously have a
00:55:00.600 disproportionate impact but
00:55:02.000 here's what's so absolutely
00:55:03.180 comical it's so completely
00:55:04.780 and utterly bizarre and
00:55:06.660 shows you what sort of
00:55:07.340 upside down political world
00:55:08.860 we live in so here's the
00:55:10.060 reality of the situation the
00:55:12.820 very people who decry the
00:55:15.040 patriarchal structure the
00:55:16.980 tyrannical patriarchal
00:55:18.000 structure and its neo
00:55:19.440 colonial attitudes let's say
00:55:21.700 and it's uh are those who
00:55:25.620 are foisting a neo
00:55:27.980 colonial doctrine of
00:55:29.820 victimization on racial
00:55:32.520 minorities that do not match
00:55:34.940 their demographic despite the
00:55:37.440 fact that those people do not
00:55:39.680 want that to happen now how can
00:55:42.080 anything be more comical than
00:55:43.920 that it's you couldn't make
00:55:45.600 that up it's like a deli
00:55:46.980 painting or a monty python
00:55:48.840 sketch from the life of brian
00:55:50.840 you know so so that was that
00:55:53.940 was gratifying to see and very
00:55:56.140 fun to read and entertaining to
00:55:58.040 think through and all of that
00:55:59.780 okay so back to the patriarchal
00:56:02.100 tyranny narrative and the crisis
00:56:03.700 of young men all right so well
00:56:05.940 what's the crisis well this is
00:56:08.020 what it is and i talked to these
00:56:09.660 young guys today about this it's
00:56:11.220 like well what do young men need
00:56:13.580 well they don't really need
00:56:14.440 help it's not the right way of
00:56:17.440 thinking about it because help
00:56:18.700 sounds like look let's say you
00:56:22.920 work in a nursing home okay and
00:56:25.320 and and you need to work in
00:56:27.400 nursing homes because they're
00:56:30.080 necessary and people get old and
00:56:32.060 so then you say well are you
00:56:33.060 offering them help and you have
00:56:36.940 to be precise about your words
00:56:38.560 that's rule 10 i said i would
00:56:40.300 mention rule 10 you have to be
00:56:42.200 precise about your words well is
00:56:44.180 it help you're offering in a
00:56:45.500 nursing home it's it's no it's
00:56:47.700 it's it's it's you're offering
00:56:49.240 what's necessary if you're
00:56:50.940 sensible you know to forestall
00:56:53.140 exceptional suffering and misery
00:56:55.220 and maybe you're doing that in
00:56:56.620 part because you know you're
00:56:57.900 going to get old and so it's
00:56:59.900 definitely the case that the way
00:57:01.440 you treat old people now is the
00:57:04.960 way you're going to be treated so
00:57:07.000 that chicken will definitely come
00:57:08.580 home to roost and so it's part of
00:57:10.600 the intergenerational compact let's
00:57:12.940 say but then again there's a rule
00:57:14.600 if you're in a nursing home it's the
00:57:16.320 same rule that you should use when
00:57:17.720 you're dealing with your own
00:57:18.680 children and that's partly don't
00:57:20.900 bother children when you're
00:57:21.960 skateboarding don't do anything for
00:57:24.940 the inhabitants of the old folks
00:57:27.120 home that they can do for
00:57:28.300 themselves don't interfere with
00:57:30.840 their autonomy leave them to
00:57:33.340 practice what self-care they can
00:57:36.180 practice let them maintain their
00:57:38.160 ability and their dignity and that's
00:57:40.040 going to be one of the things you
00:57:41.620 can do to aid them in their
00:57:44.160 transition through old age and
00:57:45.960 that's not exactly help it's it's
00:57:48.420 judicious interaction you know it's
00:57:51.020 like well lend a hand when that's
00:57:52.600 necessary but I'll stand back and let
00:57:55.260 you struggle forward as an
00:57:56.740 autonomous being to the degree that
00:57:58.400 that's possible just like I will if
00:58:00.560 you're my child because what you
00:58:02.560 should do if you have a child and and
00:58:05.380 you see them taking necessary risks
00:58:07.580 is encourage them for that it's like
00:58:09.980 kid man the life's rough get ready and
00:58:14.380 I'm not going to be able to protect
00:58:15.800 you I'll do my best when you're this
00:58:17.340 tall and I can kind of put a wall
00:58:19.000 around you and hypothetically you know
00:58:21.320 protect you but soon with any luck
00:58:24.000 you're not even going to allow me to do
00:58:25.900 that right you're going to be the 13
00:58:27.440 year old gang member who says hey
00:58:28.960 sorry mom I'm out of here I'm going to
00:58:32.080 go join my idiot peers and enter the
00:58:34.200 world you know and and cause a certain
00:58:35.940 amount of trouble and as a mother
00:58:37.500 that's there's going to be grief in
00:58:39.180 that but it's also a sign of success
00:58:41.060 the old psychoanalysts they always said
00:58:43.260 the good mother fails right if your
00:58:46.820 13 year old is still in your basement
00:58:48.600 that's just not success even if the
00:58:51.140 alternative to that is that he's out
00:58:52.600 causing a certain amount of trouble
00:58:54.040 well life is a certain amount of
00:58:55.800 trouble you know and you have to
00:58:57.220 experiment with a certain amount of
00:58:59.240 trouble to find your way well so okay
00:59:03.420 so back to back to the crisis of
00:59:06.660 masculinity yet again well so we live in
00:59:10.740 a patriarchal tyranny okay well who's
00:59:13.740 responsible for that well men and how
00:59:17.240 long have they been responsible for that
00:59:19.140 well forever now of course it's not true
00:59:22.300 because the truth of the matter is 120
00:59:25.160 years ago everybody was bloody dirt
00:59:27.260 poor and barely scrabbling to stay
00:59:28.960 alive and men and women bonded
00:59:30.860 together to the degree that they could
00:59:32.640 under their intense privation to
00:59:35.100 cooperate somewhat fractiously so that
00:59:37.900 we didn't die and that's the proper
00:59:40.280 narrative of history not a one-sided
00:59:42.900 oppression and also the insistence the
00:59:45.480 strange insistence what okay it's a
00:59:47.160 patriarchal tyranny what that mean
00:59:48.660 women had nothing to do with the
00:59:50.240 construction of our culture it's like
00:59:52.080 all you women you were just sitting
00:59:53.400 around being oppressed for like 10,000
00:59:55.360 years you didn't do anything useful at
00:59:57.200 all socially until like 1960 when
01:00:01.520 Jermaine Greer appeared on the scene and
01:00:04.960 all of a sudden you know women entered
01:00:07.480 the world it's like it's such it's such
01:00:13.880 absolute appalling rubbish and it wasn't
01:00:16.380 Jermaine Greer and the damn feminists
01:00:18.720 anyways it was the birth control pill period
01:00:21.960 because that emancipated women enough so
01:00:24.400 that they could participate much more not
01:00:26.540 period there was other things well it was
01:00:31.100 the primary mover you know sanitation
01:00:33.920 helped sanitary napkins helped tampons
01:00:37.680 helped all of that those base level
01:00:40.320 technological innovations domestic equipment
01:00:43.840 helped you know it used to take a long
01:00:46.140 time to wash clothes in the creek you
01:00:49.380 don't have to do that anymore and so
01:00:51.420 there's time freed up and you have a
01:00:54.460 certain amount of voluntary control over
01:00:56.220 your reproductive functions these are
01:00:57.900 biological revolutions that's what's
01:01:00.180 enabling women to move forward in the
01:01:02.140 world and thank God for that we need all
01:01:04.140 the talented people we can possibly manage
01:01:06.060 but to think about the fact that that
01:01:08.220 hadn't occurred you know a hundred years
01:01:09.900 ago as a consequence of oppression by men
01:01:12.300 men it's like only in university could you
01:01:15.240 learn something that foolish and that
01:01:17.720 well articulated so okay so now you've
01:01:21.220 got men and we know what men are like
01:01:22.940 they're patriarchal tyrants so what are
01:01:25.860 boys like well that's obvious they're baby
01:01:29.700 patriarchal tyrants in training and so
01:01:33.420 then what do you see them doing well you
01:01:35.400 see them playing boisterously and you see
01:01:37.380 them putting up their hand assertively and
01:01:39.020 you see them talking out of turn and and
01:01:41.700 doing the assertive dominant masculine
01:01:44.520 things that a certain proportion of
01:01:46.400 young boys do and you don't think oh great
01:01:49.400 you know there's a force that can be
01:01:51.320 harnessed for good in the world if we can
01:01:53.300 socialize it properly which is precisely
01:01:55.740 what you do for example if you take young
01:01:57.620 men and you produce a boxing arena for
01:02:00.720 them so that they can get the hell off the
01:02:02.380 street and they can meet some older guys
01:02:04.020 and they can get a little disciplined in
01:02:06.040 their ability to express aggression and
01:02:08.320 they can start to see a higher order good
01:02:11.380 than what's offered to them by their their
01:02:14.840 gang which is better than nothing by the
01:02:16.900 way right to show them a pathway for the
01:02:20.040 future that's worth sacrificing for that's
01:02:22.560 what you do that's education you don't say
01:02:24.900 oh well all that manifestation of masculine
01:02:27.580 energy is associated with nothing but the
01:02:30.440 power that our entire tyrannical patriarchal
01:02:32.980 structure is based on and then either damn it
01:02:35.700 with faint praise which is bad enough or
01:02:38.620 positively discourage it out of existence
01:02:41.180 it's like what the hell good is that going
01:02:43.440 to be exactly what do we want what do we
01:02:45.420 want women what do we want a generation of
01:02:47.640 useless men is that the idea well maybe
01:02:50.460 they'll be harmless like your neutered cat
01:02:53.400 that little overweight that warms itself on
01:02:56.080 your television set you know it's like well
01:02:58.740 you know he's not good for much but if i feed
01:03:01.520 him a bit he doesn't do any damage it's
01:03:03.720 like hey there's a mate for you it's like and
01:03:07.500 the women i know that are worth their salt they
01:03:09.540 want someone to contend with and this is quite
01:03:11.980 clear if you and this is biology and so forgive me for expressing some truths
01:03:17.560 about biology i know that that's damn near illegal now and likely soon will be
01:03:22.320 that um women across the world including in egalitarian societies by the way tend to
01:03:30.600 mate across and up hierarchies and so what they do is they look for men who
01:03:36.360 occupy positions of authority and competence that are above theirs well why okay let's think
01:03:44.240 this through it's not that complicated well the first thing is well why not right why not look
01:03:51.800 look look let's say you're a woman and you you have to you have to you have to figure out i got to
01:03:56.160 find a man it's like oh my god that's a horrible problem it's like and then look at all those men
01:04:02.060 how am i going to sort through them well i don't know how about if i put them in groups and let
01:04:08.140 them fight and the ones that come on top well we'll just call them the best men
01:04:12.320 well that's a good strategy it's like well it's the men
01:04:16.060 who are making the hierarchies at least in part and
01:04:20.140 some men rise to the top of them and if the hierarchy is worthwhile then
01:04:23.980 those men are worthwhile at least by the judgment of other men and
01:04:28.000 how else are you going to judge men except by the judgment of other men
01:04:31.320 and so the women let the men sort themselves into hierarchies and then they peel from the top
01:04:36.700 down and that is exactly what they do and you think well why is that well how about
01:04:41.200 because they're smart how would that be how about because that's a really good strategy now
01:04:46.160 there's a bit of a downside because that might be might mean that there's a hierarchical imbalance
01:04:51.580 in the relationship but here's the payoff for that well why do you select a partner well partly
01:04:58.520 partly large part if you want the whole race to survive is because well you want to have kids
01:05:05.200 and so what's going to happen when you have kids if you're a female well a couple of things is first
01:05:11.220 of all you're going to take an economic hit so you know the vaunted wage gap it's like it's not a gap
01:05:17.960 between men and women it's a gap between mothers and everyone else fundamentally and we should get that
01:05:23.800 straight and so and it's and the reason there's the gap is because it's actually really expensive to
01:05:28.740 have children and we don't know what to do about that it's like first of all well they're expensive
01:05:33.600 you know you have to buy things for them you have to have room for them you have to take care of them
01:05:38.340 and then they take you out of your life especially the first few years especially the first year it's
01:05:44.360 like man that's a full-time job a new baby the whole it's more than a full-time job it's like 80
01:05:49.980 hours a week the first year and then and then even right up to the age of four or five when they
01:05:55.980 enter school it's tremendous amount of effort to regulate the behavior of small children especially
01:06:01.220 they have more than one of them you might think well you could hire another woman to do it but
01:06:05.200 that doesn't really solve the problem it doesn't make the expense go away so we don't know what to
01:06:09.420 do with the fact that children are expensive you could say well we could pay mothers to take care of
01:06:14.680 them but the problem with that is that the children aren't worth anything till 25 years later well
01:06:19.980 they're not economically so we don't know we don't have a mechanism for figuring out how to
01:06:25.820 monetize an investment that has that much delay if you're a bloody venture capitalist you know you
01:06:31.620 want a 10 to 1 return on your investment within five years it's like good luck with that with a kid
01:06:36.620 you know even if you even if you sell the kid that's not going to work
01:06:40.780 so so the other thing that women do is well they know they're going to take the primary hit and
01:06:49.280 there's a couple of reasons for that and one is well women are actually better at taking care of
01:06:53.660 infants i mean you know below the first year than men and and there and and it's also not it seems
01:07:00.160 not as terrifying to women you know when when my wife and i decided to have kids i thought it through
01:07:05.340 we were quite young by modern standards and i wasn't fully in what would you say placed in my
01:07:12.040 career and i thought okay she wants to have a baby it's like well what about that i said well jesus i
01:07:16.900 don't know what i'm going to do about that first year because i don't really know what to do with
01:07:20.100 infants that well and i mean i'd worked in daycare and i really liked kids and i said okay look look
01:07:24.880 no problem you can have a baby but look you gotta more or less take care of that baby the first year
01:07:29.740 and i'll try to take care of you and we'll see how that goes and it's not like i ignored the damn baby
01:07:34.440 you know but i didn't breastfeed it you know and i didn't want to so and i did help her and i i tried
01:07:42.200 to see when she was too tired and then i'd step in and all that and and but i also facilitated let's
01:07:48.720 say or at least didn't interfere with that tight bond that's produced between mother and infant and
01:07:52.960 you know one of the things we lie to young women about is because we tell them oh career is going
01:07:57.920 to be everything for you it's like no that's a lie first of all most people don't have careers
01:08:03.840 they have jobs and those aren't the same thing and second even most people who have careers find that
01:08:09.680 when they have a family especially when they have children that they end up liking their children a
01:08:14.100 hell of a lot more than they thought they would i had one lawyer i used to work with female lawyer
01:08:19.040 tough cookie man and unbelievably competent and she said well you know when i was when i was going for
01:08:25.880 partnership i always thought the children were just sort of they were just sort of decorative you know
01:08:30.340 because she let's say suppressed her maternal attitude until it came out in full force at around 29 which
01:08:36.340 is you know absolutely typical and then she had a baby and it was like it was just a shock to her
01:08:42.400 it was like i really love this baby it's like you know because the thing about a baby that's so weird
01:08:48.380 and i think this is especially true for mothers is you know you see a baby on the subway and you think
01:08:53.020 oh there's a baby and it's sort of like a generic baby and and like because you just can't get too
01:09:00.280 involved with every baby that comes along first of all people think you're peculiar and that's not good
01:09:05.300 and second well you you just can't take on that responsibility right so you just you don't really
01:09:11.680 see the baby you just see your kind of one-dimensional animated version of the baby and you glance and you
01:09:19.220 walk away but when you have a child it's like no no you get the whole creature right there like that's a
01:09:24.200 real person right from the beginning and it's your real person and all of a sudden it's someone that
01:09:29.240 you're as close to or closer than anyone you've ever been close to in your whole life and if that
01:09:37.220 doesn't change you well then there's something wrong something's gone wrong and so then the
01:09:42.420 priorities shift and as they should shift and that doesn't mean we know how to balance that with like
01:09:47.760 long-term career we don't because it's complicated but you know women end up bearing the primary
01:09:55.400 responsibility for extraordinarily dependent infants and so they tend to look for men who can provide
01:10:00.880 the resources to balance that out to some degree so they're looking at productivity and generosity
01:10:07.540 let's say as markers for a suitable mate now that's not the only thing there's other elements that go
01:10:13.240 into mate choice but those are two very important things and those are those are relevant and important
01:10:18.000 and so well what do you want to do well you want to encourage young men to what to grow the hell up
01:10:25.060 right to take on responsibility and so one of the things i talked to these young guys
01:10:31.360 tonight today about was what where they'd found the meaning in their life and they all said well it was
01:10:37.640 a consequence of taking on more responsibility the two young boxers they were only 18 you know one of
01:10:43.520 them really talked about the fact that he had disciplined himself and that he wanted to go to college he
01:10:48.340 ended up wanting to go to college and it was a boxing college and there's like only four of them in the
01:10:52.300 country and he hadn't been doing so well academically but he wanted to go to the damn boxing college
01:10:56.980 because he had a talent and it was being encouraged by some older guys around him and you know he was
01:11:02.040 having some attention paid to him so he buckled the hell down and did the best he'd ever done
01:11:06.420 academically and got into the college it's like good work man way to be and then the other kid
01:11:12.140 he said well he'd started boxing and that it kind of toughened him up and made him more confident and
01:11:17.020 then he started teaching other young guys around him about how this worked and that really helped
01:11:21.900 him out because you know one of the ways that you can sort of determine if you're valuable and and you
01:11:27.180 are but the one of the ways you determine that is to see that reflected back to you by other people
01:11:32.860 and if you lend out a hand and like people love doing this this is another part about the rubbish about
01:11:38.600 the patriarchal tyranny i know lots of powerful men you know and most of them aren't powerful they're
01:11:44.580 bloody competent and that makes them powerful and one of the things they really like to do like
01:11:50.000 one of the things that's intrinsically rewarding about occupying a position in a hierarchy is that
01:11:55.540 you get to look around and some young people come along and you see wow that person's got potential
01:12:00.460 that person's got potential and that person's got potential and god i can open up a door for this
01:12:05.660 person and that'll help them develop and i can offer an opportunity to this person and that'll help
01:12:10.200 them develop and maybe you're lucky and you can do that with 12 people and you see these people
01:12:14.460 grow and expand under your tutelage and you don't take too much credit for it you think wow that's
01:12:20.300 it's so intrinsically rewarding to do that you think well that's not like two lines of coke on a naked
01:12:27.260 supermodel on your goddamn yacht you know it's it's much more fundamental it's much more profound and
01:12:33.480 it's much more realistic and lasting and it's a much more accurate reflection of the way things work
01:12:38.800 at least among reasonable people and so what you do is you encourage you encourage young boys
01:12:45.780 literally you don't help them you don't make them safe you don't bother them when they're skateboarding
01:12:51.800 you watch them take their risks and you stand back and you think yeah kid you're gonna bruise yourself
01:12:57.060 man you're gonna cut yourself you're maybe you're gonna break a damn arm but hopefully only once and
01:13:01.540 you'll smarten up a bit as a consequence of that but you know you're you're you're preparing yourself
01:13:06.300 because there's tough things coming down the pipeline in your life and there's people you're
01:13:11.300 gonna bloody well depend on you know and you better be there for them and you're gonna have to be tough
01:13:16.880 not safe give up safe what the hell safe life 100% fatal there's no safety the best you can do is to
01:13:27.420 confront that courageously and to pursue something that's deeply meaningful right that's rule seven do what
01:13:33.580 is meaningful and not what is expedient you look for meaning in your life you find that through
01:13:38.720 responsibility you put that up against the tragedy and the malevolence of existence right you grow up
01:13:45.280 responsible and respectable and awake and wise and you take your place in the world and you act as a
01:13:51.580 cornerstone for your damn civilization and that's what you encourage and the lack of that
01:13:58.100 that's the crisis of masculinity
01:14:00.420 i'll be right back thank you
01:14:19.300 these are some chairs they are they are they're some some weird uk thing happening here
01:14:36.240 you were funny tonight well thank you yeah you went from a comedian you mean purposefully funny
01:14:43.260 i don't know that's the best kind yeah i think you were purposely funny i hope so yeah yeah feeling
01:14:49.480 good huh yeah not too bad must be this manchester air going online without express vpn is like not
01:14:58.520 paying attention to the safety demonstration on a flight most of the time you'll probably be fine
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01:17:40.160 all right let's get to it in 50 years will students be referencing the joe rogan experience podcast
01:17:50.960 as reliable sources
01:18:01.660 well they are reliable sources i mean one of the things that's great about about the youtube media
01:18:12.380 explosion that you're part of is that they're not edited you know and and so they are reliable because
01:18:23.220 you get to see exactly what's happening and so that's a big plus and you know you and i have both
01:18:30.780 had this experience it's it's quite odd now for me increasingly odd to do network television
01:18:37.400 because i've done a lot of network television and i've done a lot of youtube and podcast interviews and
01:18:43.160 i'll tell you the to step into a television studio feels like stepping 30 years into the past
01:18:49.660 and the reason for that is that you just can't have a conversation with someone
01:18:55.460 in a tv studio it's very rare because everything's so tightly scripted and the person you're talking to
01:19:03.080 isn't a person they might as well be a simulacrum right there because they're not them they're the
01:19:09.240 voice of the show and so everything they do is scripted and so you have this conversation it is it's like
01:19:16.800 talking to a chatbot and not and not necessarily a very sophisticated one because you say something and
01:19:23.140 you expect that a person would carry that forward in a sort of melodic playful way and riff on it and
01:19:32.700 that isn't what happens as you say something and you get a kind of um not exactly a blank stare but
01:19:39.960 uh like i'm an attractive mannequin look that would be the right way of thinking about it and then they
01:19:45.820 ask whatever questions on the list it's like oh i see i guess none of what we just talked about had any
01:19:52.460 content and so you know be better just to provide pre-prepared answers to the pre-prepared questions
01:19:59.280 but the illusion is of a conversation whereas if you do a free-form interview like rogan it's like
01:20:06.760 you don't know what the hell is going to happen that's for sure and there's some real potential for
01:20:11.720 catastrophe there but whatever it is that's happening is it's it's honest in that everyone gets to see
01:20:20.900 all of it there's no a priori goal except let's try to have an interesting conversation and so
01:20:29.220 that is a reliable source so but god only knows what people will be referencing in 50 years i mean
01:20:36.680 jesus i don't even know what we'll be like in 50 years i've been watching the boston dynamics robots
01:20:41.500 there's some new videos have come out have you seen the everyone go look at the boston dynamics robots
01:20:47.100 everyone you got to see them they have one now god it's unbelievable it's this little thing about
01:20:52.780 the size of a dog weighs 35 pounds it can run around for an hour and a half on batteries they
01:20:58.000 had the damn thing dancing to and and twerking which is first time i've heard him say twerking
01:21:06.380 and it even it has an arm that kind of looks like a head and it can open doors and pick up cans and so
01:21:12.700 forth with it but it's so sophisticated now that it can do they call it chicken necking and so like
01:21:18.360 if a chicken this is true of all birds if if a chicken has its it holds its head up and then it
01:21:23.620 moves its body its head stays in the same place so it's sort of like this people kind of do the same
01:21:28.760 thing but you know we don't have such long necks so it's not as obvious this robot could do that
01:21:33.660 it could dance to music like really frenetically and hold its head in exactly the same position
01:21:38.700 go through doors they have one man a man-sized robot that can do backflips you can push it over
01:21:44.620 and it can get back up it's like that these robots they're coming fast and and and and we're making
01:21:51.260 our technology so spectacularly intelligent and god only knows what where we're going to be in 50 years
01:21:57.080 we better get ready because we're getting powerful man we better have our act together because it'll go
01:22:02.040 seriously wrong if we don't so i don't know what the hell people will be referencing in 50 years
01:22:06.960 as long as we're talking rogan next time i have you in studio will you smoke a blunt with me
01:22:13.120 only if you come to canada is it legal in california oh yeah it's now completely legal in canada
01:22:20.560 so that's good so now our completely inadequate prime minister can be stoned out of his gourd all the
01:22:27.680 time maybe that was the problem to begin with all right let's go political here recently a conservative
01:22:39.920 mp was forced to apologize for saying in the eu that the nazis were socialist were they socialist and
01:22:48.240 should the mp have apologized well they called themselves national socialists it's like yeah well
01:22:55.760 look it's it's complicated i'd actually thought about a research project to sort this out you
01:23:00.560 know because here's what you'd have to do to sort it out because it is complicated because um there
01:23:05.920 were the international socialists right and those were the russian communists essentially and there
01:23:10.560 were the national socialists and the national socialists were named in antithesis to the international
01:23:16.880 socialists and part of the reason the nazi movement emerged was as a response to the threat of
01:23:24.640 communist takeover in germany and that was a real threat because germany was in rough shape after
01:23:29.200 world war one i mean you think about it first of all there was all those brutalized men who'd spent
01:23:34.000 all those years in trenches and like that's not good for your mental health and you know they they were
01:23:38.880 they were in rough situation and then the treaty of versailles knocked germany down really hard and and
01:23:45.840 made the country labor under the necessity of reparations and so then they hyperinflated the
01:23:50.880 currency in the 1920s to blow out the debt and what that meant was like hyperinflation is really
01:23:56.480 hard on on good people right because you know the the idea is well you should save some money
01:24:04.400 you know that that's sensible forego gratification um and and and save for the future and and but then
01:24:12.400 if hyperinflation comes along it wipes out your savings and so it wipes out the savings of the
01:24:16.560 people who played the game most honestly and it rewards everybody who spent every cent they had
01:24:22.800 you know so that was depressing i mean you just can't imagine how depressing it would be to
01:24:27.760 you know to see your hard earned pension fund just completely evaporate and they had they had
01:24:34.480 hyperinflation of a magnitude that that maybe it was seen in zimbabwe i think zimbabwe had it worse but
01:24:40.560 it was terrible and so the national national socialism emerged and there was a lot of the policies that
01:24:47.440 were socialist not only in look but also in intent and in advertising so there's a strong socialist bent
01:24:55.920 but what kind of makes it right-wing in some sense is that it was also an ethno-nationalist movement and
01:25:02.400 it seems to me that one of the things that characterizes pathology on the right is over
01:25:09.920 enthusiastic identification with one restricted identity group so it would be ethnic or racial and
01:25:16.400 that was definitely a strong part of the platform of the national socialists that wasn't part of the
01:25:22.320 hypothetical doctrine of universal brotherhood that was put forward by the international socialists
01:25:27.840 so it was an amalgam now i think the way to sort this out and i would love to do this i'd even do
01:25:33.120 it at a university if it wasn't so difficult to do research at universities now um all you'd have to
01:25:40.000 do is take all the imagine you took a set a random set of doctrines from from the soviet union you know
01:25:46.720 policies and transform them so that they were made up to date but kept the the the meaning intact and
01:25:54.240 then do the parallel with the nazi doctrines you know you would eliminate the ones that would
01:25:59.520 this would be a bit tricky that would make it obvious that it was nazis and that would make
01:26:03.440 it a bit tricky and then what you do is make a questionnaire out of both and then you'd administer
01:26:09.280 the questionnaire to people who have identified political belief left or right and you'd see
01:26:13.840 who agreed most with what and if it turned out that the right-wingers were more likely to agree with
01:26:19.520 the national national socialist policies then you could make a fairly strong claim that that
01:26:24.000 was primarily right-wing and if it was the lefties that agreed with say the international
01:26:28.640 socialists and the national socialists then you could say that it was primarily left and i think
01:26:33.680 that's i really think that's an experiment like that's an experiment that a survey that could be
01:26:38.720 done that should be done see one of the things that happened after the after the second world war was
01:26:45.760 that there was an insistence among social scientists took me like four decades to figure this out because
01:26:50.720 it's such a mess i had to do a tremendous amount of reading that insisted that there was only
01:26:56.800 authoritarianism on the right and that was the predominant view in the social sciences from 1947 1948 right
01:27:04.800 till probably 2005 2006 my students started to put together an authoritarian leftist measurement instrument
01:27:16.480 but nothing like that had ever been created because there was an insistence especially by the uh
01:27:21.200 the the the uh what the hell do you call them it was horkheimer and his group and and
01:27:29.600 it's named after a city in germany frankfurt group there was an insistence from them that
01:27:35.280 authoritarianism was only a right-wing phenomena and so then there was an attempt to paint what happened in
01:27:40.160 nazi germany as purely a right-wing movement and um and that was definitely part of the desire to
01:27:49.360 absolve the left and so so there's a lot of intellectual crookedness about that and it hasn't
01:27:55.280 been sorted out properly and that was actually one of the things that i was trying to do with my students
01:28:00.800 before i stopped being stopped working as a university professor like my my student christine brophy
01:28:08.240 who's working on a high school version of the future authoring program um that was her next
01:28:12.880 project was an authoritarian leftist measurement instrument we'd already made some good measurement
01:28:19.200 instruments for assessing conservatism and looking at its underlying structure and so on so the
01:28:24.400 psychometrics haven't been done properly so the answer is we actually don't know and i think it's an
01:28:29.040 amalgam it might be an amalgam of the worst of the left and the worst of the right but they define
01:28:35.200 themselves as national socialists and the idea that you can be pilloried for noting that that was
01:28:41.520 a self-description and there were certainly socialist elements in their in their platform i mean they
01:28:46.880 were the nazis weren't libertarians by any stretch of the imagination they wanted a very powerful
01:28:52.320 centralized state and so the degree how that that's certainly not what like north american conservatives
01:28:59.360 want they want a small state and so it really is something that has to be sorted out and it's
01:29:04.800 something i'd like to do if i ever get time to do it so apparently you got a bunch of other things
01:29:12.400 going on these days huh oh i like this one i consider it a curse to be an intelligent and independent
01:29:20.880 thinker i feel my life would be happier if i were quote stupid
01:29:27.440 oh yeah that's the old ignorance is bliss oh yeah that's the old would you rather be i think was this
01:29:32.480 spinoza might have been spinoza might not have been well would you rather be a happy pig or an
01:29:38.320 unhappy philosopher right so that's basically the question and
01:29:42.080 i'm trying to remember exactly i gotta gotta remember this properly
01:29:53.120 i think it might have been in candide
01:29:58.400 i can't remember i'll just have to paraphrase it
01:30:02.320 dostievsky wrote about this too it's like well what makes you think you'd give up your misery
01:30:07.280 you know like people are self-conscious and that was presented in genesis the development
01:30:13.360 of self-consciousness is presented as a cataclysm right an absolute cataclysm an event that shattered
01:30:19.520 the structure of reality when people became aware of their own nakedness and mortality and the scales
01:30:24.800 fell from their eyes and woke up and discovered death and and suffering you know and it's tainted life
01:30:31.360 and that's exactly the complaint here it's like the complaint is something like i find my
01:30:36.480 expanded consciousness unbearable it's like well yeah no kidding look at what you see
01:30:42.640 around you you know you see limitation and suffering and maybe you see that even more intently
01:30:47.920 think well wouldn't it be better to just be as unconscious as an animal well
01:30:55.520 that ship sailed a long time ago you know and it's not like we don't regress that's one of the
01:31:01.600 the things alcohol does you know alcohol is definitely a drug that invites the flight into
01:31:06.800 unconsciousness partly because it works as an anxiolytic um so one of the problems with being
01:31:13.120 self-conscious is that you're aware that stupid things you do will hurt you that's very annoying
01:31:18.640 it's one of the terrible things about being awake it's like oh god that would be fun oh yes but then i'd
01:31:24.320 have to suffer for it oh no that means i can't have fun better go get drunk
01:31:31.440 then the fact that it might hurt me won't bother me and i can have some fun and that that is exactly
01:31:36.880 what alcohol does and it's a it's a it's a negative transcendence which is how aldous huxley described
01:31:42.560 alcohol and it's very tempting and no bloody wonder it's like people are rushing all the time to escape
01:31:48.400 from the burden of their self acute self-consciousness like self-consciousness as a phenomena
01:31:54.560 phenomenon loads on trait neuroticism so you know because to say well i got self-conscious when i
01:32:01.600 talk it's like well that's an elevated form of consciousness but it's very painful because it
01:32:05.600 makes you aware of your inadequacy okay there's a great book about this by the way it's a very hard
01:32:10.400 book but it's a great book called the origins and history of consciousness by a man named eric neumann
01:32:15.680 i was just talking to camille pellia yesterday um she just wrote a new book and she wrote an essay
01:32:22.400 about 20 years ago suggesting that the best thinker for english for for literary critics to have chosen
01:32:31.200 as an alternative to derrida and foucault would have been eric neumann who was a student of jung's and i
01:32:36.480 agree with that origins and history of consciousness is a brilliant book and one of the things he points
01:32:41.520 out is that there's a struggle in human beings self-conscious consciousness has to struggle
01:32:47.360 upwards and it's pulled downwards by the desire for unconsciousness that's part of the oedipal
01:32:53.200 catastrophe of freud it's like because an over-dependent mother can say look kiddo going out in the in
01:32:59.520 the world and challenging yourself and developing that self-consciousness is going to introduce you to
01:33:04.000 a world of pain and agony as you become more and more aware it's like i can pull you back and shelter
01:33:09.840 you from all that now the problem is is that there's a crippling that goes along with that
01:33:14.320 but it's in see jung characterized that oedipal relationship as a as a conspiracy between mother
01:33:20.080 and child it's not something the mother imposes it's like a it's like a pathological invitation it's
01:33:25.600 like just stay with me and you'll never have to face the catastrophes of the world it's like well that's
01:33:31.360 a potent invitation given the catastrophes of the world you see this reflected as well i wrote about
01:33:37.360 this in 12 rules that famous statue by michelangelo the pieta right where you see mary holding the
01:33:44.000 broken body of christ in her arms it's like that's the female crucifixion in some sense it's like because
01:33:50.160 what a woman has to do with her son is offer him up to be broken by the world and he has to take that
01:33:56.480 responsibility onto himself and so that's a dreadful thing and so then the question is what do you do
01:34:02.000 about it and see this is part of what struck me so hard about christianity in as a as a philosophical
01:34:08.160 system and it's it's judeo-christianity more broadly speaking and maybe even the sum total of
01:34:14.560 the searching for human wisdom across all of the time that we've been self-consciousness what's the
01:34:20.160 antidote to self-consciousness well one is a return to unconscious oblivion and that that's a suicidal
01:34:28.960 desire it might even be a genocidal desire you know it might underlie our desire to drive ourselves
01:34:34.960 to the brink of nuclear destruction saying that it would be better if being itself didn't exist
01:34:40.240 because of its suffering that's one way out it'll obliterate everything because of its suffering the
01:34:47.200 other way out is more consciousness more attention more of what's more of what's poisoning you
01:34:55.280 because that's the way out is to become more conscious and the so here i'll give you an
01:35:01.120 example this is one of the most brilliant things i've ever seen there's this painting that was done
01:35:05.360 in the middle ages it's in it's in my book maps of meaning and it's a tree and it's the tree of the
01:35:11.360 knowledge of good and evil and and and and and the tree has has uh on one half of it it it's it's
01:35:23.440 okay it's okay it's all right i'll just finish i appreciate it but it's it's okay you were just
01:35:27.920 going to show me the picture i believe but i'll just go on with it so all right so on on half of the
01:35:33.840 tree there's apples and the apples are skulls okay and so you see um eve picking the apple skulls and
01:35:43.600 handing them to humanity and so that's the discovery of death and that's a catastrophe right if that's
01:35:49.840 the emergence into self-consciousness and that that is portrayed in our most fundamental narratives as us
01:35:55.840 as a split in the structure of reality itself and given the importance role that consciousness plays
01:36:01.280 in reality i think that that's a reasonable statement something broke when we became
01:36:05.680 self-conscious we became aware of our own mortality and that's when evil entered the world because
01:36:10.720 you can't be cruel until you understand your own vulnerability you can't know how to hurt other
01:36:16.480 people until you know that you can be hurt so when you discover your own limitations the knowledge
01:36:21.280 of good and evil enters the world okay so there's the tree and on one half of it are the apple skulls
01:36:27.440 and eve is distributing them and then on the other half there's there's a there's a skull at the top
01:36:32.720 of the tree and the other half there's a crucifix with christ in the tree and then there's other
01:36:37.040 apples but they're the wheat and hosts that are part of the transformation mass right so that's the body
01:36:42.320 and bread of christ and so the church a female it's the negative and positive female the church is handing
01:36:49.200 out these hosts to other human beings to invite them to be cured of what the apple how the apple poisoned
01:36:58.320 them and so there's an idea there and the idea is it's a very complicated idea that's why it's expressed
01:37:03.840 in this painting and we've been trying to figure out what this idea means for thousands and thousands
01:37:07.840 of years it's so complicated it means that if you take on the burden of mortality and you and you face
01:37:16.880 that completely that will produce in you a series of transformations that are somewhat akin to deaths
01:37:22.880 and resurrections and that will elevate your consciousness to the point where you can transcend
01:37:28.320 the catastrophe of self-consciousness and so that's the meaning of the eating of the body and blood of
01:37:34.320 christ that's the idea it's an unbelievable unbelievably profound idea that more consciousness is
01:37:41.440 the cure for what half consciousness poisons you with and that that requires this burning off of
01:37:48.320 dead with dead wood and constant re-transformation then you might say well is that only psychological
01:37:53.920 right because you could read it only symbolically but you might say well you don't know because
01:37:59.280 if you if people turn around and and accept the full catastrophic reality of their existence and that's
01:38:06.000 this terrible self-consciousness and decide that they're going to struggle forward admirably despite
01:38:11.920 that then they actually start to contend with it and fix it and here's an open question you know
01:38:18.480 there's this idea of the genie and the genie is genius and the genie is infinite potential
01:38:23.600 constrained in in something very tiny and that's us you know we have this terrible constraint but there's
01:38:30.160 like an infinite potential within us that's what makes us akin to deity in some sense and makes us
01:38:36.800 makes us made in the image of god and and is the foundation for our value our intrinsic value
01:38:43.600 before the law we we treat this very seriously that potential lies within you what would happen if you
01:38:51.120 revealed it fully well maybe we would not only dispense with our cowardice in the face of suffering
01:38:57.200 it's maybe we would overcome and i don't even know what this means precisely maybe we would
01:39:02.000 overcome suffering itself maybe we would overcome malevolence itself we don't know what we're capable
01:39:07.680 of and so that's the answer to that question it's like no you don't shrink backwards all that does is
01:39:14.320 make things worse it turns you into an animal but that doesn't even work because it's too late for that
01:39:18.880 you can't go back there's no going back there's only going forward and and going forward in the full
01:39:27.040 sense means it means full acceptance of the entire catastrophe of existence and then forthright attempt to
01:39:34.400 do everything you can to rectify it so
01:39:45.440 so
01:39:47.840 i feel like we should we should roll with this so what tools
01:39:52.560 to peep should people use to actually do that i mean if you were if you were in a clinical practice
01:39:57.680 with somebody and they were coming to you with this what would you tell them
01:40:01.360 well if you look at the sermon on the mount for example the sermon on the mount is a very
01:40:06.000 interesting psychological document because it's a meditation on what constitutes that which is of
01:40:12.160 central value and so it's part of so what happens in the old testament in some sense is that human
01:40:17.840 beings watch each other act and then they conjure up a set of rules that approximately encapsulates
01:40:24.080 civilized action and so that would be the expanded decalogue the the law
01:40:29.920 right and and the law wasn't imposed from the top down
01:40:33.680 it it emerged it's like
01:40:35.920 moses the mythological moses
01:40:38.560 let's say observed
01:40:40.560 the structure of morality and then said okay well here's
01:40:43.840 what it would look like if you made it into rules
01:40:46.560 you know it's like a wolf pack watched what it did and said oh here's wolf pack rules
01:40:50.560 you know and they're not rules to begin with they're just patterns patterns become rules
01:40:55.840 and then you can follow the rules but then you have the problem of the rules it's like well the
01:40:59.520 rules conflict with one another so like what's the greatest rule this is what happens in the new
01:41:03.840 testament a lot because christ annoys everyone by pitting one rule against another so he heals on the
01:41:10.160 sabbath it's like well is that good or bad well he's trying to point out that you have to produce
01:41:15.520 a hierarchy of rules so that you can produce what constitutes the highest value and in the sermon
01:41:20.720 on the mount the idea is that it's something like this it's a bit of an oversimplification but it will
01:41:26.240 do is that you want to orient yourself towards the highest good that you can possibly conceive of
01:41:32.640 and that gives your life purpose real purpose and that that that orientation would be something like
01:41:39.840 the constraint of suffering and and but not in just a merely compassionate manner because that
01:41:46.080 doesn't solve the problem right it's a serious problem to address suffering and the constraint
01:41:50.560 of malevolence that's partly why christ meets the devil in the desert right you have to you have to
01:41:55.920 transcend evil and you have to you have to you have to face suffering those are those are the
01:42:01.680 part and parcel of developing that that ultimate vision and that vision is something like well it's it's
01:42:08.080 it's whatever is going to stand for you as the highest value and that'd be the relationship with
01:42:12.800 god if you put it religiously it's to live the best life you can possibly imagine and that's going to
01:42:18.480 change a bit as you get wiser but that's what you're aiming at right it's like i often tell people you
01:42:23.600 watch the movie pinocchio you know and geppetto wishes on a star and that starts the transformation
01:42:29.360 process of his creation the wooden headed puppet who's nothing but a marionette manipulated from behind
01:42:35.280 the scenes geppetto raises his eyes above the horizon looks to that which glitters in the
01:42:40.800 darkness and makes a wish it's a transformation wish and that gets the ball rolling and that's what
01:42:45.600 you need in your own life you have to decide that there isn't going to be anything that takes the
01:42:50.400 place of you aiming at the highest possible good then you concentrate on the day and that's and then you
01:42:59.600 stumble forward that way you know and rule four is compare yourself to who you were yesterday and
01:43:05.680 not to who someone else is today it's like okay you're not everything you could be you bloody well
01:43:10.240 know it and maybe you're too resentful and miserable and bitter and burdened by your self-consciousness to
01:43:15.600 wanting to do anything about it but that's not helpful it it's a road it's the pathway to hell for all
01:43:22.560 intents and purposes you orient yourself and you stand up straight and face things courageously and try to
01:43:29.520 find the highest value because what what do you have that's better to do than that and then you move
01:43:35.520 towards it and you focus on the day and you do everything you can during the day to act responsibly
01:43:40.720 and truthfully and to set things right and that atones that that brings things together and that
01:43:47.840 that's in that manner you partake in the creation of the world i would say in the creation of the world
01:43:53.360 that's good and that's your ethical responsibility and in that there might be sufficient meaning to
01:43:59.360 justify the suffering of life i think that that's accurate it seems to me to be that that works and
01:44:06.080 you know i have people they come and talk to me all the time these guys that i talked to this morning
01:44:10.320 many of them they say you know look i was miserable and doing a bunch of bad things by their own
01:44:16.560 definition you know and they decided they were going to take on some responsibility and bear a heavy
01:44:22.640 burden and try to and try to make things better and to be more honest and what they report is well
01:44:31.840 everything is way better it's like yes well then you ask yourself how much better could we make things
01:44:39.200 i had this vision once of heaven you know it's a very powerful vision and heaven was a place where
01:44:44.880 where everything was it was like a place where you were eternally playing like a child in in a in a place
01:44:52.640 that that a father who loved you had prepared for you there was that joy in it but the joy was of a
01:44:58.240 very particular sort because it was a joy that was aimed at producing the next level of joy so it was
01:45:04.480 like a heaven that would reveal another heaven within it and then that would reveal another heaven within
01:45:09.280 that and that there was no limit to that and maybe that's our destiny to do that and maybe that's what
01:45:15.520 we're struggling to do now i mean we're we're at a pretty low level heaven at the moment but but it
01:45:21.520 could be it could be much better and i think that that's what music expresses to us you know when i listen
01:45:26.480 to a box say a third brandenburg concerto it it it it there's a pattern that emerges it's beautiful it's
01:45:34.720 like an architectural motif you know like like a flower that's opening up and out of that comes
01:45:40.320 another one and it's even greater and out of that comes another one it's this continually on continual
01:45:45.520 unfolding of crystalline beauty you see that in your great cathedrals there there are expressions of that
01:45:51.840 in stone and lattice this beautiful tapestry of structure and and light that that's a representative
01:45:59.520 of well it's a representative of the heavenly city essentially it's a representative of what we
01:46:03.920 could be striving to create and so and that's what you do with your terrible burden of self-consciousness
01:46:10.800 you know and you do that in the day-to-day struggles that you have and you start small
01:46:14.400 and humbly because that's where you start there's plenty to fix up around you you know and and and
01:46:22.400 there's no limit to that and i really believe that i don't have any idea this is the problem with 50
01:46:27.520 years in the future is god only knows what we could create and and what we're what we're destined to
01:46:32.880 create we're on the cusp of a new age and if we if we aimed properly maybe we could tilt everything so
01:46:41.520 that it would get better and better and better and better and better you know what do they say
01:46:45.360 to those who have more will be given and from those who have nothing everything will be taken and
01:46:51.360 so maybe we could decide that we would like to be those who have to whom more would be given and we
01:46:56.800 start by giving to ourselves you know and and and participating in the process of creative
01:47:02.240 production and and and and the amelioration of suffering and the combat with malevolence within
01:47:08.240 ourselves and that's this that's look it's a central message of our culture to do that what are we wrong
01:47:14.880 about that look at what we've built because of it it's no time to give up faith in that it's time to
01:47:21.120 redouble the faith and as nietzsche said there's never been true christians
01:47:35.680 and that ladies and gentlemen is how you end a show so i am going to get out of the way and make
01:47:41.360 some noise for jordan peterson everybody
01:47:43.200 if you found this conversation meaningful you might think about picking up dad's books
01:47:49.520 maps of meaning the architecture of belief or his newer bestseller 12 rules for life an antidote
01:47:54.080 to chaos both of these works delve much deeper into the topics covered in the jordan b peterson
01:47:58.320 podcast see jordanbpeterson.com for audio ebook and text links or pick up the books at your favorite
01:48:04.320 bookseller i really hope you enjoyed this podcast if you did please leave a rating at apple podcasts a
01:48:09.760 comment to review or share this episode with a friend if you didn't keep it to yourself we're
01:48:14.640 still at five stars thanks for tuning in and talk to you next week follow me on my youtube channel
01:48:20.320 jordan b peterson on twitter at jordan b peterson on facebook at dr jordan b peterson and at instagram
01:48:28.480 at jordan.b.peterson details on this show access to my blog information about my tour dates and other
01:48:36.720 events and my list of recommended books can be found on my website jordanbpeterson.com my online
01:48:44.000 writing programs designed to help people straighten out their pasts understand themselves in the present
01:48:50.000 and develop a sophisticated vision and strategy for the future can be found at self-authoring.com
01:48:56.160 that's self-authoring.com from the westwood one podcast network
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