In this episode of The Megyn Kelly Show, the host Meghan Kelly sits down with Jordan Peterson to discuss his new book, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, and his controversial views on women.
00:01:23.340He's put himself out there to defend free speech and, of course, has taken a lot of crap because of it.
00:01:27.900And I admire his courage and willingness to take the slings and arrows because they have come his way.
00:01:32.560He's got a new book out, which we'll get into 12 more rules in a book called Beyond Order.
00:01:38.120And he's got just a different way of thinking about the world.
00:01:40.820And unlike most of us, he has spent his life thinking about the world, thinking about our problems, thinking about history.
00:01:46.760And how does it affect what we're seeing now in the culture and the claims of the patriarchy?
00:01:51.760And, you know, he's like a hero to a lot of young men in particular, because he's one guy who pushes back on some of these claims.
00:01:59.920Like it's a massive patriarchal system that's been created to stifle anyone who's not a white male.
00:02:05.280Well, you hear him talk in some of his lectures about how, well, lobsters have a hierarchical system and were descended from them ultimately.
00:02:12.620And so, like, did the lobsters create it or was it like really the white men who got together at a roundtable and created things the way they are?
00:02:18.940Anyway, my point is that Jordan Peterson has thought about all these issues and has deep thoughts on all of these issues.
00:02:28.660We got into like a more personal side of him.
00:02:31.780We got into some of the comments he's made on women, both alleged and real, because, of course, the press exaggerates what he says and take things out of context.
00:02:39.560And we had some spicy back and forth, which was fun, too, all in good spirits.
00:02:45.060But I think when you listen to Jordan, you'll learn and you might feel inspired to do better in your life and you might feel inspired to try harder and read more and think the way Jordan does, even if you agree or disagree with the things he says.
00:02:57.680Anyway, I know you're going to enjoy the back and forth.
00:02:59.980If I do say so myself, it's pretty compelling.
00:03:02.600I got the chance to listen to the interview before we released it, and I just thought I'd give it like one ear just to make sure everything was cool and the sound was good.
00:03:10.720Usually my team does it, but I was like, I'm going to make sure on this one.
00:04:38.680And I thought, just what you said, if this is my kid's biggest problem, I'm doing a good job and he's a happy boy.
00:04:45.340And, you know, we sort of have it made.
00:04:47.160But I did look around while reading your book at some other families that were at the beach.
00:04:53.620We were in the Bahamas and saw some evidence of the thing you point out in your book, which is, and you've said in your lectures, not everybody really enjoys their children.
00:05:07.480And it's okay to admit a lot of negative feelings that you may be having about your spouse, about your life, about yourself.
00:05:13.180And it's much better than the alternative of repression.
00:05:16.280Well, it's failure to unpack, you know, and with your kids, if they're annoying you or you're not taking pleasure in them, it's worth noting that and not pretending that it's the opposite and then trying to figure out what to do about it.
00:05:32.040And that's difficult and horrible, but it's a lot better than the alternative, which is endless misery and then alienation.
00:05:40.080I mean, if you're, you know, families can have unfortunate circumstances and no amount of striving will pull them out of it.
00:05:47.560But generally speaking, if you're not enjoying your kids, well, something needs to change and can be changed.
00:05:55.660But first of all, you have to admit it.
00:05:58.260How do you figure out, you know, I don't know.
00:06:03.840I looked at the news while I was gone, you know, and it was the darkest of the dark, right?
00:06:08.120We had more than one, two mass shootings while I was away and it keeps happening.
00:06:17.140You know, we had the massage parlor situation.
00:06:41.160And having covered so many of these, Jordan, my takeaway is basically always that we search so hard for understanding, for a reason, because we want to tell ourselves that we can prevent the next one.
00:06:53.740You know, if we can find the reason, we can prevent the next one.
00:06:57.160But the thing is, we never do or can prevent the next one.
00:07:03.620Part of the reason that I'm motivated to do what I've been doing is to help people broadly avoid ending up in the kind of horrible pit where they might be motivated to do such things.
00:07:15.340So you can do something about the causes of such events on a general scale.
00:07:21.580But when you're dealing with a nation of 300 million people and a planet of 7 billion people, there are going to be random, essentially rare, psychopathological events.
00:07:30.880And the idea that you can predict them and somehow bring them under control in any specific sense is just nonsensical.
00:07:38.800First of all, even though they're far more common than anyone would like, they're still unbelievably rare.
00:07:44.480So it's very difficult to do anything about statistically improbable events.
00:08:11.680Well, if you're trying to straighten up the world, I suppose, if you're concerned about the dismal state of the world, my estimation, it's safest in some sense to work on your own trouble and to note your own contributions to the negative end of things.
00:08:29.360And that does mean allowing yourself to look at what's dark in your own psyche, to notice when you're envious, to notice when you're jealous, to notice when your anger gets out of control, to notice when you're lying about who you like and who you don't like,
00:08:45.860or when you're trying to put yourself up on a pedestal for some reason, and to note your moral inadequacies in that sense, and to pay attention to your conscience.
00:08:55.900All of this is extremely important, and it's the right focus as far as I'm concerned, as opposed to paying attention to the more general evil in the world, at least to begin with.
00:09:05.900Once you have your house in order, well, maybe you can start solving wider-scale problems if you have the ability and the will, but until then, it's better to confront the darkness within, as far as I'm concerned.
00:09:20.680That straightens up your own life, and that's of inestimable value to everyone around you.
00:09:26.400And you don't do any harm in that, right?
00:09:29.080I mean, that's the thing, is you're experimenting in your own domain at that point.
00:09:33.060The other thing, too, is that if you don't confront malevolence, if you don't understand it, then you're completely, you lay yourself completely open to it.
00:09:42.800If you confuse your naivety with goodness, and people often do that, you know, I wouldn't harm anyone is generally shorthand for I couldn't if I wanted to, which isn't an indicator of strength.
00:10:20.500You know, I remember 20 years ago, or thereabouts, when the terrible genocidal processes were seeping through what was once Yugoslavia, the foreign minister in Canada said, Lloyd Axworthy was his name.
00:10:38.900He was a pretty well-seasoned politician.
00:10:42.800He said he just didn't have the imagination for that kind of evil.
00:10:45.940And I thought, well, what the hell are you doing being foreign minister then?
00:10:52.740I presume he was familiar with the Holocaust and with what happened in the Soviet Union and Mao's China and Cambodia, etc., etc.
00:11:01.360How would you dare be foreign minister and not have the imagination for that kind of evil?
00:11:06.560So what happens when you meet someone like that?
00:11:09.120Well, then they're going to walk all over you.
00:11:10.900And he thought that was, I'm so moral, I couldn't imagine that.
00:11:14.160Like, no, you're so timid that you won't go there.
00:11:21.920Well, history, and just to pay attention to what's going on around you in your own family, often terrible things happen in families with great frequency.
00:11:33.440So, you know, we started this conversation with your observations about the beach and seeing people who don't enjoy their children.
00:11:39.520I mean, if you see a family where the relationships between the children and the adults are seriously disturbed,
00:11:45.280you don't have to pay attention for very long until you see some really dark things.
00:12:15.340Well, let's say that you don't want your children to leave because all the meaning in your life is a consequence of being a necessary primary caregiver.
00:12:25.840So that every time you see your children do anything that moves them towards independence, it's a threat to your own security.
00:12:33.200So what you do through blindness is fail to attend or punish every time the child does something that would indicate competence.
00:12:52.020I feel like I have a pretty wide web of friends and mothers and so on.
00:12:56.260And we all have, you know, different things that we complain about or brag about with respect to our children.
00:13:01.260But being so in need of their constant presence that you ruin their maturation and independence, gosh, that's, I mean, that's pathological.
00:13:11.620Well, that's how maturation and independence get ruined.
00:13:19.080And, you know, the other thing that you see in families very frequently is that the disciplinary strategies are inefficient and ineffective.
00:13:26.720And so the children act out in ways that won't make them acceptable to other people, which is really the hallmark of proper behavior for children, or the measure of proper behavior in children.
00:13:40.340Because you want your children to be desirable to other people, but it's the best gift you can possibly give them.
00:13:44.780And so let's say your children act in ways that, you know, shed a dim light on your abilities as a parent or interfere with your own activities.
00:13:56.680The children are too demanding, so you never have any time for yourself or any time for your husband or wife.
00:14:02.800And they misbehave and you're embarrassed about that and angry.
00:14:05.320And then instead of doing something about it, instead of noting that, you know, your child will run up to you at one point with something they've accomplished, like a drawing that they spent a lot of time on or, you know, some manifestation of a special talent.
00:14:18.500And because you're annoyed at them chronically, you'll just fail to attend to it properly.
00:14:23.540And so you punish them for their virtue, and that's revenge against them for acting in an undisciplined manner.
00:14:34.320I know you have one of your one of your rules is to basically raise children who you want to be around.
00:14:42.800Don't don't raise children who you don't want to be with.
00:14:44.900And I love that because I just I mean, instinctively, we've been living that just like, I think it's just a matter of not having too much time on our hands and being somewhat selfish.
00:14:53.400It's like, I don't want to be around you when you're like that.
00:14:55.940And I got to tell you, as your mother, nobody else is going to want to be around you when you're like that either.
00:14:59.260But so either stop doing that, or we're gonna have a problem because you you are in this family.
00:15:04.360And if you want to stay here, right, so it's and they get that like, they can totally get that that it's like a bargain.
00:15:10.240I'll let you go this far, but I won't let you go that far.
00:15:13.360It's really not that hard to sort of reason with them about bad behavior.
00:15:16.540You don't have to have a complete level 10 meltdown all the time.
00:15:21.100You have no well, you but you never have to have a level 10 meltdown if you're disciplinary, disciplinary strategies are effective.
00:15:27.500No, you you hear now and then of mothers and fathers, of course, too.
00:15:32.040But mothers doing terrible things to their children, you know, incomprehensibly terrible things.
00:15:36.580And you think, well, how can that happen?
00:15:38.440And generally, what it is, is that the parent and has very ineffective disciplinary strategies and a very underdeveloped disciplinary philosophy and lets the child get away with blue murder and is extraordinarily angry about it because they're being tortured constantly by their child.
00:15:56.980And then one day, you know, the child goes too far and maybe mom has just lost her job or broke up with her boyfriend or is hung over and she just has had it and snaps and then, you know, all hell breaks loose and all the punishment that should have been meted out all the discipline that should have been meted out over two years is compressed into a single episode and the result is catastrophic.
00:16:19.100And so and because you can't if you're an adult and you're constantly being what dominated by your two year old, your three year old, there's not a possibility that that's not going to enrage you at some level.
00:16:49.460Well, that is the kind of person you are is exactly that and you should be.
00:16:53.640Now, maybe you're unreasonable and, you know, your your criteria for being upset aren't appropriate, but that hopefully you have a partner, some other people you can talk to to help you check your own pathology so you don't mistreat your children or use counterproductive disciplinary strategies.
00:17:12.220But, you know, and I see parents all the time who are afraid to discipline their children.
00:17:18.000They don't even like the idea of discipline, even though they think of discipline as punishment and all discipline equals punishment.
00:17:25.400Any constraint on the child is an impediment to their creative ability, et cetera, et cetera.
00:17:31.100And children without discipline are often terrorized, terror in terror because they have no limits.
00:17:37.380And they can't tolerate that because they're not competent.
00:17:40.760So no limits faces them with a terrible with the terrible reality that they're in charge and they have no idea what to do.
00:17:50.820Well, you're talking about letting things build up.
00:17:52.880And I know you feel the same way about relationships.
00:17:56.040There's there's something in the book rule three, which is don't hide unwanted things in the fog saying have the damn fight that unpleasant as it might be in the moment with your spouse.
00:18:08.480It's one less straw on the camel's back.
00:18:11.200And I do think there are a lot of people out there, maybe especially during the covid quarantine, who just choose not to have the fight because they want they'd rather keep the peace.
00:18:21.360And you're trying to tell people, no, they'd rather they'd rather pretend that the peace is there than work for it.
00:18:55.280Well, then you never talk about anything important or one of you is rolling over.
00:18:59.940One of you is pretending or both of you are because two people can can't live together and not disagree because they're not the same person.
00:19:45.320And because the question of how to arrange your household finances, maybe one of you works at a salary job in the other stays at home and takes care of the children or something like that.
00:20:05.980It's it's it's attached to the problem of how you value domestic labor, how it should be valued.
00:20:12.180And our whole society hasn't really figured that out.
00:20:14.400So I just think you've got you've got some good points about a long time ago.
00:20:23.580I heard a guy who was he was a proponent of what he called radical honesty.
00:20:27.140And his whole point was, you got to say the thing, just got to say the thing that's on your mind, even if you'd rather filter it, you'd rather not, quote, hurt the other person.
00:20:36.540And but ultimately, the radical honesty program, if not, if not, you know, you're not intending to be hurtful.
00:20:45.240And it might have the effect of being hurtful short term, but long term, it's going to bring you more intimacy.
00:20:50.960And I think I wouldn't say I'm on the totally radical honesty program, but but I think that sort of general approach to understand that it's not it's not mean to say how you feel just because it might wind up hurting the other person's feelings.
00:21:04.540It's actually it's almost a compliment to them.
00:21:12.120So I would say I am a proponent of radical honesty, but but but virtually no morality is complicated enough to require virtue across multiple dimensions simultaneously.
00:21:24.540So if you're going to tell the truth within the relationship, you could use the truth as a weapon.
00:21:30.400Now, you might regard that as a form of untruth if the truth is weaponized.
00:22:39.200It's like, well, maybe you were flirting and maybe I'm a jealous idiot or maybe a little bit of both.
00:22:45.680But wouldn't it be good if we could sort it through so we both do?
00:22:49.380But if you're going to do that, if you're going to throw forward a feeling-based accusation,
00:22:54.180which can obviously be damaging to the other person, you have to accompany that with the willingness to assume that your fault might be as great in the error you're making with the accusation as the fault that you're pointing out.
00:23:12.920And that's another thing that stops people from being radically honest.
00:23:19.220It might mean that I'm so warped that I'm feeling something completely inaccurate.
00:23:23.260And so by throwing that out at you, I'm going to have to look at me to see what makes me so bent.
00:23:30.600So all of that stops you, if you're at least bit alert, from using the truth as a weapon.
00:23:38.060Because it certainly will absolutely backfire on you if it's actually the truth.
00:23:43.580Well, I love it because you've written a lot about how, and you have to take those risks,
00:23:47.880those confession risks of what your feelings are, no matter how petty you may think they are in your head,
00:23:53.260and it requires some courage to do so because you know at some level they might be petty,
00:23:59.400they might make you look bad, they might not be well-founded, but it will be a relief to you to discuss them if you approach it the right way.
00:24:07.300And it will be potentially, you know, good for your relationship.
00:24:11.400And I'm telling you, I can relate to this so much.
00:24:13.800And I've had, Doug and I have a great marriage, and I think one of the reasons we have a great marriage is because we do say this stuff.
00:24:20.960We were skiing a couple years ago, and I got mad at him because I was convinced when we got to the flat light hills,
00:24:26.680he was making me go first because he wanted somebody to cut the trail who he could keep an eye on because it was very difficult to see.
00:24:34.740It's absurd. This is, of course, not what he was doing, but it was in my head.
00:24:38.780I was getting progressively ticked off.
00:24:40.900It just seemed to me every time we got to a flat light trail, he was like, do you want to lead?
00:24:44.600And finally I told him, I'm like, I'm mad.
00:24:47.500I'm like, you're making me go first on the flat light trails because you need somebody.
00:24:51.040And he was like, what are you talking about?
00:24:54.720And then he had an explanation for what was going on, and we both wound up laughing about it.
00:24:58.400I was so glad I said it, and now it's just like an ongoing joke between us, but it is hard to show how petty we can sometimes be.
00:25:07.960Yeah, well, the only thing that can convince you to show that is some consideration of how terrible it would be if you stayed that petty for the next 40 years.
00:25:19.120And so I don't know if it's so much courage that is what pushes you forward to that kind of admission as terror of the right thing.
00:25:28.960It's like, well, I could either look petty now or be petty for four decades.
00:25:33.200So, well, anyone with any sense would, well, because problems don't go away of their own accord, generally speaking.
00:25:38.860Like if you have a habit of some sort, it just doesn't vanish.
00:26:57.740Like the rules that I lay out, and they could have been other rules because there's many valid principles that you can use to guide your life.
00:27:05.020They're not coming down from on high, you know, for me, essentially, there are things that I strive towards.
00:27:12.620And the chapters are explorations of that striving.
00:27:16.840And I think that's part of why I get away with it, so to speak.
00:27:20.360Because why should someone who's handing down rules be popular, be listened to?
00:27:27.980It's a pretty presumptuous thing to do, or it can be.
00:27:30.960So how can you approach that without being necessarily hypocritical or self-righteous or any of those things?
00:27:39.240You know, perhaps I'm sure a certain number of people would argue that I am exactly all those things.
00:27:44.780But the public response doesn't seem to indicate that that's widespread feeling, quite the contrary.
00:27:52.460But I think the reason for that is that I know these things are very difficult to attain.
00:29:59.000Well, you've been you've been through it.
00:30:01.560I mean, how she probably just thought you becoming famous was going to be the most difficult thing you guys are going to go through together.
00:30:07.280And then for some reason, I don't know.
00:30:19.120There is a saying like the universe did this or the universe did that.
00:30:22.600Do you believe the universe somehow brought this upon you?
00:30:25.120Do you believe you bring trauma, physical health otherwise upon yourself in some way?
00:30:30.480Well, the degree to which you're responsible for what happens to you is always questionable.
00:30:36.560I mean, you certainly can't say in any realistic sense that people are finally 100 percent responsible or at fault for everything that happens to them.
00:30:48.240Because you'd have to say that, you know, it's everyone's moral inadequacies that make up their mortality.
00:30:56.800And I suppose in some abstract sense, maybe some ultimate religious sense, you could say, well, that's because we fall short of the glory of God.
00:31:07.820But in any realistic human sense, we're all vulnerable to fate and accident.
00:31:15.740And you always have to factor that in.
00:31:19.320Because, you know, otherwise, every time you get sick, you have cancer, let's say, or something like that, or a family member does.
00:31:25.720Because not only are they sick, but they have to presume that if they weren't morally at fault, this wouldn't have happened.
00:31:33.440It's like, well, look, if you act immorally, virtually by definition, the probability that bad things are going to happen to you is much increased.
00:31:42.880But that doesn't mean that every time something bad happens to you, there's a moral fault lying underneath it.
00:31:49.540So, and I don't see that that's disputable.
00:31:56.160Because we're fragile, we're susceptible to earthquakes, you know, lightning bolts, acts of God.
00:32:05.820And it's worthwhile looking at the situation and trying to discern moral culpability.
00:32:14.600Because maybe if you did something stupid and it made you vulnerable, you'll learn not to do it again.
00:32:21.200But, you know, you don't want to take that too far.
00:32:24.440Yeah, well, I look at you and I see somebody whose life has changed so dramatically since you first came out with that video, refusing.
00:32:39.000It's funny because a lot of people brought your story to me and said, oh, yeah, you should talk to this guy.
00:32:44.440And so many times, Jordan, people have been like, oh, it'd be great to see you're going to kill this guy.
00:32:48.300You're going to battle him on women's issues.
00:32:50.240And then I started actually reading what you were writing.
00:32:52.620I'm like, oh, but I agree with a lot of, I don't, I'm not looking to do battle with him.
00:32:57.760I actually think he's got a lot of great points because once you actually read what you've said, you've been grossly misrepresented by a lot of people who write about you because you're not some hardcore, I don't know, woke, cancel culture, identity politics activist.
00:33:11.860So you first sort of came to national or international because you're Canadian prominence, I think.
00:33:16.880Like, you know, you taught everywhere, Harvard and Toronto and you were very respected intellectual.
00:33:22.560But but fame didn't really come until you took a stance on the Canadian law, law.
00:33:29.940They were going to outlaw and did write anybody from from refusing to say somebody's chosen pronouns.
00:33:36.400Like, yes, there's a Canadian man in jail right now because of that.
00:33:42.760And it happened exactly the way I thought it was.
00:33:44.680He he was jailed for contempt of court.
00:33:47.960But that was the pathway that that yes, that was the pathway to jail that I saw emerging as a consequence of this bill.
00:33:54.560And people said, well, I was exaggerating the danger.
00:34:13.700And, you know, I was I was unhappy with the law because I believe that it was an unwarranted intrusion by the government into the domain of free speech.
00:34:23.400And I do believe that and certainly I believe that in the United States, that law couldn't have held.
00:34:30.140And there was a challenge here recently.
00:34:32.440A sixth court of appeal in Kansas, I think, indicating that those sorts of provisions are probably illegal even as workplace guidelines.
00:34:41.100In any case, I thought that the government had overstepped its boundaries.
00:34:46.580And recently I realized also that I was upset that about the theory of identity that constituted the core element, one of the core elements of the bill.
00:34:56.700And so, yeah, that's what that's what initiated all of this.
00:35:08.620But there was another element to that, too, because what happened was, well, that accounted for the first 15 minutes or the first week of public attention, let's say.
00:35:19.520But this has been going on like I've been at the center of public attention for almost five years now.
00:35:25.600And part of the reason for that is that even from the beginning, people went to my website, to YouTube, actually, because of the news reports.
00:35:35.800But I already had 200 hours of videos up at that point.
00:36:39.700I mean, he's in jail for complex reasons.
00:36:41.660He was also forbidden to speak to the press and continue to.
00:36:45.700There's a variety of reasons that he actually ended up in jail.
00:36:48.160But it doesn't in some sense, it doesn't matter.
00:36:52.800It's smoke and mirrors in some sense, because the point is, is that he is in jail for discussing the issues that I thought people might end up in jail for discussing.
00:37:01.180And this trans issue, I mean, as a clinician, I just can't help but see that the proper and moral way forward is the actuarial way forward.
00:37:14.900And the data that existed before all the politically correct discussion around this topic emerged was that about 85% of children with gender dysphoria accepted their biological reality by the time they were 18.
00:37:29.640And so the prudent thing to do, which is what you should do if you're a physician or a psychologist, a clinician, prudent thing to do is say, hold off.
00:37:39.980But that's not what's written into the law now.
00:37:42.520And the laws are getting ever more restrictive in that regard.
00:37:45.720And so now it's now it's the treatment of choice from the legal perspective is transition if the child demands it.
00:37:55.560And no one is allowed, including medical professionals, allowed to question that in a manner that might be regarded as interfering.
00:38:04.680And God only knows when the discussion of an issue like that becomes interfering.
00:38:09.660I can tell you as a practicing clinician, I would be unbelievably loath to have now to have a discussion with someone who has gender dysphoria about any of their plans under any circumstances whatsoever.
00:38:23.640Because the probability that I would misstep in some manner and be investigated and convicted by the college is so likely that the risk is unacceptable.
00:38:39.600And like I say that, I say that as someone perfectly willing to take risks, if I believe that they're in my client's best interest.
00:38:50.240Now, I'm not a child psychologist, so this particular issue isn't going to affect me.
00:38:54.740But I've had enough dealings with the colleges that regulate clinical practice to be extraordinarily leery of their reach.
00:39:05.700I mean, that's just crazy now that we've come to that point.
00:39:08.660What it means is these kids who are having confusion around their identity will never be able to talk to someone who doesn't have an ax to grind.
00:39:23.440So actual discussion of it is, right, exactly.
00:39:25.640And that sort of thing has to be fleshed out in great detail.
00:39:28.740I had a, yeah, yeah, it has to be fleshed out in great detail.
00:39:32.260And those conversations are unbelievably complicated.
00:39:34.880And they wander into territory that the current legal structure makes absolutely, the risk absolutely unacceptable for anyone who knows the law.
00:39:47.780The best thing to do would be just to not do it.
00:39:50.960You know, there have been, I know, I know you know who Abigail Schreier is and she's taken on this issue along with them.
00:41:16.540It's certainly not the only source of meaning.
00:41:18.480And it's not the primary source, not the final analysis.
00:41:23.460And the theories of identity that underlie identity politics aren't, what would you say, sophisticated or comprehensive enough to provide people with a guide through life, which is really what your identity, that's what you want.
00:41:41.140You want an identity that you can act out functionally in society.
00:41:46.640And that can't just be your sexual identity, your gender identity, any of that, because it's just not enough.
00:41:54.920No one else knows how to play the game, which is a big problem when you're surrounded by people.
00:42:00.360You know, you say, well, I want you to, I want, I'm an exception.
00:42:05.060I want you to treat me the way I want to be treated.
00:42:07.120It's like, well, if you're an exception, I have no idea how to treat you by definition.
00:42:12.940Are you going to inform me every time I make a mistake?
00:42:15.160It's like, why am I going to be around you?
00:45:42.420Sometimes emotions get the better of you.
00:45:44.240But when you are at the White House lectern briefing the nation about a pandemic that's already emotionally charged for a bunch of people and people are unnecessarily panicked over, keep it together, sister.
00:48:41.100If they're not doing that, if they're just teaching you how to be a radical, essentially, you know, to swallow a couple of presuppositions.
00:48:48.260The culture is essentially oppressive.
00:48:51.580Morality is, is to be found in the attempt to tear down arbitrary power structures.
00:48:57.260Christ, you can learn all those axioms in 15 minutes.
00:49:15.280No, nobody likes inequality in some sense.
00:49:17.480I mean, there isn't anybody who celebrates when they walk down the street and they see homeless people.
00:49:21.520Everybody, virtually without, you know, the odd person might think, well, if you just straighten up and get a job, you wouldn't be on the street.
00:49:29.940And, you know, that sort of attitude is usually rather flip and not very well thought through and also rare and not very deep.
00:49:37.540But most people are, very few people are in favor of absolute poverty.
00:49:41.900But inequality is a really complicated problem.
00:49:45.000And part of the problem with ideology is that ideology makes every problem simple and every answer obvious.
00:49:52.720And every problem isn't simple and every answer isn't obvious.
00:49:56.600And it requires real education to decompose the problem to see that it's more than one thing.
00:50:56.760The system has to be dismantled because it's based on this hierarchy created by men, white men.
00:51:03.780And they have all the power and none of these disadvantaged groups have any.
00:51:07.580And so that's why everything has to be deconstructed and torn apart, thrown out.
00:51:12.700And then we have to start anew, although they kind of run out of the plan when you get to the point of, like, what happens when we get rid of all the white men or at least their dominated systems?
00:51:21.020Yeah, well, I guess the convenient part of that is that it gives people an identifiable enemy.
00:51:28.040And that gives you something to strive for romantically and morally.
00:52:16.860But you have to admit that this system does something that is laudable in order to believe that movement up and down it is dependent to some degree on competence.
00:53:01.000And in our society, at least when its subcomponents are functioning properly, people who maneuver for reasons that only have to do with power are generally not successful for very long because no one wants to have anything to do with them.
00:53:18.040Who wants to work for someone who dominates them all the time?
00:53:20.920They're just going to, well, first of all, they're not going to be very motivated.
00:53:24.500And second of all, they're going to take every opportunity they possibly can to take revenge on the power of the person who's power hungry above them.
00:53:38.120Like power is a very, very unstable basis for a hierarchical position.
00:53:43.020And it is what incompetent people default to, but that doesn't mean that it's the rule.
00:53:51.260It's not the rule among truly successful people.
00:53:55.320I mean, partly you see that if you know successful people who are good people in the main, one of the things they delight in doing is mentoring and helping people establish their careers and move up.
00:54:06.820And it's a primary source of gratification.
00:54:09.820These professors have that with their graduate students.
00:54:12.100And if they're good professors, they strive to make their students successful.
00:54:15.740And they do that because it's gratifying, at least in part.
00:54:19.040It's great to foster someone's career.
00:55:09.700Men and women set up the value structure, not just men.
00:55:12.660I mean, women are, and this is painfully obvious,
00:55:17.000women, uh, and biologically, uh, women are much more likely to be sexually attractive to men who are, um, successful in their hierarchical structures.
00:55:31.100It's one of the primary determinants of male attractiveness to women.
00:55:34.380So women reward, uh, men who are successful in the patriarchy by, uh, granting them sexual access.
00:55:43.660And, you know, you can be less cynical about that.
00:55:47.320They're more likely, they're more likely to marry them.
00:55:52.200I mean, it modifies to some degree in the Scandinavian countries.
00:55:54.900That's actually one place where egalitarian social policies have dampened a sex difference.
00:56:00.500As a general rule, they, they make the sex differences bigger.
00:56:03.660Like differences in personality and an interest are bigger in the Scandinavian countries than they are in less egalitarian societies.
00:56:10.880But the proclivity for women to, oh, well, um, the biggest differences between men and women in terms of personality are, are in the Scandinavian countries.
00:56:20.780And the more egalitarian the countries become, the more different men and women become in personality, not the more similar.
00:56:27.160And they also get more different in interest.
00:56:28.920It's because if you get rid of the sociological differences, the biological differences maximize.
00:56:49.680And so agreeable people are warmer, more empathic, more polite, uh, um, more empathetic, more compassionate, uh, less agreeable.
00:56:58.960People are harsher, uh, less agreeable, um, more antisocial, more likely to be imprisoned.
00:57:05.020And, um, and men on average are less agreeable than women or women are more agreeable.
00:57:10.680And it's, if you took, if you, if you take, uh, a random man out of the population and a random woman, and you bet that the woman would be more agreeable than the man, you'd be right 60% of the time.
00:57:23.420That's about the size of the difference.
00:57:24.880So that's, that's one difference between men and women.
00:57:27.540And another is that women are higher in, they experience more negative emotion and they experience it more intensely.
00:57:36.260Uh, now there are some women who aren't like that compared to some men because the curves mostly overlap, but that's where the biggest differences are.
00:57:45.900So then you might say, well, those differences are so social in their origin.
00:57:49.780And so then you would look at countries where, um, the men and women are treated the same and you'd expect the differences culturally, you'd expect the differences to decrease, but that is what happens.
00:58:04.940So the less egalitarian the society, the more women and men are the same in personality, the more egalitarian the society, the less men and women are the same.
00:58:15.580Also, the other thing that happens is that in the more egalitarian countries, the difference between male and females in terms of interest also grows rather than shrinking, which is why even in the Scandinavian countries, the vast preponderance of nurses are female and the vast preponderance of engineers are males.
00:58:36.260And no amount of social engineering short of absolute tyranny looks like it's likely to ameliorate that.
00:58:48.220There might be a slight edge for men in spatial intelligence and a slight edge for women in verbal intelligence, but the fundamental determining factor driving career choice looks like it's interest.
00:58:58.640Different career choices between men and women looks like it's interest, not ability.
00:59:01.880When you understand that you have to be really interested in something to pursue it as a career, then even small differences in interest between men and women can drive huge differences in occupational choice at the extremes.
00:59:17.640And that's where all the selection takes place.
00:59:19.440So that's why, you know, 10 times as many people in jail are men rather than women.
00:59:25.780You know, men aren't that much more aggressive than women physically.
00:59:45.840It doesn't have to be a walloping effect to make itself quite manifest at the level of occupational choice.
00:59:53.060It doesn't mean men and women are radically different.
00:59:56.660I've heard you say that women who have some more masculine traits have tended to do better in the professional world at times and get challenged by that.
01:00:06.340And I have to say, that's been my own experience.
01:02:32.660And it's certainly possible that that's also reinforced by society.
01:02:35.920But I can tell you that the consequence of that, still, in the Scandinavian countries, is that despite the movement towards egalitarian treatment, that difference has got bigger, not smaller.
01:02:48.340So you can't tell what it means that women are treated that way.
01:02:55.320You can't tell if that's a social function or if it's a biological function or how it's operating or what should be done about it, if anything.
01:03:22.000I think the desire to be attractive or the necessity of being attractive, for that matter, is so deep that, you know, to attribute it to purely social forces, it's absurd.
01:03:34.520The preference of men for youth and women sexually is not social, fundamentally.
01:03:47.260If you look at how men rate women in terms of attractiveness across age and then put that graph against a fecundity graph, they're the same thing.
01:03:57.240And how could it possibly be otherwise?
01:04:00.020I mean, how could it be that the human race would have possibly survived if men didn't find women at the peak of their fertility most attractive?
01:04:08.440This is what women are up against because we do have to have the babies and we do have to find male suitors.
01:04:14.000And yet we've emerged into this time where we also want, some of us want, to run the corporate board.
01:04:20.860And some of us want to be taken perfectly serious at the office, even though, you know, we're wearing makeup and our hair looks good and all that.
01:04:29.600Well, it's great that that's how it is.
01:04:32.620I mean, look, as soon as women enter the workplace, the human race has twice the brain power.
01:04:41.120Who in the right mind would be object to that?
01:04:43.900Well, it's not that they object to it, but they don't necessarily want it as C-suite.
01:04:50.960I'm just saying that it's a good thing that it's happened, that women have, that we've managed to figure out how to provide women with enough freedom so that now their capabilities can be manifested in all sorts of places they hadn't been manifested before.
01:05:19.960I mean, well, what's the rule for a man?
01:05:24.100Like in a law firm, for example, the guys have each other's back in a particular way, but they're competing with each other like mad, right?
01:05:34.080Because they want to, well, they want to win.
01:05:37.220Okay, so what's the right attitude towards, what's the right attitude for a man towards a woman who he's competing with?
01:05:55.480I mean, listen, I can tell you, look, if you're playing mixed doubles and you're the male half of the pair on the one side, you're not supposed to kill the woman on the other side.
01:06:06.680But in a corporate setting where it's a battle of minds, killer.
01:06:11.720And if you take your foot off the gas, it's sexist.
01:06:15.420Yeah, well, that's easy to say, but it doesn't play out like that in interpersonal interactions because it's too complicated.
01:06:21.360Well, I think men need to talk about it.
01:06:22.760I mean, it's one good thing you've been doing is raising some of these issues.
01:06:35.780You know, I mean, I would certainly say, yeah, I'll just give you one silly aside.
01:06:41.080But, you know, Oprah Winfrey did the big interview of Meghan Markle and Prince Harry.
01:06:44.880And I had some I had some criticisms of Oprah because I thought she really should have drilled down in some more details the night she did it.
01:06:52.340And some people were accusing me of being racist because I had some criticisms of Oprah, who happens to be black, but is also a billionaire and a very successful journalist.