The Michael Knowles Show - Jordan Peterson ｜ Chaos, God, and Alcohol

00:00:00.000 Dr. Peterson, thank you for being here.

00:00:09.440 Thanks very much for the invitation.

00:00:11.720 So let's get into trouble with the frivolous thought police right off of the bat.

00:00:16.480 The book is subtitled An Antidote to Chaos.

00:00:19.800 You describe order as masculine, the wise king at best, the tyrant at worst, 0.89

00:00:24.860 and you describe chaos as feminine.

00:00:27.160 These days we're told that gender is socially constructed. 0.54

00:00:30.200 A figment of our imagination.

00:00:32.700 How deeply entrenched is sex?

00:00:35.600 How far back do our categories of masculine and feminine go?

00:00:40.880 Well, they go back hundreds and hundreds of millions of years.

00:00:46.480 And they do seem to form part of our fundamental cognitive architecture.

00:00:50.740 We tend to see the world in social cognitive categories.

00:00:54.500 We tend to see the world as if it's an animated place.

00:00:56.940 And the idea that sex is a large part of being animated is an extraordinarily deep biological perceptual category.

00:01:08.600 So it can't be dispensed with in any straightforward manner.

00:01:13.760 It's part of the way that we view the world.

00:01:16.280 Dan, the idea that the way that we express ourselves sexually, say, let's call that gender, is malleable,

00:01:25.380 is obviously true to a certain degree.

00:01:27.540 Because human beings are extraordinarily malleable creatures.

00:01:30.360 You can tell that just by looking at fashion variation.

00:01:32.760 But that doesn't mean that gender differences are all sociocultural constructs.

00:01:38.080 In fact, the evidence that they're not, I would say, is crystal clear.

00:01:42.620 The political types are about 30 years behind the social science.

00:01:46.620 Maybe 50 years behind it. 1.00

00:01:48.500 That's why they're desperately turning to legislative means to enforce their idiot view of humanity on the rest of the world. 0.96

00:01:54.280 That is something I frequently notice about politics and culture, is the pop culture and the politics, they are always lagging several decades behind. 0.96

00:02:04.040 So you'll see people espousing some relativistic or nihilistic view of the world.

00:02:09.340 And you say, like, listen, man, I know you think you're sophisticated, but you're actually several decades behind.

00:02:15.100 I want to talk about a dream that you write about in the book.

00:02:18.960 You had a dream when writing Maps of Meaning, your first book, that you were hanging from a chandelier in a cathedral with tiny little people below.

00:02:27.420 And you woke up in your bed and you still saw cathedral doors.

00:02:31.100 Close your eyes again, you're back in the center of the cathedral.

00:02:34.580 Was that vision a sign from God?

00:02:37.180 Or was it the fever dream of an academic who's been thinking too much?

00:02:41.520 And is there a difference?

00:02:45.000 Well, I'm not sure there's a difference.

00:02:46.600 I mean, it took me a long time to understand what the dream meant, but I eventually did.

00:02:51.000 I mean, I knew at that point, or I had figured out as part of the process of interpreting that dream, let's say, that cathedrals were constructed in the shape of a cross.

00:03:01.740 And so to be hanging at the center of the cross, which is essentially where the dream put me, was, well, obviously, you know, that's something that can be read in terms of its fundamental religious significance.

00:03:11.200 But that isn't the most appropriate level of analysis, I wouldn't say.

00:03:18.240 The reason that cathedrals are constructed in the shape of a cross is because the cross is an X that marks the spot, so to speak.

00:03:28.100 It's the center place of being.

00:03:29.600 And we're each at the center place of being, and that's a place of suffering.

00:03:35.320 And so part of the Christian injunction is to voluntarily accept that and to thereby transcend it.

00:03:41.800 And the dream was pointing to me, was pointing out the inevitability of that, the fact that I was being driven towards that conclusion.

00:03:51.100 You see, I'd been spending years, I would say, by that point, meditating and thinking about the fact of the Cold War and about this terrible ideological catastrophe that we had placed ourselves in the midst of, partly ideological possession, driving our proclivity to put the world at risk.

00:04:11.540 And as an alternative to that, kind of a nihilistic hopelessness that involved no central narratives whatsoever, I suppose that would be the postmodern conundrum.

00:04:20.280 And I was trying to see if there was a pathway between those extremes that was functional.

00:04:26.520 And the dream was part of that process of realization.

00:04:29.400 And the alternative to ideological possession and nihilistic hopelessness is something like the lifting up of individual responsibility as the proper mode of being.

00:04:40.980 And that involves voluntary acceptance of suffering.

00:04:44.580 You're not going to act responsibly and forthrightly in the world if you're bitter and resentful because of the fact that your life is tragic and that things often go wrong.

00:04:54.740 So you have to transcend that and that the dream was part of the process by which I was starting to understand that.

00:05:01.660 I do want to get back a little bit to that X marks the spot later because we see it in the Christian tradition.

00:05:07.760 We see traditionally the cross is represented with a skull at the bottom of it because it's Adam's skull and Christ is the new Adam. 0.53

00:05:16.620 I want to get back to that.

00:05:17.640 Well, let's see the idea.

00:05:18.600 Well, the idea there, that's an unbelievably profound idea.

00:05:21.440 The idea there is that the first man, so to speak, the man who's laden with original sin and the knowledge of death is Adam, of course.

00:05:32.940 And that Christ, what Christ represents is the antidote to what brought Adam down. 0.87

00:05:38.460 And so Adam was brought down by knowledge of death and knowledge of good and evil, knowledge of mortality, knowledge of nakedness.

00:05:45.140 All of that was what produced the fall.

00:05:47.540 So that's an emergence into self-consciousness and the emergence of the tragedy of the self-conscious world.

00:05:54.880 And then Christ is portrayed as an antidote to that.

00:05:57.800 And the antidote is voluntary acceptance of that burden and simultaneous transcendence of it as a consequence of the voluntary adoption.

00:06:07.040 And that's put forth in the Christian corpus as the imitation of Christ, which is a theme, of course, that runs through Catholicism and Protestantism and Orthodox Christianity alike.

00:06:16.940 I don't think it's something that's attended to enough in the Western Christian traditions, which tend to emphasize our universal salvation through the sacrifice of Christ, which is, well, it has its utility in that it takes some of the moral responsibility off human beings.

00:06:32.580 But it has its price, too, because it does the same thing.

00:06:36.760 It lessens the importance of what each of us do to some degree.

00:06:43.560 And the sobriety of it.

00:06:45.340 Right.

00:06:45.800 You know, there is the, Christ tells us, take up your cross.

00:06:49.760 But he also says, my yoke is easy and my burden is light.

00:06:53.320 And it is true. 0.71

00:06:54.500 Certain traditions fall a little bit too much to one side or to the other.

00:06:58.160 And they don't hold that tension that you see in your dream, that it clearly pervades the book.

00:07:05.900 Well, that idea, too, of the burden being light, that's a very interesting one because it's a very great paradox.

00:07:11.500 But, you know, one of the things that's quite interesting about attempting to only say things that you believe to be true and then also to acting in a manner commensurate with that is that it does make things lighter.

00:07:24.300 Because you're much less likely to be burdened by your past, you know, you're not guilty and afraid that the terrible things that you've done are going to come to light.

00:07:32.480 And you're not sleeping uneasily on a bed of nails that's your guilty conscience.

00:07:37.440 And so there's a lightness about it and a lightness about accepting things.

00:07:42.540 Even though it's a very dark act in some sense to accept things, there's a lightness that comes along with it.

00:07:47.660 But it's the lightness of being all in, I would say, something like that.

00:07:52.260 And the opposite of that, when one doesn't have that, the culture is so burdened by itself, it begins to hate itself.

00:08:00.140 You write, quote,

00:08:01.740 Now also another problem has arisen, which was perhaps less common in our harsher past.

00:08:07.640 It is easy to believe that people are arrogant and egotistical and always looking out for themselves.

00:08:12.600 The cynicism that makes that opinion a universal truism is widespread and fashionable.

00:08:17.140 But such an orientation to the world is not at all characteristic of many people.

00:08:21.820 They have the opposite problem.

00:08:23.260 They shoulder intolerable burdens of self-disgust, self-contempt, shame, and self-consciousness.

00:08:29.640 Why in 2018 do we so hate ourselves?

00:08:34.080 Well, I think that paragraph does lay out a lot of it.

00:08:38.600 But we've added additional sources of guilt to that that are, I think, part of the modern, what would you call,

00:08:45.700 manifestation of the idea that human beings have original sin and are fallen creatures.

00:08:50.720 Like, we blame ourselves en masse for the depredations that the planet suffers at our hands.

00:08:56.580 And let's say, without any commensurate sympathy for ourselves.

00:09:00.880 I mean, there are a lot of us.

00:09:03.400 You know, we're going to hit 9 billion by midway through this century.

00:09:07.220 And then it looks like things will probably level out.

00:09:11.440 But that's a lot of people.

00:09:12.680 And we're putting a very heavy load on planetary resources, let's say, and out-competing a lot of animals.

00:09:19.500 And, well, you know the whole environmental catastrophe story.

00:09:22.960 You bloody well hear that all the time.

00:09:24.940 But, you know, mostly what we're trying to do is to survive and survive with a relative minimum of excess misery.

00:09:31.220 And we're trying to do that the best way we can see fit.

00:09:34.660 It's only been since the 1960s that we've started to recognize ourselves as a force of planetary significance.

00:09:42.700 Right.

00:09:42.800 You know, a hundred years ago, we believed the oceans were inexhaustible.

00:09:46.700 That was a conclusion that was drawn by a commission that was set up by the British Parliament.

00:09:50.740 And so it's only been, not even in my lifetime.

00:09:55.280 You know, I'm older than the idea that we are a planetary shaping force.

00:09:59.640 But we carry terrible guilt about the price we have to pay for existence, you know.

00:10:06.840 And you hear people say things like, well, the planet would be better off without us, which is like an absolutely horrifying thing to say.

00:10:15.060 But I can understand why people say it, even though I think it's a dreadful thing to say.

00:10:21.340 But it's never said with any sympathy.

00:10:23.160 Like, we're fighting against mortality itself and all the suffering that goes along with that.

00:10:29.180 It's not surprising that we don't do it perfectly.

00:10:31.740 It's a virtually impossible load.

00:10:34.180 And so if you add that existential load as the member of a species, say, with the kind of power we have,

00:10:40.380 to the knowledge that each person has of their own inadequacy and failings,

00:10:44.080 then, you know, we carry a heavy existential burden.

00:10:47.680 It was something that was very well developed by the existential psychologists of the 1950s.

00:10:52.320 And people feel guilty and ashamed about being, just about being human.

00:10:57.340 And then they don't treat themselves very well.

00:10:59.260 And that's not helpful.

00:11:01.260 It's not a solution to the problem.

00:11:04.300 It isn't even anti-American or anti-Western or this.

00:11:08.340 It is anti-human fundamentally.

00:11:10.740 And you quote the Columbine shooter in the book who wrote,

00:11:14.660 nothing means anything anymore.

00:11:16.800 And one aspect I really enjoy about this book is the constant weaving together of different disciplines,

00:11:22.800 of university, of philosophy and psychology.

00:11:25.840 Everybody and her mother is on depression drugs these days. 1.00

00:11:29.400 And yet I suspect a great deal of apparently psychological problems are really essentially philosophical problems.

00:11:36.460 This pervasive cultural nihilism that robs people of meaning, of a sense of meaning.

00:11:42.160 What portion of our social malaise do you think is philosophical?

00:11:46.840 And how did we get here?

00:11:48.500 Oh, I think it's deeper than that even.

00:11:50.180 It might be theological.

00:11:51.320 Like I think the culture war that we're in is essentially a theological war.

00:11:55.120 I agree.

00:11:55.520 It's a war on the very idea of the transcendent individual.

00:12:00.420 And some of that can be conceptualized psychologically.

00:12:04.240 But that's not the deepest possible level of conceptualization.

00:12:10.440 I mean, our culture is predicated on the idea that each human being,

00:12:14.920 this is the source of the idea of natural right, let's say, or of individual sovereignty.

00:12:20.220 There's an idea that each person is touched by divinity, let's say, and is made in an image of God.

00:12:27.600 That actually means something in the context of the story within which it's to be interpreted.

00:12:33.180 So the word of God, which was active at the beginning of time in the Judeo-Christian account of creation,

00:12:39.740 used truthful language to extract habitable order from chaos.

00:12:44.760 And I think that is what human beings do.

00:12:47.040 I don't think we've ever formulated a more accurate representation of the nature of human consciousness

00:12:51.740 because we confront potential.

00:12:55.120 We call that the future.

00:12:56.480 We confront an infinite landscape of potential.

00:12:59.620 And we choose how we're going to make it manifest itself in concrete reality.

00:13:03.980 Like that is really what our consciousness seems to do.

00:13:06.900 And that brings new being into being.

00:13:10.620 And our legal systems are predicated on the idea that that capacity should be given all due respect, right,

00:13:19.500 as the generator and recreator of culture itself.

00:13:22.880 And like you can't just throw away that idea.

00:13:26.100 It's the idea on which our society rests.

00:13:28.480 And the postmodern neo-Marxist types are after that idea, hammer and tongs.

00:13:32.780 They hate everything about it.

00:13:34.440 And so that's why I think it's a theological battle.

00:13:36.960 That's why Derrida said, you know, he called Western culture phallogocentric, phallo, P-H-A-L-L-O.

00:13:45.000 And he meant male-dominated and logo-centered, which is, well, it's certainly logo-centered.

00:13:50.660 Is he going to criticize that?

00:13:52.140 Well, yeah.

00:13:52.680 Are you going to criticize the idea of the sovereign individual?

00:13:55.680 And that's certainly what the postmodern types do.

00:13:58.300 And curse upon them, I would say.

00:14:01.640 Didn't he say there's nothing outside of the text or it's all everything is relative,

00:14:05.740 everything is a matter of interpretation?

00:14:08.640 Yeah, well, he disputed whether or not he really said that.

00:14:11.620 But I think-

00:14:12.280 Of course he would.

00:14:13.320 Well, right.

00:14:14.100 And I think it's a pretty accurate summation of the postmodern ethos.

00:14:17.720 They're skeptical of meta-narratives, of transcendent narratives.

00:14:21.500 Well, that's all well and good, except that, like, if you and I make an agreement so that

00:14:26.960 we can live together peacefully and cooperate and compete over the long run,

00:14:31.180 it's because we've established a narrative that transcends both our individual identities.

00:14:36.060 And if we're going to live together as a culture, that means that despite our individual

00:14:40.880 and cultural differences, let's say, and let's say we can maintain as many of them as

00:14:44.800 possible, we need to subordinate ourselves to a transcendent narrative that actually constitutes

00:14:49.840 the framework for peace and cooperation and for civilized competition.

00:14:55.780 There's no let's dispense with the meta-narrative.

00:14:59.940 It's like that means let's dispense with that which unites us.

00:15:03.060 Well, then all we have is fragments.

00:15:04.680 And then we're going to fight because human beings tend to fragment towards their tribes

00:15:09.000 and then fight.

00:15:10.580 Right.

00:15:10.600 And that's what I see happening both on the left.

00:15:12.780 The left is pushing it, I would say, with everything they've got.

00:15:17.440 And the radical right is responding in kind.

00:15:20.600 It's really not good.

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00:16:28.440 I love this central theme of the book of culture as a natural fact of the world

00:16:34.260 because in our highly scientific age, many people seem to think or take it as a given

00:16:39.300 that we just perceive the bare world, the valueless facts of the world without any meaning,

00:16:46.480 and then we ascribe later meaning to those things.

00:16:49.320 You write in the book, quote, there is little more natural than culture that we perceive.

00:16:55.860 Yeah, well, I mean.

00:16:57.100 Well, my question on this is, what does that say about how we should live?

00:17:01.300 Well, one of the things it says is that you can't exist outside of a framework of value.

00:17:10.760 It's not possible.

00:17:12.220 It's not technically possible.

00:17:13.660 I outline this in quite a bit of detail in chapter 10, which is called, rule 10,

00:17:18.080 which is called be precise in your speech,

00:17:20.100 is that the way the world manifests itself to you is integrally tied to your value structure.

00:17:26.820 And that's because, to put it very simply, is that your very vision is dependent on an aim.

00:17:34.720 Like whenever you look at the world, you're aiming at something.

00:17:37.140 You're aiming at something with your eyes.

00:17:38.880 You can't focus on something without aiming at it, and you won't aim at it without valuing it.

00:17:44.360 So your very perceptions are dependent on your value structure.

00:17:47.940 Now, that doesn't mean there isn't a world.

00:17:50.020 It means that it does mean that experience is a complex interplay of your value structure

00:17:54.480 and the unmanifest world.

00:17:56.600 It's something like that.

00:17:57.720 And then that begs the question, which is, well, if you have to have a value structure,

00:18:01.160 then what should it be?

00:18:02.700 Well, and then that brings us back to the ideas that we were talking about earlier.

00:18:05.760 Like you should value being.

00:18:09.880 You should take on the responsibility of being as your highest ethical obligation

00:18:15.040 and try to improve it.

00:18:16.760 Try to reduce suffering.

00:18:18.540 Try to make the most out of yourself in a way that's beneficial to you and your family

00:18:23.240 and your community.

00:18:23.960 You should aim high, and your perceptions will reconfigure themselves around those aims,

00:18:29.620 and that will allow the world to manifest itself to you in the most positive possible

00:18:34.780 manner, or at least in the most meaningful possible manner. 1.00

00:18:39.120 And in the absence of that, all you have is stupid suffering. 1.00

00:18:42.240 That is the anxiety and depression that we talked about earlier. 1.00

00:18:45.400 Without a point, without value, without an aim, all you're left with is the misery and

00:18:50.240 anxiety of life.

00:18:51.380 That makes people bitter. 1.00

00:18:53.020 I love even to bring up the notion of the aim, because one can react to this stupid suffering 1.00

00:19:00.760 in a number of ways. 0.99

00:19:02.220 But this is so clear.

00:19:03.420 You write in it, you say, you cannot aim yourself at anything if you are completely

00:19:08.860 undisciplined and untutored.

00:19:10.980 You will not know what to target.

00:19:12.500 You won't fly straight, even if you do get your aim right.

00:19:15.280 And then you will conclude there is nothing to aim for, and then you will be lost.

00:19:19.680 And these days, the prevailing moral framework, as I see it, is if it feels good, do it.

00:19:24.660 How is it that discipline and the straight and narrow offer the best chance for a good

00:19:29.260 life?

00:19:30.060 And how is it that we have forgotten that is the case?

00:19:33.820 Well, the reason that discipline is necessary is because you're a mass of competing short-term

00:19:42.040 interests.

00:19:43.800 And so the question is then, well, which short-term interests should win out?

00:19:47.920 And the answer to that is, well, none of them.

00:19:50.760 They need to be organized into a hierarchy that makes them functional across time and across

00:19:57.740 individuals.

00:19:58.360 So like a two-year-old is very likely to act out his or her proximal impulse.

00:20:04.720 But of course, a two-year-old can't survive in the world.

00:20:08.180 You have to bring your primary instincts, let's say, under the regulatory structure of a higher

00:20:15.480 order value system that allows them to manifest themselves without undue mutual sacrifice across

00:20:23.600 large spans of time in the presence of large numbers of other people.

00:20:27.660 That requires a very sophisticated ordering.

00:20:30.680 It's like we already talked about the fact that a meta-narrative is necessary to unite

00:20:35.040 subcultures, say, so that they can operate peacefully and harmoniously within the same

00:20:39.340 space.

00:20:39.940 The same thing applies within you because you're an internal coalition of warring, single-minded

00:20:46.280 tribes.

00:20:47.380 And they have to all be brought under the organizational structure of long-term collective vision,

00:20:53.940 let's say.

00:20:54.420 And in order to do that, you have to be disciplined.

00:20:57.580 And any discipline, technically speaking, is an attempt to bring all those competing short-term

00:21:05.520 impulses under a larger scale and more inclusive framework.

00:21:10.020 And so you do that and then, well, that's actually what gives you freedom.

00:21:15.640 Being impulsive and being free aren't the same things because if you're impulsive, you're

00:21:20.060 just the slave of your impulses.

00:21:21.780 Right.

00:21:22.420 There's no freedom in that.

00:21:24.000 That's just, that's the same freedom, so to speak, literally, that a two-year-old has because

00:21:29.680 a two-year-old isn't socialized yet.

00:21:32.100 So it's not, it's a completely, that doesn't function in this sophisticated world.

00:21:40.780 It doesn't work.

00:21:41.820 Right.

00:21:41.960 Everyone knows it.

00:21:43.780 We just like to pretend sometimes.

00:21:45.480 You say, oh, that does feel good, you know.

00:21:47.100 Now, I have one last...

00:21:48.020 Well, we like to pretend all the time because that's why we go out and drink, you know,

00:21:52.120 because drinking enables you to blind yourself to the long-term consequences of your actions.

00:21:56.760 And there's no doubt that that's very, very rewarding in the short term.

00:22:02.180 But it's also why you wake up the next morning hungover and ashamed.

00:22:07.060 I must tell you, Dr. Peterson, we celebrated St. Patrick's Day and my birthday on this Saturday.

00:22:12.740 And I can attest with real-world experience to your theoretical notions.

00:22:17.620 I have one last question that I want to ask you.

00:22:20.760 You call for people to consider meaning as the higher good.

00:22:25.460 You write, consider then that the alleviation of unnecessary pain and suffering is a good.

00:22:31.540 Later in the book, you call Satan and our image of hell a dreamlike fantasy.

00:22:37.580 Later still, you say that hell is metaphysically true. 0.50

00:22:40.480 In the final chapters, you write a very moving, what seems to be series of prayers to, quote,

00:22:47.280 the source of all revelatory thought in a discussion with God.

00:22:51.820 My question, which is it?

00:22:54.080 I'm not asking about metaphor or symbol and symbolized or signifier and signified.

00:22:59.220 Is God fact or fantasy?

00:23:03.940 Maybe God's both.

00:23:06.780 But if you had to pick one, I don't mean to be glib about it.

00:23:09.940 Well, no, I don't think you can do that in a discussion like this because you're talking

00:23:15.340 about matters where the distinction between those things actually starts to blur.

00:23:20.220 No, because there's a reality, for example, there's a reality to fantasy that we don't

00:23:24.300 really understand.

00:23:26.160 Fantasy is how new things come into being.

00:23:28.700 And fantasy has a structure.

00:23:30.040 It has this archetypal structure.

00:23:31.480 And so, I mean, let's see if I can come up with a bitters.

00:23:40.840 I can't come up with an answer to that that's so blunt because, look, one of the things I

00:23:46.280 mentioned while we were having this discussion was that our legal system is predicated on the

00:23:50.280 idea that each individual is made in the image of God and that there's actually a reason for

00:23:54.760 that, that it's tied into the Judeo-Christian narrative.

00:23:57.280 And the narrative suggests that the way that you bring habitable order, the habitable order

00:24:03.280 that is good into being, so that's what happens in Genesis at the beginning of time, is by

00:24:09.060 using truthful speech and that there's something divine about that.

00:24:12.840 It's like, as far as I'm concerned, that's a fantasy, but it's also factually true.

00:24:17.060 It's a place where the metaphor and the literal unite.

00:24:20.620 But is there a distinction to be made here between metaphor, metaphysical reality, and some

00:24:26.600 sort of fantasy, you know, in the sense that a unicorn would be a fantasy?

00:24:33.020 I don't think a unicorn has metaphorical truth and metaphysical reality, but...

00:24:41.920 Oh, I think there are some forms of fantasy that don't have their literal counterpart, let's say.

00:24:47.000 Sure.

00:24:47.620 They don't have their real counterpart, but there are some places where fantasy and reality meet,

00:24:52.260 and we don't understand those places very well.

00:24:55.920 I don't understand them very well.

00:24:57.300 I think part of the reason that I have a hard time answering questions like that is because

00:25:00.580 they transcend the limits of my knowledge.

00:25:03.700 I actually don't know how to answer the question.

00:25:06.220 Like, I see, because it is the case, as far as I can tell, that the central presumption of our

00:25:11.960 functional legal system is that each person has within them a spark of divinity,

00:25:15.960 and that that spark of divinity manifests itself in the bringing into being of the present from

00:25:21.280 the potential of the future.

00:25:23.060 I think that's all true.

00:25:24.340 Is that a fact?

00:25:26.000 Like, is that the sort of truth that we would call a fact?

00:25:29.040 I think so.

00:25:29.500 Well, it isn't this...

00:25:30.460 Well, possibly, but it's not the sort of fact that you discover that it doesn't sit easily

00:25:37.580 in the category of facts that scientists have produced.

00:25:40.600 Right.

00:25:40.960 It's more like an inference.

00:25:42.320 So, let's say you observe a bunch of people acting a particular way, and then you say,

00:25:48.040 well, here's the rule that describes their action.

00:25:51.940 Say, well, does that rule represent...

00:25:54.840 What does that rule represent?

00:25:56.420 Does that represent a reality?

00:25:58.180 Well, it represents a reality of sorts, but it isn't the same sort of reality that's represented

00:26:02.760 by a pure scientific discovery.

00:26:04.760 They're not in the same category.

00:26:06.600 So, I'm not exactly sure what...

00:26:08.520 Look, here again, here's the observation.

00:26:11.260 If people treat one another as if they're touched by divinity, their personal lives improve,

00:26:18.620 their familial lives improve, their social structures stabilize, they produce functional

00:26:22.460 political systems and productive economies.

00:26:25.680 Does that make that proposition true?

00:26:29.340 Well, possibly, but it doesn't make the proposition a fact in the same way that scientific investigation

00:26:34.300 makes a scientific fact true.

00:26:36.120 Of course.

00:26:37.040 I ask the question in this...

00:26:38.260 So, it's complicated.

00:26:38.880 I ask the question in this way because I think you write with heartbreaking beauty about Christianity, 1.00

00:26:44.740 about the metaphysical logos that is made flesh and dwells among us.

00:26:50.400 And watching you write about this in the book is hugely edifying.

00:26:54.980 So, we talk about theological issues a lot on the show.

00:26:58.080 I highly recommend that everybody goes out and reads 12 Rules for Life.

00:27:04.480 And also, I press the question that way because my bishop promised me a toaster if I could baptize you.

00:27:10.360 But then we might have to save that for another program.

00:27:13.140 Dr. Peterson, thank you so much for being here.

00:27:15.360 It has been a wonderful conversation.

00:27:17.420 I will finally allow you to go on and move on with, I'm sure, your very busy rest of your day.

00:27:22.920 Well, thank you very much for the interview and for the conversation.

The Michael Knowles Show - November 25, 2021

Jordan Peterson ｜ Chaos, God, and Alcohol

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