Episode 232： Jordan Peterson - UNCENSORED
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 18 minutes
Words per Minute
215.97903
Summary
Dr. Jordan Peterson is a clinical psychologist, a professor at the University of Toronto, and the author of 12 Rules for Life. In this episode, Dr. Peterson talks about how he became who he is today, growing up in a small town in Alberta, Canada.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
30 seconds. One time for the underdog. Ignition sequence start. Let me see you put them up. Reach the sky, touch the stars up above. Cause it's one time for the underdog. One time for the underdog.
00:00:17.380
I'm Patrick Bedeve, host of Valuetainment, and today we're sitting down with the one face you keep seeing all over social media. It's the one and only Jordan Peterson.
00:00:24.440
So look, we get a lot of guests on Valuetainment, but one of the most highly requested guests ever by you on Valuetainment has been Dr. Jordan Peterson, clinical psychologist, professor at the University of Toronto, as well as the author of 12 Rules for Life. Dr. Jordan Peterson, thanks for joining us here with Valuetainment.
00:00:45.580
Yes, definitely. It's good to have you here. You know, this, if you, if you don't know Dr. Jordan Peterson, if you, you know, I would say total views, cause I've seen some of your views, 50 million on Facebook, 80 million, some stuff has gone completely viral.
00:00:58.060
I'd say total billion views, give or take, maybe even more than that with your content that's on YouTube, Facebook, all over the place. People now know the name Dr. Jordan Peterson.
00:01:06.900
And the part I want to spend some time talking to you about today is a couple of things. One, obviously a lot of people who interview you, they're going to talk to you about politics, religion, God, postmodernism, all of these things.
00:01:18.680
And maybe we'll get into some of that stuff. But what I'm very curious about with you is the following. One is who Jordan Peterson was growing up, right?
00:01:25.300
I mean, you read the stories about at 13 years old, you were given a book and you started studying some of, I think, Ayn Rand, George Orwell, and some of these books that were given to you.
00:01:34.600
And then from there, you have other inspirations that came up. And I think at one point at Harvard, you were studying drugs and alcohol and the addiction reasoning.
00:01:43.160
Why do we get addicted? And then you become who you become and you have some strong opinions.
00:01:47.000
But I want to know who you were in high school. If I was in high school today with you, we're in 10th grade. We're classmates. I'm sitting next to you.
00:01:56.980
Well, first, I'm not very tall. I was younger than most of the people in my class because I skipped grade one.
00:02:08.100
So, yeah, yeah, yeah. And so I suppose that made me a little bit more agile verbally than I might have otherwise been.
00:02:15.520
Most of my friends were working class guys. Most of them quit school in junior high and early in high school.
00:02:20.800
Most of the friends that I had in high school were very comical people.
00:02:24.020
I had four very close friends from a little tiny town, even north of where I grew up.
00:02:29.320
And there was almost nothing north of where I grew up.
00:02:34.480
And so we told jokes to each other all the time, tried to amuse each other.
00:02:39.220
I spent a lot of time driving around the country, listening to music, drinking beer with my friends out in the bush.
00:02:47.300
So beer helps to think the way you think right now, I guess.
00:02:50.740
It's a long winters in northern Alberta, you know, and not a tremendous amount to do.
00:03:06.360
I had a neighbor across the street who had a huge science fiction collection, a whole wall.
00:03:10.440
And he used to let me come in there once a week or so.
00:03:12.700
And I'd pick like seven or eight books and take them home and read them.
00:03:32.060
My father taught me to read when I was very young.
00:03:41.320
Yeah, well, I wouldn't say specifically he taught me to speed read.
00:03:45.840
And I guess I happen to be relatively fast at it.
00:03:55.340
Your father had a big influence on the reading aspect.
00:03:57.700
He spent a lot of time with me when I was a little kid.
00:04:05.760
He had a workbook, which I still have, that outlined all the phonics,
00:04:10.960
all the sounds of all the letters, the sounds of all the two-letter combinations,
00:04:19.940
And that happened for a long time, from the time I was probably three onward, I think.
00:04:28.600
My mom, well, when I was a kid, she took care of us.
00:04:37.640
And then later, she became librarian for our local college.
00:04:41.700
And she had a career that lasted about 20 years as a head librarian.
00:04:45.840
And she was a very, is, both my parents are still alive.
00:04:53.200
So that was, and I still do, sometimes on purpose, sometimes accidentally.
00:04:57.840
And so humor was, did humor, has humor always been part of your MO?
00:05:01.780
Like, have you always been somebody that told jokes?
00:05:04.780
Well, it was a big part of the culture in northern Alberta.
00:05:14.740
Yeah, well, there's a lot of Canadian comedians, eh?
00:05:16.640
I mean, we export them down to the States so that you guys have something to laugh about.
00:05:19.860
We need your help because we need some good comedians down here, right?
00:05:23.140
You better be funny if you're going to live through a Canadian winter.
00:05:30.840
Like, a lot of what we did when we were kids, when we were adolescents in particular,
00:05:35.200
was just try to sit around and amuse each other, you know?
00:05:40.260
I grew up in the, I was in the military, so this is very normal for us.
00:05:44.600
Some people have a hard time with that, but it's a...
00:05:47.200
I think it's more of a working class thing, you know?
00:05:51.800
I really like it because as I sort of moved up the ranks, let's say, on the academic front,
00:05:59.240
You get your wit from that side or you think that's part of the DNA?
00:06:01.780
You were born being witty or because you were in an environment that you had to be witty
00:06:05.640
that made you survive so the person doesn't tell the last joke?
00:06:08.680
Well, it was also because I was small and mouthy.
00:06:12.580
It was very useful to be sarcastic and witty, too, because it was the only defense that
00:06:21.500
There's lots of physical back and forth in junior high and high school, but people would
00:06:27.180
come after me and I could defend myself reasonably well with my tongue, so...
00:06:30.260
I think Ben Shapiro has a similar story as well.
00:06:34.900
I think it's a year, you know, and he was always smaller, so he had to figure out a
00:06:40.080
I don't think you're saying bully, though, right?
00:06:51.140
Yeah, we've had him on Valentine's Day before, and the way he thinks is also very interesting
00:06:56.880
So, let me ask you, when you said your dad was teaching you how to read from three years
00:07:00.220
old and he's going through it, and then all of a sudden you pick up and start reading
00:07:02.740
a book a day, would you also have dialogues with your dad?
00:07:14.480
So, your family wasn't, I can't believe prime minister did this?
00:07:20.060
Dad figured he would have been happier if he would have been born 100 years earlier.
00:07:23.200
I mean, he grew up in a log cabin, literally, and he grew up on this, well, my grandparents
00:07:30.100
were the original homesteaders in Saskatchewan.
00:07:32.680
Canada, Western Canada is about 100 years behind the Western US.
00:07:35.300
It's a beautiful area, by the way, that whole area.
00:07:39.020
And so, and his parents were from, his parents were of Norwegian extraction, and they built
00:07:44.240
a log cabin in the middle of the damn prairie, and that's where he grew up.
00:07:46.920
And, you know, he's a hunter and a trapper and a fisherman, and he likes to be outside.
00:07:53.100
Although he's got close friends, but these are people that he mostly does these, you
00:08:01.580
He ran a huge fish and game association, imported elk to northern Alberta.
00:08:07.480
There were no elk up there before the organization brought them up there.
00:08:13.240
And he's a gunsmith and a gun collector, and he has like, I don't know how many guns,
00:08:20.540
And it was never something that I was really part of.
00:08:27.640
We weren't a particularly political family or a philosophically oriented family, for
00:08:45.360
Where did your ability to be able to listen, process, respond, where did that ability come from?
00:08:59.800
I mean, even when I was a graduate student, when I was first teaching, I seemed to be good
00:09:05.060
The classes that I taught as a graduate student, and that was without any previous teaching
00:09:13.560
I've been lecturing for multiple times a week for 30 years.
00:09:17.140
And so, and I also very seldom relied on notes.
00:09:21.620
I mean, to begin with, when you don't know a topic very well, you have to scaffold the
00:09:27.420
You know, but I always very loosely stuck to my notes.
00:09:30.420
I would prepare a lot beforehand, but then, so I'd always try.
00:09:33.160
If I come, you're not going to give a PowerPoint speech, here's what we're doing.
00:09:37.720
You know, when PowerPoint first came out, I used it more, I relied on it more than I
00:09:46.680
But no, it's better to, it's better to sketch out your, your talk and then rely on your notes
00:09:54.680
And I, like, I practiced doing that so that I could get to the point where I could speak
00:10:00.080
You just try to stay farther and farther away from your notes as you, as you develop
00:10:06.080
Do you sit there with the notes first and then you set it aside?
00:10:08.980
Usually what I do, that, that's a good question.
00:10:10.840
I mean, first of all, I, I try to be over-prepared in some sense.
00:10:14.420
So, I mean, I believe that if you're going to, if you're going to give a 20 minute lecture,
00:10:17.660
you should have an hour of material at hand because that way you have an opportunity to
00:10:22.460
sort of move spontaneously through the material.
00:10:24.900
But generally what I do now, because I have a lot of material at hand, a lot of stories and
00:10:30.500
a lot of things that I've, knowledge say that I've accrued over the years, usually
00:10:34.620
before a lecture, I'll, and this is the hard part, and I can do a lecture without doing
00:10:42.180
I'll sit down for 20 minutes with my eyes closed and I figure out what the, what the
00:10:48.840
What's the question I'm trying to address in this lecture?
00:10:56.600
Here's point one, here's point two, here's point three.
00:11:02.080
And then with each point, I usually have a collection of stories and facts that I can
00:11:11.140
And, and to buttress it and to make it interesting.
00:11:13.100
And so it's a little bit, it's a little bit like improvisational jazz, I would say,
00:11:17.880
or even improvisational piano, because I play a little bit of piano.
00:11:20.960
So you lay out the, the story and then you can use the responses of the audience to guide
00:11:31.620
Do you, would you say you have some kind of a photographic memory a little bit or no?
00:11:36.940
So all these books, you're either kind that you can say paid 73 seconds.
00:11:44.860
Because you seem like you may have a little bit of that because the way you.
00:11:49.520
I knew professors at, at Harvard, one particular professor, Richard McNally, who was a walking
00:11:54.460
library, man, he, he, he, extraordinarily well-read person, very, very smart, very fast
00:12:01.300
And that's really how he seemed to organize his knowledge.
00:12:10.680
I thought you were for sure some of the, okay, so let me.
00:12:13.200
So I have a theory that I've been working on for a very long time.
00:12:17.160
And what happens when I read something is I plug it into the theory.
00:12:22.840
It's, it'd probably take me 45, 50 hours to lay it out in lectures.
00:12:29.120
And then, but I keep, it grows and grows and grows and grows.
00:12:33.400
So if I read something, I think, oh yes, that slot's there.
00:12:38.760
If somebody asks you a question, you need to use that fact.
00:12:40.720
You have it somewhere stored where you bring it and say, okay.
00:12:42.680
But it has to be related to this work that I've been doing over time.
00:12:46.800
So it's kind of like there, there, there's this technique called memory castle that people
00:12:54.100
And so what you do is you, you, you, you sit and you, you imagine a, might be a place
00:12:59.680
that, you know, like a lit, a geographic place, a house.
00:13:02.900
And then you can place the things that you remember.
00:13:05.520
Imagine you walk through the house, you can place the things that you want to remember
00:13:08.500
at different locations in the house, but you have to, you have to turn what you're
00:13:12.800
remembering into an image and then you can walk through the house and, and you can lift
00:13:17.200
things up and find what it is that you're trying to remember.
00:13:21.680
It's like, it's, it's been, I've literally worked on it for, it's been 40 years.
00:13:25.760
And so I know the, I know the story and I know its branches and I keep adding to it and
00:13:30.820
adding to it and shifting pieces around from time to time.
00:13:35.640
And I forget a lot of what I read, a tremendous amount of what I read.
00:13:38.780
That's now and then something pops up and it sticks, you know, that changes the complete
00:13:42.820
perspective for me a little bit, for me to know that your views obviously has been vested
00:13:48.320
for many years, but you're also constantly working on it.
00:13:50.320
I guess this leads to me wanting to ask this question from you is I think for my opinion,
00:13:59.600
I believe the people that make it to the top of any space, they learn how to process issues
00:14:05.320
They learn how to put things together, a system that helps them make a good decision.
00:14:09.980
And then from there, they come out with their opinion, maybe based on some facts, based on
00:14:13.500
whatever they collect together, data to say, this is what I believe about God.
00:14:22.320
This is what I think is the way we ought to live the 12 rules for life, right?
00:14:26.040
Here's what I think boys need to do or women or men, or this is based on this.
00:14:31.180
What is your processing when a topic enters your mind?
00:14:34.280
How are you taking the next necessary step to come up with an answer or a belief that
00:14:39.560
you're very comfortable saying, this is what I believe in?
00:14:41.700
I know one of the questions you don't like to be asked is, do you believe in God?
00:14:44.820
And your response is phenomenal because you said, one, I don't know what believe means
00:14:48.360
to you and I don't know what God means to you because the word believe in God may be
00:14:55.420
But how do you process issues here when a new topic comes out to you?
00:15:01.380
Everybody goes through the issue with Kavanaugh, right?
00:15:03.480
And you come out and, you know, afterwards, like, well, I think he needs to, you know.
00:15:15.880
And so if I'm building things, because I like to do carpentry and fix houses and that
00:15:21.480
And if I'm figuring out how to build something, I can picture it.
00:15:32.360
Like if I'm sitting down, let's say, with the Kavanaugh issue, there was a question.
00:15:36.000
The question Eric Weinstein asked was, was there an alternative to him being confirmed
00:15:41.920
Because he sort of thought both of those wouldn't bode well for the country.
00:15:45.500
And I thought, okay, well, what could the option possibly be?
00:15:51.080
And then I think, well, he could, well, I eventually thought, well, he could be nominated.
00:15:56.760
And then how would I feel in a situation like that?
00:16:02.720
Is there a way that I could help dampen the contentiousness and still retain my reputation?
00:16:10.160
I thought, well, you could be nominated and resign.
00:16:13.720
And then I lay out one side of the argument and then I lay out the other and another and
00:16:17.960
another and have an argument and like an inside.
00:16:23.920
Basically what you do, and this is really what you do when you think, is you, you know,
00:16:29.320
if thinking is an internalized conversation, which at least is one form of thinking, is
00:16:33.920
that you spin off avatars of yourself and you say, well, you take this position and you
00:16:39.260
take this position and you take this position and then you have each fictional part of yourself
00:16:45.000
lay out the argument and, and argue it through.
00:16:47.840
So for example, when I write, so that's another thing that I've done a lot of to prepare for
00:16:53.560
You know, I've written, well, I've written two books and one of them took 15 years.
00:16:57.260
I wrote three hours a day for 15 years every day.
00:17:03.740
So, so I laid out, I laid out that argument, but the way I did it was, well, first of all,
00:17:11.660
There's actually a technical process that goes along with this.
00:17:18.740
Well, then what I'll do is I usually use two screens.
00:17:21.860
I take a paragraph out, put it on the other screen, break it into sentences.
00:17:30.820
Then I look and see if the sentences are organized properly, if that's the proper order, try to
00:17:36.020
reconstruct them so that they make more sense, they flow better.
00:17:40.720
Then I take each sentence one at a time and try to write a better version of the sentence,
00:17:46.600
And every time I try to write a better version of the sentence, I try to think of all the
00:17:49.920
ways that sentence is wrong and could be fixed.
00:17:52.280
So at the level of the word, at the level of the phrase, at the level of the sentence.
00:17:57.220
Like for Maps of Meaning, the first book, I probably wrote every sentence in that book
00:18:07.900
And if it's better than the original paragraph, then I'll put it in.
00:18:20.740
So this is real helpful too if you're writing a chapter.
00:18:31.040
You've got a chapter, write a 10-sentence outline.
00:18:34.380
And that forces you to condense what you wrote.
00:18:37.380
And with 10 sentences, you can see the arguments.
00:18:41.560
Then you can cut and paste the paragraphs from the essay back into that structure.
00:18:46.460
And if you do that three or four times, then you'll have a very, very tight argument.
00:18:50.640
I have a writing guide on my website at jordanbpeterson.com under products.
00:18:56.140
It's just a Word document, but it outlines how to do this.
00:19:01.160
So here's what you have to get right if you're writing.
00:19:03.900
The whole argument has to make sense as a whole.
00:19:06.280
Okay, you can think rather unclearly and still make an argument that works as a whole.
00:19:13.240
Sometimes I read essays written by intuitive students, and the essay works as a whole.
00:19:18.500
Like there's a good idea in it, but it's very badly written.
00:19:25.420
But then if something's written real well, it's every word is the right word.
00:19:33.220
The sentences are organized into paragraphs properly, and you have to edit at every one
00:19:38.820
So it has to be like if one, you know, pianist listened to another person play, and one is
00:19:53.880
No, but what I seek, I wouldn't say I seek perfection.
00:19:59.820
So I know a book is done when I can't write it any better.
00:20:05.500
So if I can't, and if I'm at the point where when I'm starting to edit, I'm not sure if
00:20:13.440
And I also often, if I'm writing, like I'll write something and then wait, like you have
00:20:20.820
Because often when you're writing and you reread it, you read what you think you wrote
00:20:25.940
because you're still, you still have the ideas in your head that, that are part of the cloud
00:20:30.820
And it's not until you forget the context in some sense that you can actually see what
00:20:36.220
And so there has to be pauses in your writing as well.
00:20:39.020
Do you have a method for turning off all the noise?
00:20:41.240
I mean, you have a family, you have kids, so is there, and you have things that you do.
00:20:44.720
So what is your method for turning off all the noise?
00:20:48.580
It's like, don't come in and bother me when I'm writing.
00:20:51.820
And like, it's been somewhat hard on my family, particularly on my wife, because, you know,
00:20:56.420
like I said, from 1985 to 1999, I wrote three hours a day.
00:21:01.780
And the rule was, don't bother me when I'm writing, like leave me alone.
00:21:05.980
And the reason for that would be, you know, I'd be working on something and I'd have like
00:21:09.840
half an hour of thoughts in my head stacked up to make an argument.
00:21:13.940
And then someone would interrupt me and I'd lose all of it.
00:21:22.940
It's a barbed wire junkyard and I'm a junkyard dog.
00:21:32.580
So you do get frustrated, get, you know, upset.
00:21:41.860
Like, uh, do you know, you know what I'm telling when I say you get along with yourself?
00:21:44.180
Like, you know, sometimes I'm, you know, I enjoy driving.
00:21:48.720
Like I'm a guy that for me, therapy is going to the movies by myself at 10 o'clock in the
00:21:52.160
morning, telling my assistant, I got to do something.
00:21:59.540
But do you get along with Jordan Peterson yourself?
00:22:02.360
Like, do you have battles internally when you're battling the topic or an issue or a theory?
00:22:10.280
You know, like, see, people think that thinking is you encounter something and thoughts appear
00:22:17.120
It's like that's, you're just barely getting started at that point because you have to
00:22:20.620
take those thoughts and then you have to critically assess them.
00:22:23.720
And that's really, that's where the thinking starts.
00:22:32.260
That's based on influence from a friend or a professor to say, John, what do you think
00:22:36.200
What else would you, is it also based on the fact that you're not being lazy about the
00:22:40.680
fact that you're willing to put the additional minutes that you get into a topic to say,
00:22:44.380
I'm going to read a little bit more about this topic.
00:22:49.980
And I also outlined this to some degree in this writing guide that I, that I mentioned
00:22:53.900
is like, well, the first question might be, well, why write or why make an argument?
00:22:59.460
And the answer is, well, if you're writing to figure out what you think, then you're
00:23:03.800
going to use what you think to guide your action.
00:23:05.780
And the consequence of that is going to be how your life turns out.
00:23:09.080
So I'm dead serious about what I write because, because I know what the pathway is.
00:23:13.740
It's like, you don't, you don't communicate in a false manner because if you do, you will
00:23:20.160
And you will absolutely, absolutely, 100% suffer for that.
00:23:24.480
I mean, one of the things I've learned as a clinical psychologist is that I've never seen
00:23:30.700
I've never seen anyone get away with anything ever.
00:23:37.160
So, and sometimes it might, you know, let's say you get away with something.
00:23:41.640
You wait five years from now, seven years from now, it'll come back.
00:23:47.140
It's more like, yes, I think it's the same idea, but it's more like you can't, you don't
00:23:57.300
Like you have the power to bring about reality in some sense because you confront potential
00:24:02.100
and through your actions and, and, and your communicative intent, you turn potential into
00:24:07.100
reality, but you don't have the, you don't have the power to bend reality without it snapping
00:24:14.340
So you don't think visionaries and influencers have the ability to bend reality?
00:24:19.600
I think that they, they, they, I mean, you can bring new things into being, but you can't,
00:24:28.340
No, you can definitely bring new things into being.
00:24:35.100
And, and you can't get away with weak thinking either because, I mean, any more than you can
00:24:45.060
It's, it's why, I mean, one of the themes in my writing is the danger of falsehood and
00:24:50.580
at any, at every level, it's like, well, if you tell the truth to the degree that you
00:24:54.760
can, or at least don't lie, that I think that's rule eight, then you have reality on
00:25:00.860
You got to decide, man, you want reality on your side or do you want reality against
00:25:05.900
I wouldn't recommend the whole reality against you thing because you're not going to
00:25:11.060
And so I'm very careful with what I say and I'm very careful with what I write.
00:25:16.360
Like I try to, if I write something down, it's not an opinion.
00:25:19.660
I mean, obviously it is because it's my, my thought.
00:25:23.360
But it's, it's, I try to take those sentences and beat them to death.
00:25:28.220
I'm trying only to leave on the paper things I cannot get under and flip over.
00:25:34.140
So, and that's with every, literally it's every sentence.
00:25:37.560
Because it seems like for the most part, when somebody, when you, when you're sitting with
00:25:40.760
these interviews and people are asking you questions about whatever topic having to do
00:25:43.980
with politics, it seems like you've recited that answer 50 times to somebody like, you're
00:25:52.000
And like, you know, say there's a series of a thousand questions.
00:25:55.520
It's like an actor who's role-played these things so much, except you're not the actor.
00:25:59.900
You're a real life person that believes these things that you're reciting back to people
00:26:04.740
So it doesn't seem like anything's coming off the cuff.
00:26:06.940
It seems like this has been already thought about and talked about for yourself.
00:26:10.540
Yeah, I try not to answer questions that I haven't thought about.
00:26:14.400
I mean, you've been viewed a few billion times.
00:26:16.080
What do you not know a lot about that if asked about, you don't really have that strong
00:26:27.380
No, I'm not, I'm not particularly smart mathematically.
00:26:30.060
I've had students who were very gifted mathematically.
00:26:32.120
Wow, piano, I would have thought you would have been a math guy because piano somewhat
00:26:38.660
So, I mean, there's lots of things I don't know much about.
00:26:43.140
Now, I'm not sure anyone knows much about economics, but they might.
00:26:46.220
But as a technical science, I certainly don't know much about it.
00:26:49.820
So there's plenty of room, there's plenty of places where I'm, you know, woefully ignorant.
00:26:54.920
I don't know nearly as much about history as I should.
00:26:59.080
Book a day and you don't know a lot about history.
00:27:04.920
And, you know, I know enough history to know what, to have some sense of what I don't know.
00:27:14.040
Why don't we talk about what you do talk a lot about, men.
00:27:17.460
You talk a lot about, you know, what's going on right now with men.
00:27:20.340
And for me, like, I'll ask this question maybe in a way that will get a different perspective for you.
00:27:24.740
For me, I grew up with a father that taught a lot of the stuff you write in your book, The 12 Rules for Life.
00:27:32.340
My dad's, people ask me, what has your dad told you the most?
00:27:37.460
If I tell you how many times, I don't even know how many times.
00:27:40.620
He's probably told me that thing a million times.
00:27:44.340
And it's part of your, one of the rules of life, rules for life.
00:27:50.000
You should be afraid of the truth, but you should be more afraid of falsehood.
00:27:54.220
See, and that's no criticism of your dad's advice.
00:27:57.440
But people are afraid of the truth because often if you reveal it, it causes conflict in the moment.
00:28:06.700
Sometimes it's very scary to even know about it.
00:28:10.200
But life is boring if we don't pursue that side.
00:28:12.160
I mean, what do you do if you go living, not wanting to pursue the truth?
00:28:14.800
To me, it's kind of like, what is the purpose if we're not at least trying to test our own beliefs to see if we are thinking right or not?
00:28:20.460
If we're not thinking right, what the hell is the purpose of this life?
00:28:22.600
And we've just got eight years to be here and be gone.
00:28:24.820
We may as well have a little bit of friction to try to figure it out.
00:28:27.000
Yes, well, telling the truth is definitely an adventure.
00:28:29.960
And so if you want an adventure, that's a good one.
00:28:37.580
What do you mean by that, telling the truth is an adventure?
00:28:39.480
Look, look, look, so, you know, one of the things that you're counseled to do, let's say, if you do a lot of media interviews, is to figure out what it is that you want to accomplish with the media interview.
00:28:50.660
It's like, here's what I want to accomplish with this interview.
00:28:56.480
But another way of going about it is to just say what you think and see what happens.
00:29:01.300
That's an adventure because you don't know what the outcome is going to be.
00:29:04.220
So, look, there's this old idea that it's necessary to have faith in the truth.
00:29:11.220
Someone asks you a question and you might think, well, here's the outcome I want.
00:29:14.800
And so here's how I'm going to answer that question.
00:29:18.540
But another way of approaching it is you ask me a question, I'm going to think about the answer, and I'm just going to tell you what I think.
00:29:25.740
And it doesn't matter what the outcome is because I'm willing to see what the outcome will be predicated on the idea that there isn't a better outcome than the one that truth produces.
00:29:36.240
Even if it's harsh and terrible in the short term, and sometimes it is, it's like there isn't a better way of doing it.
00:29:41.600
Now, you might say, well, how do you know that?
00:29:45.460
That's why it's an article of faith because I believe, and I believe this deeply, the being that you produce as a consequence of telling the truth is good by definition.
00:29:56.940
Even though it's harsh and often uncomfortable because you get in trouble.
00:30:01.760
Yes, but your faith, to me, seems very mathematical.
00:30:07.520
Like when I see your answers about your faith, like you say, I choose to believe that there is a God, but I don't know.
00:30:14.360
So it's a very logical answer you're given, right?
00:30:19.040
Right, which is a good definition of belief as far as I'm concerned.
00:30:21.820
You know, believing in something you have not yet seen, right?
00:30:26.080
You know, like you think, well, how do you know if you believe something?
00:30:32.020
And that's something, I suppose, to the degree that I've been able to, I've staked my life on.
00:30:42.520
So that seems to be a reasonable definition of belief.
00:30:45.320
You know, if someone says, you know, do you think there's a God in heaven?
00:30:48.520
It's like, well, I don't know how to answer that question because I don't know exactly what you mean.
00:30:54.300
I think the logical side of it is more of an honest way of looking at it, saying it's a bet.
00:31:00.480
You know, I'm not 100%, but I'm betting there is.
00:31:03.360
If I was to bet to see if there is or there isn't, my bet is, yes, there is.
00:31:08.320
And I think I'm living a better life if I believe there is.
00:31:10.340
Well, it's also, there's also, there's psychological elements that are associated with that, too, that are important.
00:31:15.180
So one of the things I learned from Carl Jung, who I have great respect for, is that we necessarily exist inside a hierarchy of values.
00:31:22.980
And that manifests itself all the time because in order to act, things have to come to a point, right?
00:31:30.100
For you to do something, you have to decide at that moment that that thing is more important to do than anything else that you're doing.
00:31:38.500
Because when you look at the world, you look at some things, one thing, rather than all the other things you could look at.
00:31:43.880
So even to look at something, and this is technically true, you have to value the thing that you're looking at.
00:31:49.780
Okay, so you're always using values to interact with the world, perceptually and in terms of action.
00:31:59.000
There's some consistency in what you do, right?
00:32:08.320
Some of the things that are important to you are even more important than other things that are important.
00:32:18.100
Now, you might be fragmented and pointing to a bunch of contradictory things, but that's not helpful.
00:32:22.780
Let's assume that you're a reasonably integrated person.
00:32:32.700
Functionally speaking, whatever that is at the top of your hierarchy, that's God for you.
00:32:37.220
And you might say, well, I don't believe in God.
00:32:38.920
It's like, well, yeah, but you still have, you either have.
00:32:42.600
You have an ultimate value that performs the function that a deity would perform.
00:32:49.920
Do you think a lot of men today struggle with that?
00:32:56.000
Because there's a lot of different movements that you see.
00:32:58.900
So it's almost like, you know, there was a band back in the days and the night.
00:33:09.820
I think we're going from men to boys at times today.
00:33:12.600
You know, sometimes guys are feeling bad about being too manly.
00:33:19.900
You don't have any empathy or feelings for other people.
00:33:22.340
And then sometimes on the other side is, you know, you're not bossy enough.
00:33:26.160
Do you think there is a identity crisis right now for both men and women that they don't
00:33:30.800
really know what position do I need to be to be a real man or a real woman?
00:33:34.780
I think let's start with the male part of that.
00:33:37.360
So I think that right now our society is criticizing itself.
00:33:43.140
That's part of, let's call it, patriarchy theory.
00:33:45.840
And the idea is the hierarchies that are characteristic of our society are male-dominated and predicated
00:33:55.520
I think that any hierarchical structure can degenerate into tyranny.
00:33:59.840
But I think that most of the hierarchical structures in the West are about as good as hierarchical
00:34:05.520
And if you think we can do without hierarchical structures, then you don't know what you're
00:34:09.600
Because you can't organize your perception without a hierarchical structure.
00:34:12.680
And you can't organize people in terms of pursuing a valuable goal.
00:34:17.040
You can't even say that a goal is valuable without producing a hierarchy.
00:34:21.760
Now, then you can say, well, yeah, but the hierarchy is based on power and it's corrupt.
00:34:25.260
I don't think that's true in the West, although hierarchies can become corrupt.
00:34:34.080
Well, then let's say you're a young man and you're ambitious.
00:34:36.940
Well, then obviously you're corrupt, too, because your ambition is to take your place in
00:34:41.740
And so, because the hierarchies aren't tyrannical and because they're based on competence, your
00:34:47.560
ambition, if you have any sense, is actually to become competent.
00:34:50.880
But if you confuse that with a power drive, and there's tremendous confusion about that,
00:34:55.260
then you confuse young men because they think if they're ambitious and they want to get
00:34:58.820
ahead, let's say, they want to be useful and competent, that they're somehow buying into
00:35:03.860
So you actually punish the young men for their virtues.
00:35:07.180
And I actually think that that's part and parcel of this critical process, because I
00:35:11.000
think that one of the things that drives the people who are theorizing about the tyrannical
00:35:14.980
patriarchy is that they absolutely detest competence.
00:35:21.740
It's very hard on young men, but it's also hard on young women.
00:35:24.940
So it's hard on young women because they end up with partners who are confused.
00:35:28.580
They're confused about the relationship between masculine and feminine.
00:35:32.400
They're confused about what role they should play out in the world.
00:35:36.440
Apparently, it seems to be fine if a woman wants to play a patriarchal role.
00:35:43.040
I don't understand how that can be the case if the patriarchy itself is corrupt.
00:35:46.960
It's corrupt, but it's okay if women occupy the positions of power.
00:35:53.880
Part of the reason it doesn't make sense is because it isn't designed to make sense.
00:36:01.460
There's lots of reasons why people are unstable in their roles now.
00:36:06.260
And one of the big reasons is the introduction of the birth control pill.
00:36:09.380
So we still haven't adapted to that by any stretch of the imagination.
00:36:15.580
It's a huge biological transformation for women to have voluntary control over the reproductive function.
00:36:20.800
You can't possibly overstate how massive a technological revolution that is.
00:36:33.520
And so there's plenty of waves produced by that, and we haven't sorted that out at all.
00:36:38.880
Do you think that is becoming the norm that, you know, boys, like we had a guy today, Trent, ask the question, hey, I'd love to ask, you know, Dr. Peterson, I'm a new father today, raising kids today.
00:36:49.900
How different is it to be a father today than before?
00:36:52.220
Do you think he who controls the mic dictates how people should live and think, like men and women?
00:36:59.740
And today the mic is controlled by media, and media is telling us everything, and it's controlled by 80% on one side.
00:37:06.460
Do you think that's where the influence is coming from, and that's where the whole postmodernism's influence in the younger generation?
00:37:14.080
I mean, the criticisms that we've been discussing are in some sense justified because it's reasonable to look at a hierarchical structure and to be concerned about the degree to which it becomes tyrannical.
00:37:25.540
The hierarchical structures tilt towards tyranny.
00:37:28.240
You have to be awake, and you have to be ethical in order to keep them straight.
00:37:32.280
But the criticism has gone so far, as far as I'm concerned, that it's critiquing the entire idea.
00:37:38.380
It's gone way down to the bottom and critiquing even the idea of the sovereign individual, which I think is a catastrophic problem.
00:37:45.900
And it's so interesting to see the response to people after my talks, say, or as a consequence of watching my lectures, I have people come up to me every night because I talk to about 150 people a night after the talks.
00:37:57.860
And so many of them are happy because they've put their lives on firm foundation because they found a little bit of encouragement in my lectures, saying, look, it's good for you to go take your place in the world.
00:38:08.260
Have some ambition, have a vision, have a goal, have a strategy, try to be a good person, not because it's your duty precisely, because that's the proper way to live.
00:38:19.940
We're in danger of undermining all of that, and it's not good for people.
00:38:23.600
One of the things that I've really learned, for example, recently, or learned to articulate better, is that there's a very tight relationship between aspiration and responsibility.
00:38:33.440
So let's say, well, the first question might be, do you need to aspire to something?
00:38:38.680
And the answer is, well, yes, because you have to do something.
00:38:53.040
Well, it should be something worth doing, let's say.
00:38:55.500
Why do something that you don't feel is worth doing?
00:38:59.660
Well, if you watch other people, and you judge when they're doing something worthwhile, you usually judge them positively if you see that they're taking responsibility, at least for themselves.
00:39:09.260
What, do you want to be completely useless so other people have to take care of you?
00:39:13.240
And maybe you could get your act together so you're taking care of yourself and your family.
00:39:17.340
And maybe you could even do better than that and take care of yourself and your family and your community.
00:39:25.300
Well, here's one of the things that's cool about that, is that your life doesn't have meaning without aspiration or an aim.
00:39:35.860
If you don't have that, your life doesn't have any meaning.
00:39:38.280
So if you criticize the hierarchy, or even the idea of hierarchy, you destroy the idea of aspiration.
00:39:48.460
People are built for a struggle, and they're built for a weight.
00:39:50.980
And you want to take on a heavy burden voluntarily.
00:39:55.580
See what you can do out in the world while you're waiting to die.
00:40:02.100
And so there's a tight relationship between responsibility and aspiration and hierarchy.
00:40:07.780
And when you criticize those things, you get rid of the aspiration.
00:40:13.040
Like, why are those, the idea of, you know, feeling entitled or victimhood mentality,
00:40:20.560
Why is it becoming a norm to say, people are feeling like I'm a victim,
00:40:23.700
but you don't understand what I'm going through.
00:40:25.840
It feels like there's a lot of that going on today,
00:40:27.500
versus a stand-up and do something about your life and take some responsibility.
00:40:30.660
Why are those ideas getting so much attention today?
00:40:33.080
Or is it something that's always been like this?
00:40:35.060
I think, in some sense, it's an eternal battle.
00:40:38.100
I mean, the story of Cain and Abel is a story about that.
00:40:40.840
It's about responsible, proper living, and the jealousy that might be engendered while observing that.
00:41:00.540
Do you know how much money you have to make in order to be in the top 1% in worldwide terms?
00:41:14.140
If you make $32,000 a year, you're in the top 1%.
00:41:17.080
So it's like, well, why do you draw the boundaries so that the top 1% are people that aren't you?
00:41:24.800
I mean, you're doing okay with, say, an average working class salary.
00:41:37.000
You've got some ability to move forward into the future.
00:41:40.880
And by historical standards, you're doing damn fine.
00:41:43.840
So why all of a sudden is the 1% that you're envious of only those people who are richer than you,
00:41:48.320
when you're also part of the 1% worldwide, if that's not envy?
00:41:53.140
The rich is always someone who has more money than me.
00:41:57.380
I don't put myself in that category, you know, especially if I'm pursuing this victim mentality.
00:42:02.060
And then the other part of the victim mentality is, well, you know,
00:42:04.780
let's say you can have a meaningful life by adopting responsibility, but it's a heavy load.
00:42:08.720
You've got to be awake and alert and on your feet and moving towards something difficult.
00:42:12.520
You have to have some self-control and you have to sacrifice in the present so that the future is better.
00:42:20.480
And when you take on some responsibility, your life has meaning.
00:42:25.860
If you're willing to take on the responsibility, what's the alternative?
00:42:29.380
Well, to garner a lot of unearned sympathy for your victimization position.
00:42:33.980
And to, at the same time, take down the people who are willing to take more responsibility than you.
00:42:40.100
And I see it played out in the universities too.
00:42:41.780
I think if you quadrupled the salaries of sociologists, that most political correctness would go away.
00:42:47.860
I think they're jealous and envious because they see people who aren't any smarter than them doing way better out there in the capitalist world.
00:42:56.300
Even though they're unbelievably privileged in their positions as, let's say, sociology professors or social work professors or people who are on the faculties of education.
00:43:04.740
All disciplines that have become incredibly corrupt.
00:43:09.680
Then we're talking media and we're talking about educational system.
00:43:12.980
And the influence of the media and the educational system, 80% is on the left.
00:43:17.240
Well, the media is a complicated, more complicated thing, I think.
00:43:20.420
Because I think what's happening in the mainstream media is that it's falling apart as a consequence of technological transformation.
00:43:29.480
You know, like, well, look, newspapers are having a hard time making any money, right?
00:43:34.780
And, of course, cable TV networks are losing all their viewers to things like YouTube.
00:43:44.140
Well, when you start to disintegrate, you get more desperate.
00:43:46.840
And when you get more desperate, well, then you have to attract attention however you can.
00:43:50.500
And I think what we're seeing in the mainstream media is increasing focus on polarizing figures because that drives the remaining audience to view.
00:44:00.220
And so I think a lot of that's being driven by the underlying technological transformations.
00:44:04.300
So media solving for views rather than the truth is what you're saying.
00:44:08.280
So how do you feel about the media yourself when you think about the media?
00:44:13.100
I mean, I've been treated very well by some journalists.
00:44:15.860
You know, there's a handful of Canadian journalists in particular.
00:44:18.380
I actually think they're the best journalists in Canada.
00:44:20.680
I hope that isn't mere personal bias who've taken a careful look at what I've been doing and saying and have been very supportive of me.
00:44:28.100
The Post Media Group in Canada, it's an aggregation of 200 newspapers, came out publicly in support of my stance on free speech a year and a half ago.
00:44:36.440
And at some cost to them because it was very contentious at that point.
00:44:42.040
And, of course, the media, so to speak, has also enabled me to bring what I know or purport to know to a very broad audience.
00:44:52.920
I've had very, very stressful interactions with many, many journalists.
00:44:57.000
It's certainly been the most stressful part of my life over the last two years.
00:45:04.320
Some of the journalists, MSNBC News, appalling, appalling and amateurish.
00:45:10.420
So both at the same time, it's a bad combination.
00:45:13.920
Vice, another pit of snakes as far as I'm concerned.
00:45:17.540
People who interviewed me and then chopped up the interview to make it look as bad as they possibly could.
00:45:21.660
And that was all laid out by other people on YouTube who spliced back the original interviews and, you know, put out what I actually said.
00:45:30.640
CNN, I've had absolutely no contact with personally.
00:45:41.960
Here's the reason why I'm asking this question for it.
00:45:43.680
So I'll sit with people on the left and the right.
00:45:48.460
But we've had Prager, Shapiro, McAfee in the middle, Ron Paul.
00:45:52.280
So you've got two left, two right, in the middle, weird.
00:45:56.260
Because I'm trying to get clear for myself philosophically and politically to see if there's some clarity.
00:46:01.880
As an entrepreneur, what are some of the things we ought to pay attention to?
00:46:04.580
Sometimes entrepreneurs, you're so independent, it's like, listen, just leave me alone.
00:46:09.940
For the most part, most entrepreneurs are libertarian-esque type of philosophies, for the most part.
00:46:18.300
I don't want to get anybody else into my business.
00:46:21.180
Having said that, I hear Republicans complain about the fact that, well, you know, 80% of media is controlled by the left.
00:46:30.280
They own, you know, they own this and they own that and they own this.
00:46:39.980
Why can't he get up there and go out there and say what's on his mind?
00:46:45.840
Then on the complete opposite side, I say, wait a minute.
00:46:47.680
Time Magazine was just bought by the founder of Salesforce.com for $350 million.
00:46:53.320
You mean to tell me somebody on the right couldn't have bought Time Magazine for $350 million?
00:46:59.120
So when I hear that part on the conservative side, the right side, Republicans calling the left snowflakes, I see the other side that sometimes conservatives, Republicans, if you're calling them snowflakes, why don't you go also and compete and buy some media and create some media for yourself?
00:47:12.960
There aren't any social media platforms that are pretty much owned by somebody on the right or conservative.
00:47:18.760
So that's why it's the question from you saying, you know, what do you think about media?
00:47:24.780
And why aren't the Republicans or the people on the right doing something about it where at least 50-50, media is 50-50, where I can get up and say, you know what?
00:47:35.560
These guys are full of it, but I have an opinion versus 80% tells me to go look one-sided.
00:47:39.700
I think part of it, the argument that the large-scale social media providers were politically biased in some important sense has only existed for about three or four years in any real sense, right?
00:47:50.900
It's really expanded, I would say, since the election of Trump.
00:47:55.800
I mean, I don't think people necessarily thought five years ago that Facebook and Google were primarily left, at least to the degree that they're accused of as being now.
00:48:04.940
Well, Silicon Valley, for the most part, outside of Peter Thiel, would be left.
00:48:08.900
If you think about Silicon Valley, the only person that you've got to be worried about is Peter Thiel.
00:48:12.700
Right, but how long has that really been a contentious issue?
00:48:16.300
Like, Google has only been a company that people had mixed opinions about for about two years.
00:48:26.060
But nothing to the point where it's out right now.
00:48:29.800
But if you think about CNN, you know, MSNBC, Washington Times, New York Times, some of that is,
00:48:35.720
But to some degree, that was balanced by Fox News.
00:48:38.600
I think part of the reason that there aren't—
00:48:43.560
I think part of the reason that there aren't more conservative social media platforms is because it wasn't obvious until relatively recently that that was a necessity.
00:48:54.380
If the conservatives want to do something about the hypothetically liberal bias of the large-scale social media companies, then they're free to go out and do something about it.
00:49:04.220
But I don't think they've—I don't think they've considered that a problem for that many years yet.
00:49:10.020
You don't think they've seen that as a problem?
00:49:13.880
I mean, I've been following American politics, say, for—I mean, I come from Iran.
00:49:19.860
So for us, we know Jimmy Carter, the influence played in Iran, and my mom's family's communist, dad's side's imperialist.
00:49:28.220
So I've had to follow politics for quite some time because it's affected my life, right?
00:49:33.040
And when you see politics here, I would say 20 years of me at least looking at it.
00:49:39.560
But the reason why I'm asking this is I'm not looking for it being right.
00:49:42.940
I don't think it's good to be 80 percent either side.
00:49:45.280
Like, I think what you, Shapiro, Rubin, Rogan, some of us, what we do on Value Time when we talk about capitalism, I think that is very healthy.
00:49:58.420
I think some of that is also good because we need both sides to say—
00:50:01.160
Well, and it's certainly the case that the people that you just described aren't having any shortage of opportunity to get their message out over—
00:50:10.580
That's the thing when I say control at the top.
00:50:16.600
He said that he's got reports from hundreds of people that have been unsubscribed from his channel.
00:50:22.620
You know, and the problem is, well, is that true or is it not true?
00:50:25.100
The problem is that, well, the trust for YouTube, for example, has been damaged.
00:50:32.520
They shut my email channels down, all of them one day.
00:50:36.340
I had thousands and thousands of emails on Gmail.
00:50:56.000
You were thinking about getting off of Twitter.
00:50:57.380
I don't think it's a good idea, but you said you were considering—
00:51:00.220
No, you're saying I'm thinking about no longer going on Twitter and kind of writing more articles on my—
00:51:04.640
because your son recommended that you write more—
00:51:09.740
I don't use Reddit much, and I already have a good YouTube following.
00:51:15.560
And I read the article, obviously, when you wrote on your website, I said,
00:51:20.660
And when I read it, you know, and then you said to yourself,
00:51:23.900
Look, just because I say something doesn't mean I'm right.
00:51:27.120
Not every thought I'm saying means I'm right, but I was thinking about that, right?
00:51:31.080
But when you go deeper into it, I see that part.
00:51:32.900
I say, wow, this is interesting how he's wired.
00:51:34.680
No, my only concern is the fact that, look, in Iran, the Shah was worried about today.
00:51:39.520
Today was a group of communists in Iran, and everything they wanted to do was find him
00:51:44.320
I said, oh, my gosh, we can't have these concepts coming.
00:51:46.080
And then people were so afraid of today that they forgot about Khomeini.
00:51:53.360
So the fear of communism, of what if they could take over, made him kind of give more ability
00:51:59.480
for Khomeini to create influence that led to a revolution with 9 million people in the
00:52:04.960
Iran goes from one day, one of the best countries in the Middle East coming up, and the Middle
00:52:09.600
Next thing you know, the war, half a million people getting killed, and all this other stuff.
00:52:13.080
So I think sometimes being worried about what other people are going to say they disagree
00:52:19.420
But today, 100 social media platforms are controlled on one side.
00:52:25.140
If all of a sudden capitalism becomes a curse word, and anybody uses capitalism, hey, you
00:52:30.760
I actually see things in the U.S. balanced quite nicely.
00:52:33.720
You know, I mean, there is tremendous control on the, say, left-leaning end of things in academia
00:52:41.800
But, you know, the electoral process seems to have balanced that out quite nicely because
00:52:48.380
The American system seems to work pretty damn well.
00:52:51.500
It'll be really interesting to see what happens in November's elections.
00:52:57.520
However, this is the one part that I think we have to realize that, you know, Ron Paul
00:53:06.160
Ron Paul raised, I think, $6 million in 2004 on MySpace in 24 hours.
00:53:16.480
This guy raised $6 million in 24 hours a month?
00:53:25.080
And then he took social media and he raised, and he's a two-term president.
00:53:28.800
And then Trump, you take Jack Dorsey's Twitter out.
00:53:33.060
So Trump learned how to use Twitter to his advantage.
00:53:35.920
Now that everybody knows the power of social media, the concern now becomes everyone knows
00:53:42.240
what you need to do if you want to be a president two years from now or six years from now, right?
00:53:46.200
You know if you play the game of social media, whoever's got the big following.
00:53:49.100
So now the people at the top who control these social media platforms are more powerful than
00:53:56.100
So this is why when you say the electoral college, you know, the system works, it works today.
00:53:59.960
But, you know, that doesn't necessarily mean...
00:54:03.180
Well, we have no idea how all this technological transformation will destabilize and transform
00:54:10.340
I mean, part of the reason that I'm going on this tour, for example, and talking to people
00:54:14.000
about individual responsibility is that I see this, like everyone does, this unbelievably
00:54:19.500
rapid process of technological transformation approaching us.
00:54:23.040
I think, well, we better be wise enough to handle it because we can't predict it, right?
00:54:27.140
So to the degree that we have character flaws that could be rectified, the consequences,
00:54:32.080
those are going to be magnified by our increased technological power.
00:54:34.980
So I'm hoping that everybody can try to get their act together a little bit more carefully.
00:54:41.680
And like the lecture, so I've been in 85 cities since March.
00:54:49.740
Yes, and I've been fortunate because I've had lots of good people helping me make sure this
00:54:54.240
But it's really quite, it's very heartening because all these, every night I talk to about
00:54:59.780
2,000 people, not every night, but like four nights out of four nights in a week.
00:55:03.660
As far as I can tell, they're all primarily coming there because they want to put their
00:55:06.980
house together from a psychological perspective.
00:55:08.820
They're interested in developing a vision for their life and taking on responsibility.
00:55:12.600
And I have dozens of people every night who have told me that over the last couple of
00:55:19.620
They've gone from a bad place, you know, where they were really lost and nihilistic.
00:55:23.080
They've decided that they were going to do something with their life.
00:55:25.540
You know, I had, I tweeted out something today that some kid wrote me, he said, two years
00:55:31.420
He didn't, he didn't have an intimate relationship.
00:55:35.580
Like he was just, you know, nothing was going for him.
00:55:45.620
And so I hear this sort of story from people all the time.
00:55:48.320
People stop me on the street and tell me this, which is lovely, right?
00:55:51.000
To go to a city you've never been to, this happens to me all the time.
00:55:55.180
Someone will come up and say, I'm sorry that I'm bothering you.
00:55:58.880
And they're not because people are very polite.
00:56:02.280
They say, you know, I wasn't in such a good place a year ago, two years ago.
00:56:09.260
And here's a bunch of things that are way better for me.
00:56:14.360
And I think that's the right way forward, you know, which is why I don't really regard myself
00:56:19.160
I have political interests, but mostly I try to operate at the level of psychology.
00:56:25.280
It's like better for people to put their lives together.
00:56:28.580
And I think each person is crucially important.
00:56:31.300
I think that's a predicate of the democratic state, right?
00:56:35.880
People wouldn't have the responsibility to vote to determine the outcome of the state
00:56:39.800
if there wasn't a deep belief in our culture that each person was vital.
00:56:44.860
I believe that the world is constructed so that each person plays a vital role.
00:56:48.100
And so every time that someone gets their act together, it's like, great, great.
00:56:52.180
That's going to have way more positive effect than you think.
00:56:57.080
Because someone who goes bad can do an unbelievable amount of damage.
00:57:04.500
So, you know, sometimes you read these, you know, articles or videos.
00:57:08.600
America is more divided than it's ever been before.
00:57:11.100
And then you read some research and it says, you know, it's actually not the truth.
00:57:13.700
America is more united than we've ever been before.
00:57:15.740
It's a better place than it's ever been before.
00:57:17.800
I know you're a Canadian looking in, but you're going also speaking everywhere.
00:57:23.040
That's a lot of people you're shaking hands with that you're talking to.
00:57:25.580
And the 150 people that stick around afterwards, they're having a dialogue.
00:57:28.440
This is more info you have here than the average human being.
00:57:32.180
What are you feeling about the conditions of America?
00:57:35.240
Are we more divided than we've ever been before?
00:57:40.060
We're definitely not more divided than we've ever been before.
00:57:46.500
And I don't think that the current division is any greater than it was in the 1960s.
00:57:52.300
I think there was more tension while the war was going on.
00:57:59.100
I mean, people, young people particularly now who haven't been through that don't realize what that's like.
00:58:05.220
It's not like I've been through that personally.
00:58:10.020
I mean, that was high stakes bargaining, you know.
00:58:12.840
And then things were pretty divided later under Nixon.
00:58:25.440
And everyone was afraid that we were going to push the nuclear button.
00:58:30.160
Even in my lifetime, I've seen times when I think that your country, the United States, was more divided than it is now.
00:58:38.720
I know that if you look at what's happened to political attitudes, the typical Democrat has moved farther to the left over the last 20 years.
00:58:49.860
They're still relatively, the median Republican is still relatively close to the center.
00:58:54.560
But I think a lot of the polarization is actually being driven by the death of the mainstream media.
00:58:59.260
Like, you know, you always want to look at what the consequence of a technological transformation is.
00:59:06.780
You know, there used to be flagship media sources that were basically attempting to give a balanced picture.
00:59:12.540
And I think they did a pretty good job 30 years ago.
00:59:15.080
Time Magazine, even the mainstream news programs, they had a professionalism that was associated with their journalism that had some degree of objectivity.
00:59:25.880
And it's fragmenting because there's all these media sources, like innumerable media sources.
00:59:31.360
And so it's driving people who are trying to get attention to desperation.
00:59:42.980
Like, and this is part of the reason I'd thought about, I'm still thinking about what to do with Twitter.
00:59:48.780
Because Twitter, I think, my experience with Twitter is that I'm wandering around in the world and everything's fine.
01:00:00.540
That your cities I've been to, I don't know how many American cities in the last four months, like 40 or 50.
01:00:07.840
You know, I mean, everywhere I go, there's construction.
01:00:13.900
How does one person that's watching the news, and that's where the news they get from, they consume news through media.
01:00:23.680
How do I tell apart between the truth and propaganda?
01:00:28.180
I mean, when I counsel my clinical clients who are depressed or anxious, one of the things I've always told them to do over the last few decades is to disconnect themselves from the news.
01:00:40.500
Well, I hadn't, see, you asked me about CNN earlier.
01:00:44.300
Like, I haven't watched mainstream television news since like 1985.
01:00:53.720
You haven't watched mainstream media since 1985?
01:01:06.780
So if I come to your place, I know you have some interesting collection of art that you collect.
01:01:11.200
But if I come to your place, your TV is not going to be on CNN.
01:01:21.040
If it was only news for a day, it wasn't important.
01:01:23.300
So I read magazines, you know, I read Harper's, or I'm not at the moment.
01:01:27.940
Harper's, Atlantic Monthly, The Economist, those were my basic sources for news.
01:01:33.280
Now that's changed, you see, because I got tangled up so badly in scandal two years ago
01:01:38.340
that I've been on top of, especially social media, like an obsessed addict for two years
01:01:45.000
You know, but it's not clear to me that that's been a good thing.
01:01:51.480
Well, it's, certainly, I don't think Twitter is a good thing for my sanity.
01:01:58.180
It's so, I mean, if you want a daily dose of hate, you can get it in 10 minutes on Twitter.
01:02:02.940
You know, if I post something, you know, there's a number of comments about whatever I posted.
01:02:08.660
And one out of four of them is brutally rude and obnoxious, as nasty as it can possibly be.
01:02:17.980
And, like, you know, people are quite sensitive to negative information.
01:02:21.540
We're more sensitive to negative information than we are to positive information.
01:02:29.580
And I'm certainly a massive beneficiary of the existence of social media.
01:02:37.200
But it exists in absolute contrast to my experiences in the world.
01:02:41.760
Like, it's not like I'm walking down the street and one person out of four jumps out of an alley and, like, curses me.
01:02:48.320
I haven't had a single negative interaction with an individual.
01:02:52.360
I met one really drunk woman in Dublin, and she called me a wanker.
01:03:00.160
But she was quite the piece of work, though, with a little timid husband by her side.
01:03:05.600
Maybe she was pissed off because of the UFC fight.
01:03:08.200
But I've had thousands of interactions with individual people on the street, let's say, in airports and so forth, in the last six months.
01:03:16.980
And every single one of them has been overwhelmingly positive.
01:03:21.920
Then I go into Twitter, and it's like, oh, my God.
01:03:27.940
Listen, all of us, you know, no one likes negative comments.
01:03:31.580
Like, right before this, Mario's sitting, I'm preparing my notes, and Mario's like, look at the three negative comments we got today.
01:03:39.060
So, obviously, before doing something like this, but does it bother you a little bit when you read those negative comments?
01:03:46.120
Well, look, when I was still working as a professor, I'm on unpaid leave at the moment, you know, I get my feedback from my students.
01:03:55.180
And my feedback has been generally extraordinarily positive.
01:03:58.460
So maybe there'll be 50 comments from students, and three of them will be negative, something like that, or two.
01:04:12.280
And the reason for that is negative things can kill you.
01:04:17.940
So, going back to it, I guess what you are saying is with the social media platform, you're saying from 1985, you didn't consume any content on TV outside of pure accident.
01:04:30.800
In the last two years, you've done it because social media, so you kind of had to be aware.
01:04:37.380
Are you happier now that you're consuming the content last two years, or do you find yourself being, man, I'm a little bit more anxious than I was two years ago.
01:04:47.300
So, are you thinking about going on a diet again from social media?
01:04:51.560
Look, it's complicated because my life has gone.
01:04:54.900
I mean, my life was fairly broad two years ago.
01:05:18.300
And so, like, there's no shortage of ridiculously positive things that are happening to me on an ongoing basis.
01:05:27.900
And so, what's happened is the range of my emotional experience has expanded almost unbearably, I would say.
01:05:35.080
So, and again, I'm not complaining about that because I could choose to do it differently.
01:05:40.300
But some of this has also been a matter of management.
01:05:42.800
It's like, it is literally the case that, although it's been a little better over the last three or four months, for about 18 months in a row,
01:05:50.820
I was at the center of a scandal that could have taken me out at least twice a week.
01:05:55.940
So, constant, non-stop scandal of one form or another.
01:05:59.940
And so, that took a lot of juggling and management to see what was going on.
01:06:03.820
And I was paying attention to social media and trying to figure out how to respond in the press and on YouTube and on my blog and all of these sorts of things,
01:06:13.260
And so, it's been an obsessive learning experience, let's say.
01:06:28.680
Facebook, I don't pay much attention to Facebook, although I post on it.
01:06:34.860
Twitter is, I don't know what to do with Twitter.
01:06:46.620
You know, there's a part of me that there's people I keep up with on Twitter, the people I follow, some of these IDW types, so to speak.
01:06:54.060
I see what Brett Weinstein's posting and Sam Harris.
01:07:06.300
But there's also this addictive curiosity, you know, that what's happening, what's happening, what's happening, what's happening.
01:07:14.180
And I tried to pull myself away from that on the TV news because it's the same thing except in much less concentrated form.
01:07:22.280
And I do think if it's only important today, it's not important.
01:07:25.560
If it's news, it doesn't matter if you don't know about it for a week.
01:07:30.020
But I still haven't figured out how to completely deal with all this social reach I have at my fingertips.
01:07:42.620
Because, you know, that's the whole thing with social media addiction, to feel like you are committed to seeing what everybody else is doing because it's a part of loyalty.
01:07:50.780
And I kind of feel like they've been loyal to me.
01:07:53.820
Well, there's definitely some of that, but there's also that.
01:07:56.540
There's also, like, I am insatiably curious about things.
01:08:01.920
And so Twitter is terrible for that because it's just continual hits of information.
01:08:10.060
Yeah, I mean, if you're talking about reading a book a day and you all of a sudden have all this information to your hands, like, what is this?
01:08:18.560
And that's starting to happen a lot with social media.
01:08:20.320
Last question here before we go into a speed round.
01:08:27.040
I know sometimes when we're talking about early 80% of media is on the left.
01:08:29.940
One of the stats you read about is that 1 in 12 professors in colleges today are conservative.
01:08:39.660
So, you know, what do you think is the influence of colleges and how do you feel about the current educational system, period?
01:08:46.420
I've seen large institutions fall apart because they make a fatal error.
01:08:51.100
I think universities are making seven fatal errors.
01:08:57.020
Increase in the number of part-time untenured faculty members who have no administrative or academic power.
01:09:04.700
Insane increases in tuition combined with indentured servitude for students, right?
01:09:12.420
So that means that the burgeoning administration has learned how to pick the pockets of the young people's future earnings.
01:09:18.420
They entice them into university and offer them extended adolescence with no responsibility, and the price they garner from them is to garnishing their future earnings.
01:09:30.700
The dominance of this weird nonsensical alliance between the postmodern types and the neo-Marxist types, which makes no sense philosophically, given the postmodernist stated, what would you call it, skepticism for metanarratives.
01:09:44.840
Why the hell they've aligned themselves with the Marxists is beyond me, except that I think postmodernism is just a shell game for Marxism.
01:10:03.060
And so I think that, I don't know what's going to happen to the university system over the next 20 years, but I'm certainly not optimistic about it.
01:10:09.360
So, and I've hired some people, this is like, this is a big problem we just discussed, and I've got this little solution, and so I know I'm talking about a little solution.
01:10:17.720
That'd be an interesting book if you were to write about it.
01:10:19.400
Well, I've hired some people, I've hired some people to build an online education platform, and we're, they've been working on it for six months, and we have a bit of a prototype, and we're trying to figure out how to build an alternative.
01:10:30.680
You know, you said, look, if the conservatives are so concerned about the liberal media, why the hell don't they go out and build their own media empire?
01:10:37.200
It's like, well, if I'm concerned about the education system, then why don't I try to generate an alternative to it?
01:10:43.980
I mean, the probability that it will succeed is like zero, because it's an impossible task.
01:10:47.880
But we're trying to build a platform that would help people use their online time more productively and keep track of it.
01:10:54.480
So imagine that everything that you taught yourself on YouTube could be accredited, and you could be rewarded for that across time, and maybe guided through it so that you could track your educational progress along a whole wide range of potential learning opportunities.
01:11:11.560
We'd like to build an online portal that would make your use of your online time much more productive and engaging.
01:11:23.160
We have a prototype, and we've applied to Y Combinator.
01:11:28.480
We've got alternatives lined up if we're not accepted.
01:11:37.780
I mean, you know everybody has inspirations that you're talking about, right?
01:11:40.620
Well, I can tell you what's happening in the next year, but that's as far out as I can look.
01:11:48.660
So we're never going to see Prime Minister Jordan Peterson?
01:11:56.320
I mean, God only knows because I can't look that far out.
01:11:59.780
I'm more interested in what I'm doing at the moment.
01:12:03.060
I can tell you what I'm doing for the next year.
01:12:06.340
I have like 15 talks in Europe, all over the place.
01:12:09.460
And then Hawaii, Los Angeles, Calgary, Vancouver, more talks.
01:12:16.160
And then I'm going to Australia and New Zealand in February for another lecture tour.
01:12:21.980
If the Y Combinator thing pops up, I'll go to San Francisco for January and February.
01:12:29.740
From May to September, I'm going to hopefully finish up my next book,
01:12:33.320
which is called 12 Moral Rules for Life, Beyond Mere Order.
01:12:37.760
And then from September to December next year, I'm going to, I did a whole series of lectures
01:12:43.620
I want to go back after that, but go to Exodus and do a series of lectures on Exodus.
01:12:53.360
That's plenty of planning for how fluid and crazy things are right now.
01:12:59.000
If I get through all that, that'll be a miracle.
01:13:01.860
I think if you were to start a university or online university or somewhere to educate
01:13:08.760
thinking, processing, decision-making process, I think that wouldn't just be something that
01:13:19.440
We've been trying to figure out how to do this, to teach people to read, to teach them
01:13:22.860
to think, to teach them to speak and present, to teach them to negotiate.
01:13:33.460
And obviously, with the current technology that we possess, it would be possible to educate
01:13:41.800
So one of our goals is to make a high-quality university equivalent education process that would
01:13:49.420
be like one-tenth to one-one-hundredth of the current cost.
01:13:54.940
So the fact that you're doing that, I'm looking forward to it.
01:13:57.120
I think the way your ideas have been growing and people are looking at it and being so receptive,
01:14:04.460
where nowadays everybody's saying, Jordan Peterson, Jordan Peterson.
01:14:06.820
Well, maybe one day, if the man upstairs has plans, who knows?
01:14:10.220
Maybe the Trudeau last name may be replaced by a Peterson last name in a place like Canada.
01:14:17.580
Definitely, you are very presidential, prime minister-esque type of a person.
01:14:31.700
Just tell me the first thing that comes to your mind.
01:14:50.160
Oh, man who capitalized without virtue on the name of his father.
01:14:56.840
If he had an ounce of character, he would have never run.
01:15:10.760
And so that put Trudeau at a tremendous advantage with regards to moving into a leadership position
01:15:18.800
You should move ahead on your own merits, especially if you're daring to do something
01:15:23.840
If you have the advantage of a name, you have a moral duty to supersede the accomplishments
01:15:29.220
of the person who bore that name and gave it its weight before you dare capitalize
01:15:44.580
And if there was, he wouldn't have run the way he did.
01:15:48.080
He's not an impressive person in my estimation.
01:15:52.760
He appointed 50% of females to 50% of his cabinet because it was, what did he say?
01:16:00.400
It's like, no, quarter of your elected members of parliament were female.
01:16:04.320
If you would, your job was to pick the most qualified people, period, regardless of their
01:16:09.700
genitalia, because they're leading the country.
01:16:13.700
Instead, he abdicated his responsibility to make those difficult decisions and then wallpapered
01:16:18.360
it over with this casual virtue of, well, I'm going to promote women.
01:16:22.320
It's like, no, you're going to promote competent people, you weasel.
01:16:29.280
I'd say one word, but that was a few hundred words.
01:16:50.480
You know, lots of people think conspiratorially.
01:16:53.780
And perhaps Alex Jones a little more than everyone else.
01:16:58.740
They stopped all the people that were listening to him.
01:17:02.240
It wasn't like they believed everything Alex Jones said.
01:17:07.040
So it's not, he's a canary in the coal mine, I think.
01:17:11.680
A testament to the murderous power of resentment.
01:17:25.340
He made an electric car and then he shot it into space.
01:17:31.740
But to do them together and to actually do them, it doesn't even seem real.
01:17:38.180
You know, we talk about Einstein, but he's current.
01:17:49.120
And by the way, if you haven't already subscribed to Valuetainment on iTunes, please do so.
01:17:56.780
And if you have any questions for me that you may have, you can always find me on Snapchat,
01:18:04.560
And I actually do respond back when you snap me or send me a message on Instagram.