Andrew Schulz's Flagrant with Akaash Singh - Jordan Peterson Shares The Best Major To Get You Laid | Flagrant University

Episode Date: April 29, 2021

This week Dr. Jordan Peterson joins Andrew Schulz on Flagrant University

When a society's corrupt, then the powerful rule. When a society isn't corrupt, then the great have authority. Not witty, don't sparkle, and you're not gonna get laid. Are we willing to pay the price for our words to be valuable? When did masculinity become something bad? As I sit here with ripped jeans and my legs crossed. What's up, everybody? Welcome to Flagrant U. Today Today I'm very excited to say that we are sitting down

with acclaimed Canadian psychologist, New York Times best-selling author, and one of the most influential people of our generation. It is Dr. Jordan Peterson. So let's get into it. How do you keep yourself humble? You have, in i don't know what is it like four years maybe you have have had this like amazing rise in popularity an amazing rise in influence and i'm sure you've had tens of thousands of people reach out to you directly and share with you how you change their lives for the for the better right have you maybe saved their lives i'm sure there's tons of people that were suicidal and they started getting into your stuff and they're like no there are other things that i should live for thank you so much dr peterson

how do you not let that change your disposition how do you how do you check yourself you you're not a religious man per se where is your check i would say that i'm a religious person okay i i know people have asked me if i believe in god and i said that i act as though he exists which for me is a fine definition of belief because i think that people the best indication of someone's belief is actually their action rather than their their statements about their beliefs let's say so um i have all sorts of checks apart from that i mean there's a responsibility that goes along with being someone who people turn to when they're in trouble. And so I have that in mind all the time. I also understand that many of my ideas, perhaps most of them,

perhaps all of them for that matter, it's not appropriate for me to claim them. Because I've read so many great ideas of so many great people. And I've been able to synthesize them and to put them perhaps in a new form and maybe in a form that's more accessible but that's partly due to the technological uh wonders that are at our fingertips which really don't have much to do with me either and i'm very cognizant of the fact that i've been influenced by the great thinkers that i've had the privilege to read. And I have friends and family who are watching what I'm doing all the time and helping me. And then I also don't, probably don't really have the temperament for rampant egotism. You know, I tend towards the depressive

end of the spectrum. And so. Yeah, that's your superpower. Maybe that's your check. I suppose. spectrum. And so, yeah, that's your superpower. Maybe that's your check. I suppose, you know, I, I wonder like, and look, you've studied all these people. You studied these people with mass influence, uh, ideologues, you studied these leaders, right. And as you've become a leader, do you have like a new empathy for what they went through? Do you look at some of these like philosophers and you look at some of the things that they were talking about and like you didn't understand it before you had the influence and the responsibility and now you're like, oh shit, okay.

Well, I think I have a new empathy for celebrities. I understand a lot more clearly what it's like to live in the public eye. So, and, and to see the upside and the downside of that, I mean, it really produces a radical transformation in your life and it's hard to, it's hard to grasp completely. I mean, you've become very popular. How long has it been now for you? At this, at this level, maybe the last, like, what, two, three years? Something like that.

Maybe at this level, the last two, three years. I had a little fame earlier in my career. Then it kind of went away. And then when it came back, I was more kind of, like, ready and understood what it was going to be. I felt more comfortable in my own skin. Initially, I thought that I had to prove I was funny to every stranger I met on the street. I had to justify where I was. And then it went away. And then when it came back, I was like, oh, yeah, I don't have to do that. I know what I am. I know

who I am. And if I have an interaction with someone and it's genuine on the street, that's not going to change their opinion of me. And if it is, who cares? But at first, yes, there was that like almost imposter syndrome. I must be this person they think I am. Right. Well, it also wreaks some havoc with who you think you are because part of who you think you are is a consequence of how you're reflected in the eyes of others. And, you know, people say, well, you shouldn't base what you think of yourself on what other people think of you.

Of course, that's complete nonsense, because the only person who doesn't base their own concept on what other people think is a psychopath, right? You have to be sensitive to public opinion, which doesn't mean that you should be nothing but a creature of public opinion. But when you're a public figure, let's say, and you are reflected continually in the public, then it does tend to wreak havoc with your own conception of yourself.

And that's certainly the situation that I find myself in, because while I'm not working at the university anymore, I'm on extended leave, and I don't have my clinical practice. So those were two primary sources of my, let's say, professional identity. And now I'm constantly beset with the question of exactly who I am. And I can't tell because I'm reflected all sorts of ways publicly. And it isn't obvious which of those I should be paying attention to. So I try to pay attention to as many of them as I can, but it's very confusing because there's a, you might say there's a very wide range of opinions about me. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You got a broad spread, a broad spectrum, right? Yeah. Yeah. So

it's, it's somewhat daunting. And so I have some sympathy for celebrities who, who are now exposed in a radical way to the public. I'm in a strange position, though, I would say in some sense, even compared to most celebrities, because movie stars, for example, they're famous for the parts they play, right? But I'm famous because I'm not famous for playing a role. I wasn't an actor. And so that makes things, I somewhat well it's different whether it's more complicated or not I can't be sure but I think that's different I think that's in a lot

of ways better I always thought it was really difficult being like Ross from friends because they don't like you they like Ross from friends and like dealing with that every single day when they interact with you they want you to be ross you better be goofy and say things they're self-deprecating like you can't be anybody that's not that character so this this you went into this business not you but as an actor you go into this business right because you want love you want the pats on the back there's a hole that you need filled and all of a sudden it's kind of filled, but deep down, you know, it's not for you, you know? And I don't know, for me, at least being a standup comic, it's rewarding knowing that like what I put out there, I'm the decider of what I put out there. And if they enjoy that, it's like,

ah, you kind of, you like this part of my personality that I choose to give to you. That's, that's cool. So what you're putting out has to be a part of you. I don't think you're playing a character, uh, except in your, uh, Red Skull comic book. That was fantastic. But, uh, thank you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Great job. Great job. Uh, but like you are giving my makeup artists for that. Come on down here to Miami, man. We'll take care of you little son. But yeah, it's, it's, I don't know know i feel like you're giving yourself so the love that you're getting is for who you are i'd imagine when you get hate for who you are that's a devastating feeling i don't know is that what you struggle with like do you you think you don't think that you don't think you know who you are? Are you letting the public sway your identity?

Oh, yes, I would say so. I do what I can to resist it, but it's a rather irresistible force in some sense. I mean, there's so much. I suppose I could lock myself away from it, but I don't really know how to do that because I'd have to lock myself away from my world fundamentally, and then I wouldn't know what to do exactly. So I mean, I enjoy the YouTube videos I do the interviews that I do, I have to have an active professional life, I'm still writing, I want to stay engaged with the world as much as I possibly can. But that also means simultaneously exposing myself to all the commentary that's associated with what I possibly can, but that also means simultaneously exposing myself to all the commentary that's associated with what I'm doing and trying to puzzle my way through it.

But what has changed about you? I mean, I can look back to like interviews and I saw some like really interesting things, like just random excerpts, right? Like where they were asking you or some people were inquiring about you running for a prime minister in Canada. And like your reaction was really specific. You're like, I thought about doing it, but it would take me too long to learn about the power grid. So I can't do it. And I was just like, what? And I thought it was a really cool answer because most people just go, yeah, I'll run for president and I'll hire some asshole to figure out the fucking power grid. Right. Well, maybe that's a better answer, you know, but I'm, I'm, it's a very complicated job running a country and I suspect you should prepare

for it by knowing some things about how to do it. And, you know, that hasn't been my preparation except perhaps on the psychological front. So, and I'm also more interested in continuing to do what I'm doing, which at least in principle is to provide some useful psychological guidance for as many people as possible and to participate in the constant dialogue about where the culture is heading and why. So. I don't know. I just thought that answer was so you. I thought the answer was reflective of your identity. It was like, I'm not the right person for this job. And in order for me to do it, it would take too much time away

from the things that I enjoy. So perhaps the things that I'm better at. I mean, I've made that decision continually throughout my life because I've contemplated a political career multiple times. But when push came to shove, I always decided to keep doing what I was doing, which was philosophical investigation and scientific investigation, I suppose, as well as my practice as a professor and as a clinician. It just seemed the better fit for me temperamentally. Do you feel like, like, do you sometimes feel like you're

like a seven foot guy with amazing athleticism that can shoot a basketball. Like you're just so good at it that you should do it, but maybe it's not the thing that you want to do. No, I think it's been the thing. I think I was fortunate that I got to do the thing that I wanted to do. I mean, I really love my, my job as a professor and as a clinician, it was extremely rewarding in pretty much every possible way. I love doing the scientific research and answering questions that way. I liked engaging with my competent colleagues.

I liked my graduate students. I really enjoyed teaching undergraduates. I liked my clinical practice. And I had a very, very wide range of clients, ranging from people who were barely hanging on to the edge of the world to people who were unbelievably competent and accomplished. And so I got to see a huge range of people's lives. And that was extremely exciting. And I ran a couple of businesses, more or less, on the side where I was involved in their running.

And so that was all extremely good. I've been exceptionally fortunate in that. And then I've been on a tremendous adventure for the last five years as well. Even though it's torn me apart in some ways, it certainly hasn't been boring. It's been unbelievably exciting. Incredibly too exciting, I would say pretty much all the time. Yeah. Yeah. The curse of an interesting life, I suppose. Yes, yes, yes. Yeah, I don't know. It's just it's just it's really refreshing to hear you say to hear you say that you struggle with identity. That is that is refreshing because

it seems from the outside that you have it figured out. And yeah, I can imagine somebody looking right now going like, oh, oh man i don't know what the hell i want to do or maybe i do know what i want to do but i don't know who i am and i'm being swayed and pulled all these different directions and then to hear someone that they really admire and look up to is also feeling those things is very refreshing man i i don't know i yeah it's kind of like i think it's even ballsy to say I think a lot of people in your position would be like, no, I got it. Keep buying the books. Yeah. Well, I guess I'm still trying to figure it out.

And maybe that's what makes the books useful to people too, is that, I mean, they are my constant attempt, not so much to say what I know to be true, you know, and shake my fist at them and say, you better believe this, but to walk through the process of trying to figure something out, which I'm continually doing. So, you know, there's been a lot of illness in my family as of late too, and that tends to throw you for a loop. So I think all of us, all of my family is still recovering from that. And so that also puts a knot in the tail of your identity, so to speak. Why is that? not in the tale of your identity, so to speak.

Why is that? Well, because it knocks you out of your routine. I mean, I spent much of 2020 in hospitals and 2019 as well. I spent 2019 in the hospital with my daughter and my wife, and then I spent much of 2020 in the hospital with me. So, you know, that knocks you out of your daily routine in a major way. And I mean mean all three of us had very so had very serious illnesses and so and well that that that that's a blow to the side of your head when that happens when you think you're close your partner's going to die for

example that's changes things so luckily that didn't happen. Yeah. Yeah. Thank God. I think it's, I don't know. I wonder my, I have a buddy of mine named little Duval, who's a comedian. He's also a mentor, I guess, of mine. He just has this amazing understanding of life has like no formal background education or anything. he literally has just learned all these things from observation and uh he kept saying something to me and i'm sure it's in a lot of books and stuff like that but it's something i always like think about and he goes um he was all about perspective man and he'll like say very few words he won't like explain much to me he'll just like say a few words and then just kind of like move on or just like hang up the phone. And, uh, and, and he's like, it's all about perspective, man. And, uh, he had a close friend of his, uh, of his

die and, um, of, of cancer. And they, they knew he had cancer for, I think it was like two years. He was supposed to have like two months and then it ended up going for like two years. And, um, he's like, yeah, man, it was a great gift. I go, what are you talking about? Like your friend had cancer. He goes, yeah, but like you oftentimes don't know when someone you love a lot is going to go away. Like we knew and we did everything that we wanted to do those last two years. And for him to look at like the person he loved, like getting cancer as like a gift, you could almost look, oh, this guy's crazy. But at the same time, like life happens. He would always say this.

He's like, life is going to happen. How you react to life is going to dictate your happiness. And I know there's certain things you just cannot be happy about, of course. But making it seem like it was a choice was like oddly empowering. And I was always curious what you would think about that. Like how much is it your choice how you react to these things well it's it's always indeterminate i mean you know there's limit situations where things are so intense that your attitude is well it's very difficult to adjust your attitude if about hunger if you're starving to death yeah you know i mean we can all be pushed

to the point we can be pushed past the point I think all of us where we can control our reactions, if the pain is sufficiently intense, if the situation is sufficiently intense. I suppose, discussion of the possibility of adopting that as a goal, a decision to be grateful. And I think that you can make that a decision to some degree. And it's a fight worth having because it's better to be grateful than not to be. And maybe that's even somewhat independent of your situation. I know when I was particularly ill and I was bitter because of it, then I was worse off than when I was ill and I wasn't bitter because of it. So, and so I did what I could to adjust my proclivity for bitterness because it didn't seem helpful. And so, you know, we do have this scope of decision making that we're always testing out. You never, it's a dangerous thing to push too hard because, you know, you don't want to say to someone who's suffering from extraordinarily painful terminal cancer, for example, that if they just adjusted their attitude, everything would be okay. Obviously, that's a little bit on the harsh side, let's say. But by the same token, we do have the capacity to change the way we look at things, and we do the best that we can.

I mean, the fundamental ethics, I suppose, that people are encouraged to adopt have a fair bit to do with decision about what attitude you're going to take. Are you going to tell the truth. Are you gonna lie? Are you gonna be grateful? Are you gonna be bitter? Are you going to try to care for other people as if they're valuable or are you going to always put your immediate? gratification first These are all at some level Decisions. Yeah, and they're also articles of faith, you know people say well you should never believe what can't be proved but lots of things there's lots of decisions you have to make in the absence

of proof yeah so for example if i say well you should be grateful in spite of your suffering i'm suggesting that that's you take that as an article of faith rather than anything that could ever be proved because I can't really see how it could be proved. It's a decision. Sometimes I feel like religion was designed to trick people into being happy. Yeah, well, you never know. That's not such a bad trick then, is it? It's not a bad trick. What if you and your boys figured out all these life hacks?

They're just life hacks and you try to tell people and they don't seem like they would make sense you're just going up to be like look if you help people out you're gonna feel better and the average person is like man i'm trying to help me out why the hell would i help someone else out and you're just like dude trust me if you do it you'll feel better and most people are operating like maybe a little bit empty they're just trying are operating like maybe a little bit empty they're just trying to fill their tank a little bit just trying to fill their tank so they can't even they can't even put it together in their mind that if they help someone else out that would fill the tank they think it would like take some gas away from the tank and like what if all these rules right or just these very simple life hacks and in order to get people to be happy they had

to say oh you'll go to heaven or this is from God. Well, I guess heaven in part is maybe where you end up if you do things right, right? That's the idea. Well, you have heaven now on earth. You live heaven. You get to enjoy your time here if you live like this. That's how I always looked at it but i mean when you when you live correctly when in the moments that you live according to the dictates of your conscience when you're doing things right is there any other time that you feel as good as you do then not even close i mean drugs right yeah yeah well yeah

but only for a short time exactly yeah and then you pay the price i pay the price there's a i remember i i did a drug called Molly, right? MDMA, whatever ecstasy. I'm not a big drug guy. I would go to this thing called Burning Man, but I've never been a big drug guy in my life, right? Drink a little bit, but I've never done any of like the hard stuff. And, um, but what it does is it gives you this super boost of like, I guess it's serotonin or something like that. And it was for the first time in my life, I felt like serotonin or something like that. And it was for the first time in my life, I felt like way excess feelings of happiness, right? Like my jar, my tank was full and then some. And the enlightening experience I came out of it with was when I had that excess, I didn't want to hold it.

I literally was calling friends and going, oh my God, I love you. You're the best. This, that, the other. That's what I did with my extra. I didn't store it. I didn't put in a fucking bank vault. I did nothing but give it away. And I was like, wow, that's kind of cool that if I can get myself to full, what I'll do without anybody pushing me is try to get other people to full. You know? And that's a hell of a realization i don't i don't think i'm i'm alone in that i think a lot of people i don't think you are either i think that's how it is so does that mean that we're inherently good if we can just get too full probably i don't know i mean look it does seem to me, you put your finger on something

that's exactly right there, I think, is that, you know, you had intense enough joy so that you wanted to share it. That's what happened. You didn't want to keep it all for yourself. And there is intense joy in making other people happy. I mean, look, you're a comedian. What are you trying to do? You're trying to make other people happy. That's your goal. Why is that so rewarding? I mean, partly it's because there's a recognition by the crowd of your value. You're witty, you're sharp, of your value. You're witty, you're sharp, you're creative, you know, and that's, that's reassuring and flattering, but, but that isn't, that isn't the essence of it. The essence of it has to be that, that you're there to serve the audience. You're paying attention to the audience. You want their, you want their approval, but not in a false way. You actually want to be funny.

You want to provide something of value. And if that's genuine, they're going to see that in you, especially if you work hard at it. And then that is rewarding. Yes. Yes, 100%. Approval, but on my terms. Right?

I won't go for the easiest thing to get approval. I often choose the hardest thing and that is my own little like um for lack of a better word like intellectual uh stimulation that I get from and the hardest thing in what way uh like I would prefer the topic that is the least funny uh so you set a challenge in your path yes now i know the audience might not maybe subconsciously they appreciate it the audience might not know uh on a conscious level but for me that's the challenge you know it's it's like um i saw jack white did a it was from the white stripes jack white i got that right yeah my memory has some holes in it so and in any case i saw a documentary he made and he talked about the way he set up his stage.

And first of all, he had this old guitar. Like, it was just beat to death, and it didn't stay in tune. So he had to tune it up all the time while he was playing, or it would go out of tune. Right. And then he would put instruments in places that were difficult to get at on the stage. And he did all that, at least in part,

because it kept him sharp while he was performing. He had to pay attention, intense intention to what was going on. And that heightened his, that heightened, what would it say? Because he had to pay so much attention, it heightened his creative ability. Yeah, his awareness. And the intensity of the performance. It sounds like you're doing something that's quite similar. Yeah, yeah, 100%.

I almost look at it weirdly, like, you know, diving in the Olympics. You know how, like, you not only get judged on how clean the dive was, but also the level of difficulty of the dive. Right. Everybody can just dive straight into the pool. But if you want to do a few backflips and then dive into the pool clean, you know, you're going to raise the stakes. And then the comedians that I've always looked up to and weirdly enough, someone who I think has a lot of a lot in common with you. There's my favorite ever is Patrice O'Neill. Right. And the thing about Patrice is like almost to a fault, he lived his truth. So when I'm reading your stuff about like telling the truth and like the most

adventurous thing you can do is, is tell the truth. Right. What do you think about that idea? It's fucking great. I love it. Why? Because I've been really thinking about that again lately. I put a little Instagram clip out from a from a podcast with Chris Williamson. Yeah. And I said, you know, if because I've been thinking all these political movements, you know, Black Lives Matter and Antifa and the and the right wing identity politics, white white supremacist types. supremacist types, they're all offering this kind of romantic adventure, right? You can join this revolutionary group and take yourself out of your mundane day-to-day existence. There's a real attraction in that. And it's very difficult for mainstream political ideas to compete with that because people need an adventure, especially young people. You need an adventure, man. That's your life. But I do believe that there isn't any more intense adventure than saying what you believe to be true because you just don't know because you have to let go of what's going to happen and you don't know what's going to happen

and and what you said it's true i don't know if i would recommend it but no it's certainly not dull it's not dull and and it's not realistic i think in a lot of ways, like Patrice sabotaged himself. There's a comic named Jim Norton that said it brilliantly. Like he lived his life as if he was going to have to watch a movie of it with his three best friends afterwards. Like they were going to be there and call him out on every fraudulent thing that he did. Right? So instead, he told the truth. So when he watched the movie with all them, he could be like, no, that was me. I really felt that way about that

person in that time, right? But the problem with, obviously, there are certain problems with telling the truth all the time. Like sometimes the things that we feel are not acceptable, right? We might feel something that's not publicly acceptable. And I think that your workaround for that was, well, you don't have to say it out loud. You don't have to say out loud everything you feel. But if somebody's asking you something, like what if my friend is like, hey, how was my set?

This is a person I love, a person I want to do better at comedy. Do I tell them that it sucked? That will be the best thing for them maybe Maybe, maybe they'll work harder on the jokes. Maybe they'll get better. You know, like, do I have, do I have a sit down with my mom and do I tell her that she's annoying me when she's calling and asking for help? I feel guilty that it's annoying. That's on me. So it's like, well, you can have that conversation too right you can say this is a good way of having a conversation with someone you love it's like it turns out that there's

something you're doing that's bothering me but that might be because i'm stupid yeah so you're either annoying or i'm stupid let's figure it out because if you're annoying i want you to stop because i don't want to be annoyed with you but if i'm stupid then you should tell me because i don't want to be stupid and and that's like you can you can tell the truth without claiming omnipotence you know it's not that you're right it's just that that's what you think and so and but you you do want to be corrected if you have any sense because why would you want to lug your stupidity forward yes apart from the fact that it's painful to confront i mean and it is yeah but it's not as painful as lugging it forward so then you're stupid forever that's not that's not advisable you know unless you think that's an advantage but you know stupid is disadvantage is disadvantageous by definition. Yeah. Right. So we call stupid

persisting at something that's disadvantageous without learning. Right. So with your friend, you know, if you have a friend and he's attempting to be a comic and, you know, you have to assess why he's asking you. Yeah. Now, if he's asking you for a pat on the back, then maybe, you know, you're sensitive enough so that you realize that he for a pat on the back, then maybe, you know, you're sensitive enough so that you realize that he needs a pat on the back. And then you think about something that you could do that would offer him a pat on the back. But if he really wants your opinion about,

because, you know, conversation is ambiguous and it isn't always clear what people are asking for. Yes, yes. You know, because maybe your your your girlfriend says do you like this dress and she really means do you love me and when you say well it makes you look fat then she thinks that means you hate her that's not really sophisticated truth now is it you know it right because of the ambiguity but if your wife if you go shopping with your wife and she's trying on three dresses and she asks you which one you like, well, maybe you could tell her because you're going to

have to look at it. Maybe you're going to have to be happy taking her out and, and maybe she needs your opinion. And like, it's tricky, but that, that is true. It's like being able to decipher what that person is truly asking. Right. That is so true. If the person just wants a compliment, then the truth of that moment would be either satisfying that compliment or not, right? This is often true, obviously, like with a spouse, girlfriend, but that is so true. Yeah, yeah, you can still live in your truth

almost within a lie. It would be a surface level lie, but an under the surface truth because that happens a lot. You know, people call those white lies. And I would say like a white lie is better than a black lie, but it's not as good as the truth. Right. So, and I would say even in situations where you're called on to, to manifest a white lie, it's still better if you can come up with something that isn't true at one level and false at another you know to keep it true all the way down right sometimes you're just not smart enough to whip up an answer like that on the fly though yeah so and that is we you know

that is a situation where you're being asked two conflicting things at the same time yes it's not necessarily easy to do that correctly but yeah but i well but i still hold to our previous discussion that it's an adventure to tell the truth now you agreed with that very rapidly it made you laugh too like why why did that strike you because i think and maybe this is a comedic thing for me i people oftentimes go like jokes are jokes are wrong or jokes are right or blah, blah, blah, or jokes speak about the truth. Jokes aren't truthful, right? We lie all the time. How often is the misdirect something that completely didn't happen, right? The whole point of the joke is the lie. I think Seinfeld actually said that really well. But the feeling within the joke is true.

And the problem is a lot of us don't want to acknowledge the feelings that we have and i think one of the reasons why you've had well that's what chapter three and beyond order is about right don't hide things in the fog and it's definitely the case that what comedians do often is point to something and say look we have that hidden in the fog and here's what it is and everyone laughs it's like yeah that's really what it is yeah so yeah that happens a lot so so and you use fiction it's not so much lie it's fiction right and fiction is fiction is more than true in some sense because it's like the it's like the average of truth look a great novel is more realistic than life itself and because who the hell wants to read a novel about how many times you blinked

after you woke up this morning, right? If you wrote down every detail, it's just not relevant or interesting. You want to sift through your life and pull out what's importantly true. And fiction pulls out what's importantly true about lots of people's lives and amalgamates it together into one story. So it's hyper true. It's more than true. And that's why it's so useful. And when you use fiction on stage, when you use fiction in a performance, you're doing the same thing. You're drawing on this ability. So for example, when a little kid plays dad, when he's playing house, you say, well, he's imitating his father but that's not right because if you watch the child he doesn't do exactly what he saw his father do that day what he doesn't said

is he watches his father in many many situations and he gets the gist and then he acts out the gist just like someone who does an imitation comedians do this all the time they do imitations yeah yeah and it's not like they do exactly what they saw the person doing. They watch them across lots of situations and they act or speak like they would in that situation. And so it's true, but it isn't an accurate representation of something that actually happened. So it's a very funny form of truth that doesn't make it trivial it it's a more true and and i think oftentimes when you're dealing with things that uh these feelings that are more true right let's just talk about these like these these feelings itself a lot of times now especially with like the you know the political landscape it is terrifying for the average person, right, to express a feeling that might be high stakes. And I think this is one of the reasons why you became so addictive, for lack of a better word. And there are other people that are in your same vein where it's like you created these very safe structures

to express a feeling that we all had, right? The average person might come out and they might say, I don't even know an example, but I don't think the sky is blue, right? You would have a nuanced specific way of saying that the sky is blue. I'm probably being confusing here, but you would have a nuanced specific way of saying it where they wouldn't have to feel like if they went to work the next day, everybody would judge them. I don't think a lot of people have these feelings. The average person, I'm not talking about the extremist, but the average person has a feeling and it doesn't make them a bad person. But today,

depending on what you say, you could be looked that way. And the nuance will be almost certainly a hundred percent. And so the nuanced thinkers that's why it's so deadly that so many comedians are now uncomfortable to perform yeah yeah comedians are canaries in the coal mine man when when comedians start censoring themselves you know something's gone wrong they're the first they're the first line i think they're out there in front of the artists that's my sense of popular culture The first people to go are the comedians because they, they're the ones that take, well, they take risk with speech. That's part of it. And it's, it's, there has to be a spontaneity and a daring. So they're always testing the limits of what's

acceptable in speech. And they're almost always doing it in a way that points to uncomfortable truths of one form or another things that people won't admit things that we keep hidden in the dark um the foibles of our leaders you know anything that that's there but makes people too uncomfortable to talk about that's exactly what a comedian hones in on institutions right we make fun of the institutions and i think when comedy is best is is when those institutions are a little bit oppressive i think the best comics come from those times. All these comics get upset about what's happening right now. I'm like, you should be salivating. This is our time.

This is when we push back. This is where it's fun, baby. What would you do without some oppression? Yes! You'd need it. We need depression so we don't become sociopaths. We need oppression so we can be great comedians. Like when you could say whatever you want, comedy gets weird. You know those times where like comedy is all like quirky, like I'm going to have a fucking

clown nose and I'm going to be like super absurdist. Like it just means nothing. The second you tell us we can't say something, you get the Carlins, you get the Pryors, you get the Chris Rocks, you get the Chappelle's you know it to me I think this you should be so excited if you're a comedian I also think if you're an intellectual and academic this is the time hey I don't know how to say how I feel what there's a really smart person that's taken a large part of his life to learning how to say things so that they're digestible I'm interested in that guy see. See, it's so interesting that you bring that up too, because one of the comments that people do make to me quite frequently is that they've provided them with ways of saying things they

knew to be true, but didn't know how to formulate. And that's a privilege, right? And I do believe that is the proper role of an articulate intellectual. What else would be the role, except to say the things that need to be said, that want to say but can't? I mean, hopefully education helps you do that. I was speaking with one of Canada's finest journalists the other day, a man named Rex Murphy, who's a real character. I mean, he's like a movie character. He's so eccentric and extreme and interesting. He's like someone you'd write into a movie. And he went to do an English literature degree at Memorial University in Newfoundland. And he memorized a lot of poetry and plays, Shakespearean plays particularly, but great works. And he could recite them at will. I was trying to get him to do a bunch of recitation,

but he was too shy, I guess, too reserved to do it. But I wanted to hear him do it. I heard Russell Brand do it on a podcast we did. He recited some Shakespeare. It was just deadly. He just nailed it. It was so impressive. But Murphy said that absorbing all that poetry

and learning it by heart gave him words. He could feel the spirit of the poetry within him as a consequence of doing all that memorization. And it made him brilliant with his words. And he is brilliant with his words, which is why he's one of Canada's foremost journalists and has been for like 50 years. And so he was able, by relying on the words of the past, by respecting them, by worshipping them, essentially, by becoming extremely educated words of the past, by respecting them, by worshiping them, essentially, by becoming extremely educated in this verbal tradition, he was able to give words to the

feelings that everyone has. And that's partly what made him so popular and so useful. It's the advantage of education. And it's really the people are always doubtful about the values of a humanities education, let's say say especially let's specifically concentrate on english literature yeah well why bother it's like well do you want to know how to talk or not and because how is that different than thinking try to get laid in another language it's hard right i lived in some people that's probably an advantage you might be right but i'm just saying like i lived in barcelona i learned that spanish fast boy i learned it real fast because it's life or death out there i'm competing with not only are they spanish they know how to talk to women but like i'm i'm i'm i have nothing so you learn to create those tools we had a guy named jim quick on here he said uh uh competence is confidence and i thought it was really cool.

The more competent you are at something, the more confident you are speaking about it. You know, if you and I are going to sit here and like wax poetic on like philosophers, I'm not going to be nearly as confident. I'm going to ask a lot of questions. I'm going to be really curious, but I don't have that deep, like, vocabulary or deep understanding about SART, you know? But if we want to talk about comedy, you might be insecure. It might be out of your depths, you know? So... I understand why people aren't better at making this case for education. I mean, I talked to Jocko Willink recently, too, and he's, you know, do you know of Jocko? Of course, the black and white Instagram. Love it. Okay, and most people and he's you know do you know of jorko of course the black and white instagram

love it okay and most people he's a military type oh yeah former navy seal a tough tough guy wakes up early way man what's that wakes up early yeah right and wants you to know about harasses people for not doing it yeah in a friendly way you know he also went on a very inspired rant about the utility of his english literature degree because it made him so formidable in communication within the military structure it's like i can't understand how that idea has been forgotten or why it isn't being transmitted properly it's like there's nothing you can possibly do to become more deadly than to improve your facility with language and the way you do that

is by reading, especially great things, and by writing, and by thinking, and by speaking, for that matter. But how could that not be viewed as absolutely central to what education is about? You want to be inarticulate and stumble over everything that you try to think and communicate? How are you going to get anywhere? You don't even know who you are under those circumstances. You're this massive feeling that's expressing itself, you know, maybe in violence because you can't find the words and you stumble around and bump into things and you're clunky and dull and you're not witty. You don't sparkle and you're not going to get laid. And so not unless someone feels sorry for you. You know, that's probably not a great motivation.

Yeah. Well, prostitution is legal in New York now. So there are ways around it. There's always that. Yes. Yes. But 100%. And there's pornography, you know, where you don't have to speak at all.

I guess I wonder if it's like it's too deep. I have. I should tell the people who are listening. I have a list on my website of great books. There's like a hundred there. I swear to God, I thought you were about to say, I have a list of great pornography. And I, go, go with the books. I keep that list private. Anyways, I have a list of great books on my website. And I put that there because these

are books that had a major impact on me, both as a scientific thinker, but also as a philosophical or psychological thinker. So I'd encourage people if you want to facilitate, if you want to develop your capacity to articulate yourself and gain all the advantages that that brings along with it, which are immense in every possible sphere of life, you could go read those books. And you won't come out of that knowing everything, but you'll come out of it knowing a lot more than you did when you went in. And then you're deadly, regardless of what you do. Do you think that a liberal arts education or humanities education is too derivative from making money? No.

No, no, no, no. Not when it's proper. Not at all. And the evidence suggests that it's not. Look, here's the proof of that. In the eyes of the public. I'm saying in the eyes of the public. In fact, you can't.

Yeah, but look what rich people do with their kids historically. They send them to get a liberal arts education. Well, do you think it's because they're stupid? That's not why they did that. They know that there isn't anything that makes you more powerful than being literate and articulate. And so you might say, well, you didn't get trained in anything specific. And maybe you need to buttress your liberal arts degree with training in something specific. But being able to communicate, especially as you rise up the ranks in any organization,

there isn't anything that serves you better than your ability to communicate. I mean, you read to learn, you communicate to negotiate, to plan, to strategize, to encourage other people, to bring them on board, to put them on your side. It's like, so if you're, if you have finesse with language, nothing can possibly stand in your way. And that's how it should be taught to young, especially young but not only young men but especially young men it's like you want to get somewhere like learn to speak yeah yeah yeah in its most basic sense do you want to get somewhere learn how to speak there's a uh my my fiance when she was younger, her stepfather would do this thing with her where he would make her go start conversations with people. She was like nine years old or something, like a young kid. But just go up to people, start conversations, and don't ask yes or no questions.

I cannot. She is so much more comfortable around people. Like, I'm pretty comfortable around people. I literally talk to them for a living. Like, I perform in front of groups of people. For someone who doesn't perform, who's not in entertainment, her ability to just walk up to a stranger and her confidence in being able to spark a conversation. Right. And I'm not just talking to, like, a guy.

Of course a guy is going to talk to a beautiful girl. It could be a girl. Or not. Because he might be intimidated right into inarticulateness right you're right 100 and she's that isn't a word he might be rendered inarticulate by her beauty and that'd be especially the case if he's not confident in his ability to speak 100 so it's like yeah i wonder how much of that like i i keep trying to like as i as i get older my kids were little, I had each of them, because I used to go to performances at their school, dramatic performances. And the kids would be up on stage playing out a part at some concert.

And I'd be like five rows back and I couldn't even hear them. And it just used to drive me mad. I'd think, good God, why couldn't the teacher take that child and like spend 10 minutes getting them to yell out their lines so that people could hear them? I took my kids at home and I had them stand up and said, well, you tell me what happened during your day. I want you to talk about your day for five minutes, right? Louder, louder, belt it out so I can hear it. You know, put your hands down, stand up, deliver the damn lines.

You know, we did that a few times and they got it right away. And how useful, what a useful skill that is to be able to stand up and at least speak loudly enough so that people can hear you. When you're doing your comedy performances, where do you put your voice? You whisper so no one can hear you. Well, I mean, you want people to hear you obviously, but sometimes you can use low volume to bring people in.

Yeah, sure, sure. That's when you're doing it on purpose. Yes, yes. You can play with the volume and the delivery. Yes, yes. But yeah, 100%, like, I don't know. I think about all this stuff with like child rearing as I get older and I'm going to want to start a family. And like, you know, even the things that I got from my parents to develop confidence,

like now that I look back on it, we would just have, we were so fortunate. Like we had dinner together every single night and it was literally the stage for me. They would just ask me how my day was and I could go on. And I thought that what I said was valuable. It was probably stupid.

Oh, that's definitely a gift, man. That's definitely a gift. And I think your observation about the table as a stage is a really good one. A tremendous amount of socialization takes place around the table. Yeah. And people learn to communicate or not there because it is a stage. And we share food. It's a very peculiar human trait.

It's very deep. Yeah. Yeah. It's just so interesting. I don't know and you were encouraged apparently yes they they pushed me and you know both of them were dreamers so that was maybe a unique situation as well but but i'm just curious about that especially now as i what did your parents think about your ability you said you were encouraged so you know

my father particularly but also my mother but but particularly my father, you know, he, he had confidence in me. He was, he was strict and, and he had very high standards, but he also had confidence in me. So I always knew that. How did you know that? As opposed to many of my friends who didn't have that. How did you know that he had confidence in you? How did he express that? I think probably because he spent a lot of time with me when I was a little kid, helping me, like he taught me how to read. He spent a lot of time with me when I was a little kid, helping me like he taught me how to read. He spent a lot of time with me, teaching me things that were useful. So I knew that he valued my attention, my time. I guess that was a big part of it. And I suppose it was also partly, perhaps partly, the fact that he would be disappointed if I didn't do something well.

You know, which you think, well, you don't want to disappoint your father. It's like, well, wait a sec. Maybe you do. Maybe you want to disappoint your father. It's like, well, wait a sec. Maybe you do. Maybe you want to disappoint your father when you do something not so good. I mean, are you going to be pleased if he's pleased when you do something bad? I don't think so. I got shitty grades once when I was in like high school. Like, yeah, I was never like an AA student, but I got like bad grades once.

I think I got like Cs. And I remember my mom looking at the report card and she was like, oh, that's pretty good. And I was like, what? Right. What do you mean it's pretty good? Like I need you to come down to me. I'm so pathetic. You need to compliment me on my failure.

Exactly. Yeah, so maybe that's interesting. So like creating those boundaries for the kid also instills a certain level of confidence because it creates what you believe is an expectation. That's discipline, man. That's what discipline really is. It's like, look, you're trying to bring out the best in your child. Right. Isn't that what you would do if you love them? Yes. they could be and how are they going to be secure if that doesn't happen because they're going to think just what you thought is like oh well i really you know was lazing around like a useless

bastard and that's okay how does that make you feel sick everything you do is okay yeah oh my god it's like you might as well just hang yourself right then and there if everything you do is okay no i mean no matter no matter what you do no matter how despicable no matter how underhanded or deceitful that's okay it's like no it's not you just that's that is not how you make a child feel secure that's a lie yeah it is definitely a lie you're not being truthful so maybe there's truth maybe there's confidence with truth i have i have a friend who's uh uh like kind of quebecois we don't even know what the fuck this kid is like he kind of had an accent when he spoke English but he like lived in America like his whole life it was very weird but he's one of our best friends Laurent he says he's from

France but Canada who the fuck cares but uh this guy was so honest with us and we just assumed it was because he was European like we just grew up in New York we never heard anybody just be that honest like we you know what do you think of the pants and he'd be like ah they just don't fit you you're too fat for the pants and we're like are you like are you being serious you're joking around whatever but i'll tell you something whenever that guy says something complimentary i believe it more yeah yeah well that's you know that's that's definitely worth thinking about too it's like are we willing to pay the price for our words to be valuable now there you could put that on a t-shirt and print it that's a great phrase because the price is you don't want to

debase the currency that's the problem with every child wins a trophy day yes it's like you know if if everything is valuable then everything is of equal value. And that equal value is zero because you can't, everything can't be valuable. It isn't possible. Nothing is valuable when everything is valuable. There has to be a differential. There has to be judgment. There has to be hierarchy.

All of that, that people are upset about. It's like, wait a minute. Do you not want some things to be better than others? Wait a second. Are you sure about that? You don't want to be better tomorrow than you are today and that means you're you know that means you judge yourself one of the things i learned from carl jung it was so brilliant that one of the things he he wrote in one of his books um it was about christ coming back in revelation he was trying to explain why the book of revelation was appended on to the end of the bible because it's

such a strange hallucinogenic trip and And it's an extremely bizarre book. In any case, Christ comes back as a judge and most people are damned and some are saved. Well, Christ is an ideal. So in the gospel, he's mostly merciful, but an ideal is a judge. Well, why? Well, because you don't live,

you haven't lived up to the ideal. Of course, it's a judge. You can't have an ideal without it being a judge. And so then let's say there's the ultimate ideal, right? The ultimate, let's imagine there's the ultimate you, you could be. You kind of have glimmerings of that because you know, when you're acting that way and you know, when you're not so well, that's also your ultimate judge. And how could it be otherwise? Because every time you're not that you're going to feel guilty and your ultimate judge. And how could it be otherwise? Because every time you're not that you're going to feel guilty and ashamed. Yes. And you might say, well, I'd like to dispense with all of that because who wants to feel guilty and ashamed and fair enough, man,

but are you going to sacrifice the ideal so that you don't feel guilty and ashamed? Then, then what do you do? Then you have nothing. You just sit there because everything's okay. then what do you do then you have nothing you just sit there because everything's okay yeah well no no yeah no and i think it's better to love people for who they could be i think so it's it's better to love people for who they could be in other words you know you know the moral shortcomings of your friend but you are going to love him for who he can be. Well, I mean, look, it's complicated, right? Because you love people and they have their shortcomings and their vulnerabilities, and you have to take that as a package. But look, if you're someone's friend, if you're really someone's friend and they betray themselves,

you're unhappy with them for doing that because they've sacrificed their better self for their lower self. And if you're a real friend, that doesn't sit well with you. So I don't know to what degree we love each other because we see the ideal in someone else and are trying to encourage that for them. But I know in my clinical practice, there's a psychologist, Carl Rogers, a famous psychologist, and he propounded this theory of unconditional positive regard that you should have that with your clients, unconditional positive regard. And I thought through that a lot. I thought, no, that isn't right. I get what he was doing. I'm a great admirer of Carl Rogers and his work taught me a lot, but my sense in therapy was the best in me is serving the best in you. And so what I'm going to help you do

is separate the wheat from the chaff. You know, you and I will both decide what ideal we're pursuing in relationship to your life. I don't want to impose that on you. It has to be a consequence of dialogue because I don't know you and you're a particular person and your direction is your particular direction. It can't be mine. That would be wrong. But once we've established your direction and your ideal, then part of what we're doing in dialogue is to separate out what is unworthy of that in you. And I, I, I can't see how you can't, how you don't do that with your friends and with the people that you love. You have to, but it's hard because you love them. And you know that the things you say could hurt them. And the last thing you want to do is hurt the people you love.

And so sometimes you put a band-aid on these cuts with like a baby lie, and it's selfish. If you really want to help that person, you would tell them the fucking truth. You deal with that discomfort. They would deal with the discomfort, and then they'd get better, and then you guys would be better.

Yeah, or you get sophisticated enough in your in your ability to do that so that you you can serve both the masters we talked about at the same time you can tell the truth but you don't do it in a way that's damaging yeah i mean that's hard let's let's not make any mistake about it it's this is very very difficult that's a tight road i do think like i thought a lot about friendship and about about you know if something good happens to you and you have a friend you can go tell them and they're happy for you and that's because they want things to be better for you right they're not jealous they're not upset about it yeah and i do think that we see we see the we see the ideal

in people that we love and we try to call that forward. I believe that to be the case. I think that's right. and there's like a weird protective instinct that kicks in where I have this like this not vision but like you know when you have this like imaginary play that's going on your head this scenario has never worked out oftentimes it happens you know after an act right like what I would have said to that guy who embarrassed me or something like that but like I'll have this little play in my head where somebody does something to that person that I love. And then I inflict some sort of pain on that person to demonstrate to the person I love that nobody can do anything to them without me doing something. And I'm looking at this. I'm like it's kind of like barbaric that I got to like beat somebody up to prove that I love somebody. But I wonder if that's like instilled in our DNA.

It's like the people that become part of our tribe we want them to know that they're safe that they're protected and that that safety and that protection you know i think that all that's look i think that's that's part of that's part of the hero myth as far as i'm concerned is to protect your territory against the barbarian interloper, right? The evil barbarian interloper. And there is something about that that could go terribly wrong, obviously, but there is something that's noble and heroic about it. A lot of that instinct has to be transmuted up into the religious domain, I think, essentially. What does that mean? Well, because you do want to protect the people that you love, but it isn't precisely that you want to protect them against the bad person who might come along. It's that you want to protect them from malevolence itself, right? It has to be abstracted upward. You can't beat up an idea

or a feeling. You can beat up a bad guy, right? But you can't beat up bad behavior that they're doing. Well, so, so you, so, you know, you, you play out the fantasy in a concrete way, but, but there's something in it that can be elevated. So if you're trying to make a child confident and competent, then you are in fact, helping them fend off malevolent incursions against them. Right. And so that is what you're doing, but you can do it in a manner that's, that's sophisticated. sophisticated look let me give you an example like maybe this will work i was reminded recently of this documentary i watched called hit man heart which is a great documentary hit man heart it's about pro wrestling brett the hit man

heart yeah that's right that's right and he's the good guy and he was the good guy in pro wrestling and so and he was very very famous he was the most famous canadian of his time as it turned out and he had this role thrust upon him he was the good guy right yeah and watching the documentary i realized that people watch pro wrestling because it was a battle in a coliseum between the forces of good and the forces of evil and i didn't understand that i didn't know it was a drama for people who didn't want to go to movies. Like it was one level of fiction below movies. I'm not being smart about this. I'm not being cynical about this. I didn't realize that it was a mythological drama.

And Hitman Hart got cast as the hero, the savior, essentially. And that was very weighty for him because that's what people expected from him. And that was very weighty for him because that's what people expected from him. But in any case, there was a sophisticated psychological drama that was being played out in the wrestling ring. And it was good against evil. And that fantasy that you have of protecting the people you love against malevolent and malicious intruders is the fantasy of good against evil. It's just concretized. And so you see it like in our religious doctrines, at the core of religious doctrine, much religious doctrine is the idea that the entire world is a stage for the battle between good and evil. And that's right. It's right. We know it's right.

You know that's happening in your own conscience because you torture yourself when you do things that you shouldn't do. You want to see yourself on the side of the good. You want to be on the side of the good insofar as you're motivated by the proper and appropriate intentions. And so you'll see that in a fantasy, and it is part of friendship to defend and guard, but you want to make that sophisticated enough so you don't get the bad guy wrong because sometimes the bad guy you're saying is not a person so sometimes the bad guy is you sometimes like it's better and this is something i tried to stress in my writings is the the forces of good and evil are inside yeah they're best conceptualized psychologically it's it's the most appropriate way to conceptualize

them get yourself under control right yeah quell the devil in your own soul yeah it's the most appropriate way to conceptualize them. Get yourself under control, right? Quell the devil in your own soul. It's the best thing you can do for your friends. Because otherwise it risks getting acted out at a much more concrete level. And then it becomes dangerous. You know, it's the protesters who are shaking their fists all the time. They've identified evil outside. And that's what they're fighting.

And you know, you can understand that motivation. But the problem for me is like, what makes you so sure that the evil is where you think it is it's not it's so convenient for you that it's outside i don't think it's outside i don't want to misquote you but uh you said something about um there is no uh there is a i don't know there is a, I don't know, there is a, there is no limit to what human beings will do in the pursuit of good. There's no limit to the evil human beings will do in the pursuit of good, something like that. Well, the idea of utopia, you imagine that sort of revolutionary utopia.

Yeah, how many people have done that? Utopia that the revolution is going to bring. It's like, well, it's so good that anything I do to bring it about is justifiable yes yes jesus you've just been handed a blank moral card you can get away with bloody murder because after all you know you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs right so away we go breaking eggs it's like well it's better it'd be better be one hell of an omelet. Even then, it's not clear it's justifiable. Look, in sophisticated literature, you know, in unsophisticated literature, there's evil people and there's good people and they have a battle. In sophisticated literature,

the good and evil are within the characters. That's the thing about, to make it very unsophisticated, but Marvel, I think what they get so well about their villains is that they make their goal somewhat relatable. You know, like there's this Thanos character who's like, I want to remove half of life in the universe. And everybody's like, oh my God, you're a piece of shit. That's horrible. And then he's like, no, I saw what happened on my planet and there was no more resources and the people just killed each other and it's absolutely horrible so if I just remove half of life and rich people poor people everybody gets taken out in the same way then there'll be plenty of food there'll be plenty of resources for everybody and everybody will live happily ever after and all of a sudden

you're like okay he's a psychopath but he has good intentions with his psychopathy you know so now you relate to this fucking villain in a weird way and i guess what i'm saying is yes that is that is the the more sophisticated storytelling that i really like i want to relate to the villain i want to look at the joker yes of course because you want to grapple with those sorts of forces inside yourself too and you want to see where your motivations might take what's that i'm not hero. I always will relate to the villain more because I'm not Captain fucking America. You know, I'm battling. I imagine we probably relate to the villain if it's a sophisticated villain way more than the hero because the hero doesn't isn't really dynamic. He's not really battling a lot in a lot of these

like superhero movies like Superman. The fuck does he have to deal with the fact that he's faking have powers? A big problem with Superman, right? right i mean he got to the point where because he could do everything there was nothing to do yeah there's no story boring give me a regular guy that's going through some shit yeah well that is what marvel did when they burst onto the scene in the early 60s right they made their they also made the heroes more complex and and and and more multi-dimensional in their motivations and that simple thing i guess made them blow dc out of the water or something and it's just it's so interesting how we just get drawn into these stories man i i i even look at like directors well the whole marvel universe is

i mean it's on you know in my last book in beyond order i talked a fair bit about harry potter and yeah a lot of the people who'd like to take pot shots at me took pot shots at that because, you know, I don't know, they think Harry Potter's beneath their notice or something. But, you know, I kind of noticed that J.K. Rowling made several billion dollars building the biggest entertainment enterprise of the decade and rose herself from, you know, single mother status, unemployed single mother status to richer than the queen and then occupied every movie screen for like 10 years maybe something's going on there yeah well these complex characters they play out mythology you know and so if religion disappears in the culture in general it pops up

in our stories instantly and that's exactly what's happened in the marvel universe and what happened i mean you even have thor for god's sake thor Thor is a God. Yeah. Yeah. It's not even, not even subtle. You can't get rid of these stories. They, they come back no matter what you do, these stories come back. So what was, what was JK Rowling doing with the, with Harry Potter? Well, it's the battle between good and evil. I mean, Voldemort is Satan for all intents and purposes. Yeah. So it's, it's, it's the battle between good and evil i mean the second volume in particular is saint george and the dragon it's bilbo and the dragon harry fights a giant snake that's under the castle it's the same story as the lord of the rings and that's

the same story as as um what's the original story hobbit yeah but far before that uh well the oldest story we have of that sort is a Mesopotamian creation myth where a god named Marduk attacks a giant dragon named Tiamat. And that's one of the oldest religious tracts that we have. It's symbolic of humanity, right? The human being goes out there and encounters the terrible unknown, often in reptilian form. And that terrible unknown, well, that's why that terrible unknown is often evil itself. And so in Christianity, you get this weird intermingling, for example, of the snake in the Garden of Eden with Satan. It's not obvious why there should be a connection.

Snake, Satan. It's like, well, what's the worst snake? It's not a snake. It's snakes as such. Well, it's not snakes as such. It's predators as such. Reptilian predators. Wait a minute. It's not reptilian predators as such. It's enemies. It's human enemies. It's the enemy in our own soul.

That's the progression of the thought. It's unbelievably sophisticated. It's insanely sophisticated. How does it go from enemies to the enemies in our own soul? Well, who's your worst enemy if it's not you? Who's your biggest obstacle if it's not you? And... I mean, who do you contend with more than anyone else if it's not you?

And to the Harry Potter thing, Harry Potter has a piece of Voldemort in him. Yes, well, that's the original sin doctrine recreated. It's also the case that he can't understand evil without it. It's also part of what makes him sophisticated, right? Because he's being touched by it. Yeah. So is that what we got to do is just copy the Bible? We don't have a choice.

Wait, what do you mean by that? It happens whether we want it to or not. I mean, the Bible aggregated itself over centuries right i mean no human being directly oriented that it it's not something that could happen over thousands and thousands of years this is just the greatest hits that's one way of thinking about it. And each one of these hits taps into something innate to us. Yes. Otherwise we wouldn't remember it. We wouldn't have, we wouldn't have conserved it. It wouldn't stick in our memory. It wouldn't structure the way we think. And the fact that it taps into something innate, that doesn't necessarily mean each, does it mean that each story is valuable? Like you can tap into

fear. You can tap into joy. Like there's different things to tap into. I'm just trying to discern, like, like literally, as you said that, I'm like, I got to start reading whatever stories in the Bible said, you know, talk about raising kids, you know? Cause I'm fucking, I'm terrified of fucking this up, man. Like I know how much I'm going to love this kid. I love my dog. The dog gets on the bed i don't want to tell the dog to get off the bed even though i have to so he learns not to get on the bed yes well and you don't want to be annoyed at your dog you want to like your dog that's a really good rule for kids that's one that i laid out in the first book don't let your kids do

anything that make you dislike them it's like you want to dislike your kids because you will if they don't behave well you will dislike them and then you'll take it out on them and then you might think oh no i wouldn't do that it's like yes you would for sure you would and then they'll be insecure because they'll be like my father or mother doesn't like me and yeah definitely your kid be fucking unlikable that no i can tell you what happens i've seen it many times in in my personal life in my clinical practice so let's say you have a three-year-old okay and they're acting out they're pushing you because they will because they want to find out

where the limits are yeah so they'll push us because they want to know where the limits are they will push you man so you let them push and push and you're annoyed as hell but you won't admit it because you're such a good guy and you don't get annoyed at your children and you always love them no matter what they do and all of that so you know your child is annoyed the hell out of you and so now you're annoyed and so then he goes away and maybe he goes and makes a picture and maybe he's learned how to draw a person that day or something that really really indicates a step forward and he's forgotten all about annoying you and he comes trotting out with this picture to show you and what he's hoping is that you'll point to the picture and you'll say, oh, look, you know, yesterday you drew a man, but you didn't get his legs on right. And you

didn't get his arms on right. But this time you got them right. And you've really made progress. And so you, you're paying discriminating attention and you're encouraging development, but no, you don't do that because you're annoyed. You just say, oh, well, I'm go away. I'm watching TV. And so that's how you get your bloody revenge. And if you don't think you'll do that, that's just because you don't know anything about human beings. Of course you'll do that. And so you want now, you know, you think, well, you're an idiot. So maybe the kid's annoying you because you're stupid. That's highly probable. So maybe that's why it's useful to have a wife around because she can help point out where you're stupid and

maybe you won't be so stupid then well right because you're gonna do this on your own no you're right and my my fiance always says she's like you're gonna make me discipline the kids i already know it i i know you're gonna be a pushover dad and i'm gonna be the one this way it's happening with the dog you know she's got the electric zap collar for the thing i can't even touch that thing i just want to pet it i want to give it a little treats totally undermine everything that she's done and i feel like that's what i'm gonna do with our kids as well yeah well that you should i would say you should pay attention to that because you're probably right you know because the dog is a good practice dog's a good practice so you know so you you and if you're an agreeable person you

know if and that's a temperamental trait agreeableness and okay agreeable people are compassionate and polite essentially and they care they don't like conflict they don't like to hurt other people's feelings they're not harsh they're not stubborn it's highly probable given the way you just described your interactions with your dog that you're quite agreeable but I would still say that you have an ethical responsibility to establish the standards that you want to apply to your children and then uphold them. And you may have to do that in intense dialogue with your fiance, because you don't want your household to be set up. So she's the bad guy and has to carry all that weight. Yeah. And she resents me. Of course. And why wouldn't she? and your children will get the wrong idea too.

And besides they'll manipulate the hell out of you because you know, they'll see you as the pushover and then they won't have any respect for their father. And you know, and then they don't have any respect for masculinity because you're the representative of masculinity and that's not good. You want it to be as close to 50, 50, as you can manage. When did masculinity become something bad? As I sit here with ripped jeans and my legs crossed. Maybe when all us men decided that we would accept that characterization of it. I never accepted it.

I mean, like, I don't know. I remember growing up, right? I think I saw it play out in movies. I remember growing up, right? And I think I saw it, like, play out in movies. Like, I remember growing up and I remember seeing, like— TV, too. It went from My Three Sons and Father Knows Best to— Dude. Well, to every father being a buffoon.

Yeah. So I'm literally watching movies and I'm like, okay, Bruce Willis is saving the day, right? And then, like, 90s, Bruce Willis is still saving the day. And then it's 2000s. I'm like, do, Bruce Willis is saving the day, right? And then like 90s, Bruce Willis is still saving the day. And then it's 2000s. I'm like, do we have nobody new here? Is Bruce Willis still the only fucking man left saving the goddamn day? We just ran out of young, I guess, masculine men that were going to be the heroes. And then all of a sudden, these Michael Cera types.

He could be a sweet guy, but he's playing this imp guy who just being like walked around on a leash by his girl in every movie good got to be good got to be synonymous with harmless I I but I don't understand it because I don't think that like I don't think that you can make that a trend I can't speak on behalf of chicks but I don't think that you can like make chicks like beta males I I don't think that you can like make chicks like beta males. I don't think that exists, right? Like, don't we like what we like? I mean, maybe an outfit can change. Maybe we like certain jeans and other people like skirts. But at the end of the day, I think there's gonna be certain characteristics of the opposite sex that we're going to be drawn to biologically. Well, you know, one of the ones you already discussed is competence.

Anybody with any sense is going to prefer competence unless they want someone who's emasculated and is completely powerless and because then they don't have to be afraid of them in some sense i mean they should be more afraid of them really but you know when you confuse competence with power then you punish competence and maybe then you become attracted to weakness because it's not authoritarian. It doesn't look like tyranny, but it's, it's, that's only because competence and power are confused in your mind. Competence and power. Yeah. There's this thing with power. Yeah, that's for sure. It's on, you know, there's this claim that all of our institutions are

based on power. It's like, no, they're not. Only when they're corrupt is that true. Has anybody that you've studied throughout history managed to obtain a significant amount of power and done the right thing with it? Well, I think most of our institutions that function reasonably well do that reasonably well or had. You know, I mean, we're all flawed, but there's a huge difference between Joseph Stalin and Franklin Roosevelt. Yeah, a little bit.

Yeah. the democratic west all things considered yeah the leadership has been okay okay to good especially compared to absolutely catastrophically horrible which is the alternative yeah yeah is it so and we've we've we've we don't give our functional institutions the benefit of the doubt and that doesn't mean they shouldn't be subject to criticism, but the idea that they're predicated on arbitrary power, and that's their essential nature, that's appalling. I wasn't being critical of the institutions.

No, no, I know. I know you weren't. Yeah, I'm just curious about like, I'm just curious about like a human's relation to power. Well, you have a car. Yeah. Does it work?

Yeah. How often? Currently, every time I use it. So like if you use it a thousand times, how many times doesn't it work? Zero out of a thousand. A car, right? You said car. Yeah, a car.

Okay. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Well, that institution is doing pretty well. Yeah. Because I'm not- Has a 99.9% success rate.

I'm not mad at the institutions. Have you crashed yet when you flew? I mean, I think you're jinxing me, but no. No, and they're so safe, it's just beyond comprehension. Yeah, no, I agree with you. I'm not upset at institutions in that. I'm talking about a human being that is compelled to power. I understand certain people being compelled to greatness.

That's really cool. You see it in athletes. What's the difference? What's the difference? I think there is a difference to greatness. That's really cool. You see it in athletes. What's the difference? What's the difference? I think there is a difference. I think there is a difference because I think like once somebody accesses power, they don't necessarily need to be more great, right? They'll just do whatever they can to continue to have that power where there are people.

What do they do? This is a good thing to differentiate. You made this case. Greatness versus power. Okay. Okay. Let's take it apart. Okay. So you just said there's something arbitrary about power. Yeah. I think, I think there's something, I think there's something about people who desire power instead of greatness.

And I think that power comes with greatness, but if your, if your desire is power, I think there is something dangerous there because you're willing to do whatever it is to maintain that power. It's the mimicry of greatness. It's the mimicry of greatness. Greatness deserves power because you want the powerful to be, you want the great to be powerful. Why wouldn't you? Oh, that's why we exalt these people that we believe are great. We want them to have it. They've earned it. Well, who else would you want to lead you? I mean, if they're good at doing something, why wouldn't you put them in the front? You want to be you i mean if they're good at doing something why wouldn't you put them in the front you want to be led with some by someone who isn't great i mean you think of all the all the times we spent as tribal hunters who do you put in charge the best hunter

so perhaps the best hunter who's also the most generous yeah exactly you want the guy that's going to share that that yeah right that would make him a great hunter too right because over time he would have people in his hunting party you want great you want productivity and generosity so how do we just how do we discern between people who are mimicking power uh greatness for power and greatness that's a great question by paying careful attention by listening and by talking about it that's the purpose of free speech. That's the purpose of political attention because you want the great, but it can be mimicked by psychopaths who use power. But that doesn't mean that power is the basis of our hierarchical human relationships. That's only the case when they've gone badly wrong. What do you mean by

that? Well, when a society is corrupt, then the powerful rule. When a society isn't corrupt, then the great have authority. That's not the same thing. And confusing those, you asked why the beta male is now this object of attention. It's because we've confused great and powerful. And now we're so afraid of power that we're willing to dispense with greatness entirely, or even to question whether it exists. That's the attack on the meritocracy. There's no meritocracy. Oh, there's no greatness.

And no one who has a position deserves it. There's no difference in talent. That doesn't mean our institutions are pure and that everyone with talent is rewarded. Yes. But because no institution is pure and no selection method is 100 accurate but you made this distinction between great greatness and power yes so pursue it okay how do you know someone's great as far as you're concerned how do i know someone is great i have great admiration for the skill okay you admire them for the skill not yeah well that's weird that see that's an

interesting thing because we have this instinct of admiration that's weird that see that's an interesting thing because we have this instinct of admiration it's like you see someone and you admire them yeah it's like well why you want to be like them yeah that's imitation right that's the instinct of imitation yeah and because we can identify what's great because it would be better to be great than the way we are so when we see it oh man, I really admire that. And maybe you're mad about that because you're so unlike that and it's judgmental and makes you annoyed. But fundamentally you think, I'd like to be like that. So there's one, admiration. You admire what's great if you have any sense. Okay. And that happens spontaneously, especially in a domain that you value.

Yes, exactly. The more I value the domain, the more, God, I can't speak, the more admiration I have. More admiration. Absolutely. I do not admire power. I don't even care about people who are powerful if they don't have something that I admire, some sort of skill set that I care about. The only thing that's nice is the ease of power. You can open up doors easier, only thing that's nice is like the ease of power you can open up doors easier you know but i'm way more impressed by like a powerful person that actually has a skill i didn't even know about like that to me makes me go oh cool that oh maybe that's why he got there but just holding the position isn't admirable to me in any way at all does that make make sense? Yes. So I guess I'm trying to think like, why, why is that? Is that a common belief? I imagine we all, I don't think I'm unique in that.

Well, so here's something about religious belief. Okay. Think about this. So there's an idea, a Christian idea that Christ is the King of Kings. Okay. So here's what this means. You can think about this psychologically for whatever it's worth. Okay, so imagine that you had a set of people that you admired. Yeah. Okay, now imagine that there's something about each of them that's admirable that's the same, because why else would it be admirable? You said, well, they have particular skill in a particular domain. So there's something, let's say there's something about skill as such that's admirable. Okay, now you average across all those admirable people, and you come out with one hyper-admirable person.

That's who you want to be. That's what Christ is in the Western canon. That's what technically, that's the idea. He's the most admirable person. Yes, by definition is what I'm saying. It's by definition is what i'm saying is by definition so imagine imagine this imagine that the collective imagination of of western civilization has been working on formulating a picture of the ultimate ideal for thousands and thousands of years and and partly

in stories yeah yeah but also partly in music partly in literature partly in stories, but also partly in music, partly in literature, partly in architecture, everywhere. It's like, what's the ideal? What's the ideal? Across ideals. Because we need to know, because that's what we're aiming at. Well, should you worship that? Well, obviously, because what else would you worship? Why would I worship anything less than the best?

Yes, exactly. Exactly. Why would I worship anything less than the best? Yeah, yeah. Yes, exactly. Exactly. And you see, so the, the, the, it's very difficult to puzzle these things out because you run into rational problems. It's like, well, did, for example, did Christ really exist? Okay. Well, your brain hits that problem and it brings the whole thing to a halt to some degree. But that's beside this other point.

Sure. to a halt to some degree yeah but that's beside this other point sure it's like well look we're we're very good at abstracting out the essence of something that's why we can tell stories that's why we can mimic yeah yeah okay well wouldn't we extract out the essence of greatness now that's hard right because what's the greatest human being jesus there's a hard question, man. That's a tough question. You know, generosity, mercy, productivity, truth. Yeah. So magic. What's that? Magic. Magic. Yes, exactly. Yes, exactly. And so, I mean, one of the, one of the two, two hallmarks that I've seen across images of this sort in my studies are two. One is the ability to pay attention. So someone that's admirable pays attention. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, they open their eyes,

and they watch, and they see what's in front of them. It's not the same as thinking. Yeah, yeah. They'll see what's in front of them. Yeah. Pay attention. And you know, there's something about attention that's riveting, right? If you watch someone attend to something, you'll watch what they're watching. Yeah. Yeah. And so attention is, attention is the ultimate resource. And to pay attention is to pay the highest compliment. Okay.

The next is the ability to speak magic words. Well, that's what you do as a comedian. If you're on, you entrance the audience. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I hear what you're saying. How is that not magical? They pay you to do that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Obviously, it's magical. Okay, and how do you come up with your jokes? Well, you pay attention, and then you speak magic words. Well, that's the essence. If you look at representations,

I'm going to stick to Christianity for the time being, but Christ is tightly associated with the word, with the spoken word, especially the spoken word of truth. And that's partly why. It's because underneath this is the idea that while there isn't anything more admirable than the capacity to pay attention and to speak magic words it builds the world it retains renews the world it creates the world all of that i mean it's true it's true we need to know these things and do you think that there are people that like outside of religious figures that crave power and are utilizing the word if you will in order hitler did yes yeah but he pathologized it what do you mean by that he used his god-given talents for malevolent purposes because he didn't care about being great he cared about being powerful well it seems that way

doesn't it so his words serve it? So his words serve power. Okay, so his words serve power. Not greatness. Not greatness. And then these people come to power, right? And then I've often seen what happened, like you can even see it now within institutions. Once a person or an institution has power,

they attack any greatness that could make that institution or person less powerful. Well, that is especially true if the people who acquired the positions aren't great. Greatness is the thing they fear more than anything. Exactly. Because it shows them for the frauds that they are. It exposes them. In fact, you want to attack the very idea of greatness,

which is part of why there's such an assault right now on the idea of meritocracy yes not just not there's not just an attack on the idea that our institutions are meritocratic which you can have some sympathy with because of course they're not entirely meritocratic yeah but the idea of merit per se well let's go after that really you want to dispense with merit do you yeah you really do You really do. You're sure of that. Really? You're sure you want to do that? Think about it. Like if you thought you were the king of kings, you would never dispense with merit because you know you earned your position. You would only dispense with merit if you're admitting you're not the person that should be there. Well, you'd certainly, you're certainly not relying on merit as the, as the means to your own accomplishment. That's for sure. about that's such a tricky thing and it's hard for people to parse apart you know but you got to ask yourself too if you really want equality of outcome maybe you want maximal difference between people in some sense because look the only reason you can trade on your ability

as a comedian is because you're actually better at it than other people right right so you the only thing you have to offer that's valid as a trade is something that you're better at. So if we insist that everyone has exactly the same of everything, well, then what do we have to offer each other? I don't understand that. And I don't understand how that's commensurate with diversity. Yeah, that's interesting. I've kind of like built my career based on that idea that the comedy that was on TV wasn't the funniest version. And I literally said, well, if I just put my comedy on YouTube, I think the average person will see that there is more merit here and they'll gravitate towards me. Right. And I think because these institutions were so caught up in like what you can and can't say and all this other stuff and blah, blah, blah, it doesn't really matter. But

yet the internet. It does matter. It does matter. Exactly. Because you saw, I said in this book, there's a chapter, right? Notice that opportunity lurks where responsibility has been abdicated. Yes. Well, that's the story you just told. You said you noticed that what was being meritorious wasn't being rewarded yeah okay well that sucks but it does open up an opportunity for you if you have some merit and then you can test it so you put your comedy on youtube what happened and then it blows up man and it was crazy and it's like everything that i've gotten from my career has come from the fact that like the people were able to decide it you know it it is's quite interesting, like the disruptor that the internet is, because

around the same time that you were exploding, I was starting to blow up and there's a bunch of other figures and all of us, merit-based in our own situations, were able to come to some sort of like, you know, prominence, obviously different levels, but because the people decided we should be there. Like, that's what the Internet does. You see it happening. I have a friend of ours named Ben Uyeda. He's a really smart guy, but he's like, that's all the Internet is.

It's the ultimate disruptor, and it will happen to every institution. Wall Street's going through it now with the whole GameStop thing. They're just finding ways to disrupt. The people will band together, and they will disrupt. And there's a tool for the disruption. And it's really cool, at least for, I guess, guys like you and your contemporaries, myself and my contemporaries, because we got a fucking chance to fight. You know, we had to ask for permission before. Hey, can you put me on TV?

What can I say? I'll try to figure out the best way to say it around, you know, what you guys think is cool. And then when we just did it based on our own accord, we put out the best version of it and then got the most success it's very very rewarding it is very rewarding and it's just really cool to see this happen all at the same time yeah yeah well it's it's it's well it's a consequence of this immense technological revolution isn't it is that we've got this insane power now all of us are tv producers all of us are movie producers all of us are radio broadcasters it's right there at your fingertips yeah and that's such a revolutionary change from three decades ago that it's it's it's almost unimaginable and not only do we have all that bandwidth and that communication capacity but it's also permanent sword you know because television

stations back in the 1960s you broadcast something and once and it was gone, gone, gone, gone. And now this, now videos have the same permanence as books. It's stunning. And you know, people say, you know, I was talking to Russell Brand the other day and I like Russell and he's very, very smart and stunningly smart at times. And he said, you know, he was talking about people not having a voice. And I thought, who? Wait, you have a voice now. you want to know you can just sit in front of your computer and you can talk to as many people as will listen to you yeah that's a voice it's like can you do anything with that well perhaps

not but perhaps you can too not not only not only is there a voice there's an algorithm that will amplify interest meaning if people enjoy what you're saying science will push it out to more people so it's it is wow it's like it's merit on crack you know it's merit on steroids you could be saying the most interesting thing on a soapbox in New York and maybe 10 or 15 people hear about it and then they never hear about it again but the fact that YouTube or these different platforms are incentivized to share your shit that people like, never a better time. Never a better time to have some merit. Yeah. Yeah. I don't want to take too much of your time, Jordan. I could talk to you all day,

but this has been a thrill, man. Thank you so much. Hey, I've enjoyed our conversation a lot, especially the discussion about power and merit. I really found that useful and interesting. And it's very much worth delving into and thinking through. And I do encourage you as well for what it's worth to think through this discipline issue with your wife and with regards to the kids that you're going to have and aim at 50 50 right you guys you want to make an end you want to make a unit you want to be you want to have each other's backs with regards to your disciplinary decisions because the children need to see you as a unified front and they'll test and push to see if they can push between you and they'll see if they can manipulate you or your wife because they want to see how strong that bond is. But they're going to be much, much happier if the same story is coming from both people. And maybe you can practice with your dog. All right. We're going to do that. I really appreciate this so much. Thank you so much for the advice and just the time and, uh, and keep in touch if there's anything that you need, we're here to help. Uh, we really appreciate this, man. Thanks, man. It was great. I'm

appreciated the conversation very much. Absolutely.