The Daily Signal - #434: Jordan Peterson Explains What Draws People to Socialism

Episode Date: April 5, 2019

On today’s podcast, we’re featuring our colleague Genevieve Wood’s interview with professor and bestselling author Jordan Peterson. They talked about the rise of socialism in America, the importance of personal responsibility, and why Peterson’s message is resonating with so many people.Also on the show:• Mykala Steadman has an inspiring story about a girl who is not letting a tragedy stop her love of music. • Our favorite letters to the editor. Your letter could be featured on our show; write us at [e-mail] or call 202-608-6205.The Daily Signal podcast is available on the Ricochet Audio Network. You also can listen on iTunes, SoundCloud, Stitcher, or your favorite podcast app. All of our podcasts can be found at DailySignal.com/podcasts.If you like what you hear, please leave a review or give us feedback. Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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This is the Daily Signal podcast for Monday, April 8th. I'm Rob Lewy. And I'm Rich Dal Judas. Today we're featuring our colleague Genevieve Woods interview with Jordan Peterson. They talked about the rise of socialism in America, the importance of personal responsibility, and why Peterson's message is resonating with so many people today. We also share your letters, and Michaela Stedman has an inspiring story about a girl who is not letting a tragedy stop her love of music.

Before we begin, we'd like to ask for your help to spread the word about the Daily Signal podcast. Please give us a five-star review on iTunes and share this episode with your family and friends that will help us make sure that we are continuing to grow and reach more listeners. Stay tuned for today's show coming up next. Jordan Peterson is one of the most consequential figures of our time. He's a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto, a clinical psychologist, and the author of the book, 12 Rules for Life. He spoke to Genevieve Wood at a Heritage Foundation event in New York City. Here is their interview.

We've got so many ways that we could go with this interview tonight. And we got questions. Thank you to all of you in the audience who send in your questions. I've got some of them right here. And we're going to get into those. But let me start with, let's just start with the socialism piece. do you think Americans truly understand the history of socialism and actually what it is? As you've gone around, I know you've had, when you speak to not just college campuses,

you've been events around the world, I think 250,000 people you've spoken in front of. I mean, people are unbelievably ignorant about history. And I mean, I would include myself in that. You know, I mean, I know what I know about the history, say, preceding the 20th century is very sketchy. It's embarrassingly sketchy, you know. And what young people know about 20th century history is non-existent, especially about the history of the radical left. How would they know?

They're never taught anything about it. So why would they be concerned about it? And, you know, for many of the people in the audience, you know, you're old enough. that the fall of the Berlin Wall was, well, that was part of your life, you know, that was really the end of the Second World War, let's say, in a technical sense, and it was very meaningful, but that's a long time ago. There's been a lot of people born since then, and it's ancient history, and we don't have that many good, bad examples left, you know, there's North Korea, there's Venezuela, but we're not locked tooth and nail in a war with, you know, you know, there's North Korea, there's Venezuela,

but we're not locked tooth and nail in a war with, you know, in a proxy war, in a cold war with the Soviet Union. And it's easy to understand why people are emotionally drawn to the ideals of socialism, let's say, or of the left, because it draws on, it draws its fundamental motivational source from a kind of primary compassion. And that is always there. in human beings. And so that proclivity for sensitivity to that political message will never go away. And it's important to understand that. You have to give the devil his due, unfortunately. You've also said that people aren't as resentful at the success of others as we might think. And I think as you watch a lot of people being interviewed today and you watch some of the students being interviewed, you saw some of the ones that

appear. You hear people talking a lot about inequality, but you say they really aren't as resentful as we might think, as long as they don't think the game is fixed. Yes, well, that's certainly in the case. Well, first of all, I mean, if you look at the psychological literature to the degree that it's accurate, which is difficult to ascertain often, people report far more prejudice against their group than against themselves. So that's quite an interesting phenomenon as far as I'm concerned. So there's a tendency for people to exaggerate the degree to which the group they belong to is currently suffering from generalized oppression.

They've been relatively free of it themselves. I also think that fairness is an absolutely essential, and perceived fairness is an absolutely essential. component of peace, because people can tolerate inequality, so to speak, or even revel in it, let's say, if they believe that the unequal outcome is deserved. I mean, look at how people respond to sports heroes. You know, everyone, no one goes to a sports event and booze the star, even though he or she is paid much better. attracts the lion's share of the attention,

hopefully not in too narcissistic a manner. People can celebrate success, but they do have to believe that the game is fair, and the game needs to be fair, because otherwise the hierarchy becomes tyrannical. The problem with the radical left is that it assumes that all hierarchies are tyrannical, and it makes no distinction between them,

and that's an absolute catastrophe, because, you know, there's plenty of sins, let's say, on the conscience of the West as a civilization, but you can't throw the baby out with the bathwater, and there are far worse places like all the other places, for example, that there have ever been. Well, it's the case, and people also don't understand that, and they also don't understand this is something that's of particular importance. they also don't understand, and that may even characterize you in this audience. It's very the knowledge of how rapidly we're making economic improvements around the world, in the developing world, for example, how fast that's happening. That is not well-distributed knowledge, you know, that between the year 2000 and the year 2012,

the rate of absolute poverty in the world. fell by 50%. Now, it's a UN figure, $1.90 a day. That was their cutoff for absolute poverty. And so the cynics have said, well, you know, that's a pretty low barrier. It's not such an achievement to have attained that. But I can tell you it's an achievement to obtain that if you were living on less than a dollar 90 a day to begin with.

But if you look at, if you double the amount to $3.80 or you double it again to $760, you find the same pattern. I mean, the poor in the world are getting rich at a rate that is absolutely unparalleled in all of human history. And I think a large part of that is happening in Africa, where, by the way, here's another lovely piece of news. The child mortality rate in Africa is now the same as it was in Europe in 1952, which is, I mean, that's an absolute miracle. It's insane that that's not front page news, right? that's within a lifetime, and the fastest growing economies in the world are also there. And so, but as you're saying, but why isn't it front-page news?

And when you're considering social media and how fast news and photos and all that can travel and that young people are the shenados of all this technology, why don't they know these things? Or why aren't they computing what they see as being progress? Well, I think part of it is that things are changing so fast that none of us can keep up. Like, it's hard to keep the story updated. I had no idea, for example, that most of the world's economic news, and even a substantial proportion of its ecological news, by the way, was positive until I started to work on a UN committee about five years ago

on sustainable economic development. And I read very widely economically and also ecologically and realized that things were way, better than I had any sense of that these improvements had come at a tremendous rate. But you see, so partly it is just that it's so new that we don't know and we don't have a story about it. And who would be driving the communication of such things, especially given two other things. One is that human beings are tilted towards negative emotion in terms of its potency. And so, for example, people would rather, they're much less happy to lose $5 than they are happy to gain $5. We're loss averse.

Or we're more sensitive to negative emotion than we are to positive emotion. And there's a reason for that. And the reason is, well, you can only be so happy, but you can be done. dead. And, right? And I mean, dead is, that's not good. And there can be a lot of misery on the way to that end. And so we're tilted to protect ourselves. And that makes us more interested in some sense and more easily captivated by the negative than by the positive. And so that's a hard bias to fight. And then when you also take into account, and I think this is something that's worth seriously considering, because the other thing we don't understand is the technological

revolution that's occurring in every form of media. No one understands it. But one of the consequences is that the mainstream media, so to speak, is increasingly desperate for attention. There exist in a shrinking market with shrinking margins. All of the leading newspapers and magazines are feeling the pinch. Television is dead because YouTube has everything that television has and then, an incredible array of additional features.

And radio is being replaced by podcasts. And so it's a very unstable time for the mainstream media. And what would you expect them to do, except to do whatever they can to attract attention in whatever manner they can manage? One example of this, one very good example of this, is you may or may not know that the rates of violent crime in the United States, and actually in most places,

have plummeted. in the last 50 years. It's really quite remarkable. The United States is now safer in terms of violent crime than it has been since the early 60s, and that was probably the safest time there ever was. But the degree to which violent crime has been reported,

has increased. It's funny, the curves are almost completely opposite to one another. This is the decline in violent crime. This is the increase in the reporting of violent crime. And the reason for that is, well, people read stories about violent crime, and then, of course, they're much more likely to believe that it's on the increase. And the people who are most likely to believe that it's on the increase, by the way, are also those who are least likely to be affected by it. Because, you know, to be a victim of a violent crime, what helps to drink too much, but it also helps a lot to be young and male. And those aren't the people who are particularly afraid of violent crime, even though they're the ones most likely to be implicated in it.

So there's technological reasons for our concentration on the negative, and they're complex. It's not easy to figure out how to combat the spiral of outrage and attention-seeking that I think is accompanying the death of our previous means of communication. No one knows how to handle that, and that's a big problem. Let's go. I mean, I know so many in this audience, and not just here in New York, but we hear from our members all over the country.

They're so concerned about what their children and what their grandchildren are both being taught, but also what they're coming back home from college and talking about and saying, where are they learning? I mean, they know where they're learning about, how does this seeping into them? You obviously have spoken not just at the University of Toronto, but colleges all over the world.

What is it you see today on the campus or among young people today that is new or is it new? I've heard you say that we're no more polarized today than we were, maybe even under Richard Nixon, and the campuses were more on fire than than even they are today. So what are the similarities and differences that you're saying? Well, I don't see any real evidence that your society is more polarized,

generally speaking, than it has been many times in the past, and I think the Nixon era is a good example. I mean, if you think about it merely statistically, I mean, you've been split 50-50 Republican Democrat for, what, five elections now, and it's almost perfect 50-50 split. That really hasn't changed. Trump, of course, is somewhat of a wild card, and so that complicates things, but I don't think it changes the underlying dynamic.

What I do think has arisen again, because it's made itself manifest many times in the last 100 years, is the rise of this group identity associated quasi-Marxist viewpoint with this additional toxic mixture and paradoxical mixture of postmodernism. The postmodernists are famous for being skeptical of metanarratives. That might be a defining, that was Lyotard, I believe, who coined that. although I might be wrong. It was one of the French postmodernists.

And that means that they're skeptical about the idea that uniting, large uniting narratives are valid. And it's a huge problem, that claim, because the first question is, well, how big does the narrative have to be before it's a meta-narrative? Right? I mean, is the narrative that holds your family together a falsehood?

Is the narrative that holds your community together a falsehood? Like, how big does it have to be before it becomes a falsehood. And so it's a very vague claim. And it's a very dangerous claim in my estimation because I believe that, and I believe the psychological research is clear on this.

What we have, our cognitive abilities are nested inside stories. We're fundamentally narrative creatures. That's how our brains are organized. And so to determine, deny the validity of large-scale narratives is to deny the validity of the manner in which we organize our psyches. And that's unbelievably destabilizing for people.

I mean, first of all, look, the simplest story in some sense is that I'm at point A and I'm going to point B. And that's not as simple a story as it might sound because it implies that you are somewhere and that you know it, You have a representation of it, geographically, let's say, socially, psychologically, you have some sense of who you are. But more importantly, you have some sense of who you are transforming yourself into. And so that gives you a direction. And now that direction, the direction gives you meaning. And I don't mean that in a cliched sense. What I mean is that the way that our brains are constituted is that almost all.

the positive emotion that people feel, and it's also true of animals, by the way, it emerges as a consequence of observing that you're making your way to a valued end point. So, you know, you think, well, what makes you happy is the attainment of something. And there is a form of reward that is associated with that. It's called consumatory reward. It's the satisfaction that you feel, say, after you have a delightful Thanksgiving meal. But that isn't the hope and the meaning that people thrive on. The hope and the meaning that people thrive on is the observation that they're moving towards something worthwhile.

And that might be individually, although it really can't be because we live in collectives, but it should be collective. And that isn't optional. If you don't have a goal, a transcendent goal, say, something that's beyond you, then you don't have any positive emotion. And that's not good because you have plenty of negative emotion. And that's the problem with fundamental claims of meaninglessness too in life. It's the philosophical error that's made by nihilists, let's say, who say, well, life is meaningless. It's like, well, if you're a nihilist, genuinely, you've lost all hope. Your life isn't meaningless.

It's just unbearably miserable. And that's a form of meaning. You know, that suffering is a form of meaning. And you can try to argue yourself out of that with your nihilistic rationalizations, but that is not going to work. You need a transcendent goal in order to withstand the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. And the destruction of the narratives that guide us individually, psychologically, and that also unite us socially, familial in socially,

It's an absolute catastrophe. And, well, the question then is, why is it being undertaken? And that's a complex question. And I don't know if we can even discuss that. That has something to do with this unholy marriage of the postmodern nihilism with this Marxist utopian notion, which makes no sense at all because the postmodernists are skeptical of metan narratives, yet Marxism is a grand meta-narrative.

But coherency... It doesn't have to make sense. Well, in fact, the idea that things have to make sense is part of the oppressive patriarchy, and so we can just dispense... Well, I'm serious. People teach that in a dead serious manner that the requirement for logical consistency

is an arbitrary... It's an arbitrary imposition on cognitive structure. It's not something necessary for... for rational cognition, even if there is such a thing. I mean, you don't know how deep this war goes in some sense. I can give you an example. There's a debate about free speech on campus. But what you don't understand, it isn't a debate about who can speak.

It's a debate about whether there is such a thing as free speech. And the answer from the radicals is that there isn't. Because for there to be free speech, you see, there have to be sovereign individual. And those sovereign individuals have to be defined by that sovereign individuality, and they have to have their own locus of truth in some sense. That's a consequence of that sovereignty. And then they have to be able to engage in rational, discursive negotiation with people who aren't like them, which means they have to stretch their hands, let's say, across racial or ethnic divides. They have to be able to communicate, and they have to be able to formulate a negotiated and practical agreement. And none of that is part and parcel of the postmodern doctrine.

All of that's up for grabs. There's no sovereign individuals. Your group identity is paramount. You have no unique voice. You're a mouthpiece of your identity group. You can't speak across group lines because you don't understand the lived experience of the other. And so it's not who gets to speak. It's whether the entire notion, it's a very classic Western notion,

a very deep one of free and intelligible speech is even valid. I mean, this intellectual war that's going on in the universities is way deeper than a political war. It's, and way more serious than a political war. It manifests itself politically, but, no, it's, politics is way up the scale from where this is actually taking place. So when you're talking with students both one-on-one or your, their questions, and I'm going to get to some of your questions here very shortly.

These are not all conservative students that are coming up to you and they're downloading your videos and listening to your podcast. And it's not, even though it is a lot of young men, it's not all men. What do you think drives people to the message and to the things that you talk about? Oh, I think it's that I'm believable. And, well, that's why. That's why. I mean, you know, in most of my lectures, so I've done about 150 public lectures or so in the last year all over the world. And to large audiences, the audiences in Australia, we're starting to approach, well, we had audiences for 5,500 people in Australia. So, which is quite remarkable, you know, that 5,500 people would come to listen to, like, a serious discussion about philosophical, theological, and psychological issues. to participate in that.

And I don't pull any punches. I'm not speaking down. I would never speak down to an audience. I think that's a dreadful error of arrogance. But the reason that I think people believe what I say is that I'm very pessimistic. Well, look, because most times when you listen to someone who's a motivational speaker, let's say, you know it fills you with a temporary optimism

but you go home and the wiser part of you knows that mostly it's the painting over of rotten wood with a fresh coat of paint and I tell my audiences very clearly that their life is going to be difficult and sometimes difficult

beyond both imagining and tolerance and that that is definitely in your future, if it isn't in your present, and for many people it's in their present, and that can be unbearable, enough to turn you against life itself, to corrupt you, to drive you to nihilism, to drive you to suicide,

and worse, to drive you to thoughts of vengefulness, of infinite scope, to not only be, turned against yourself and your fellow men, but to be turned against being itself because of its intrinsically brutal, in some sense, nature. And that is worse than that, actually, because it's not only that we suffer,

and that that will necessarily occur, but that we all make our suffering worse because of our ignorance and our malevolence. And everyone knows that to be true. And so the discussions start, let's say, on an unshakable foundation. But then I can tell people, look, despite that, despite that, we're remarkable creatures. You know, we're capable of taking up the burden of that suffering and facing the reality of that malevolence voluntarily. We can actually do that.

And all of the psychological evidence suggests, and this is independent of your school of psychology, if you're a practical psychologist, a clinical psychologist of any sort, the evidence is crystal clear that if people voluntarily confront the problems that face them and the malevolence that surrounds them, that they can make headway against it. And not only psychologically, so it's not only meaningful to do that psychologically, which it is, which it is, to confront the problems that torment you voluntarily. That's meaningful psychologically. But it's also practically useful in that you can actually solve some of the problems that beset you. And God only knows how good we could get at that. I mean, I don't know what percentage of human effort is spent in counterproductive activity. You know, I'm not an absolute cynic about that.

But, I mean, when I talk to undergraduates, I ask them, you know, how much time do you waste every day by your own reckoning? And it's somewhere between five and eight hours, you know, it's a lot of time. Well, I usually walk through, I walk the students through an economic analysis of that. I said, well, you know, why don't you value your time at $50 an hour and calculate for yourself just exactly what you're doing to your future by your inability to discipline yourself. It's worth thinking through. In any case, people do waste a lot of time, and they also act counterproductively a lot of the time.

Regardless, we do make progress, and we can thrive under the difficult conditions that make up our lives, and we can resist the malevolence that entices us. That's within our power, and we don't know the limits to that. And we also know that it's better to, we all know this, that it is better to live courageously than cowardly. Everyone knows that. That's what you teach people that you love. And we know that it's better to live truthfully than in deceit.

And you can tell that too, because that's also what you teach. tell people that you love. And we know that you should pick up your damn responsibility and move forward. Everyone knows that. It's part of our intrinsic moral nature. And that nature is there. And it's not difficult to communicate to people about this. Like everyone knows that you wake up at three in the morning when you left, let your life go off the rail. and that you berate yourself for your uselessness and your cruelty and your failure to take the opportunities that are in front of you. And if you were the master in your own house, in some sense,

the captain of your own destiny, if there was no intrinsic nature, well, that would never happen. You'd just let yourself off the hook. There'd be no voice of conscience tormenting you. But no one escapes from that. And what that indicates to me is that, at least psychologically, we live in a universe that's characterized by a moral dimension, and we understand that well,

and that moral failings have consequences, and that they're not trivial. They destroy you. They destroy your family. They destroy your community. And you can tell people that, and they listen because they know. They don't know they know.

That's the thing. And maybe that's the thing about being an intellectual. You have the opportunity to articulate ideas that other people know. They embody, but they can't articulate. And that's what people tell me. You know, they say, well, you help me give words to things that I always knew to be true but couldn't say. Or they say, I've been trying to put some of your precepts into practice. responsibility being a main one, vision, another, honesty, I suppose, bringing up the pack and saying,

and this is the fun part of doing all of this. Fun is a weak word that it's the remarkable part of doing all this. I mean, I have people tell me constantly wherever I go. It's so delightful that, you know, they were in a pretty dark place, and they tell me why, and there's plenty of dark places in the world, and they decided, well, maybe they were going to, develop a bit of a vision and take a bit more responsibility and start telling the truth and putting some effort into something and they come up and they say well you can't believe how much better things are it's like i've got i got three promotions i had one guy tell me this was a lovely

story you know 15 seconds he came up after a talk he said two years ago i got out of jail it was homeless he said i own my own house i have a six figure income i got married and I have a daughter. Thank you. And that was the whole conversation. It's like he decided. He decided he was going to put his life together. And you know, so you can look at that pessimism that constitutes, let's say, the core of what, well, I think it's the core religious message, really, is the tragic nature of the world.

The reality of suffering, it's part of the core religious message. But what emerges out of that properly conceptualized is a remarkable appreciation for what human beings are capable of. Like we are unbelievably resilient and able creatures. And we do not have any conception of our upper limits. Dr. Proust, let me ask you. I mean, we have about 10 minutes, and I'm going to get a couple of questions in here from our audience on this too. But is that that hope that you're talking about, that you're giving people, hope, young people hope, is that one of the secrets to reaching them?

Well, it's a funny kind of hope, you know, and it's such a perverse sort of hope, because I would say for the last 45 years, we've told psychologists have been certainly to blame for this, at least in part, you're okay the way you are. That's what we tell young people. Oh, you're okay the way you are. It's like, and there's nothing worse than you can tell. that you can tell someone who's young than that, especially if they're miserable. And lots of them, well, if they're miserable and aimless, it's like, oh, I'm miserable and aimless,

and sometimes I'm suicidal and I'm nihilistic, and I don't have any direction in your life. In my life, it's like, well, you're okay the way you are. And it's like, they don't want to hear that. They want to hear, look, you know, you're, and you know this, you're useless. You know nothing. You haven't got started.

You've got 60 years to put yourself together, and God only knows what you could become. And that's so, that message is so much more, it's so funny because it's such an attack, but it's so positive, because there's faith there in the potential that makes up the person rather than the miserable actuality that happens to be manifesting itself at the moment. And young people respond extraordinarily well to that. Because, and you know that if you're a parent and you love your child, your son, your daughter. What you're trying to foster is the best in them. You want that to manifest itself across the course of their life.

You want them to become continually more than they are to see what they could be. And, well, and I think that's part of the great message of the West, is that that's the ethical requirement of individual being in the proper sense, is to constantly note that you're not what you could be, to take responsibility for that, and to commit yourself, like body and soul, to the attainment of that ideal. We're going to get a question here from our members right here on the front row.

Bob Grantham had a couple good questions right here. He asked, much of your effort today is trying to help people improve their lives. I've just been talking about that. Why does the establishment attack you rather than try to support your efforts? Well, you know, we should be nuanced about that. I mean, the group of newspapers in Canada called Post Media, that's 200 newspapers strong. And they supported me. You know, I mean, I've had a lot of support from journalists.

And I would say I've had more support from the higher quality journalists, which I'm quite happy about. So it's polarized. You know, there is a, I have a dedicated coterie of people who regard me as an enemy. There's no doubt about that. And I think it's because I am absolutely no fan whatsoever of the radical left. I think the fact that you can actively present yourself, let's say on a campus as a communist, is as the fact that that's allowable is as mysterious as it would be if it was allowable to present yourself as a Nazi. I am not a fan of the radical left. And I think I understand the motivations on

the radical left, both on the postmodernist end and on the more Marxist end. And I'm, Because of that, I'm a relatively effective critic, and that makes me very unpopular. And that's fine, because I'm not, because what people are being taught that's emerged from that brand of absurd and surreal philosophy is of no utility as a guiding light to anyone. and it's a catastrophe to take young people in their formative years when they're trying to catalyze their adult identity and to tear the substructure out from underneath them and leave them bereft. And I do believe that that's what the universities, on the humanities end, and to some degree on the social science end, I do believe that that's what they fundamentally managed to achieve. so and I don't admire that

I think there's something deeply sadistic about that there's something deeply anti-human about that and it presents itself in the guise of moral virtue which makes it even worse and so well that's why people don't like me all right we've got about five minutes I'm going to try to get in two quick questions this is

where is Adam from Basser College is Adam? Oh there he is all right So this was Adam's question. He said, given the liberal political order bends towards automation of individuals, e.g. automation and urbanization. How can meaningful community be assured? Well, you build that for yourself, in part. You know, I mean, Adam, get a girlfriend. People aren't doing that.

You know, that's falling by the wayside, right? And so, and it's because it's trouble, you know, to, well, it is trouble. Life is trouble. And it's trouble to establish a permanent relationship, you know. I mean, we've told young people for far too long that, well, they should be happy in their relationships, let's say. And it's like, that's a week. Well, it is. God, most of you are married.

It's like to be married for 40 years. That's not a triumph of happiness. It's a triumph of character. It's a triumph of negotiation. Right? It's a triumph of will to do that. And that should be celebrated. But it should also be pointed out that no matter who you find,

like, they're no better than you. And that's not so good. So there's going to be problems. And so, but that shouldn't stop you. It's like, find someone, you know, you're going to have, if you're lucky, you're going to have the opportunity to sort of sift through about five people in your life. That's about it. Then you're going to have to stake yourself on one of those people.

And it's a hell of a risk. But with any luck, it'll make you a better person. That wrestling, you know, one of the things I learned, I did a series of biblical lectures in 2017, which have turned out to be, crazily popular of all the insane things to be. And I was supposed to ask you, why do you think that is? Yes, yes. Well, I learned, one of the things I learned in those lectures

and should have known before was that the word Israel, so the chosen people of God, the people of Israel, are those who wrestle with God. And that's such an interesting idea. You know, it's a fascinating idea because it indicates at least, even in our deepest religious text, that there's something about existential conflict and engaging in that that's actually part of the moral substructure of life.

That simple belief, let's say, whatever that might mean in a deity, isn't sufficient, is that there's an active engagement with the infinite. And it's a battle in some sense. And I think that's the proper way to conceptualize. I think it's the proper way to conceptualize a relationship. It's a battle.

It's a battle towards a positive end. It's a battle towards the transformation of both of you into more than you could have otherwise been. So you need that. You need your friends, and you need to develop a network of friendship. And you need to put your family together and to act responsibly towards them,

and then you need to move out from that into the broader community. And that's on you. And that's how you foster it. You make it a part of the ideal that you're pursuing, and then you realize that that's up to you to do. And maybe then you realize that you can do it as well if you're willing to make the right sacrifices, which usually means burning off a fair bit of dead wood,

and that's not something that people are particularly excited about doing, and no wonder. our time has been too short we have time for just one more final question I'm told what have I not asked you about and thinking of our theme of standing up against socialism what have I not asked you about what have other

interviewers not asked you about that would be beneficial for us all to know is we want to take that on well you asked a little bit about these biblical lectures you know and what was interesting was I rented a theater in Toronto I rented it 15 times and it was a theater for about 500 and it sold out every time and I lectured about Genesis which and it was mostly young men who came they weren't all young but they were mostly men which was very surprising because like that's

just not what happens and what the reason that the the lectures worked and and and was because I put together something that I don't think liberals or conservatives have done a good job of putting together. The liberals are more on the happiness and freedom end of things, and the conservatives are more on the duty end of things. And those are both, those both have their place. But I've been attempting to develop an argument that's centered on meaning. And I do believe, and I believe that our most central religious symbols, like the symbol of the cross itself, for example, the bearing of the cross, is an embodiment or a symbolic representation of this idea. is that you have to have a meaning in life that sustains you.

Life is a serious business. You're all in. It's a fatal business, right? Everyone's in it up to their neck. And it's dreadful in some sense, in the classic sense. And you need a meaning that can sustain you through that. And that's to be found in responsibility. And that's something that we have not communicated.

I don't think well to ourselves, but we certainly haven't communicated it to young people. It's like, well, you're lost? There's reasons that you could be lost, and they're real. God only knows what terrible things happen to you in your life. It's like, how are you going to get out of that? Well, not by pursuing impulsive happiness. That is not going to work.

Not by thinking in the short term. Not by thinking in a narrowly selfish manner either, but by taking on the heaviest load of responsibility. that you can conceptualize and bear. That will do it. It'll do it for you. It'll give you a reason to wake up in the morning. It'll give you a bomb for your conscience

when you wake up at night and ask yourself what you're doing with your life. It'll make you a credit to yourself and to your family and it'll make you a boon to your community. And more than that, there's more than that. You know, it's said in the Genesis that every person is made in the image of God. And there's an idea in Genesis that God is that which confronts the chaos of potential with truth and courage.

That's the logos. And if we're made in the image of God, that's us. That's what we do is we confront the potential of chaos, the future, the unformed future. We confront that consciously. And we decide with every ethical choice we make, what kind of world we're going to bring into being. We transform that potential into actuality. And we do that as a consequence of our ethical decisions.

And so it's not only a matter of putting yourself together and putting your family together, putting your community together, it's a matter of bringing the world in its proper shape into being. And I truly believe that that's the case. And I believe that we all believe that. We hold ourselves responsible. You know that if you've made a mistake,

with your family, you know, because you were selfish or narrow-minded or blind in some manner that you regard yourself as culpable. You could have done otherwise. And now you've brought something into the world that should not be there. And it's on you. We hold ourselves responsible in that manner. And so what that indicates to me is that in a deep sense, we believe that we are the agents that transform the potential of being into reality.

And that is a divine, if anything, links us with divinity. It's our capability to transform what is not yet into what is. And the other thing that happens, and I'll stop with this in Genesis, and this is so interesting, it's so fascinating, is that as God conducts himself through this enterprise, of the transformation of potential into actuality, he stops repeatedly and says, and it was good.

And that's a mystery. Why is it good? And the answer is something like, well, if you conduct yourself with the courage that enables you to accept your vulnerability, which is no trivial matter, and if you're truthful, then what you bring out of potential is what's good.

and that sets the world right. And that's up to us. And to me, that's the great story of the West. That's why we regard ourselves as sovereign individuals of value. That's what we are. And we need to know that, to take ourselves seriously, and to act properly in the world. And so, and that's what I said in the biblical lectures.

in many hours and that's what's made them popular because people at the level of the soul i would say people know these things to be true so ladies and gentlemen please help me thank gordon peterson do you have an opinion that you'd like to share leave us a voicemail at 202 608 6205 or email us at letters at daily signal dot com yours could be featured on the the Daily Signal podcast. Thanks for sending us your letters to the editor. Each Monday we feature our favorites on this show and in our Morning Bell email newsletter. Rachel, what do you have this week? Marlene Marty Fowler-Helfrick from Spring Hill, Florida, wrote to us on special counsel Robert Mueller's conclusion that the Trump campaign did not clude with Russia to win the 2016 election.

Dear Daily Signal, Marlene writes, funny they should whine that President Trump is not above the law when Hillary and Obama are judged to be according to the same Democrats. And Patricia C. Porter writes, Why can't the Democrats just quit it and start doing the job they were elected to do while they still have a job and spend some time securing our country? They are dividing our country and making fools of themselves. And Raymond Hudson writes, Dear Daily Signal, I was not a Trump fan going into the election,

but it has been an eye-opening experience watching the left have a meltdown after meltdown, as Jared Stetman writes in his commentary about the Mueller report. Here is a man who has never held office before, has plenty of his own money, and places himself dead center in the bullseye. President Trump actually wants to put America first. Very simple. Not being a career politician, he has refused to bow to the media. He has run his mouth when he felt like it and called them out.

And after all this, he still has done more for our country than Obama did in eight years. In fact, it seems a good portion of it. of his time in office has been spent trying to repair Obama's damage. Go for it, Mr. President. I believe you are on the right track. Your letter could be featured on next week's show. Send an email to Letters atdailysignal.com or leave a voicemail message at 202-608-6205. Do you own an Alexa? You can now get the Daily Signal podcast every day as part of your daily flash briefing. It's easy to do. Just open up your Alexa app, go to settings, and select flash briefing. From there, you can search for the Daily Signal podcast and add it to your flash briefing

so you can stay up to date with the top news of the day that the liberal media isn't covering. Michaela Stedman has an inspiring story about a girl who is not letting a tragedy stop her love of music. Thanks, Rachel. Sonia Banduel has played piano since she was five years old. Her dream was to be a professional pianist. That all changed last November when the facade of a building suddenly collapsed on Sonia while she was in Boston with her boyfriend. The ground shook that I didn't know what to do. It just fell and the first thing I noticed was that Sonia wasn't there. Two weeks later, Sonia was told she had broken 21 bones, suffered from internal bleeding and bruised a lung. Her right hand had been crushed resulting in nine

surgeries, one of those being the amputation of her middle finger. Sonia had to re-learn how to walk and do simple things with her hand, like brushing her teeth. This made her sincerely doubt whether she would ever play piano again. I really just thought, well, since something so crazy happened, maybe I would be better off to just drop the piano, to not put myself through so much frustration. But while Sonia was in rehab in Boston, she slowly started finding her way back to the piano. There was one at the hospital, and her loved ones encouraged her to try playing again. I just had to keep telling myself, you know, this is what I was. I was a happens, so you have to really keep moving forward. And so that's what I'm just doing every day,

trying to relearn. Sonia's story does not end in the miraculous healing of her hand, but that's part of why I picked this one. I think Sonia's story is a remarkable one that shows amazing determination through something really challenging. As a musician myself, her desire to relearn piano with only nine fingers really inspired me this week. Michaela, thank you for sharing that. As a musician, tell me about how difficult the challenge she's facing really is. Yeah, well, I think about, I play the flute and a lot of what I play is through muscle memory. And so missing a finger, I can't even imagine trying to think through that. Well, Michaela, I am no musician, but thank you for sharing that story. We'll certainly keep Sonia

in our prayers and hope that she has a recovery and continues to learn the music that she loves so much. Do conversations about the Supreme Court leave you scratching your head? Then subscribe to Scotus 101, a podcast breaking down the cases. personalities and gossip at the Supreme Court. We're going to leave it there for today. The Daily Signal podcast comes to you from the Robert H. Bruce Radio Studio at the Heritage Foundation. You can find it on the Rurkishay Audio Network along with our other podcasts. All of our shows can be found at daily signal.com slash podcasts.

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