The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - Rex Murphy's Interview with Jordan B. Peterson

Episode Date: October 20, 2019

Legendary Canadian commentator and author, Rex Murphy... interviews Jordan. This episode is truly unique! More from Rex Murphy: https://nationalpost.com/author/rmurphynp Big thanks to our sponsors! Butcher Box: https://www.butcherbox.com/jbp Eero: https://eero.com/jordan

Hi, I'm Michaela Peterson, Dad's daughter and collaborator. This is an interview podcast. It was organized by Rex Murphy, who was a straightforward Canadian commentator and author, primarily focused on Canadian political and social matters. He was the regular host of CBC Radio One's Cross Country Checkup, a nationwide call-in show for 21 years before stepping down in September 2015. He currently works for the National Post and has his own social media platform. He's been supporting Dad since Dad's controversial rise to fame in 2016, even though he got little support elsewhere.

I'm a huge fan of his. You can check out his new YouTube channel, RexTV. It was just recently launched. Peterson updates, not yet, unfortunately. We're hanging in there slowly improving though. Thanks for watching soon. You can sign up using the code LionDiet at thinkspot.com to get invited in. I think the first set of invites

are coming out right away. If you haven't been invited, don't worry. It'll happen. There are just a lot of moving pieces still. ThinkSports is social media platform that has a whole bunch of functionalities that other social media platforms don't. You can support your favorite content providers.

You can annotate podcasts and basically form book reading groups. It's a learning platform more than a scrolling down trolls platform. Give it a shot if you're interested using the code LionDiet at www.thinkspot.com. Enjoy the podcast. I've named it simply Rex Murphy's interview

with Jordan B. Peterson. Rex Murphy's interview with Jordan B. Peterson. About the join me now is probably the world's most famous intellectual certainly the most famous intellectual that come out of Canada in the last 20 years and he will be speaking with me about the role of the university and about his meteoric rise to intellectual and media influence Dr. Jordan Peterson. Dr. Peterson, I'm going to start on an incidental thing, at least incidental to me, and it's bothered me since you became known as it is now to all the world.

And that was in the very early days of the controversy that came to you when the University of Toronto sent you some military letters that I thought I've used this word before, insolent, that I thought were against the spirit of a university, that they weren't supporting you, they were actually threatening you. And that said to me that something is beyond a particular controversy, something deeper is wrong here, that universities, or this university is upside down. How did you reason that? How did they get there that they could be so completely unaware of their own position?

Well, I think a lot of it was confusion and a lack of experience with this sort of thing. I mean, the University of Toronto is a peaceful place, and a rather conservative university, all things considered, the administration wasn't prepared to handle a controversy of the nature that swirled around me. They were used to making minor administrative decisions.

And when they were put on the spot and forced to defend their fundamental presumptions, let's say, it isn't clear that they were ready and prepared to do so. Partly because of lack of practice, it isn't necessarily the case that you climb the administrative chain in the university by engaging in continual philosophical re-appraisal of the fundamental presuppositions of university as an institution. You know, it's a much more administrative job. And so I'm going to say everything I can in favor of the University of Toronto before I say anything. Contrary. You know, I've found, too, that when I've been put on the spot by journalists

and asked to defend, let's say customs that everyone has always accepted, like marriage, it's very difficult to generate a defense for such an institution off the top of your head, let's say, because part of the whole purpose of customs is that everyone accepts it. You don't think it reflects. Well, they are there. They're unstated presuppositions. And so when you put on this spot, you don't know what to do. When I first got the letter, the first letter, and I know

how each our departments work, they send you one letter of warning so that it's documented, and then they send you another so that it's documented, and then they send you a third, and if you haven't ceased by then, well then they go to the next step, which would be something to do with whatever approximation, determination, they might be able to manage. They document you. Yes, yes, And they're documenting all the steps. And I told the person who delivered the letter to me, who's a person I actually got along with quite well, that it was full of errors and it was poorly written

and that they should take it back and read it properly. Because I did. I followed it. And I know. And because if they're going to do this, they better do it right, or there was going to be trouble. Yeah, and I didn't mean that I was going to cause trouble necessarily, but that there was

going to be trouble, but they didn't take it back. So I read it on YouTube. So, and then I did the same thing with the second letter. And then I met the dean, and after that, and, you know you know we agreed we had quite a congenial discussion I would say and we agreed to have a discussion at least a debate. We never was a debate. It was I don't know what they call those now. They can't be debates.

They were forums or something. Something I, yeah. Not a debate about free speech on campus. That was a three. Yeah, I saw that. I saw that. It was awful. Yeah, it was quite the, but they did do it, which was something, you know, and I've also heard that behind the scenes,

because I have some friends who, some colleagues who have some access to administrative decisions, and they believe that the University of Toronto in the aftermath of all this has actually reconfirmed its internal commitment to free speech. So, and, you know, I don't know how much of that is true, but I'm willing to give them a certain amount of benefit of the doubt. But it's important to understand that people can be caught unaware, and the other thing too is that they actually did me a bit of a favor, because one of the things I claimed in the YouTube video that I made was that

What I was doing by making the video was probably illegal Yes, I remember and Their lawyers basically said that it was probably illegal and so that also helped establish my bona fides, so let's say as a reasonable interpreter of the law and so it wasn't all bad Although it was extraordinarily stressful. That demonstrations that followed. How is it that any university, which of all things, obviously, is the exercise of thought, the training in mind,

and therefore the power of expression that comes as a result of those two things, that the same things under the banner of reason and an exercise mind, that's what it is. So how comes that uncertain issues, the transgender one, there's a whole list of the political correct ones, suddenly, not only is language being bent, it's being turned upside down in some cases, it's also neologisms are floating out to every six seconds with new rules on them. A word you never heard yesterday is somehow rather prejudiced if you say it today. Yes, or even illegal to use. Very much. Yeah, like the idea of dead

naming. Well, the very one I was saying that the word didn't exist two days ago. And now if you dead name someone, which is a word that doesn't exist, you're in violation of something or a whole bigot. When have we let go of the straps that kept us either do something like reason, or when have we lost our nerve that when people come to you, and they say to you things that you know, not from bias, are nonsense that they can't simply be dismissed as nonsense, with no peril whatsoever. Well, you're assuming that we had nerve. Yeah, I suppose.

Well, I mean, you know, some people have nerve, but one of the things I've learned over the last three years, because really this all started in October of 2016, was that the percentage of people who have nerve is very small and vanishingly small. You know, I've met people, Doug the Smurray has nerve. That's for sure. Roger Scrood has nerve. Yes he has. Lindsey Shepard has nerve. Yes she has. There's a handful of people that I've met who you can't move. You know, you're one of them, I would say. Try. Well, succeed, I would say. And I've met a number of journalists who, you know,

I've had my fair share of conflict with journalists. That's for sure, I would say. Talking to journalists is the most stressful thing I've done apart from talks at university campuses. Journalist, just a sidetrack that because it's a very good issue. Journalism, I've been playing at it from the margins for a long while. Journalism is very much corrupted. It is not the media in the middle.

It is in many cases, wittingly or unwittingly partisan. It is part of the game that it says it's covering. Journalists is one of the failing institutions in the society, as much as universities. Yeah, well, there's technological reasons for that. The journalists journalism, as such, is under unbelievable pressure from the new technologies, YouTube podcasts in particular, which, of course,

have also vastly expanded what constitutes journalism. And so journalists are running scared. It's very difficult for them to to find paying jobs. It's their staffs are shrinking. The newspapers are in trouble. Television stations are vanishing. And so there's increasing desperation, I would say, as well as decreasing professionalism among those who still practice. And so some of it's the personal failings of the ideologues who happen to be occupying the positions that ideologues occupy, but some of it's a consequence of these transformations in communication technology that are so vast that they're actually inconceivable. And I think YouTube, both YouTube and podcasts are great examples of that.

Podcasts even more than YouTube because YouTube serves billions of people, which is one wall of thing network. But podcasts are maybe 10 times as popular. So and that's all underground. It's interesting. You can just be known to track as much attention, you know, or as much as much controversy Maybe because they're more siloed in some sense but the journalists are fighting a losing game and and I think as you fight a losing game

I've seen this happen with corporations. You lose your best people first and then the death spiral begins and and I think we're seeing exactly that. And then that's exaggerated by this proclivity to polarization that also might be part and parcel of the technological changes. Okay. Let me sweep back to that other nerve. I know because I follow you. How deep your respect and attention to Alexander Soltz-Nitsyn is, if you have a hero, obviously he is it. Now, in the Soviet Union, if Soltz-Nitsyn is not a small note or something, he gets tossed up until a ghoul like for nine years or more.

If a man looks the wrong way in China, he can put some Dan Kamp and in Korea, he won't even go into it. In those countries, if you wanna say something, even if it's nearly innocuous, you really have to have courage, soldier Nitsa should be gone stalling, he had the steel. Over here, when, okay, we have a transactive group, let's say in the thing. And you almost, almost innately know that this is absurd.

And you say, well, I don't think I'm going to say that's absurd. What are we afraid of? We fight wars and say we gave all our soldiers, that we've been preserved democracy and freedom of speech. There is no, there is no loss if you decide to challenge in terms of any contrast with the totalitarian systems, where if you said something, in terms of any contrast with the totalitarian systems where if you said something you really did pay a price. Worse thing you'd know over here lose job.

Well, you can be hold in front of quasi-judicial tribunes as well and they're certainly willing to do that. I think the human rights tribunals should in my opinion they should be obliterated. They're a travesty. They're there. Yes, we're setting up these quasi judicial inquisitions in all sorts of instances. And ideologically constituted because I read the biographies

of some of the people who are appointed to them. Yeah. And no one can be judging their own cause. And in this context, it's the cause people judging the causes. Yeah, precisely. But I look at what's happening in British Columbia with this case is what's what's the person's name? Jessica or Jonathan, I prefer Jonathan. I think we'll go with Jonathan. I think they still haul us in front of the entire human race. We will go together. Good. That would be

that would be too much to bear on that. But no, he's got 16 people. A good portion of them are immigrant women. Yeah. He is insisting that they wax his penis and testicles. If he's got a hair on the first, it's a bit of a worry. And he's got 16 of them under charge. And I asked the question, if 16 people are of this mind and one person is of this, who is the more likely to be off? Yeah, well, it seems irrelevant, and I mean, it's a consequence. One of the things I pointed out with Bill C-16 was that it contained multiple internal

contradictions, especially in the background policies, which I had read in quite a bit of detail. They were formulated in Ontario, although the federal government removed the link on their website to those policies after I pointed out the fact that that link existed, which I thought was unbelievably underhanded and still believes so. But Carl Jung once said that internal contradictions are played out in the world as fate, you know, is that the thing about propositions, if they're accurate, is that they represent real states of being in the world. And if you entertain a set of propositions that are internally contradictory, then you're going to run yourself into all sorts of sharp objects and dead ends. And that's exactly what's happening.

And every time, and I've thought this really for three years, every time you think that there's no possible way that this can get more absurd, then one more example comes up where it's more absurd. And I would say the situation in BC is precisely that. I mean, one of the women that he's persecuting, because I think he and this terrible bureaucracy is persecuting was an immigrant woman. I believe she was Muslim, who had a on aesthetics business

in her own home and as a consequence of the negative publicity or the publicity and the pressure she shut down her business. And who don't only knows what that means for her family and while and for her. And you were asking about courage earlier, you know. One of the things that I have watched quite frequently is the way that people respond to being mobbed on Twitter. Yeah. You know, now I've almost stopped looking at Twitter.

It's been about three months that I've taken out Twitter. Hiatus, let's say I still post, I don't even have my password anymore. I send what I want to post to a third party, and they post it because it keeps me out of the... An antiseptic distance. That's right, exactly. And that's exactly the right way of thinking about it. You know, people, civilized people, and I mean that in civilized, socialized people, cannot

tolerate being mobbed. Because, and there's a reason for that. You see, you said with regards to the British Columbia, human rights tribunal, you know, if there's 16 people on one side and one on the other, you might be thinking that the 16 people are right. Right, right, but then you think of the situation where you've said something on Twitter and,

you know, a thousand people, mom, you, publicly. I mean, your first response is going to be to examine your own conscience and see how you transgress. It's not really much different psychologically. I mean, it's lesser, I suppose, but it's not that much different than waking up one morning and coming to your door and finding a mob of your neighbors angrily educated on your lawn. It's a terrible shock for people and it really hurts them. They're often, by all accounts, damaged for lengthy periods of time by this. And their first impulseses to apologize which is

Which is truly the wrong thing like the right thing to do is stand well the right thing to do is to is to is to Understand that if you haven't done anything wrong. You have you don't apologize. Now. That's a very difficult Yeah, I know and then to wait Because if you wait two weeks, people will come to your defense. But it takes the people who will come to your defense two weeks to get their act together where it takes the activists who are unbelievably organized

15 seconds to all of you. Well, there's two points to draw out of there. First of all, because you have now been almost fire-hosted into the world of celebrity multimedia and vast attention. I've dabbled in a lesser zone for a long while, so you adjust to the kind of swirl, okay? But what I've never forgotten, and I'm serious, is that people who are not in it at all,

my father, or the mechanic down the road, or the doctor over here does not be class. If you haven't had media and if you haven't adjusted to it and suddenly your name, and I'm just backing up your point, your name suddenly becomes the center of some great Twitter snowstorm in pejorative terms and people are speaking of you and with the most vulgar responses. It is a terror. It isn't to me, it is just missing, but people who have not experienced it.

It is really, really, really something that, it's an unbearable pain. Yes. And they bring it down with club force and the great mega-phones of the national networks and the states, et cetera. You can expunge a person's personality with this kind of brutality. Yes, well, it's permanent, right?

Because the record never disappears. So I want to put a personal question to you now. When you, because I know you had been on YouTube, you knew the media in that sense, but you weren't a media person. In your baptism, harsh as it was, how hard was it in the first couple of weeks for you to find balance and scale? Maybe a clinical psychologist and you are obviously mature. Oh, I don't think I've ever found balance and scale. I've joined my club. I don't believe it. I mean, I've got a year. I mean in the, in the

that great throbbing moment, but all the stuff came in, and he's hates this one, and your name is flashed all over the world. That was the first real magnitude of media attack on. So even for you, how was that period? Well, it was dreadful, I mean, especially the first couple of months, because, well, because the attention was, well, it has been since then, but the attention was unbelievably intense. I mean, I had, there were days upon days where there were reporters lined up coming into the house one after the other, and that really hasn't stopped. I mean, it stopped, let's say, in the last two months since the end of March, long that is because I've shot myself

off because of my I have some family health trouble that's very serious but I don't take I've ever adjusted to it. What's made it bearable, I would say, and some of it's been very good. I know that. I mean, it's taken my life, which was fairly broad. I had a fairly broad range of experiences, partly because I'm a clinical psychologist. You I, yo-yo between those states, what's helped is, well, the first thing is, is that I determined right from the beginning that I was going to say carefully what I believed I was going to say carefully what I believed to be true because there wasn't a safe root than that.

It's interesting. You know, that in the final analysis, it wasn't certain that anything would protect me. Better than willing to write things. Well, whether that would work or not was debatable, but there wasn't a better option. Yeah, I can understand that. And I believe that. I still believe that. And I think the success of what I've done is an indication of that.

The success of my book, say, which is also absolutely overwhelming. I mean, it's impossible to actually, I'm kind of old, you know, I'm just about 60. And you're white, and you're white and you're male. Oh, there's all of those things. You are a bad man. Yeah, well, the old part, I think, has to do with the ability to be a little bit older and wider than men.

Yeah, well, but, you know, it's fulfilled and the lectures and the podcasts as well, and the YouTube videos, they've filled a need, which also is something that's very difficult for me to reconcile myself to, you know, meaning on every time I walk down the street, someone stops me, someone stops me on the way here, you know. And as opposed to my treatment at the hand of a minority of journalists, which has been atrocious

upon occasion and academics as well. The treatment I received from people in public is so positive that it's almost unbearable. Let me tell you, as personally that relates to you, I don't mix my old stuff with family members, but my sister is a non-plundial kind of person. And as I said, I don't mix those things. She called me, she's out of kind of person. And as I said, I don't mix those things. She called me, she's out of this world altogether. She called me, I don't know, every year ago.

Have you seen Dr. Jordan Kitchett, you know, a drug, a lovely stuff. And she was following the videos, the biblical lectures. Yeah. She's a smart, nice woman. And then that was one thing. That was unsolicited.

She's not in the world of publicity. She doesn't volafads, but somehow your name got in there and she's watching these with great attention, great enjoyment actually. But the better one, won't be particular. Friend of mine from home, never in finished school. He's about 55, 56, so we're not into the team cohort. And he calls me up.

I don't think he's read a book in six years. And he says, I've been watching this Peter Senthelo. And you know, I can't reproduce what he was saying. It was just that he found such comfort. And he found such support. And my thought when I was hearing this, it was a way to relay it to you in all the ping-pong back and forth that you're going to. These voices are saying something.

You're doing something really fine for people that I could never project would be receiving the message. It's very, this is also something that's been very difficult to both understand. I would say in a strange way to tolerate because I've become opened up to the trouble that people have in a way that far exceeds even what I experienced as a clinical psychologist. All the time. Yeah. You know, last year, my wife and I went to 160 cities. Yeah, it was, well, we figured we'd better make. Oh, well, the sun shines. So...

You're a stronger man than I. You know, the, well, you get caught up in, you get caught up in, in, in, in the wave of events, you know, and, and... The adrenaline itself supplies? Yeah. Well, and it was, it, and it was exciting and worthwhile, and the demand was there, you know, and I enjoy lecturing, and I used the opportunity.

I delivered a different lecture every night, and I used the opportunity to think, you know, and to communicate, which, of course, is what used, and in a psychologically, in a manner that I believe would be, psychologically helpful, but it was also, I think, And in a psychologically, in a manner that I believe could be psychologically helpful, but it was also, I think, and I don't know exactly

what the cumulative effect has been on me. But I had no idea the degree to which I had no idea the degree to which so many people were dying for a word of encouragement. So many people want that's what my friend was about. I'm speaking back to you know on the same thing. I know what he was saying. He had felt no software in for a long long time. Yeah. And he was in this camp of the truly neglected.

Yeah. Yeah. You're uneducated. You're not particularly sophisticated. You got a low-paying job. Who gives a fuck about you? And then someone is out there of stature and credibility. And this guy who would never be in your circle, never.

You send an echo, pang, to him, and he was calling me to say, my God, this is so good. Allow yourself to feel good. Yeah, well, the funny thing is, is that it doesn't feel good. And that might be a reflection of my general state of mind, which is very unsettled at the moment for the reasons that I told you. And well, because of everything that's happened over the last few years, but to get a taste of the depth of despair

that can be ameliorated with not much more than some words of encouragement, some statement that you as a human being aren't intrinsically worthless and that you have a human being aren't intrinsically worthless and that you have a spirit worth preserving and that the things that you do in your life that you do correctly are important it's like people are literally dying for lack of that and I mean that I mean that honestly I don't know how many people have told me, and these are very hard things to hear. It's been hundreds of people, because I might meet people after each of my lectures, you

know, who've told me that they are still alive because they watched my lectures or because they read my book, or... And then they usually have a good story to tell, about what sort of hell they happened to be in six months earlier and what they did to pull themselves out and how that's brought their family back together or helped them advance in their career or got the boat of bed or stopped them from using heroin or being alcohol like that.

Or jumping off the, yeah. Yeah, well, and all know, all of that is I'm... Is it something that you, at some point, have at least to shield against? No. No? No. No.

Well, maybe I can put another way. I meant to ask this a little early, but you're already telling me. When you, when this began, I want to say when you began, this, when this began, this is, this is an experience. And you set out to the world, you started, you had maps of meaning. I also know, without knowing you, that you had spent some considerable time doing actual thinking, which is something people don't do very much. As excessively, you thought and you thought things through in a way that these generations are almost abandoned.

So you were prepared in that sense and you went out and there were certain things you saw wrong or discordant either in the universities or in the general system. And you said, I'd like to spread some reason here. I'd like to talk also about reality and life. Now, when that began, I would think you, everything was fairly sufficient. What did you learn, and how did, I'll call it a mission, if I may.

How did the mission change over time when you came in contact with the audience that you're now describing. And what is it that you have learned? You have done a lot of stuff beforehand, you know what you're at, but when you go out and encounter all of these individuals, what new came to you? Well, I would say it isn't obvious to me that the mission itself changed. I think it's an extension of what I've been doing for since 1985 and maybe even before that It's just that the scale continued to grow. I mean even with my YouTube channel Where I put my lectures in rather primitive technological form

Because I was just using an iPad and you know lapel Mike. Yeah, I remember because I was just using an iPad and you know lapel mic. I remember. I had a million views by April 2016 and you know that really made me think because I worked with TVO of course and my lectures were popular with big ideas which showcased a number of public intellectuals. I think I had five lectures in the top 20 or something like that so I knew that there was and I was getting a certain amount of recognition in public for that, not a lot, but enough, and then from a very wide variety of people, which was quite interesting.

When I hit the million mark on YouTube, I really thought about that because I thought, well, I don't know what to do with that figure. I don't know how to conceptualize it in context, because a million is a lot of people. It's 20 football stadiums full of people. It's an overwhelmingly best-selling book. It's far more people than you'd teach in your life.

And I thought, well, what, and it wasn't cute cat videos. And this was back when YouTube was still a developing force, let's say. And something to be sort of ignored in some sense because of, because of, it's humble beginnings. And it was a very secondary place. Yes, it was a very secondary place. Although that was starting to change, I thought, what the hell is this YouTube? What, what are we doing here?

And then it struck me that, well, this was a Gutenberg revolution that we were experiencing, that the spoken word was now as permanent and as immediate, more immediate than the printed word and just as permanent. And with a much larger audience because more people, as far as I can tell,

can listen, than can read. And even with my book, a tremendous percentage of my books have been sold in audio form. So I really started to think about YouTube at that point. And I suppose that was one of the things that drove me in my foolish curiosity to make those political videos that I made in October, which was the first time I'd ever tried something like that. And that was in some sense, I wouldn't call it a whim, but I woke up at three in the morning because I was so irritated about this bill.

And it's attempt to force a certain type of language usage. And I could see what was behind that quite clearly. I thought, well, this really is annoying me to death. And often, what I would do when something was annoying me to death was get up and right. But I thought, well, I'll make a YouTube video and see what happens. It's like, well, I certainly saw what happens. Yeah, you did. Yeah, no kidding.

Well, the thing is, you know, you've got a hold of something. Let's say it's YouTube, and you think you know what it is. And you don't have any idea what it is, and neither does anyone else. And that's certainly still the case. We have no idea what these multiple technologies are doing to us, but I can tell you that YouTube is an overwhelming force

and it's becoming more and more powerful day by day. I've especially seen that in countries, Slovenia was a good example where no one really trusts the mainstream press, all the young people do. And not so young either, pretty much everybody under 35, I would say, all they watch is YouTube. And that's the case all over the world. And so it's, I think on my YouTube channel,

my videos have been watched 110 million times and the total viewership is probably, because people keep cutting them up and distributing them, which is something else that can be done on YouTube, right? You can have a dialogue, right? Where people edit and make their own commentaries. And the total for that would be at least 500 million.

Yeah, that's for sure. Dear God, it's, it's a new, it's a, it, well, it's not a new conversation. It's a new idea of conversation. I don't know if that is the word for it. Yeah. Well, it is certainly, it certainly has that I know that it's the word for it. Yeah, well, it certainly has that conversation aspect, that television lacks. It's very comical to watch an organization like CBC try to adapt itself to YouTube, because they'll put on a 10-minute clip,

and they break all the rules. They put two 30-second commercials in front of them, which you can't skip. No one will watch it. No one will watch it. No one. What you do No one will watch it. What you do with YouTube is you put on a 10-second commercial and you let people skip it after five seconds.

That's the rule. They break that rule. Then they don't allow comments. And so they'll put up a perk, something you might want to watch, you know, for 10 minutes and they'll get like, you know, 20,000, 30,000 views. Because they don't take the conventions of the, of the, they don don't take that seriously and it's like you should take YouTube seriously Well, they also they also have no intuition for these particular forms and they're also that this is a circle back to even to the beginning They're wrapped up in certain ideas about things and they're wrapped up in a certain orientation towards change and politics

That there's only a certain certain Certain corners that they will walk down. Yeah. And there are other corners which you are forbidden to or it is heresy to even admit that they exist. Yes, and populations you won't gain to address. See, one of the things that's interesting about the YouTube stars, you know, like Rogan and say Dave Rubin, is that they don't think their audience is stupid.

That's a good beginning. And it is, it is a really good beginning.. That's a good beginning. And it is. It's a really good beginning. And one of the things I've noticed that at my lectures is while you talked about the gentleman who sent you, the email, it was 55, he wasn't well-educated. A tremendous number of the people who are coming to my lectures are people in that camp.

They're working class often men, but not always. So women as well, but more men more men and their long-haul truckers or construction workers and they're listening to three-hour lectures and complex lectures too. That's the point. You know and it's because they're not stupid. They're interested in the world. It also defies a great accident. If you were in the television world private or public for 30 years the idea if you had

an interview I did a provincial show for for 30 years. The idea, if you had an interview, I did a provincial show for years and years. If you had an interview, you may make it four minutes. You're going to be going to be going to watch you for five minutes. If you had a commentary, can you make it 60 seconds? The idea that people had an attention span that went beyond four minutes never entered into the world of people in the studio. And you put stuff on that has no glitz, it's profound, it can be complex, and it goes on for 67 to 80 minutes, and everyone is happy. Yeah, I mean, it's all upside down, but they've been operating under wrong assumptions for

three decades. Yeah, while in Rogan's interviews for three hours long, and people watch the whole thing or listen to the whole thing. Let's go back to another area where you really have been on the mark. I'm saying that personally. And I think you're absolutely correct. And this is not security. There's some of the stuff that goes on in the university.

Some of the, if I read the course syllabus, if I read some of these regal peer reviews, some of the subjects in there are beneath-tripe. Well, that's why they've flourished. I'm serious. I'm serious. I know what you're saying. I thought about this a lot.

It's like, what the hell happened? And here's what happened is that, you know, the scientific types and the serious scholars, they're a specific sort of person, they're rather obsessed, the good ones. The great ones are completely obsessed. And partly mad. Well, and then, well, maybe you need a bit of that to be completely obsessed. I think you are. And, you know, a minority of scientists produce the majority of the literature.

And it's the same in the humanities and in the social sciences. And so those are people who are working 70 or 80 hours a week. All they do is work. And what they work on is their thing. And they need to do that because, well, they're on the cutting edge and they want to stay there. And they have their ambitions for some of, sometimes it's political ambitions, but their stuff never lasts. But the good scholars are, some of some of sometimes it's political ambitions, but their stuff never lasts. But the good scholars are some of them are great.

They discover amazing things. I mean, I've encountered amazing psychological research, you know, that's just especially in the physiological or the physiological end of things in the general literature that's just absolutely brilliant beyond belief. And even the devoid of discoveries from in this ecstasy in itself. Yes, and it's a minority taste in some sense. Of course it is. And then there's the pseudo disciplines which have multiplied since the 1960s

and no one who was serious paid any attention to them. See, that's what happened is that the serious people were busy doing their serious things. And there was all this stuff. Yeah, political activism in these gender stuff. That's right. That's right. In the, in the, what do they call them, grievance studies, departments, you know, and everybody just sort of assumed that they were noisy, but harmless. But they were not harmless because they're extraordinarily well organized. And the balance tipped, you know, it almost tipped in the 90s

because there was a big rising of political practice around the city there in the street. But then the American economy boomed like mad. And that kind of, I think that just kind of took the steam out of the what would you call it, out of the objections. But something happened four years ago, something like that, five years ago, where the skills tipped.

I think it was a fair part of this. I like really, like you're opinion is the growth of this. It's an awful philosophy. The idea of identity politics, which carries two great axioms, that I can only communicate with you if you're the same tribe as I am. And if you're teaching me in particular, I can't be taught by you if you're not my tribe. But education is actually to receive it from everybody else and take you out of yourself. And the second thing is, the subdivisions of identity politics, that ridiculous story I would didn't be seen as an identity politics, gender politics, that's the broad out into

society. Half the people that have to entertain North America are afraid to bring these subjects up. Yes, probably more than half. And we're being ruled by them. Yeah. Well, it doesn't take a very large determined minority to shut down a large and silent majority. That's unfortunately the rule.

And the identity politics issue, it's a reversion to tribalism. And, you know, and so it's the miracle, actually, the surprise isn't actually that it's back. The surprise is that it ever went away. You know, and, and we took the fact that it's back, the surprise is that it ever went away. We took the fact that it went away for granted. We forgot the reasons that it went away. We forgot the axioms.

We started to lose faith in them, let's say. That's partly what I've been trying to fight against and to write about why those rules were necessary. Why those rules were necessary. And what they meant. Is part of your project, the various words I'm using here, is part of your project a kind of restoration or a reminder that certain markers are fundamental and cannot be moved? Well, that is the project.

I mean, when I wrote my first book, which took me about 15 years to write, and I spent, really, I spent all my time, except when I was writing scientific papers, and when I was socializing, which I did a fair bit of thinking about that book. I mean, it was really an obsessive thinking chronic from the time I woke up till the time I went to bed, unless I was engaged in some other activity that would shut down my mind.

I was trying to understand whether there was what a foundation of stone underneath the presumptions of Western civilization, or it was really a postmodern book, maps of meaning, which I didn't understand, because at the time being unfamiliar with that, lexicon, let's say, there was the terrible Cold War raging, and it wasn't obvious that it wasn't merely a matter of opinion. You could make that case, is that, well, here's your set of Marxist presuppositions, many of which sounded incredibly attractive and would still do. To sound me out.

From each according to his ability, to each according to his need, I mean, no one likes to see people with needs unfulfilled. The problem is that needs multiply without end and ability is limited. But you have to start thinking about the world in a harsh and sophisticated way to notice that flaw. I wanted to analyze that system and the Nazi system

to a lesser degree, but also that. And the Western system to see if there was something at the bottom that was rock-like, that wasn't merely armature, and I believe that what I discovered, let's say, or thought through, was that we got some things in the West fundamentally correct. And they're correct for biological reasons, which is very important because we've been

around very long time. Biological reasons are very fundamental, but also that biology reflects some underlying metaphysics as well, that we don't understand, because we don't understand anything about the fundamental nature of the world is beyond us. The why? Yes, the why is in the where-for is for that matter, the purpose, all of that, the fact that people have religious experiences and that they're easily duplicable and that they

seem to be consistent across societies, at least to some degree. And what I decided then, because I was trying to understand why the world had divided itself up into armed camps that were hell-bent on mutual destruction, right? Mutual assured destruction, right? The terrible acronym MAD, which was an insane, satanic joke, and why it was so important for us to defend our tribal positions in that manner?

And what if anything could be done about it? Like, here's the solution. We have this terrible tribal warfare. It's characteristic of our species. And it's accelerated to a degree that's not sustainable. What do we do about it? And the answer that came to me as a consequence of what I studied was that we try to make ourselves better people. It's the solution to tribalism is the elevation of the individual.

The West got that right. The individual is the atom. Yes. That begins the entire reaction. Yes. That's why the identity politics makes the individual a simple Avatar of the collective right and everything that attaches to him is is always extrinsic and not essential yes, and you strip personality and

We're adding up groups and trying to administer justice via a collective. Yeah, it's insane. Yeah, why do we know? It's terrible. It's terrible. It's so dangerous And we are I heard you on this Why do we seek to perpetrate some sort of justice over the generations? It was one of the worst things in in all of history that you would make the son or the daughter Carry the sin that they're after parents. Yeah, and now it's you're seeing it in reparations again Yeah all the ideas that we thought had been completely wiped out

in either enlightenment or just symbologic itself, they're back. Yeah. Why are we so easily yielding to this? I mean, the patterns of correctness and language and people kind and things of that order, it's an absurdity. Well, I think some of it is the desire to escape from individual responsibility. No, if you can dissolve yourself in the collective

and then the impetus isn't on you to act as forthrightly as would otherwise be necessarily the case. So there's that, and then there the the undeniable attraction of having someone to blame for the miseries of your existence which which are likely manifold. So also the comfort of saying I can start a small war with one tribe and another and we can we can play games with each of these blocks. It won't be a society, it won't be a country, but if you dissolve the collective politics, I mean the real politics, into sub-categories of gender, sex, ethnic, religion, and each of these is now claiming a right only as a collective, everything else falls apart. You know you're jades, and you don't need to vote. But again, back to the universities, if there's one place

that can reset balances, it starts with mine. It starts with the younger mine that will be met with a more mature mind and taught the ways of the mine, how the mine works, what you should read, how you form judgments, how you put contrast over great lengths of time, not the interval, but 500 years ago. If you train the mines, then there is a balance and there's an opportunity to see the world as it really is. You have to believe in the mind in order to do that. Well, you know, it goes back to exactly what we were discussing is that, you know, one of the things I've pointed out to my audience is that there isn't a debate about who should speak on campuses? There's a debate about whether free speech exists. That's a whole

different debate. I know. People don't understand the difference in the severity of those two debates. Like, if I don't want you to talk, I still might believe that people can talk. Yes. And they can exchange opinions and they can change each other's minds. And even if they're different, the argument that's being put forward on the campuses to stop people from speaking is that there is no such thing as free speech. All there is is the exchange of the ideas of avatars who are possessed by their group ideology.

Exactly, and then the logical consequence of that is to refuse to let them to speak, speak because why should you allow the group that you're in direct competition? Exactly. To have its voice. And so it's the collectivists, the identity politics types. It's the very idea of individuality that they're opposed to, that they've dispensed with.

And that goes back to the terrible, the despicable French intellectuals who, in my opinion, were responsible for leading this revolution. And it got picked up as always, the most obnoxious and useless idea is useless in the sense of their intrinsic logic. Find the easiest welcome on the campus. It's the most trendy institution in the world. Yeah, well, and it came through the it came through well it came through the Yale in English department Yes, the wall. Yeah, that's where that's where the the the French continental ideas made their entrance into the North America You know, you know your travels and speeches

I know much of it gets small peat into the politics because that's the world we're in. Do you get much chance because I'm using all good following you around? It wouldn't last. Do you get much chance to expand on the beauties of the culture? I'm thinking of poetry and music and things of this nature, the other side of the academic, the things that sometimes they sing to the humans. I do, I do. I mean, that's one of the reasons that I was so motivated to continue the lectures, you know, because we actually put together a sequence of tours, what we didn't plan 160 cities in one go. I mean, it sort of unfolded. So, you wouldn't bottom left.

Yeah, yeah. Well, it unfolded across time, you know, because they were so popular. Yeah. And the popularity didn't seem to be waning. But it was an opportunity to put forward the case for all the wonderful things that we've done. And to express gratitude and abasement at the fact that, you know, the fact that our city, this city, Toronto, the city works is for me. And I think this is partly because I've been sensitized so much to the catastrophes of existence and sort of the collective and the personal senses that when I go outside and everything works and there's all these people of different colors and creeds and religions walking down the street and it's all peaceful and the lights go on regularly and the power is always working and everything technological is a hundred percent reliable and there's no riots in the street and the probability that you're going to meet with an untimely and painful death at the hands of someone else is almost nil and that we live for such a long time. All of this to me is a complete, it's a complete miracle.

It truly is. And I remind people of the unlikelyhood of that constantly in the lectures and asked them to be grateful for the fact that I mean, you think you look a hundred years ago in 1990, in 1919, you just think of what you would have been through in the last six years, right? The Russian Revolution, the First World War, the Spanish influenza, just absolute bloody, hellish catastrophe, one after the other. Conception of Naziism was brewing then, too. Right, right, right, right, right. The seeds of the next catastrophe were already at work. They were. And then also, of course, the same thing with the Russian Revolution, which was bloody

enough to begin with, but which certainly accelerated in its brutality as it expanded. And, you know, we don't have any of that at the moment. It's actually the world is more peaceful than it's ever been. There's no wars in the Western Hemisphere. That's the first time since the coming of Columbus that the entire Western Hemisphere is free of conflict. I see frequently on your various sites that you do list up and that's another great counter. The environmental crowd and I don't think them as being pure either. Some of them are obviously, most of them are not. They're always having a spectacular at the high table, look at Astrophied, the world is ending the more this is is the worst would ever be we're destroying the planet.

You point out very frequently that certain of the technology is certain of the advances of the civilization that lift the people out of poverty. They put them into new situations. They, we have relieved more suffering in some cases, not maybe not more than we have caused, but it's a different century, we should be grateful for things.

Gratitude isn't short supply. Yes, I understand. And it's completely absent among the collectivists and the people who play identity politics. There's no gratitude at all. And that's so interesting. It's so interesting to me to see that because let's say the professors who lead those movements,

they are the most protected people who've ever lived. It's like they're standing on a hill and around them is a wall and it's four feet away. And around them, that wall is another wall that's four feet away and another wall and another wall. And there's just sequential walls and at this edge of the sequential walls is a huge army. And it's powerful.

And all of that protects them, absolutely. this edge of the sequential walls is a huge army, and it's power. And all of that protects them, absolutely. And they say, everything is corrupt and going to hell. And it's just no sense of gratitude whatsoever. And that's appalling to me, because it's so unlikely to occupy a position like that. And the proper response, although criticism is necessary, obviously, criticism means, well, this is wrong

and this is how we could fix it. It doesn't mean tear everything down, leave people with nothing. And that certainly happens to people in universities. Now they come in, barely formed, and they leave... Ill-formed. Yeah, they leave in barely formed and they leave... Ilformed. Yeah, they leave in tatters, you know, and that's... And it's also true that you go back to,

you refer to it, I've referred to it. There are so many people outside of the higher structures of society that no one is talking to. That's where Mr. Trump comes in. And more power to them, for that matter. He is talking and listening. I know that's another absolute heresy. He's not the cause of these things.

He's the result of failures of other and more sophisticated people. Well, and I think I have a friend who's working very closely with the Democratic Party in the United States and has been quite effective at doing so and trying to move the party closer to the middle and away from the radicals. We've discussed this a lot because I think one of the reasons that the people who hate the Democrats in the United States truly hate them, right, that there's just vitriol

is because they've proved themselves incapable of generating a candidate who can actually take on Trump. And I think there's a disappointment, even among the enemies of the Democrats, that's so profound there that it generates precisely that's vitriol. It's like the man is characterized by manifold flaws, and I'm not saying this in a partisan way. No, I know, I'm not saying this in a partisan way. No, I know, I'm not accepting. And the fact that the system works so poorly

that a credible, centrist candidate can't be found to offer himself at least as a viable alternative. I mean, my core friend, who I said has been following this and has been deeply involved in the debates, he's just tearing out his hair and watching the Democrats debates and watching it degenerate. Well, they should. Well, exactly. So it's so sad to see that. You have a new age spiritualist who's going to be president of the United States and you have

them dissolving the idea of nationhood. We will live in that in the border. Anyway, it's such a weeping butt. People in the street, the guy who called me about you, that's a class and it's a vast class. Yes. And it is, that's the great 50 percent that has been walked over and is term, and all of the identity politics and all of those things that get traffic and commerce in conversation in the media. These are irrelevant to them. Yeah. Apart from being insulting.

Yes. And after a while, the social pressure builds it, and this game that's going on over here, will have to close or something breaks. Yes. Yes. Well, I guess in Trump was an attempt to break it. Brexit was another attempt. Yeah, that's right.

Brexit was another attempt. And Australia was good to illustrate. I'll let you go with one more question only after all of that you have done and all the energy obviously that it required to do it. Have you come at this point to something fresh in your understanding about what counts and what does not count and how one conducts oneself about the universe? Has something new occurred to you or is it a refinement of what you went in with? I think the fundamental thing that I've learned is that you can speak in the deepest terms imaginable if you're careful to an extraordinarily wide range of people and that that and that

that's desperately needed and that hopefully it's salutary. It looks like it's salutary. And so that's hopeful, you know, the counterpoint to the stress of the last three years has been my observation of the positive consequences of having these sorts of deep, as deep as I can make the many ways, philosophical philosophical discussions and to watch thousands of people participate as if it's important. You know, when I talk to Sam Harris in Dublin about the relationship between facts and values and religion and science, which, you know, is about as academic a topic as you could hope for, we had 10,000 people come to the...

So that's... It's not. It's, it's, it's, so that's the university may not be functioning where it's supposed to be functioning, but that doesn't mean that it's not functioning, you know, and it's out there. Thought we'll find its place. Well, that's, that's what it looks like to me. And, and so that's been unbelievably positive, although very demanding. Yeah, very.

It's, well, I mean, in these interviews, and more frequently, I've tended to get emotional. And the reason for that is the health problems that are plaguing my family, at least in part, have... Yes, understand. So that makes me much more fragile than I should otherwise be, despite my exortations to people to bear their cross. My friend, I'm a cross for you to bear.

Listen, I thank you greatly for your courtesy, because you obviously didn't have to do this. And I really do admire what you're doing and I would say on behalf of the people who will never meet you that you are a very fine person. Thank you. Thank you very much for the support that you showed me over the last two years. I was much appreciate. I would do it 20 times. Well I appreciate that very much. It was a pleasure to meet you and to speak to you as a big news. If you found this conversation meaningful, you might think about picking up dad's books, maps of meaning, the architecture of belief, or his newer bestseller, 12 rules for life,

and antidote to chaos. Both of these works delve much deeper into the topics covered in the Jordan B. Peterson podcast. See JordanBeePeterson.com for audio, e-book, and text links, or pick up the books at your favorite bookseller. I really hope you enjoyed this podcast. If you did, please leave a rating and Apple podcasts, a comment, a review, or share this episode with a friend. Thanks for tuning in. Talk to you next week.

Follow me on my YouTube channel, Jordan B. Peterson. On Twitter, at Jordan B. Peterson, on Facebook, at Dr. Jordan B. Peterson, and at Instagram, at Jordan.b. Peterson. Details on this show, access to my blog, information about my tour dates and other events, and my list of recommended books can be found on my website, JordanB.com. My online writing programs designed to help people straighten out their pasts, understand themselves in the present, and develop a sophisticated vision and strategy for the future can be found at selfauthoring.com. That's selfauthoring.com.

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