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

Episode Date: November 25, 2021

This is a classic interview with Michael Knowles and Jordan Peterson when they discussed the madness in our culture and how to bring order to this chaotic moment. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Dr. Peterson, thank you for being here. Thanks very much for the egotation. So let's get into trouble with the frivolous thought police right off of the bat. The book is subtitled, An Antidote to Chaos. You describe order as masculine, the wise king at best, the tyrant at worst, and you describe chaos as feminine. These days, we're told that gender is socially constructed, a figment of our imagination. How deeply entrenched is sex? how far back do our categories of masculine and feminine go?

Well, they go back hundreds and hundreds of millions of years. And they do seem to form part of our fundamental cognitive architecture. We tend to see the world in social cognitive categories. We tend to see the world as if it's an animated place. And the idea that sex is a large part of being animated is an extraordinarily deep. biological perceptual category. So it can't be dispensed with in any straightforward manner. It's part of the way that we view the world. Then the idea that the way that we express ourselves sexually say, let's call that gender is malleable is obviously true to a certain

degree because human beings are extraordinarily malleable creatures. You can tell that just by looking at fashion variation. But that doesn't mean that gender differences are all sociocultural constructs. In fact, the evidence that they're not, I would say, is crystal clear. The political types are about 30 years behind the social science, maybe 50 years behind it. That's why they're desperately turning to legislative means to enforce their idiot view of humanity on the rest of the world. That is something I frequently notice about politics and culture, is the pop culture and the politics. They are always lagging several decades behind. So you'll see people espousing some relativistic or nealistic view of the world. And you say, like, listen, man, I know you think

you're sophisticated, but you're actually several decades behind. I want to talk about a dream that you write about in the book. You had a dream when writing maps of meaning, your first book, that you were hanging from a chandelier in a cathedral with tiny little people below. And you woke up in your bed and you still saw cathedral doors. Close your eyes again, you're back in the center of the cathedral. Was that vision a sign from God, or was it the fever dream of an academic who's been thinking too much? And is there a difference? Well, I'm not sure there's a difference. I mean, it took me a long time to understand what the dream meant, but I eventually did. I mean, I knew at that point, or I had figured out as part of the process of interpreting that dream, let's say,

that cathedrals were constructed in the shape of a cross and so to be hanging at the center of the cross, which is essentially where the dream put me, was, well, obviously, you know, that's something that can be read in terms of its fundamental religious significance, but that isn't that isn't the most appropriate level of analysis, I wouldn't say. The reason that cathedrals are constructed in the shape of a cross is because the cross is an X that marks the spot, so to speak. It's the center place of being. And we're each at the center place of being. And that's a place of suffering. And so part of the Christian injunction is to voluntarily accept that and to thereby transcend it. And the dream was pointing to me was pointing out the inevitability of that, the fact that

I was being driven towards that conclusion. See, I would, I'd been spent, I'd been spending years, I would say by that point, meditating and thinking about the fact of the Cold War and about this terrible ideological catastrophe that we had placed ourselves in the midst of, partly ideological possession, driving our proclivity to put the world at risk. And as an alternative to that, kind of a nihilistic hopelessness that involved no central narratives whatsoever. I suppose that would be the postmodern conundrum. And I was trying to see if there was a pathway between those extremes that that was functional. And the dream was part of that process of realization. And the alternative to ideological possession and nihilistic hopelessness is something like the lifting up of individual responsibility as the proper mode of being. And that involves voluntary acceptance of suffering.

You're not going to act responsibly and forthrightly in the world if you're bitter and resentful because of your because of the fact that your life is tragic and that things often go wrong. So you have to transcend that. And the dream was part of the process by which I was starting to understand that. I do want to get back a little bit to that X marks the spot later because we see it in the Christian tradition. We see traditionally the cross is represented with a skull at the bottom of it because it's Adam's skull and Christ is the new atom.

I want to get back to that. Yeah, well, the idea there, that's, an unbelievably profound idea. The idea there is that the first man, so to speak, the man who's laden with original sin and the knowledge of death is Adam, of course, and that Christ, what Christ represents is the antidote to what brought Adam down. And so Adam was brought down by knowledge of death and knowledge of good and evil, knowledge of mortality, knowledge of nakedness, all of that was what produced the fall. So that's an emergence into self-consciousness

and the emergence of the tragedy of the self-conscious world. And then Christ is portrayed as an antidote to that. And the antidote is voluntarily acceptance of that burden and simultaneously transcendent, simultaneous transcendence of it as a consequence of the voluntary adoption. And that's put forth in the Christian corpus

as the imitation of Christ. So which is a theme, of course, that runs through Catholicism and Protestantism and Orthodox Christian. Christianity alike. I don't think it's something that's attended to enough in the Western Christian traditions, which tend to emphasize our universal salvation through the sacrifice of Christ, which is, well, it has its utility in that it takes some of the moral responsibility off human beings, but it has its price, too, because it does the same thing. It lessens the, it lessens the

importance of what each of us do to some degree. And the sobriety of it. Right. You know, there is, Christ tells us, take up your cross, but he also says, my yoke is easy and my burden is light. And it is true. Certain traditions fall a little bit too much to one side or to the other, and they don't hold that tension that you see in your dream, that it clearly pervades the book. Well, that idea, too, of the burden being light, that's a very interesting one, because it's a very great paradox.

But, you know, one of the things that's quite interesting about attempting. to only say things that you believe to be true and then also to acting in a manner commensurate with that is that it does make things lighter because you're much less likely to be burdened by your past. You're not guilty and afraid that the terrible things that you've done are going to come to light and you're not sleeping uneasily on a bed of nails that's your guilty conscience. So there's a lightness about it and a lightness about accepting things, even though it's a very dark act in some sense to accept things, there's a lightness that comes along with it. It's the lightness of being all in, I would say, something like that.

And the opposite of that, when one doesn't have that, the culture is so burdened by itself. It begins to hate itself. You write, quote, now also another problem has arisen, which was perhaps less common in our harsher past. It is easy to believe that people are arrogant and egotistical and always looking out for themselves. The cynicism that makes that opinion a universal truism is widespread and fashionable, but such an orientation to the world is not at all characteristic of many people. They have the opposite problem. They shoulder intolerable burdens of self-discussed, self-contempt, shame, and self-consciousness.

Why in 2018 do we so hate ourselves? Well, I think that that paragraph does lay out a lot of it, but we've added additional sources of guilt to that. are I think part of the modern, what would you call, manifestation of the idea that human beings have original sin and are fallen creatures. Like, we blame ourselves en masse for the depredations that the planet suffers at our hands, and let's say, without any commensurate sympathy for ourselves. I mean, there are a lot of us, you know, we're going to hit $9 billion by midway through this century, and then it looks like things will probably level out. But that's a lot of people. And we're putting a very heavy load on planetary resources, let's say,

and out-competing a lot of animals. And, well, you know the whole environmental catastrophe story. You bloody well hear that all the time. But, you know, mostly what we're trying to do is to survive and survive with a relative minimum of excess misery. And we're trying to do that the best way we can see fit. It's only been since the 1960s that we've started to recognize ourselves as a force of planetary significance. Right. You know, a hundred years ago, we believe the oceans were inexhaustible. That was a conclusion that was drawn by a commission that was set up by the British Parliament.

And so it's only been, not even in my lifetime. You know, I'm older than the idea that we are a planetary shaping force, but we carry terrible guilt about the price we have to pay for existence, you know, and you hear people say things like, well, the planet would be better off without us, which. is like an absolutely horrifying thing to say. But, but it's, but it, I can understand why people say it, even though I think it's a dreadful thing to say, but it's never said with any sympathy. Like we were fighting against mortality itself as, and all the suffering that goes along with that. It's not surprising that we don't do it perfectly. It's a virtually impossible load. And so if you

add that existential load as the member of a, of a species, say, with, with the kind of power we have to the knowledge that each person has of their own inadequacy and failings, then, you know, we carry a heavy existential burden with something that was very well developed by the existential psychologist of the 1950s. And people feel guilty and ashamed about being, just about being human. And then they don't treat themselves very well. And that's not helpful. It's not a, it's not a solution to the problem. It isn't even anti-American or anti-Western or this. It is anti-human fundamentally. And you quote the Columbine shooter in the book who wrote, nothing means anything anymore.

And one aspect I really enjoy about this book is the constant weaving together of different disciplines, of university, of philosophy and psychology. Everybody and her mother is on depression drugs these days. And yet I suspect a great deal of apparently psychological problems or really essentially philosophical problems. This pervasive cultural nihilism that robs people of media. of a sense of meaning. What portion of our social malaise do you think is philosophical? And how did we get here? Oh, I think it's deeper than that even. It might be theological. Like I think the culture war that we're in is essentially a theological war. I agree.

It's a war on the very idea of the transcendent individual. And some of that, some of that can be conceptualized psychologically. But, but that's not the deepest possible level of conceptualization. Our culture is predicated on the idea that each human being, this is the source of the idea of natural right, let's say, or of individual sovereignty. There's an idea that each person is touched by divinity, let's say, and is made in an image of God. That actually means something in the context of the story within which it's to be interpreted. So the word of God, which was active at the beginning of time in the Judeo-Christian account of creation, used truthful language to extract habitable order from chaos. And I think that is what human beings do.

I don't think we've ever formulated a more accurate representation of the nature of human consciousness because we confront potential. We call that the future. We confront an infinite landscape of potential and we choose how we're going to make it manifest itself in concrete reality. Like that is really what our consciousness seems to do. And that brings new being into being.

And our legal systems are predicated on the idea that that capacity should be given all due respect, right, as the generator and recreater of culture itself. And like, you can't just throw away that idea. It's the idea on which our society rests. And the postmodern neo-Marxist types are after that idea, hammer and tongs. They hate everything about it. And so that's why I think it's a theological. battle. That's why Derrida said, you know, he called Western culture fellow, fellow go-centric, fellow, P-H-A-L-O, and he meant male-dominated and logos-centered, which is, well, it's certainly

logos-centered. Is you going to criticize that? Well, yeah, you're going to criticize the idea of the, of the sovereign individual, and that's certainly what the postmodern types do. Didn't he, didn't Derrida say? Didn't he say there's nothing outside of the text or it's all, everything is relative, everything is a matter of interpretation? Yeah, well, he disputed whether or not he really said that. Of course he would. Well, right, and I think it's a pretty accurate summation of the postmodern ethos. They're skeptical of meta-narratives, of transcendent narratives.

Well, that's all well and good, except that, like, if you and I make an agreement so that we can live together peacefully and cooperate and compete over the long run, it's because we've established a narrative that transcends both our individual. identities. And if we're going to live together as a culture, that means that despite our individual and cultural differences, let's say, and let's say we can maintain as many of them as possible, we need to subordinate ourselves to a transcendent narrative that actually constitutes the framework for peace and cooperation and for civilized competition. There's no, let's dispense with the metanarrative. It's like that means let's dispense with that which unites us. Well, then all we have is fragments.

And then we're going to fight because human beings tend to fragment towards their tribes and then fight. Right. And that's what I see happening both on the left. The left is pushing it, I would say, with everything they've got. And the radical right is responding in kind. It's really not good. MyPillow wants to give back to our listeners. You can get great discounts on all MyPillow products if you go to mypillow.com right now and click on the radio listeners specials.

I love my pillow. It's a great conservative patriotic company. So we all kind of like them because of their politics. But I tell you, they could be run by the Taliban right now and I'd still probably buy their products. They're that good. Okay, they're that good. The pillows, the mattress topers, the towels, so much more. They've also got to buy one, get one free offer on the Giza sheets. These are top quality sheets. You're going to love them. They have a 60-day money-back guarantee with a 10-year warranty, but you're not going to need that warranty or the money-back guarantee because you're going to love them so much. So head on over there right now. Check out. the buy one get one free offer on the geese sheets use promo code daily wire at checkout or call

800 651 1148 you'll also get deep discounts on all my pillow products including the pillows the slippers the my pillow mattress topper my pillow towel sets and so much more 1 800 6 51 1148 tell them daily wire sent you 1 800 651 1148 these deals will not last forever so call now i love this central theme of the book of culture as a natural fact of the world because in our highly scientific age, many people seem to think, or take it as a given, that we just perceive the bare world, the valueless facts of the world without any meaning, and then we ascribe later meaning to those things. You write in the book, quote, there is a little more natural than culture that we perceive. Yeah, well, I mean, my question on this is, what does that say about how we should

live. Well, one of the things it says is that you can't exist outside of a framework of value. It's not possible. It's not technically possible. I outlined this in quite a bit of detail in chapter 10, which is called Rule 10, which is called Be precise in your speech, is that the way the world manifests itself to you is integrally tied to your value structure. And that's because, to put it very simply, is that your very vision is dependent on. on an aim. Like whenever you look at the world, you're aiming at something.

You're aiming at something with your eyes. You can't focus on something without aiming at it and you won't aim at it without valuing it. So your very perceptions are dependent on your value structure. Now that doesn't mean there isn't a world. It means that it does mean that experiences a complex interplay of your value structure and the unmanifest world.

It's something like that. And then that begs the question, which is, well, if you have to have a value structure, then what should it be? And then that brings us back to the ideas that we were talking about earlier. Like you should value being. You should take on the responsibility of being as your highest ethical obligation and try to improve it, try to reduce suffering,

try to make the most out of yourself in a way that's beneficial to you and your family and your community. You should aim high. And your perceptions will reconfigure themselves around those aims. And that will allow the world to manifest itself. to you in the most positive possible manner, or at least in the most meaningful possible manner. And in the absence of that, all you have is stupid suffering. That is the anxiety and depression that we talked about earlier. Without a point, without value, without an aim, all you're left with is the

misery and anxiety of life. That makes people bitter. I love even the note, to bring up the notion of the aim, because one can react to this stupid suffering in a number of ways. But this is so, clear. You write in it, you say, you cannot aim yourself at anything if you are completely undisciplined and untutored. You will not know what to target. You won't fly straight, even if you do get your aim right. And then you will conclude there is nothing to aim for and then you will be lost. And these days, the prevailing moral framework, as I see it, is if it feels good, do it. How is it the discipline and the straight and narrow offer the best chance for a good life? And how is it that we have forgotten that is the case?

Well, the reason that discipline is necessary is because you're a mass of competing short-term interests. And so the question is then, well, which short-term interest should win out? And the answer to that is, well, none of them. They need to be organized into a hierarchy that makes them functional across time and across individuals. So like a two-year-old is very likely to act out his or her proximal impulse. But of course, a two-year-old can't survive in the world. You have to bring your primary instincts, let's say, under the regulatory structure of a higher-order value system that allows them to manifest themselves without undue mutual sacrifice across large spans of time

in the presence of large numbers of other people. So that requires a very sophisticated ordering. It's like we already talked about the fact that a meta-narrative is necessary to unite subcultures, say, so that they can operate peacefully and harmoniously within the same space. The same thing applies within you, because you're like an, you're an internal coalition of warring single-minded tribes. And they have to all be brought under the organizational structure of long-term collective vision, let's say.

And in order to do that, you have to be disciplined. And any discipline, speaking, technically speaking, is an attempt to bring all those competing short-term impulses under a larger scale and more inclusive framework. And so you do that. And then, well, that's actually what gives you freedom. Being impulsive and being free aren't the same things. Because if you're impulsive, you're just the slave of your impulses. There's no freedom in that.

That's just, that's the same freedom. so to speak literally that a two-year-old has because a two-year-old isn't socialized yet. So it's not, it's a completely, that doesn't function in this, in the sophisticated world. It doesn't work. Right. Everyone knows it. We just like to pretend sometimes. I say, oh, that does feel good, you know.

Now, I have one last. Well, we like to pretend all the time because that's why we go out and drink, you know, because drinking enables you to blind yourself to the long-term consequences of your actions. And there's no doubt that that's very, very rewarding in the short term. But it's also why you wake up the next morning, hung over and ashamed. I must tell you, Dr. Peterson, we celebrated St. Patrick's Day and my birthday on this Saturday. And I can attest with real-world experience to your theoretical notions. I have one last question that I want to ask you.

You call for people to consider meaning as the higher good. You're right. consider then that the alleviation of unnecessary pain and suffering is a good. Later in the book, you call Satan and our image of hell a dreamlike fantasy. Later still, you say that hell is metaphysically true. In the final chapters, you write a very moving, what seems to be, series of prayers to, quote, the source of all revelatory thought in a discussion with God. My question, which is it?

I'm not asking about metaphor or symbol and symbolized or signifier and signified. Is God fact or fantasy? Maybe God's both. But if you had to pick one, I don't mean to be glib about it. Well, no, I don't think you can do that in a discussion like this because you're talking about matters where the distinction between those things actually starts to blur. No, because there's a reality, for example, there's a reality to fantasy that we don't really understand. Fantasy is how new things come into being. And fantasy has a structure.

It has this archetypal structure. And so, I mean, let's see if I can come up with a bitters. I can't come up with an answer to that that's so blunt. Because look, one of the things I mentioned while we were having this discussion was that our legal system is predicated on the idea that each individual is made in the image of God. And that there's actually a reason for that, that it's tied into the Judeo-Christian narrative. And the narrative suggests that the way that you bring habitable order, the habitable order that is good into being. So that's what happens in Genesis at the beginning of time is by using truthful speech and that there's something divine about that.

It's like as far as I'm concerned, that's a fantasy. But it's also factually true. It's a place where the metaphor and the literal unite. But is there a distinction to be made here between metaphor, metaphysical reality and some sort of fan. You know, in the sense that a unicorn would be a fantasy. I don't think a unicorn has metaphorical truth and metaphysical reality. I think there are some forms of fantasy that don't have their literal counterpart, let's say. Sure.

They don't have their real counterpart, but there are some places where fantasy and reality meet. And we don't understand those places very well. I don't understand them very well. I think part of the reason that I have a hard time answering questions like that is because they transcend the limits of my knowledge. I actually don't know how to answer the question. Like, I see, because it is the case as far as I can tell that the central presumption of our functional legal system is that each person has within them a spark of divinity

and that that spark of divinity manifests itself in the bringing into being of the present from the potential of the future. I think that's all true. Is that a fact? Like, is that the sort of truth that we would call a fact? I think so. Well, it isn't this. Well, possibly, but it's not, it's not the sort of fact that you discover that it doesn't, it doesn't sit easily in the category of facts that scientists have produced.

Right. It's more like an inference. So let's say you observe a bunch of people acting a particular way. And then you say, well, here's the rule that describes their action. Say, well, does that, does that rule represent? What does that rule represent? Does that represent a reality? Well, it represents a reality of sorts, but it isn't the same sort of reality that's represented by a pure scientific discovery. They're not in the same category. So I'm not exactly sure what I'm, look, if here again, here's the observation. If people treat one another as if they're touched by divinity, their personal lives improve, their familial lives improves, their social structures stabilize, they produce functional political systems. And, and productive economies. Does that make that proposition true? Well, possibly, but it doesn't make the proposition a fact in the same way that scientific investigation makes a scientific fact true.

Of course. I asked the question in this, I ask the question in this way because I think you write with heartbreaking beauty about Christianity, about the metaphysical logos that is made flesh and dwells among us. And watching you write about this in the book is hugely edifying. So we talk about theological issues a lot on the show. I highly recommend that everybody goes out and reads 12 rules for life. And also, I press the question that way because my bishop promised me a toaster if I could baptize you. But we might have to save that for another program. Dr. Peterson, thank you so much for being here. It has been a wonderful conversation. I will finally allow you to go on and move on with, I'm sure, you're very busy rest of your day.

Well, thank you very much for the interview and for the conversation.