Dr. Jordan B. Peterson On The Impact Of the Radical Left

[Music] [Applause] [Music] half a billion times people are just in what you have to say it seems that way somewhat of a shark well maybe it's because you aren't a politician you are a psychologist and you're understanding more about what's going on in the world than many of our lawmakers actually do and I know we bet 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 sent in your questions I've got some of them right here we're gonna get into those but let me start with let's just start with socialism peace do you think Americans truly understand the history of socialism and actually what it is as you've gone around under you've had when you speak to not just college campuses if 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 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 I mean how would they know they're never taught anything about it so why would they be concerned about it and you know what for for many of the people in the audience you know you're old enough so 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 and in a technical sense and it was very meaningful but that's a long time ago there's mean 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 in a proxy war and a cold war with the Soviet Union and and it's easy to understand why people are emotionally drawn to the ideals of socialism let's 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 so and it's important to understand that you have to give the devil his due unfortunately you 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 up here 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 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 then against themselves so 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 it has is currently suffering from from generalized oppression they've been relatively free of it themselves I also think that yeah fairness isn't 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 boos the star even though he or she is paid much better and attracts the lion's share of the attention Oh not into narcissistic manner people can celebrate success but they do have to believe that the game is fair and 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 too radical 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 of the West as a 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 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 a dollar ninety a day that was their cutoff for absolute poverty and so the cynics have said well you know that's pretty low barrier it's not such an achievement to have attained that I can tell you it's an achievement to obtain that if you were living on less than a dollar a ninety a day to begin with but if you look at if you double the amount to 380 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 I think a large part of that large part that is happening in Africa we're by the way here's another lovely piece of news the child mortality rate in Africa is now the same as it was Europe in 1952 which is I mean that's an absolute miracle or it's insane that that's not front-page news right it's that's that's within a lifetime and the fastest-growing economies in the world are also there and so but 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 aficionados of all this technology yeah 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 and also ecologically and realized that things were way better than I had any any sense of that that that these improvements had come at a tremendous rate and and but you see pardon so 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 and and and and who is who 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've much they're much less happy to lose five dollars than they are happy to gain five dollars 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 dead and right and I mean dead is that's not good and and there can be a lot of misery on the way to that end so were were 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 that's a hard bias to fight and then when you also take into account and I think this is something that's Sarat 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 and but one of the consequences is is that the mainstream media so to speak is increasingly desperate for attention right there exists in a shrinking market with shrinking margins all of the leading newspapers and magazines are feeling the pinch television is dead you because YouTube has everything the television has and then an incredible array of additional features and radio is being replaced by podcasts and so it's 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 and actually in most places have have plummeted in the last 50 years it's it's really quite remarkable the United States is now safer and 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 that 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 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 no one knows how to handle that and and that's a big problem let's got me 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 you where are they learning them and I know where they're learning it but how does this get seeping into them you obviously have spoken out not just 15 or so Toronto but colleges all over the world what is it you see today on the campus or among young people today that that is that's new or may 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 that even they are today so what are the similarities and differences that you're saying well I don't I don't see any real evidence that your society is more polarized generally speaking than it has been at many times in the past and I think the Nixon era is a good example I mean if you 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 what I do think is is has arisen again because it's made itself manifest many times in the last hundred and hundred years is the rise of this group identity associated quasi Marxist viewpoint with this addition little toxic mixture and paradoxical mixture of post-modernism the post modernists are famous for being skeptical of meta-narratives that might be a defining that was lyotard i believe who coined that although i might be wrong it was one of the French post modernists and that that means that they're skeptical about the idea that uniting large uniting narratives are valid and it's a 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 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 we our cognitive abilities are nested inside stories were fundamentally narrative creatures that's how our brains are organized and so to 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 enough 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 that outed 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 install so true of animals by the way is it emerges as a consequence of observing that you're making your way to a valued endpoint 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 consume Ettore 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 the 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 that's the problem with fundamental claims of meaninglessness - in life that it's this 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 Jen you genuinely you've lost all hope your life isn't meaningless it's just unbearably miserable and that's 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 unites us socially familial and socially it's an absolute catastrophe and well the question then is why is it being undertaken and that's a complex question that and I don't know if we can and discuss that that that has something to do with this on in unholy marriage of the postmodern nihilism with with this Marxist utopia notion which makes no sense at all because the post modernists are skeptical of meta-narratives yet Marxism is a grand meta-narrative but coherency it doesn't have to make sense well that's well that in fact the idea that it makes that things have to make sense is part of the oppressive patriarchy and so we can just dispense well I'm serious that people people people people teach that in a dead serious manner that the requirement for logical consistency is an arbitrary which is 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 know you don't know how deep this war goes in some sense I can give you an example you know there's a freeze debate about free speech on campus but what you don't understand it 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 individuals right 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 post martyr doctrine all of that all of that 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 higher notion it's a very classic Western notion and a very deep one of free and intelligible speech is even valid I mean these these this this intellectual war that's going on in the universities is way deeper than a political war it's it's it's and way more way more serious than a political war it manifests itself politically but but no it's politics is way up the scale from where this is actually taking place so when you when you're talking with students both in one-on-one or what you're there questions and I'm gonna 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 on 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 people unbelievable and well that's why it's 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 and the audiences in Australia we're starting to approach well we had audiences for fifty five hundred people in Australia so which is quite remarkable you know that that fifty five hundred people would come to listen to like a serious discussion about philosophical theological and and psychological issues and and to participate in that and and I don't pull any punches I'm not speaking down I would never speak down to an audience all right 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 when you listen to someone who's who's a motivational speaker let's say you know it fills you with a temporary optimism but you go home and and and the wiser part of you knows that mostly it's it's the painting over of raw would with with the 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 that and that and that that can be unbearable that enough to turn you against life itself to corrupt 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 and then it's worse than that actually because it's not only that we suffer and 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 a on our 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 which it is to to confront the problems that 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 you know 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 asked them you know how much time do you waste every day by your own bracketing and it's somewhere between five and eight hours it's a lot of time well I usually walk through my walk with student students through an economic analysis of that I said well you know why don't you value your time at 50 dollars 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 are they also act counter productively a lot of the time regardless we do make progress and and and 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 is better to live courageously than cowardly everyone knows that that's what you teach people that you love and and 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 tell people that you love and we know that you should pick up your damn responsibilities and move forward everyone knows that it's 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 3:00 in the morning when you've left let your life go off the rails and that you berate yourself for your uselessness and your cruelty and your failure to take off 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 is 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 is 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 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 do 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 or they say I've been trying to put some of your precepts into practice responsibility being a main one vision another honesty I was bringing up the pack and saying this is the fun part of doing all of this fun as a weak word that it's it's it's uh 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 there's plenty of dark places in the world and they decided well maybe they were gonna 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 leave out much better things or hearts like hi I 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 not what's the whole conversation it's like he decided he decided he was going to put his life together and you know and 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 is the tragic nature of the world the reality of suffering it's 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 and able creatures and we do not have any conception of our upper limits dr. P so let me ask you I mean we have about 10 minutes I'm gonna get a couple 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 body bag you know and it's it's it's such a perverse sort of hope because I would say for the last 45 years we've told psychologists have been have been certainly to blame for this at least in part your 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 you know and lots of them why if they're miserable and aimless it's like oh I'm miserable and aimless and sometimes I'm suicidal and I'm nya list ik and I don't have any direction in your life it's in my life it's like well you're okay the way you are here 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 so it's such an attack but it's so positive because there's faith there in the 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 well you know that if you're a parent and you love your 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 that's the 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 and to commit yourself like body and soul to the attainment of that ideal we're gonna get a question here from our members about right here on the front row Bob Grantham had a couple of good questions right here he asked much of your effort today it's trying to help people improve their lives we'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 there's a there's a 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 isn't 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 I am absolutely no fan whatsoever of the radical left I think the 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 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 so 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 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 gonna try to get into quick question this is where's Adam from Vassar College it's Adam oh there he is all right so this was Adams question he said given the liberal political order bends towards automation of individual ZG 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 [Laughter] people aren't doing that you know that that's falling by the wayside right and and so I meant it's because it's trouble you know 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 weak it's well it is God most of you are married it's like to be married for 40 years that's that's not a triumph of happiness it's a truck it's it's a triumph of character it's a triumph of negotiation right it's a triumph of will to do that and and and that should be celebrated but if so today 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 so there's gonna be problems and so but that shouldn't stop you it's like find someone you know you're gonna have if you're lucky you're gonna have the opportunity to sort of sift through about five people in your life that's about it then you're gonna have to stake yourself on one of those people and it's a well it's it's a it's a hell of a risk but but with any luck it'll make you a better person that that 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 yes that is yes yes well I learned one of the things I learned in in in 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 even in our deepest religious texts that there's some there's something about existential conflict and engaging in that that's actually part of the moral substructure of life that that that that simple belief let's say whatever that might mean in a deity isn't sufficient is that there's an active engagement with with with the infinite and then and it's and it's a battle in some sense and I think that's that's the proper way to conceptualize I think it's the proper way to conceptualize a relationship it's it's a battle it's about 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 and 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 you you you make it a part of the ideal that you're pursuing and then you you realize that that's 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 really usually means burning off a fair bit of of Deadwood 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 I've been thinking of our theme of standing up against socialism what have I not asked you about what have other interviewers not ask you about that would be beneficial for us all to know as we want to take well you you you asked a little bit about these biblical lectures you know one what was interesting was I rented a theater in Toronto I rented it 15 times and 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 the lectures worked 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 our most central religious symbols like the symbol of the Cross itself for example the bearing of the cross is a an embodiment or a symbolic representation of this idea is that you 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 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 you know god only knows what terrible things happen to you in your life it's like how are you gonna 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 balm 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 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 but 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 we hold ourselves responsible in that matter 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 is links us with divinity it's our capability to transform what is not yet into what is and 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 and then that didn't and that's a mystery why is it good and the answer is something like well if what 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 that's the great story of the West that's why we regard ourselves as sovereign individuals of value as 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 in at the level of the soul I would say people know these things to be true so ladies and gentlemen please help me thank Jordan Pederson [Applause]

Channel: The Heritage Foundation

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Keywords: Jordan Peterson, The Heritage Foundation, socialism, socialist, leftists, leftism, college campuses, leftist college, socialist agenda, liberal, peterson, Who is Jordan peterson, Heritage Foundation, psychologists, university of toronto, Self Authoring, intellectual, communism, post modern, psychology, philosopher, interview, moralism, liberal university, leftist, activism, politics, political philosophy, life coach, life advice, heritage event, capitalism

Id: dOmJx8mTnm8

Length: 45min 59sec (2759 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 04 2019