Extended Interview: Jordan Peterson Discusses How The World Shapes His Views | NBC Nightly News

your background it's pretty earthy but how did you connect that with your current political perspective what you said that it became disillusioned with socialism I became disillusioned with ideology with a theology in general yeah definitely and that's certainly not something that's changed you know I don't like ideologue I think I think that it's it's ignorant to begin with in the technical sense is that you apply it ideological solution to a problem when you actually don't understand the problem and you don't have a solution because most problems have to be dealt with at the level of detail the left has degenerated into identity politics obviously and that's no secret and then the right winger right winger types while they're playing the same game and they increasingly say that they say well look the game is identity politics okay fine you cut to the point very quickly doctor I love this know what my daughter bought that for me just to bother me I am pretty funny so we're just so absolutely ridiculous that thing so since we're on that what do we have to learn from the noble lobster well the reason I wrote chapter one rule one there was a couple of reasons but I would say the deepest reason is we have this idea promulgated primarily by the ignorant left I would say that you can you can you can place the responsible for responsibility for hierarchy and inequality at the feet of Western civilization and capitalism okay that's wrong it's not just a little bit wrong it's unbelievably wrong and it's actually wrong in a way that's counterproductive to the aims of the left because there are terrible things about hierarchy and inequality I mean the the problem with hierarchy is that it produces inequality and the problem with inequality is that people tend to stack up at zero right you get people who fall out of society they stack up at zero and they can't get away from the bottom and then they get angry and they get hostile and the whole society becomes destabilized plus there's all the suffering that goes along with that kind of unequal distribution of resources and the left the left points to that and says well this isn't good we should do something about it's like fair enough but then they take the next step and they say well it's a it's a it's a unique side effect of Western civilization and capitalism it's like no it's not that's not even close to right it's way worse than that it's way deeper than that so the reason I wrote about the lobsters in particular is to show that even among crustaceans from whom we diverged 350 million years ago there's hierarchy and inequality and that their nervous systems are adapted to that and so are ours and that were there even adapted using the same neuro chemical structures and emotional responses that's a third of a billion years old you don't blame something that's a third of a billion years old on capitalism that's just it's foolish we're way past that and so if the left is serious about inequality they have to rethink their they have to be more pessimistic than they are right so but they're not serious about inequality so there is no way to get rid of inequality well it's theirs there's no reliable way that we know of to get rid of inequality well there's no way of getting rid of inequality per se because and it's not even clear that you want to because you want I don't think you want everyone to be exactly the same across all dimensions I mean that's another problem with the whole equity idea as far as I'm concerned it's like yeah really you want equality of outcome okay across what parameters all of them you don't want people to differ in any way oh no well we'll just limit it to the economic okay well good luck without limiting it's the borders around what constitutes economics aren't obvious so the equity doctrines are absolutely deadly I think that you know we've met we've figured out fundamentally that the way you cordon off the Intolerable right is by noting who makes claims of racial superiority and saying that's a no-go zone that's where reasonable conservatives draw the line on the left I think what we need to do is the same thing with equity as soon as someone talks about equity is like no they've they've wandered off the cliff and there's no excuse for it whatsoever we know what happens when when when right-wing governments and operation of superiority doctrines right we know what happens we get an extraordinarily toxic form of tribalism and and blood so that seems like a very bad idea well when does that happen on the left well it's not so obvious because the ideas on the left have this appeal to universalism that makes them credible and attractive especially to people who are compassionate but there is a line well I'm suggesting that the line is crossed when we start talking about equality of outcome because it's technically not tenable but it's also there's also this this terrible resentment that's that's driving it like and and that resentment tends to manifest itself in a very negative political outcomes the lines in the New Testament that I've tripped over many times is Christ is being anointed with a very costly vial of perfume and and his disciples are taking the woman who does that to task for wasting money that could have been spent on the poor it's a very complicated story but Christ tells his disciples that the poor will be with us always and that's something that I've I've spent a lot of time trying to understand why that statement would be made that and to those who have everything more will be given and from those who have nothing everything will be taken which is a discussion which is a very very succinct observation about the continuing existence of inequality so there's there's evidence throughout the New Testament of observation of the inevitability of inequality that doesn't necessarily mean that it's a moral good appealing to a certain political viewpoint people claim that's your fans your fanbase seems to come from that side no I don't agree with that at all I think that first of all you know whether or not what I have our fans is debatable rock stars have fans I'm not a performance artist I don't have fans I have people who are listening carefully to what I'm saying and it's very complicated what I'm saying so they're not just fans second there's a very large number of them third there they stack up everywhere from the radical left the radical leftist don't like me to the right and they're they're people all along that spectrum and there's no way of identifying because they fall along that entire spectrum there's no real reason to pull out a particular subset of them and say well they're indicative of the lot now the radical leftist like to do that and they say well you're probably a right winger because right a radical right wing or let's say because radical right wingers also oppose us it's like well yeah everyone to the left of the route everyone to the right of the radical left is not a radical right winger it encompasses the entire spectrum are you a radical right when you're it's a silly question what's the evidence for that I'm not asking for I'm asking you it's ridiculous to defend yourself against an accusation that has no grounds so what is your political perspective I don't really have a political perspective I'm not trying to play a political game and I don't think that the problem that we're having right now is a political problem I think it's deeper than that which is what I said right from the beginning which is why I think that what I'm doing is resonating so let's consider my let's consider me a psychological diagnostician so the two they said that your fan base does come from what we would call the alt-right what do you think of them what do you think of them as obviously their ideology is very amorphous I think that anybody who plays identity politics is playing a bad game I don't care whether they're playing it on the left to the right and I've made that perfectly clear although perhaps I haven't concentrated on it as much as I might but like I said I don't see the right as a as a threat in the university campuses for example and that's a large part of the place that I've been fighting this battle mm-hmm so but I don't like identity politics I don't care who's playing it and so the alt-right tends towards identity politics and you know maybe they thought maybe there was a proportion of them who were hoping I was their boy when I came out against the radical left because if you come out against the radical left it's not obvious where you sit on the political spectrum right you can sit anywhere on the political spectrum but I'm a I'm for the sovereignty of the individual and that isn't what you're for if you're an identity you're for the sovereignty of the group so what do you say to those who say that you are an alright thinker I don't generally say a lot it's like that's an easy excuse if you happen to be a supporter of the radical left and that's where most of that's coming from well here's what it is the radical left thinks their policies are reasonable so then someone like me comes up and says hey you're not reasonable at all well then they have two choices either I'm reasonable and there's something wrong with their policies or I must be part of the reprehensible radical right it's like well that's an easy choice it's like well you're a fascist or you're a Nazi or you're a trans phobe or you're a bigot or you're anti-semite Semitic or your or you're an islamaphobe or you know there's a whole panoply of of terms that can be used to deny the validity of your opponents viewpoint well I'm no fan of the radical left but that doesn't make me a member of the radical right it's a wishful thinking on the part of the radical left there's no evidence for it whatsoever stand up with your back straight put your shoulders back don't tell lies this is a father talking to his son this is right well we heard a voice that's exactly that which is also why so many people who don't have fathers are reacting positively to me it's like in times of radical uncertainty what what was once common becomes profound and partly what I'm doing in that book and with the other the lectures that I'm doing is to look at those things that we all took for granted at one point to say look despite their commonplace nature there are profound reasons why these norms exist why these norms and traditions exist and we dispense with them at our peril in the book you're clearly referring to you're clearly speaking it seems to me to young men that seems to be the primary audience is that fair I wouldn't say so I mean one of the things that's happened because I've become very popular on YouTube is that a large number of my listeners let's say have been young men but it's hard to distinguish that from the baseline fact that about 75% of YouTube watchers are men chaos is something that you say is distinctly feminine whereas we're symbolizing it it's symbolized by the feminine yeah okay so you posit that so this almost seems like in certain ways an antidote to femininity is that not the case it's an it's an attempt I think that let me think here for a minute how to how to put that properly under under under other political conditions it could have been an antidote to order but I think that the fundamental threats that our society faces now are threats from the side of chaos from the size of side of destabilization rather than in our culture at least rather than from the side of tyranny you do mention though in the book you say partly what this means for the future is that if men are pushed too hard to feminize they will become more and more interested in harsh fascist political ideology that will definitely happen that's already happening and you're seeing that are you to tell me about Donald Trump do you see that as part of this do you see that all right peripheral II uh-huh well no I don't even see that there has been a move to the right particularly in the u.s. it's been 5050 Democrats and Republicans for like the last 20 years something about Islam on Twitter you said that is that you know Jew feminists not attack Islam because they're secretly desiring well there's a real question there it's like do you see the feminists criticizing Saudi Arabia yes well not very much yeah that's for sure so like what's going on there I feel like so they do I don't know how I don't feel okay well some of them do some of the time but they seem to - what would you say reserved most of their vitriol for the oppressive patriarchal structures of the West there aren't societies in the world where women have more status than the West should they be happy with what they have I don't know if people should or could ever be happy with what they have but they but a little bit of gratitude might be an order a little bit of understanding of the situation in a historical context might be an order okay so that's how it looks to me hey NBC News fans thanks for checking out our YouTube channel subscribe by clicking on that button down here and click on any of the videos over here to watch the latest interviews show highlights and digital exclusives thanks for watching

Channel: NBC News

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Keywords: Nightly News, nbc news, news channel, news station, newspaper, breaking news, us news, world news, politics, current events, top stories, pop culture, business, health, jordan peterson, jordan peterson interview, jordan peterson lecture, jordan peterson nbc interview, jordan peterson advice, jordan peterson anxiety, jordan peterson best, jordan peterson book, jordan peterson channel, jordan peterson debate, jordan peterson education, jordan peterson exercise

Id: lROo5nCNvgk

Length: 13min 41sec (821 seconds)

Published: Thu May 03 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

(((lobsters)))

[u/RedErin]

To hear a critisism of his lobster point. Here's my man PZ Myers.

He got a lot of hate from JP fans and he made a response vid about that too.

[u/DiscreteChi]

I thought all Peterson's observations came from a subconscious desire to be a Disney Princess.

The most obvious is his outright claim that Frozen is feminist propaganda.

Accepting socio-economic norms and falling in to lobster heirarchies is quite clearly the message of Under the Sea.