Greenlights (and Darkness) | Matthew McConaughey - Jordan B. Peterson Podcast S4 E1

[Music] so today i have the good fortune of speaking with mr matthew mcconaughey who's one of america's most recognizable actors and i guess according to his peers also one of america's best actors as he's won an academy award and multiple other rewa awards and we started to communicate about a year ago and he's also been on my daughter's podcast and matthew recently wrote a book green lights which we're going to talk about today i've read that and and uh i'm looking forward to discussing it there's all sorts of things i want to talk to matthew about and so hopefully we'll have a stimulating conversation that's my guess so let's start with well we can start with whatever you want to start with but let's start with the book i think tell me why you wrote it and and when you wrote it and what you want people to know about it yes so i've been keeping journals since i was 14 years old um and so i guess starting 15 years ago i always carry this treasure chest full of the journals i'd been keeping and they were filling up that treasure chest and i would take it with me to any place that we went for an extended amount of time put it over there to the right of my proverbial desk and go have it there because if you get the itch and you get some time i dare you to go on that treasure chest and see what's in there well i've threatened to open up that treasure chest and see what those journals held for the past 15 years didn't have the courage really to uh to open it up didn't didn't want to make the time to go in there because i was intimidated of looking back at 50 years or however many years of my life i'm not one for really liking to look back over my shoulder i'm somebody who likes to you know i'm still someone who rather enjoys making the sandwich more than eating it i like making my movies more than i even like watching them i like doing things moving on and uh and heading forward so well you must have had some idea too when you were making those journals at least in principle that you owed an obligation to yourself at some point to look back over them and i can see that that would be intimidating because you're creating a a task for yourself a task of reconsideration and contemplation i suppose well my my excuse was oh when i die camilo open them up and if there's something worth sharing she'll do it which wasn't used um in martyrdom you know if there's something worth it so i uh maybe it was coming across 50 unconsciously i didn't think about 50 as a number of the time to be retrospective but i had some time on my hands and i had read an article in the new york times that a young man had written and i liked the article oh this guy gets me in a way that it was first article i read where he had weaved all different times of my my career and life into a thread instead of sort of like saying he was this then and now he's this and this then and now he's this so he'd strung them all together and i liked his style of writing and i asked him to come on and be a ghostwriter for a book we met one time it was a good meeting we thought it was going to be a book a little hardback book that you could put on the back of the toilet that every college kid could take to school and could open it up any page maybe read a truthism tourism or a bumper sticker or something and have a little aspiration ahead about their day well the new york times pulled him off because evidently they weren't allowing the writers to work with celebrities and just as he got pulled off and i was in the in the room my office with camilla my wife i said i think i need to find a new ghost rep and i stopped at the same time she stopped and she said you know what this means i went yeah i do know what it means which is i need to go off and ride it myself so she said i packed up the uh all the journals she said uh don't come back until you got something and i headed off with uh 15 gallons of water i don't know how many pounds of red meat and and and my favorite my favorite libation and i went away to the desert uh the first 12 days were sort of no electricity me with my journals uh no no cell reception nothing like that i wanted to be forced with nothing but my past um and find some entertainment in that at least and i uh feared being embarrassed i feared being feeling ashamed and i feared seeing a arrogant little sob that i was in the past and i crossed all those things and looking back at my last 50 years um but what i noticed was that the things that a lot of things i thought i'd be embarrassed about i giggled at a lot of thought to be ashamed about i had already forgiven myself for or not forgave myself for and a lot of the times where i was an arrogant little sob what i realized is that if i wasn't the arrogant little sob at that time i may not have had the confidence to put myself in a situation to get absolutely humiliated and humbled so i sat down with uh the uh the journals i remember thinking going into thinking it was going to be more academic thinking that that's what it was that's what it was after day five i realized no there's actually more folk poetry in here and stories to tell than any academia so i backed off and said let's just see what the journals give reveal themselves to be and i ended up with eight stacks of all the journals i said what are some themes had a big stack of stories big stack of people big stack of places big stack of pre-scribes big stack of poems prayers and bumper stickers so i had these eight stacks i said okay now let's sift through those and see if we find a central theme and that's where green lights came from i found that i had engineered green lights in my life through responsibilities taken yesterday which bore me freedom today i found that i'd gotten just plumb i have no reason why good fortune landed in my lap uh there was no reason why but i said well let's make some rhyme out of this and do something with it i found that also a lot of my yellow and red lights those things that we don't really like that slow us down or make us stop all had lessons that they revealed to me which then enhanced made them green lights or at least gave them green light assets um and then i also found that um that the art has sort of been approaching me online all right so we've reestablished ourselves in a win-free zone so look one of the things you struck me as an intensely likable character as a consequence of what you revealed in your book i mean i i kept thinking um it would be a pleasure to spend time around this man and i certainly saw no sign of arrogance in it um i thought i saw a lot of thankfulness and conscious thankfulness and i think implicit thankfulness as well and um a lot of a lot of love for your family your parents and and your current family uh and gratitude for that as well and also one of the things that struck me too was your um integrity and decision making with regards to your career you you talked about taking a break after being somewhat typecast in romantic comedies i mean very successfully typecast and so there's nothing negative about that but feeling that you had taken that as far as it could be taken yes productively and creatively and and then took a risk of really being bounced out of the system i mean one of the things i think that people perhaps don't understand about a society or a situation as intensely competitive as hollywood is that it's virtually impossible to be successful there and the probability that you'll fail even if you are successful is extremely high because the competition is beyond belief there's no help wanted signs no definitely not and so if you decide to do something like think well i've been successful in romantic comedies but i don't want that anymore you're throwing away something that's virtually impossible to attain and then to imagine that you might recreate yourself in the different guys and be successful it's a it's a big risk you see this often when actors fail to make the transition from television to to the big screen and that that happens far more often than it doesn't happen even if they have a very successful tv career so all of that was extremely interesting um now okay so you were out in the desert writing your book how long did it take you to sort through the material i went off into solitude five different times for 10 to 12 days a piece the first trip out was to the desert for the first 12 days and that was basically to see what i had um i came back from that feeling like i had something that was that was personal that might be worthy of being on between you know two hardback covers um i remember writing early on going okay now you're gonna have a lot of people that are gonna buy this book even if it's the words are crap on the page because of who you are mcconaughey i said you're gonna have a lot of people who are not gonna purchase this book even if what you put on the page was awesome because you're math mechanics i remember saying to myself and one of the first things i wrote down i was like the words on the page need to be worthy of being put on the page if they were signed by anonymous but at the same time need to be words that only mathematically could have written and that was sort of my little bubble going because this is not about you've read it's not about a celebrity book um no in fact there's very little in it that's celebrity like i was actually struck by how infrequently you made reference to your to you to the milieu that that that you inhabited while you were well while you've been pursuing your career as an actor there's there's no celebrity gossip in it it's very it's it's it's family-centered and very intimate um i actually i actually wanted it left me wanting to know more about your career and so we can also talk about that today flesh that out but so that was quite remarkable for you know a celebrity memoir let's say it's a terrible way of phrasing it a memoir by someone who happens to be a celebrity yeah yeah yeah well it wasn't a celebrity memoir it was a it was a an autobiographical meditation i would say okay heard i like that so i went away i went away i came back the first 12 days i was like okay i think i got something and then i'd come back handle my honeydews at home get everything back make sure i didn't fall too much in the deficit of being a father and a husband back home and then as soon as i could head off again um i was fortunate to have a wife who was like get out of here each time you know when i came you could tell how you know the first the first 12 days were like a purge i mean i came back and and the whole family like saw me i mean i came back shedding tears i had just sort of gone back and looked at 50 years of my life and had them down and all of a sudden was crying they were tears of joy of this love story that i was seeing and to face certain things that i looked at in the past or forgot in the past or thought i forgot but noticed that actually i'd remembered um was aw it was a very earth shaking my floor was moved in a good way yeah well that's great that it was moved in a good way you know i mean that's a lovely thing to have happen to you when you're 50 and looking back yes and then four other trips uh so 52 total days i was in solitude and then the next year and a half was basically editing it and you know i didn't have as many of the stories in there early which i would say serve as sort of the narrative backbone throughout that string the whole piece together yeah enter intermittently in there i'll put a poem a prescribe a prayer or something that either call back i looked at them in like in movies like their flashback or a flash forward and can they coming out of a story tell the reader oh this is how i saw the situation that you just read or can it propel you into the next story because the story the stories are really more chronological um that take you from four years old to 50. um and i didn't have as many of the stories in there um and so the next year and a half was going okay i've got these stories my my editors i would tell them she was like oh geez you got to put that in there and that's when it became again i was i was hesitant about the word memoir i don't have a great relationship with the word memoir memoir it seems like good night everybody i'm heading off into the twilight of my career the sun setting have a look and i was like because i need these stories to be active because they are still active and so right telling them as long as they had a vitality that they felt active which they felt like they were and then i had that that uh that thing that is so obvious when you say it but it didn't feel obvious to me at the time which was the more personal i got the more i started to notice that it was probably more relatable the more into the eye that i went this objective the more i noticed that oh it's actually more relatable to more of the human condition and that was my hope um and uh yeah well you have a there's a there's a it's a it's a great it's a collection of great stories and part of the good fortune of your life is to have had those experiences that transform themselves into compelling stories without what would you say without undue editing the african story for example the dream story that's quite that was quite remarkable for me that was a highlight of the book i would say where you related the dream you had a recurring dream or at least one that recurred twice and um and on the basis of that dream voyage to south america and to africa is that i hope i've got that right the second time i had the dream which was the exact same dream 11 frames 11 seconds the second time i had it is when i chased down the first half of the dream which was south america i thought i'd finish it then five years after that i had the dream for the third time which made me say oh i gotta chase down the second half which was their african tribesmen on the banks of the river to the left and that's when i went to africa any idea why i mean you staked a lot on the pursuit of a dream and i mean maybe we could say that's the motif of your book that you staked a lot on the pursuit of a dream but it's much more concrete in that episode you had an actual dream a literal nighttime dream that recurred and as a consequence of that you you took a large risk or a series of risks merely going to africa was a risk i would say and not something that would be expected it's quite out of the ordinary to do that obviously well i've never had i've had dreams that are similar to each other but i've nev it's the only dream i've ever had that one was so specifically i mean it was exact when i say 11 frames i mean like film frames picture one two three for 11 seconds the exact same frames exact same editing sequence in my mind 11 seconds that ended in such a i don't know if ironic's the right way word ended it was the elements of a nightmare but it was the opposite of a nightmare it was a wet dream and so the fact that it was the exact same dream that i've had once in 92 again in 96 whoa i had that twice that's the first shake up well that was the exact same dream i had four years ago exactly first time that's ever happened oh that's maybe that's a celestial suggestion here somebody something is telling me what do you think you specifically learned in pursuit of that and have you had the dream again my guess would be no that you probably exhausted it but i might be wrong no i have not to this to this point is it seems that i fulfilled it the dream in the trip to africa which was the two elements of the dream one was the amazon river one were african trash those are the two geographic elements that i knew that were crystal clear in the dream um so that's why i went to south america that's why i went live i have not had it again um i mean one i one i'll say this i'm always looking for a good reason to go for a walkabout yeah another really good reason a concrete reason there and why were they wet dreams there was nothing overtly sexual about them there was i don't you know um so they were you know spiritual in that way is how i took them now in mali i can say and i've been back to mali i went back to mali as i write about in the book five years later after i fulfilled the dream not because i had the dream again just because molly i've never felt more at home in a place than molly now you're in certain places like i've been here before this is my big gravity here is right i've been here before whether it's another life i don't know but mali was where i felt business home this was the original home i've been here um and so that's what went back so that's my favorite place to go and i've been back and did the exact same trip i did when i chased down the second half of the dream and you shed you shed your identity to a great degree when you went to africa and so that may enable you to exist in a way that would be much unlike the manner in which you have to exist where people know where you are or who you are um what do you think that did for you like the dream you you took this dream quest let's say and and you paid a price for it the risk would be the price what was the consequence of allowing yourself to do that um that it was one that was on me that it was my doing i could own it at a time of becoming famous you go through at least i did and still do at times go through wait a minute what's mine what am i getting based off of my worth as the man i am as the person i am forget my thing and it becomes challenging you know what is it real what is it not how many of those i love you's or meant or how many of them would just follow him because i just had a big box office hit and wait a minute the person that have had dinner with their kids and spent christmases with who have shared i love using hugs then now i have two movies that didn't do well and that person won't return my call wait a minute what all matters what do i want to do what are we what are we doing here so if you have a rep if you have a reputation that has a life of its own it becomes very difficult to distinguish between yourself and that reputation and that's one of the pitfalls of fame and lots of times you see people sacrifice themselves to their reputation you see celebrities becoming impersonators of themselves yes and that's a it's a tragic fate i would say and and well that's when you go i've that's yeah who's wagging who i've never wanted pain to wag me i mean like no no i got i understand i got famous because of who to whatever extent because of who i am and what what did i do yeah well i could see in the book that you were snapping yourself out of your fame even while you were doing things like the motorhome adventures because you were living a life that certainly wouldn't it was certainly wasn't what i expected to read that you would voluntarily abandon what so many people value as like the pinnacle of of cultural achievement say at the popular level and shed all that and and set out like any any any person who who doesn't have that right well what i was like for instance in the south american trip and it happened in the molly trips and all the walk the walkabouts it was i needed to go to a place where nobody i had just become famous to i mean my world was like all of a sudden all the options were mine and two days before there were none of those options were there and now it was a world of yes and i'm going i only have 24 hours in a day and i would do any of this work and you're now telling me i can do it all yeah i mean you're asking me to be discerning right now and again i went away to go i need to go where someone doesn't know my name i need to go away where no one's seen my movies i want to go where there's no electricity i want to go someplace where those hugs and tears when i say goodbye 22 days later are based only off of the man they met 22 days ago well you you managed to abandon them too one of the problems with being famous is and i suspect this is particularly the case with the kind of fame that you have is that it must be very difficult to distinguish between people wanting something from you and people enjoying your company and liking you and it might even be difficult for them to distinguish between those things because fame is a very difficult thing to deal with even as an onlooker even as a family member you wrote about your mom's reaction for example she became a fan girl to some degree and that that would be definitely disconcerting yes it was yeah i had eight years there where my mom and i i i couldn't i needed a mother and what i on the other hand the phone was a fan of my fame somebody who wanted my fame more than i did great well it shows you the power of that too because your mother obviously cared for the person you were before you became famous but she was overwhelmed and it's not surprising i mean to some degree the entire hollywood apparatus exists to manufacture fame that's overwhelming that's its whole i can't say that's its whole purpose but that's what it uses to drive let's say to to drive people to the theater so to be victimized by that no no to to fall under the sway of that is unsurprising it's surprising that it could be resisted and and that was certainly you could certainly see that with your mother's response oh for sure and that has that i'm sorry i don't remember your mom is your mom still alive yes she is she's 88 and 88 years young and with us right now uh uh so and has that has that situation rectified itself did she adapt to we both adapted yeah um you know i i got through enough time where i felt stable enough in my career that i was like her loose lips aren't going to sink my [ __ ] and actually i like the reigns and as soon as i said you go mom here's the mic hit that red carpet line you can talk to anybody you tell no filter sell whatever stories you want 99 of time it's awesome and i'm like you know what let her enjoy it and i was able to enjoy it and then come to that you know the realization that you know i wasn't going to change her so because i couldn't change her it's kind of like the sabbatical i took from the rom-coms i wasn't going to change her so i just had to kind of block her out for a certain amount of time that ended up being eight years until i was stable enough to go go for it and uh yeah our relationship's great you know all through that time she didn't love me less she's loved me in a new different way as well as being her son what i was needing was just i needed her to double down on being a mom to me where instead of she didn't double down she didn't even cut it in half she kind of was really wanting to know about the fame part i remember telling her things like boy you keep wanting to come out here and see me but what if i was an accountant in chicago would you want to come see me as much and my two brothers were like you don't want to come see us as much you want to see little brother and we were like yeah we get it you know so we call her out and um yeah it was a strange eight years i never questioned her love for me though i knew we were gonna be fine i knew we weren't gonna like head to our death beds going on on a bad note i knew we were gonna come out the other side it's just a matter of when and we did yeah well it's it's nonetheless a good example of one of the unintended consequences of fame right is that the this this very profound alteration in the nature of your personal relationships so yes so um i want to switch topics a bit i've been watching you in um true detective which my son recommended and i'm really enjoying you i believe you said in the book that the script leapt off the page for you it did especially the words of the character rustin cole right right who you play marty heart roll that woody played yes you were offered that rule yes yeah and i read the thing and i remember telling them i said guys i understand why you're coming to me for marty hart i go but the guy who i cannot wait to turn the page to see what comes out of his mouth is this guy rusting coal and they were a bit surprised yeah well they're both complex characters so you could see that either of them might have been attractive but i was i i'm i was quite struck by your your characterization of of coal um it reminded me of heath ledger and that's why i wanted to talk to you about it you you play a dark character very well if you don't mind me saying so i mean thank you um it's believable i've known some dark people and your portrayal is believable very believable and so that makes me wonder what price you pay for that's kind of a cliche you know you play a dark role and it invades you but it isn't obvious to me how you can play a dark role without it invading you and then or at least you have to allow something dark in yourself to come out and respond to that and you're very different on the screen playing rust and cold than you are in a romantic comedy role clearly and it's it's somewhat surprising to see that transition which i guess is why other people might be surprised by that too which is why you actually had a bit of a hiatus when you stopped taking rom-com rules but i'm curious like what did it what were the consequences for you of playing that character in particular but dark characters in general the dark the dark characters the the baddie usually has so much more identity than the white knight than the hero in stories that i read in scripts and things um the dark characters and also they're they're always usually outsiders and i the consequences that i'm really gonna portray one of those well that part of myself i'm putting myself on an island and i love and i'm and that excites me i want it to be i want to feel like the underdog i want to feel like i don't have to pander to manners or graces i'm living by different rules and not even to prove a point but just saying a russian cole's position someone who just you know i didn't make big acting choices with russian co i just did what i could to understand the text so well that i could just say it and not have to solicit it or again rusted rusting coal was a guy who preferred his own company to anyone else's and and and that solitude that was a vacation for me also to as a person who was a believer to have to to to be in a in an inhabited character who is not a believer at all and here's why um [Music] i'll tell you i've always thought this was odd at the time that i chose and wanted to go and have it rust and cold was the time that my faith was strongest and if my faith would have been as strong i might have been a little more fearful of going so deep into this man's mind spirit and ethos and so you had some protection but very nihilistic the character call he reminds me there's a philosopher in south africa who's an anti-natalist um unfortunately his name escapes me for a moment i i had a debate with him a couple of years ago but his basic premise is that conscious suffering is so morally untenable as a phenomenon that all life should cease that if we were making the proper moral choices we'd stop reproducing but not only that that we'd we'd also do what we could well we can leave it at that that we'd stop reproducing because if you sum up a life it's it's bitter and and the bitterness overwhelms the sweet and so it's cruelty to perpetuate yes i i think that is is beautiful and in many ways true and i think it's also hilarious um what strikes you is as comical about that you you laughed about it and because that's where of course of course we're on the way to dying you talk about it all the time it's tough it's cruel it's hard we're out here this thing is okay i'm in so that's inevitable that's the strange thing you know and i i felt too i mean i can certainly understand the argument i i hear it and i and it adds up but if that's inevitable which i think we all say that's inevitable it's typed we're on the way to dying it's over what's that we don't we'll never know if this is the end or not so hell you know or or if there's anything after it and it is it's hardships and overcome okay since that's inevitable and we got to do this thing anyway if we're choosing to stay in life another day so what's a better way to go about it saying it's all for nothing or realizing right there when you go it's all for nothing no that's why [ __ ] it's all for everything yeah well there is it also seems to me that if your objection to life is its suffering adopting an attitude that will make that suffering worse is probably not a reasonable solution and that that's that's where that grounds out for me there's no construction in there what i mean there's nothing there's nothing affirmative or life giving about that's not making the best of the situation if the situation's doomed day so you know i'm not for hallmark cards and delusional optimism but i mean and in this way i would say optimism is survival it's like well okay if it's all for i think optimism is courage if it's not naive and one of the things i liked about your book too was that your optimism wasn't naive and you know because you had enough harsh experiences so that any naive optimism would have vanished right even your even your the way you grew up i mean it wasn't traumatic but it wasn't it wasn't uh it had its harshness about it sure yeah it was it was immediate it was physical the same hands that hugged the same hands that could harm yes and you all there was also very little sign of and maybe none no sign of bitterness about that and and no sign i didn't think of any excuses for it either like when you portrayed your father like you said he was a man who could hug and hit and both of them were meant and they weren't casual i i never got the impression from from your book that your father's actions were casual his physical altercations with you and and your brothers um it was a different it's a different ethos that's not an ethos that's well understood today i would say or one that's that's ever appreciated and i suppose that's because of its harshness but i didn't detect any sign of bitterness from you emanating towards that no and and i have i have none um while i choose to maybe give consequences to my children in different ways than my father and mother did um there was absolutely no casualness to why and when he did punish us none i talk about in there what you know the values that were instilled even by the antonyms of the words that we got in trouble for saying do not to to get their first butt whooping for saying i can't oh geez okay i mean you know can't brings the thought of can't brings pain oh don't think can't okay you have trouble there's a difference and to say the second open for saying i hate you to my brother i didn't know the hell i hate you man i heard it from older kids at school and i thought it might be cool to throw it out there i hate you well that was my own birthday party my mom stopped the whole party and said what'd you say you don't ever tell your brother anyone you hate them bent me over right there embarrass the heck out of me again the next one for lying so what do i learn out of those don't say i can't don't hate don't lie boy when i did those i felt pain so what are the antonyms of those um but instead of hate i understand you're having trouble but don't believe you can't and tell the truth don't lie those are three great values he was preparing me or you're going to need this in in life you know it was also the time when i called when i called him to go to tell i want to go to film school and said law school and he tells me yeah that was a striking story you know what happened i've realized now many years later i think what happened in that moment is he heard and the conversation lasted 25 seconds ah what do you got little buddy don't want to go to law school i want to go to film school you sure that's what you want to do yes sir well don't half-ass it boom sent me the flag but what he heard in that conversation was his son who we were brought up in a very structured family discipline you worked your way up a ladder you follow the rules he heard his son calling him to tell him he could tell i was asked calling for permission you could tell i wasn't calling kind of well you know i was thinking maybe no he heard my voice i want to go to film school instead of law school and he said you also weren't calling because of failure because you'd worked at law school right but he heard that i was not bluffing i was not really calling to ask his permission and in that moment i think he heard what all parents want to hear yes my child's going their own way they broke out the mold yeah well what you'd hope every parent would want to hear i hope so but you know what i mean you can't come i i had plenty of times before that that i asked him for things where i was bluffing and he could tell where dad can i will you please give me the skateboard elbow pads and knee pads i really want to be a skateboarder are you sure your son yes sir [ __ ] i did skateboarding for three weeks and then they gathered dust and got cobwebs damn it that was a fad you know i talked my dad into doing something and i didn't follow through on it but he heard this time no resolve and clarity in me and i think on the other line he was going that's my boy yeah well for him to make the to give you the green light that rapidly the situation must have been set up properly and for the green light that he gave you to be accepted by you is exactly that as encouragement yes the situation must have been set up properly okay so you talked about playing coal in in true detective and that you were protected from his dark excesses let's say by your faith why did that provide you with in what way did that provide you with protection it's a striking thing to say especially given his his attitude is is mephistopheleian there's a character in gertha's faust mephistopheles who's satan himself and his essential credo is that everything that lives should perish because of the the sin of its existence essentially and so that's coal in a nutshell right yeah and and and and that's it it is a it is it's a logically tenable argument but it's one that needs to be rejected holistically i i shouldn't use that word i hate that word but you don't reject that argument rationally because it's a rationally tenable argument you have to reject it with your whole being instead and say well despite this i'm going to live and i'm going to try to live in an appropriate manner yes but you said your faith protected you from coal well it was one of the things that that allowed me to fully go into coal and fully believe coal and get down and live it and and look at the world through that lens right i had already had year a few years running my life where i was quite agnostic it was my agnosticism was not about trying to prove the disbelief of god's existence my agnosticism was about me going you sure have been letting yourself off the hook mcconnell hey mr fatalisto i'll forgive you again because you're being a repeat offender and i'm kind of tired of it put your damn hands on the wheel man talking to myself um you're driving here and quit going to this i can pray and be forgiven but you're repeat offending cut it out i had gone through a few years earlier in my life of of agnosticism where i was not so much trying to prove a non-existence of god as i was trying to have more understand more self-reliance and self-determination on myself because i've been letting myself off the hook and and how how was that related to the agnosticism do you think because you you put those together in in the way that you're relating this story well i needed to have i needed to i knew i needed to feel like i was wholly responsible for myself and what happened to me that that i was uh um uh not gonna let myself slide there's an ideal calling to you then like when you experience yourself as ashamed by your own behaviors what that means is that there's an ideal inside you that's trying to manifest itself right because you wouldn't be ashamed if you weren't comparing yourself to something better and the question then becomes well what is that better thing that you're comparing yourself to and it's an ideal and then the question becomes well what is the ideal you know and that's the sort of fleshing out what that ideal is is that that's the function of religious thinking and so that's why i was interested in your comment about agnosticism you know um in in revelation in the book of revelation christ comes back as a judge even though he's a figure of mercy let's say he comes back as a judge and the reason for that this is from carl jung the reason for that is that any ideal is a judge and so if you posit the highest ideal then you put yourself in a position where you're judged and that's when your conscience tortures you yeah and so you can discover your ideal that way by having a dialogue with your conscience and say well i'm not living up to who i should be well who should that be like where where does that figure come from that's a great mystery that it's it's it's your higher it's the higher form of being that you're capable of manifesting that's calling to you and let me say this it was a version of when my father mortal father died i write about this about being less impressed and more involved i sobered up i mean it was time to become a man it was time to quit relying on the fact that i knew he had my back he was above government above law if i really got a pickle now he's visiting so this was i'm going to discard my spiritual father we're racing to the red light buddy that's all it is so what are you doing what's here there's one play and you go until you die and that's it so what are you going to do don't be giving yourself let yourself off the hook thinking well there may be life after this stop it so that's what i've been i've gone through that my feeling come out of that and was and i didn't feel this till later because i allowed myself to stay in the midst of being really scared of oh my gosh it was am i going to get struck by lightning here was that my god was going thank you yes wish more of us would put our hands on the wheel or we take we throw this faith card out there really lacks basically like oh inshallah says la vie i believe well you know okay that's it then ride around and run all the red lights get your damn hands on the wheel yes you are supposed to be self-determined so that got me and woke me up and sobered me up into that position now the going into the rust and coal i'll say this so i found that in my it's i caught like almost like a boomerang reverb wherever i am strongest in my own life i find a i like to go to the i actually can inhabit the opposite even better the deeper i go into whatever would be to create the opposition meaning when i played prosecuting attorneys i actually usually believe in the defense's position more and study their defense more their position more which then makes me again feel like an underdog over here to go well i really gotta know what my argument is because i actually kind of agree with them when i play defense attorneys i'll usually agree or push myself to a point of agreeing with the prosecution well at a time where my faith was the most fulfilled rust and coal was like ah here's another great here's another what i call a boomerang reverb here's another time to go way over to the opposite side because i'm so coming out here with so much steam and where i am and what i really believe and how i'm feeling in life you got newborn children and all the things that were opposition that i have in my life opposition to what russian rust and cult was that was i i don't know why that is um but i've all i look back and i have a consistency of of that of wherever i am in my life sometimes i'll lay in and go play a character that i'm calling but i'm also feeling like i'm drawing something well now that you're so secure here let's test it let's go all the way to the other side because over there be geared up because i feel so strong in the position say at that time with my faith now i have the strength to go inhabit somebody over there that is on the opposite side and and not have to keep my eyes open to make sure the door's open i can trust that the door can be shut and i'll still be there when i'm at it when i'm when i'm done with this i'm still there it's still happening you have to see it because i don't want to see it if i'm if i'm peeking over there going hey are we okay god are we okay with what i'm saying and doing it no not without half-assing it now i'm not really inhabiting the part i'm playing rust and cold going i believe everything he says i'm i actually thought rust and cold was hilarious which you probably would now understand by i've laughed at two comments that from from things that you said about the other people that spoke like rust and coal yeah well things can be things can be dark enough so that the immediate response to them can be laughter yeah so i i um that that may have that may help explain what you're asking but i don't know why that is i don't know why that is for me it's not a straightforward thing to to sort out um let me ask you about a little bit more about fame so you know now and then you see stories true or not about hollywood celebrities who are irritated with the consequences of their fame and it's very easy to be judgmental about that because they're obviously the benefits to that fame appear obvious monetary gain um access access to opportunity um the benefits i suppose of the ego benefits perhaps of being known rather than unknown and then especially in the hollywood community i would say it's more difficult to generate sympathy for celebrities who are hurt by their fame because the price it's so obvious that that's the price that has to be paid to be successful in something that's mass marketed like a movie where your face is associated with the product right you can't extract out the success you can't distinguish between the success and the fame but but i don't think it's possible to understand what fame does to your life until it's happened to you so i'm curious like and you protect yourself you hide i don't mean in a withdrawing sort of way but i mean you live in texas you don't live in l.a and you go on these sojourns where no one knows you so you you set up escape mechanisms let's say or yes so what tell me about fame and and about the impact that it's had on you so initially fame and fame happened to me extremely quickly it happened over one weekend when the film and time to kill came out um the friday afternoon before time kill opened that friday night um i'm walking down a promenade in santa monica to go get my tunas fish sandwich that i always like to get 400 people on the promenade 396 mind their own business four of them looking staring at me a couple girls thought i was cute somebody like my shoes 100 scripts out there that i want to do i'll do any of those 99 knows one yes now within 48 hours time to kill open up that weekend very very good good reviews et cetera et cetera that monday following monday 48 hours later i got down the same promenade everything inverted now 396 out of the 400 people were staring at me and four weren't and i knows check comply what have you now those 90 those 100 scripts that were 99 knows of one yes inverted 99 yes please do this whoa the roof has been taken off oh my god you're so good i love you oh my god i'm so sorry about miss hud number one who are you how did you know i had a dog how did you know her name was miss hud how did you know she had cancer whoa you just skipped four things nobody's a stranger anymore everyone seems to have an inherent biography of me i'm feeling trespassed on it is it okay does that i love you mean something boy they say that a lot out here i've only said that to four people in my life you shouldn't throw that word around here a lot maybe that's how it's supposed to be yeah jesus did uh oh yeah so trying to take that in um i learned a great lesson after year seven of fame and it's probably year seven for a reason how old were you when that when that happened 96 um 1888 eight years later 26 years old 26 so you're still pretty young but you weren't 17. so you had some maturity you had some maturity at that point thank you yeah i know more of what i know more of what i'm not than maybe more than what i do or what i am but i'm i'm i'm i'm aware enough of who i don't want to be and i'm aware enough that i don't want to that i need some discernation in this now optionless yeses that are coming at me my world i'm i'm aware that i'm not that i need to again be less impressed and more involved and go hey i'm now that i have the chance now that i've got the wheel and i can go wherever i want where am i gonna go um which was the first unbalancing sort of very scary proposition which is why i took off the first couple of times to the monastery and then to christ in the desert hear my damn self think um trying to decipher and disseminate what matters from what who am i in this what i actually want to do um what i not want to do what i want to make stands on look i remember for a while there i had such a my life was so many like things on top the frequency of events from top of me from peop just walking walking down the street to interviews to talking to somebody my life was being recorded the world was now a mirror and i remember telling my feeling almost numb i couldn't put a demarcation between the life the fame i just gotten and myself so i remember telling myself well since you're kind of numb just i took the old abraham lincoln thing i was like just be a gentleman and don't lie all right just stick to these two things and i gave some boring ass interviews but i was a gentleman and i didn't lie but i just said like don't even try and get colorful don't even try and have an opinion on anything just just right now ride through this and be a gentleman and don't lie and i gave the same interview 50 times in a row over for about a few months yeah well there is something to be said um when you're exposed to that degree to adopting a strategy of don't do anything stupid for a while yes it was so i was it was you know surviving on the way to what could possibly become thriving but it was holding my head above water and going just keep knocking them down you'll take some time off you'll get some time off to let your memory catch up with you later so to begin with it was a shock and you've you developed some strategies for dealing with it what about over the longer run now it's been you've been you've been well known for it's got to be 25 years say so 32 or 33 years old i wake up and it clicks for me one time [Music] that oh you got to get the joke in hollywood and the joke is it ain't personal it's business right and that's not a particular joke to hollywood maybe it's a particular joke in in in life a lot uh but that made me go ah okay don't take it so personally when that person i talked about earlier won't even call you won't even call your call you back because your last couple of movies have failed and you spent you know you were on the list to be their children's godfather five years ago don't take that personally or don't take it personally when that person now because you did get hit is calling you and wants to go out and hang out again don't even bring up that hey you wouldn't even answer back don't even don't even tell them you understand the score about how they wouldn't call you then but now they do now well that's a good that's a good technique to avoid resentment yes and resentment is so toxic it's so toxic well that's what the that's what getting the joke of the understanding that wasn't personal yeah yeah i've done that with people who are looking for work you know because it's difficult to find a new job um and you're going to get turned down a lot in all likelihood you're going to send your resumes out to 50 places and get one positive reply if you're you know you can expect that it might not be that bad but it could be it's not personal most of those jobs don't even exist it hasn't it doesn't it has something to do with you but not that much there's a huge situational factor there and you have to take that into account yes well it's similar to we lose a loved one for me i lose my father well after he dies after he moves on from this life i find out some facts where the message and the messenger were not sympatico you know what he was teaching me and what he was actually doing there was a gap between those things and i was like what inevitably right inevitably you actually want that from your father you want your father to teach you better than he is yay you know yay but the first feeling can be and i've seen people yeah a lot of resentment oh yeah betrayal yeah and there is it's true it is it is a betrayal but but what you want your father to put forward the worst version of himself and use that as what he teaches you see this goes back to that nihilistic view if it's off or nothing then come on let's make it all for everything i'm i'm i'm with you on that so my father moving on i it happened pretty quickly for me of going like oh i get it he's wanting me to be better than he is he's want me to do better i get it bravo so but i could tell maybe if that happened two years earlier i wouldn't have been in the emotional space i might have been because it was flabbergasting it's like meeting a hero and they turn out to be an [ __ ] and you're like well they're and they're very likely to turn out badly in comparison to your idealization of them 100 which and but but at the same time you go talk to your favorite musician you followed who you performed with your version of patriotism and fairness in the world and you go meet them they turn out to be an [ __ ] and you go like they don't even believe in what they wrote you're like what but you and well if flawed people were incapable of creativity we wouldn't have any creativity right you know and so i think what you have to do when you're dealing with creative people is realize that or people who are creative and accomplished even is realize that the fact that they've managed that despite all their flaws is the thing that's truly remarkable because they have as many flaws as the next person yep so so thank god there this is why you know when i see someone like louis ck for example hillary terribly i think well yeah he did some things that were unseemly certainly even by his own standards obviously um so what do we make of that well there's plenty of people who do unseemly things but not but very few of them are as masterful a comedian as louis c.k so do we want to lose him because he's flawed right seems it seems inappropriate because we'd lose everybody that way and then we just have loss that's not helpful yes yes i mean i think you're leaning into you know a lot of what we call a cancel culture today yeah is can that uh you know in the name of rehabilitation does it do we have to have a world in which we are able to grow and evolve if that's what we're trying to do now oh i mean you know i'm not for repeat offenders or or tyrants but if someone screws up and they have sincere they sincerely want retribution i think it's fair to give these people well it better be because otherwise we're all doomed right well absolutely like there's not a person among us who hasn't made repeated errors and and if if contrition and and repentance aren't sufficient then we're all damned no doubt about that so all right so so we were we were continuing our discussion on fame so you you you're 25 years into being famous and you seem to be doing handling your success right in in a manner that allows you to be pleased about the way your life has unfolded and so thank god for that and here you are you're still here after all these years and so you've handled your fame well how come how could you manage that okay how can a man is that well big big thing for me and that worked for me in my life like this just getting a click of a word or an understanding will completely change my perspective when i go ah that's it that's true i'm not quite banging my head against the proverbial wall oh now i understand that one big click for me seven years was it ain't personal it's business that helped a lot from but okay i understand the impermanence of this just roll dance dance with this guy dance with it next one that was just sort of a behavioral perspective even though it sounds like a cool one-liner was when people would ask or i would of myself run into an inconvenience of fame a paparazzi or whatever someone looking over the wall might be able to go outside i was like i'm not going to cry about it because that check is already cached right that's right i can't go back if it's inevitable i'm gonna figure out a good way to get it through this i then started to say okay well when you're watched in life matthew and a camera's on you notice how you speed up and you get a little nervous well why don't you look at this like a good of the master acting class see if you can go out into the world with eyes on you uninvited eyes cameras recording and actually behave and do just the behavior that you went out to do yeah you know okay we're in new york city makeup artist doing my face my son's three years old he's talking to his favorite things fire trucks she goes with my husband fired captain he's actually blocks away going free and bring the fire truck over downtown new york well that means a lot of paparazzi are going to come right but my three-year-old son doesn't know what paparazzi are and he gets to see his first fire truck live do i go down there and show my son's first fire truck or do i tell him no son i'm not gonna see the fire truck because you'll understand it later there are people with cameras i'm like f that man my son wanted to see his first fire truck is much more important and came before any right that anyone's got that inconvenience that comes with my fame we're going to see the damn fire truck well we go see the fire truck he sees the fire truck cameras all around he didn't understand what it was i'm sitting there going like this was about let my son see the fire truck i'm trying to live my life and i and i check with myself i don't i'm not foolish with my fame i don't open the doors and invite the the the devils in or open my you know self up and say yeah look have a look come on and now i understand i can be fully taken advantage of and there are plenty of people who would love to take advantage of that but i often tell myself again who's wagging who what are your rights mcconaughey as a human as a citizen as the man you are don't let those be taken away from you because of something you got along the way which was fame and inconveniences that come with that so while i don't advertise my wife and i say this we do not advertise ourselves but if we want to go for a walk in the park or go see that proverbial fire truck and show our child that we're going to go let's do it and we're doing it if you want to record us i call them the discovery channel record it you know what good use of film good use recording so there is advantages to having eyes on youtube because it does force you to behave you can leave your keys in your car in a lot of places because if you come come rob your car they're going to document the one kind of robber it's a bit of a security blanket on that too um so you see where i've spun a few things here and perspective not denying inconvenience but saying hey if this this check is cash here's how i'm going to try and get constructive and do it and so fame now um it gets me in certain doors i've had to watch this um things that i'll say a famous person can come out in bold print not just on the printed page but two people so i've i've had i've told you too strongly and actually hurt people with my words where maybe i didn't have the emoji to put on the end of the the what i wrote with the wink and they heard it like i was throwing a dagger at him but i was going no no i didn't i was just tickling you i didn't mean to hurt you you know and what tickled me may bruise somebody else and my words come out with that weight sometimes so i have to watch that definitely i remember when i was a teenager i got put down by someone who was reasonably well known in public and it was a misunderstanding but it burned itself into my memory and i thought if i'm ever in a situation where i'm well known i'm going to remember this so that i don't and like had it been a normal had he been an everyday person let's say what he said wouldn't have had nearly the impact on me that it did so and that is a strange thing to have to realize and to weigh your words that way um i'm cognizant of your time i know that you have another obligation coming up and so i thought it might be useful to move towards closing this i i people are going to wonder how it was that we came to have a conversation yes and so maybe you could shed some light on that and it's because i'm curious i'm curious about it as well i got turned on to you from a friend of mine about four years ago i think three years ago and i started listening to a lot what you were saying and many of the things you you said i had been thinking about but i heard you putting them into words and context i was like what that's that's that's what i'm talking about that's what i'm trying to get to i found um uh and a lot of goes back to talk about self-determination which we've talked about a lot about your self-authoring and then you hear you hear you see a lot of those threads through my book maybe in a different way in a more folksy way but a lot of what you've said gave me confidence to go i i'm going to put my story on paper um so i thank you for that and that's why i thank you for the back of the in the back of the book you know i reached out um to you uh i guess a year and a half ago or so and you and i chatted and i've stayed in contact with you with your daughter um you know your definition one of the great simple things i said earlier sometimes just to re-unders understanding a word differently i've always had trouble in about a tough relationship an awkward relationship with with many words but my late my two that i've had the longest trouble with are vulnerability and humility yeah these are tough ones they're tough ones so humility i you know okay be humble well for for you decades be humble i lost confidence when i was humble i i i feigned false modesty which i felt which i knew at the time that's arrogant what are you doing right absolutely it's very difficult to be to have humility without being arrogant about it weirdly enough you said and correct me if i if i misquote you it's humility is known and you have more to learn you're either in love with what you know or you're in love with what you don't know and there's a lot more of what you don't know so pick your love carefully oh well that i went oh i purchased i'm in on that but for the first time when i see that i'm not shrinking i'm actually standing taller my heart's higher my chin's higher my shoulders are further back right right i have more courage going forward because oh 100 i i can rely on that until i'm gone and maybe even further than that yes i have more to learn i purchase but now i can go forward with confidence of watching what i do know what i have built i can add more courage i can forgive easier i can i can i can take responsibility with more courage um i can take care of the things i've built and to attend those gardens better with with that understanding of humility so for that i thank you i appreciate that yeah it's a humility i i i i want to throw a little funsy out there for you okay so while i was writing and i've i've become a fan which i'd love to continue talking with you more about this subject divine objective we in the third eye sort of the jumbotron of our life we hop out of ourselves and have a look or we project forward in our lives and say who am i in 10 years or what would my eulogy be you see i write a lot about these things in in the book but while i was writing i hopped out i gave myself the pleasure one night after a a few sips and it was late at night and mind you the most trouble i was i'm happy to say this the hardest thing about going to write this book for me was making myself go to bed i was putting 17 hours a day 17 hour days and i was like you've got to get some sleep but anyway one of these nights when i was in the fever pitch on fire writing i wrote down some i hopped outside of myself and said i'm going to write reviews from people that i think this is what they would say about this book after reading and this is one of them that's a great way to become aware of your audience or of the audience you want to have well you have to speak to an audience when you're writing obviously well it's you know it's it's a very subjective experience but i think there's there is another as you said but the good thing about talking to oneself in the third person is it's a different view of awareness it's an objective awareness back at like oh am i actually doing what i intended to do is what i intended actually being recorded is what being recorded actually what's being received there could be a lot of gaps in between those things and i'm trying with those gaps right so um i hopped outside of myself and wrote a uh um a wrote a uh um which what i thought you would say about green lights and max mcconaughey the author it's entrance level understanding to master class psychology delivered in a folk song i mean the guy's got the gift of gab man what can i say jordan peterson that's quite remarkable because that is very close to what i thought you know i so i think you nailed it um you did it it's very difficult to put forward a message without being propagandistic and the best way to do that is to tell stories and your book is full of stories and and the stories seem to me to add up to a life well lived and that's a good model and so it's a model but it's also not put forth as a model so it doesn't suffer from the flaws of the flaws that might come along without putting forth you know it's and i guess that's because you stayed contemplative i mean one of the things i've tried to do in my lectures is to remember that i'm lecturing to me as well you know i'm part of the audience if i'm talking about how we might behave i mean we i don't yet think that i'm outside of the problems that i'm discussing those two are not a contradiction more of us can understand that we're talking to ourselves as well yes well it takes the sting out of things and it keeps you on the ground so well i think that's quite funny that you wrote that review and it's also quite funny that it is in line with with what i thought i read the book i should show the book again since this is a good time to do that and and you know that's the cover of with my picture on it but underneath that is is the really cool thing that sort of is the is this symbol that's the metaphor that i'm playing with which is all the red and yellow lights that we have in our life the hardships the crisis is in the rear view mirror of life at least via lessons learned we will reveal green light assets that we needed um it's not denying the crisis you know of even the death of a loved one but it is saying oh there were lessons even in that and i would offer i wondered you know jordan if some of these lessons we know we're going to learn them when we're in the crisis some we don't know till next month some are probably not going to know to our death bed and i would argue that some will never be realized until maybe our great great great grandkids realize them three generations from now and there's a green light in this year we're in right now big green lights in this big red light year of cobit and social unrest and and and political distrust and and and people having to redefine who they are and what politics is and what's fairness and what's equality and all the this in the extremes everyone there's a big there's big green lights that will be revealed out of this year don't know when but more than optimistic i think realistic that that's going to be true that's an excellent place to end i would say thank you very much it's it's been a pleasure talking to you and i deeply appreciated the acknowledgement and i'm very pleased that my work has contributed to what you've produced i also get a kick out of the fact that our books are chasing each other on the top 10 list on amazon so i think that's quite well it's a privilege and it's an impossible privilege and so i'm very pleased to see that and i wish you the best of luck i hope that we get a chance to talk again i enjoyed that very much i did too good good and hopefully the audience will respond in the same way i think so so thanks for taking the time me my pleasure jordan i very much appreciate i look forward to the next time um good to see you sir good to see you too ciao [Music] you

Channel: Jordan B Peterson

Views: 3,476,378

Rating: 4.897387 out of 5

Keywords: Jordan Peterson, Jordan B Peterson, Matthew McConaughey, Matthew McConahey, Matthew Miconahey, greenlights, greenlights book, 12 rules for life, 12 more rules for life, beyond order, upbringing, motivational podcast, fame, malevolent characters, life, philosophy, life philosophy, true detective

Id: y8wBjH8aXw4

Length: 73min 12sec (4392 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 10 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/Emanersoochasue122]

Look at all of the welcoming, inclusive leftists in this thread.

One academic who doesn't lean entirely to the left, and they lose their fragile little minds.

[u/wadeboogs]

Jordan Peterson: clean your room, wash your balls

Errol Childress: no lol

[u/shadowenx]

I would rather suck on a sweaty contractor’s toe than give Jordan Peterson a single view.

[u/FacelessOnes]

How did we all get so hateful and toxic? Come on guys.

I personally dislike, heavily dislike Jordan Peterson, but this interview is not bad and it was insightful to see the character breakdown of Rusty.

[u/SlowTalkinMorris]

Jordan Peterson is a joke.

[u/outlawsoul]

McConaughey appeared on Peterson's podcast? That's a shame.

🖕🏽 Peterson.

[u/Croissant420]

Jordan Peterson can go suck an egg

[u/docchakra]

Lmao fuck Jordan Peterson entirely.

[u/fillymandee]

Thanks, the hate this guy gets almost seems scripted.