Joe Rogan Experience #1070 - Jordan Peterson

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four three two one boom and we're live 12 rules for life so without reading this so what you're saying is there's only 12 things you need to do in life right that's it yeah well yeah this this interview that you just did with this woman Kathy Newman shit was that in the UK it was channel 4 UK I just went I felt bad but I was also laughing I went to her Twitter page to read like and in with each one of her tweets no matter what she says someone writes underneath it so what you're saying is and then some Radhika by the way the your fans were mocking her but politely non aggressively their idea I didn't read any rude things like there was no there was no insults or there was what maybe a few insults but there's no swears it was just playful mocking of the interview that she did with you because the interview was ridiculous it was a ridiculous interviewing I'd listen to it or watched it several times I was like this is so strange it's like her determination to turn into a conflict - it's one of the issues that I have with television shows yeah because they have a very limited amount of time and they're trying to make things as salacious as possible they won't have these sound bites these clickbait sound bites and she just went into it incredibly confrontational not trying to find your actual perspective but trying to force you to defend a non non realistic perspective yes well I was that I was the hypothetical villain of her imagination essentially well what happened it was interesting - the way it played itself out because I met her in the greenroom beforehand you know she was being made up and then they put a little bit of powder on me and we had a friendly kind of interchange and then we went and sat in front of the cameras and for a couple of minutes you know before before the show got rolling and we had a pretty pleasant back-and-forth and then as soon as the cameras went on she was a completely different person and I thought oh I see - Tracie what's going on yeah yeah boss oh so that kind of alerted me - well the fact that there was something rotten in the state of Denmark let's say yeah but you know this is also why YouTube is gonna kill TV because television by its nature all of these narrow broadcast technologies they rely on forcing the story right because it has to happen now it has to happen in like often in five minutes because they only broadcast five minutes of that in interview they did put the whole thing up on YouTube to their credit it it it hasn't ceased to amaze me yet I think that they thought that the interview went fine that's the scuttlebutt I've got from sort of behind the scenes because I've you know I know some people who know what's going on at channel 4 and their shell shocked by the response you know and and then of course there is the counter response the Guardian the next day published a paper published an article saying that you know the head of channel 4 had to call in police security because of threats you know well first of all you can call the police and about anything and they never did detail out exactly what the threats were you know but then about 20 newspapers picked that up and went for the well Kathy Newman is now being harassed by an army of online trolls for doing nothing but doing her job which well I and then there was a backlash against that in the press and so it's been a well what you say one took an audit of the the actual interchanges that yep between fans and her and there was way more negative ones coming your way yes that were seriously negative yeah that's right seriously negative violent harassing just rude they're way more yeah and no one picked up on that at all yes all the narrative was she's a victim yeah even though she was highly aggressive in this but she's a funny victim it's not like she's not successful yeah you know you think you should have to hand in your victim card I think like when you go to an Ivy League university it's like right down in there yeah because you don't get to be oppressor and oppressed at the same time that's just too much well one of the things you pointed out was when you were talking about competition for very lucrative jobs and you were saying look what you've done well you you must have had to work here and she proudly was saying how hard she had to work yeah to get there I'm like well yes of course no one's gonna hand this to you no this is why and this is why you were saying you are opposed to equality of outcome cause outcome I can't imagine anything we could possibly strive for in our society that would make it into hell faster than equality of outcome like the historical the historical evidence for the pathology of that root is so strong it's like you have to be historically ignorant beyond belief or malevolent or resentful beyond comprehension in order to think that that's a good idea I argue for that I agree with you but I think that even if you came into this with no knowledge of history but a complete understanding of human beings you would say well that doesn't make any sense and one of the best quotes that I've ever read about it is that if you have real true freedom you're never gonna have equality of outcome because with real true freedom you have the freedom to not condemn you age well look if you look at a guy like Jeff Bezos for instance that Amazon guy was worth more money than anybody ever right that guy works all day yeah I mean he's a maniac oh yes acquiring all these different companies and and everything he's doing is designed to succeed I mean he's just well that's what Gates just said in a recent interview and I know some guys that are you know they're in approximately the same universe as those two and they just work all the time that's all the time and and they don't just work they work so efficiently and so effectively and make use of every second in ways you can't even imagine unless you're in that sort of position so and you know doing that doesn't mean that you will succeed but not doing it certainly means that you will fail well use well not doing it certainly means you will never achieve that level of success and that's what we're talking about we're talking about equality of outcome you know I don't want that I don't want to be that guy I don't want to work like that I don't want to do what he's doing and I should have the freedom to not do that yeah as he should have the freedom to do that if we're gonna play this game called capitalism which we're all agreeing is probably at least in as far as the models that we have right now is the best one that we have if we're all going to play this game if someone decides to be the Michael Jordan of capitalists you can't stop them you can't say nonono you're playing this game too well you're playing this team too hard you're too obsessed with this game you're going to have that yeah you can stop them you can try to stop people from winning crookedly yeah which is what you should do and yes you know there's a couple of things that are really worth delving into with regards to that too because there's this sort of Marxist notion that all this inequality is generated as a consequence of capitalism and that's actually technically false because if you look at there's a there seems to be something like a law of nature that's described by this statistical model called the Pareto distribution and it basically suggests that in any creative domain there's going to be a small number of people will will do almost all of the output but it doesn't just apply to human beings it implies it applies to the heights of trees in the Amazon rainforest it applies to the size of cities and it applies to the mass of stars which is it's something like the more you have the more you get it's something Lincoln imagine how that would work with a star as it gets bigger and bigger and it's gravitational mass increases it's going to attract more and more matter and then as a city grows while more and more people are excited to move there because of all the opportunities and so that some cities start to grow tremendously and others and others don't but this this this phenomena where a small number of people end up controlling a tremendous proportion of the resource is not only limited to money and it doesn't only occur in capitalist societies it occurs everywhere it's like a natural law so you see the same thing with number of points scored by a you know a spectacular sports figure there's always a tiny proportion of people who are way they wait they had way ahead on the curve or people who make records or people who sell paintings or people who compose music or people who sell music on line it's all the same it's it's the 1% gets 80% and so well first we can't blame that on capitalism and second we should note that it actually does constitute a problem which is what the left wingers are always jumping up and down about right like too much inequality starts to destabilize your society and it isn't obvious how to shovel money from the top and maybe the one tenth of one percent who have almost all the money down to the people who have almost nothing in a way that's effective so that they don't get thrown out of the game completely and so that the whole society doesn't destabilize we don't exactly know how to do that it is a problem because inequality does exist and it does tend to magnify across time and then there's another problem too which we haven't figured out is imagine that in order to make everyone rich you have to tolerate a certain amount of inequality that seems obvious we don't know how many units of inequality you need to tolerate per unit of wealth generated but the answer is definitely not to zero it's definitely not zero so yeah so it goes back to this equality of outcome yeah yeah yeah and this this thing has perplexed me since I've met you and since you were involved in this original debate over gender pronouns and there was an article that was written recently I forget the exact title of it I think was something along the lines of why can't people hear what Jordan people are saying yeah you are misrepresented more than anyone I know in a weird way you are villainized in a weird way where I can't believe that these people are honestly looking at your opinions and coming up with these conclusions I I can't help but feel like what is happening is people are consciously deciding to ignore reality and paint you as this archetypal figure of oppressive white male patriarchy ignorance to fill in the blank with all the rest of the descriptives that you'd like to use but they've decided to paint you in this way like as as a target because they need a target to sort of reinforce this idea that transgender people are being victimized and women are being victimized yeah only well even deeper that the right narrative is the way that we should view the world is victim versus oppressor because that's the basic postmodern neo-marxist template it's the right way to view the world is that it's a power it's a power ground I thought what it's a it's a battleground of power interests competing constantly the ones that win or oppressors the ones that lose are oppressed that's the way you look at the world and I think that that's that's a bad way of looking at the world psychologically sociologically politically economically ideologically you name it now it ends in nothing but catastrophe I mean first of all because it puts your group identity as something that's paramount and I mean that's just not well that first that isn't what we do in the West let's say we put your individual identity paramount and then well that's just that's just for starters fundamentally and then I guess the other reason that people are on my case to some degree is because I have made a strong case which i think is fully documented by the scientific literature that there are intrinsic differences say between men and women and I think the evidence and that this is the thing that staggered me is that no serious scientists have debated that for like four decades it's that argument was done by the time I went to graduate school everyone knew that human beings were not a blank slate that biological forces not parameterised the way that we thought and and felt and acted and and and valued everyone knew that the fact that this has become somehow debatable again is just especially because it's being done by legislative Fiat they're forcing it to me as a scientist it's just it's just well and in the states too with title with title nine for example because title nine is sort of predicated on that viewpoint what is title man Oh title nine was originally just a piece of legislation that mandated that female sports teams were funded to the same degree that male sports teams were funded in the American universities but it's been expanded out so that if there's any differences in any areas whatsoever between the genders then the universities are being taken to court and like two hundred I mean last I looked about 200 of them were up and they can have their funding revoked if they violate the title nine provisions so it's become like a vicious weapon for social justice warrior equality of outcome types it's not just about sports no it's got way way beyond that yeah it's it's it's become an equality of outcome issue fundamentally there was an article that I sent you one of them was from I think like I I forgot I got it off of digg.com but it was Jordan Peterson is having his moment and we should ignore him I send this to you and there was one of the party hey the last part of that might be true one of the things in the article was citing this study that showed very little difference oh yeah amen and damn study yeah it's a pathetic study yeah I sent it to you because I was like this this is not right well the thing is like most things it's complicated yes you know so our men and women more similar or more different well it depends on how you define the terms first but they're more similar well why well they're the same species so we could start with that like but the question is what are the differences and how do they manifest themselves and are those manifestations important so here's an example if you took a random woman out of the population and a random man and you had to bet on who was more temperamental e aggressive if you bet on the man you'd be right 60 percent of the time but you'd be wrong forty percent of the time and that that's not a walloping difference right 60/40 it's not ninety ten like so there's quite there's a lot of overlap between men and women in terms of their levels of aggression and you think well they're more the same yeah except so then let's say no no let's play a slightly different game let's pick the one in a hundred most aggressive person from the random population well they're all men and that's why all the people in prison are men so even though on average most women most law yeah it's 90 90 90 to 95 percent right so and often if the women are in prison is because they got tangled up with a really bad guy you know so so one of the problems is is that difference is at the extreme are where the differences really start to manifest themselves and so you can have a small difference at the level of the average but out at the extremes it starts to make a massive difference so let's say to be a Google engineer which is hard right because you not only have to be an engineer but you have to be a very good engineer say well you have to be interested in things rather than people that's that's a huge difference in interest like men are more interested in things generally speaking and women are more interested in people generally speaking now there's still a lot of overlap between them but that's one of the biggest differences between men and women it's been demonstrated cross culturally it's also a very big difference in the Scandinavian countries well on average the difference isn't that great even though it's a relatively large difference but at the extremes it's the same thing almost all the people are hyper what would you call hyper focused on things they're almost all men and all the people who are hyper focused on people are almost all women and so how does that play out in the world well in the Scandinavian countries it plays out this way about eighty-five percent of nurses in Scandinavia are female and about 85 to 90 percent of Engineers are male that doesn't mean women can't be engineers it doesn't mean men can't be nurses it also doesn't have anything to do with intelligence but it does have to do with interest and the differences in interest are big now at the extremes in particular so when you read a review like that the one that was pointed out the first question is well what do you mean by big and little there's more overlap there's more overlap between men and women than there is difference on virtually every parameter okay fine are the remaining difference is significant in how they play out in the world and the answer to that is overwhelmingly significant because you you select for extremes so here's another example Ashkenazi Jews have an average IQ of 115 so in the typical population overall has an average IQ of 115 points is about the difference between the typical college student and the typical high school student okay so it's not a massive difference but if you go to the extreme say well let's go look at people who only have an IQ of 145 which is kind of where you hit the beginnings of genius level it's like the Jews are overwhelmingly over-represented so relatively small differences in the average can produce walloping differences at the extremes and people don't understand that it's not surprising because it actually requires a fairly sophisticated grasp of Statistics but when we're talking about things like differential outcome in the workplace then you have to take a sophisticated statistical approach to it or you don't know what the hell you're talking about and unfortunately many of the people who are talking about things like gender differences they have no idea what they're talking about they don't know the literature they don't know there is a literature they don't understand biology like the the social constructionist types the women's studies types the neo-marxist they don't give a damn about biology it's like they inhabit some disembodied universe so the review was poorly written at best and did not was showed it a very poor grasp of the relationship between group differences and economic and practical outcomes it's not just that it's deceptive and there's there's a need in some way on that side this side of the debate the anti Jordan Pederson side to label men and women as being virtually identical when there's so much evidence that that's not the case and what you're saying what you've you've never said one is superior one is inferior what you are is a guy who's pointing out the reality of the difference between the various types of human beings and you've been very open about the extremes about you look I'm I'm well aware of the extremes I deal with MMA fighters I know a lot of female MMA fighters are as aggressive and it's tough as any man you're ever gonna meet in your life and I know a lot of men from comedy that are meek little guys who they're not nearly as aggressive as some of these female fighters so there's I think one of the beautiful things about freedom is that people get an opportunity to express themselves in a way that genuinely them yeah and whether that is like our friend Alex Honnold who's a free climber who is like climbing up these fantastic mountains with no ropes or whether it's a female MMA fighter like Raquel Pennington who's just a tank and beating the shit out of people and that's what she loves to do all of these extremes are available to people because of freedom this is not a suppressive thing no one's no one's stopping people from choosing these paths I don't know if you saw the most recent slip-up by the CEO of YouTube i retweeted it today they were talking about why there's not as many women in tech and she basically said they both her and the CEO of Google said exactly what James d'amour was saying in his memo they completely fucked up they tried to do you find this look at this this is goddamn hilarious and James d'amour had this on his page they respond women a lack of tackles could you now go to Joe go to James d'amours tweet just go to the the what i retweeted and what he said so there was a study published a while ago all about jano jamie scroll back right was right there it's right there just good just make his tweet larger there you go look see it said he's saying did i read this right i don't know how to say her name is Susan Wojcicki I'm sorry I don't know how to say her name woj IC IC K I said that women fine geeky male industries as opposed to social industries not very interesting and sundar cites research on gender identities that's exactly the difference in interest that I just pointed out yes this is ready this is what changed more wrote in his memo that got him fired and this in my mind if I was the lawyer for James d'amour I'd be like oh well look what we have here this is this is checkmate yeah you dummies sorry the divorce story is really interesting you know because I think it's such a classic story of of an engineer getting tangled up in politics so d'amour went to this diversity seminar and he wasn't very happy about it because he knew the literature and so at the end of the seminar they asked for feedback well James d'amour is an engineer so when you tell an engineer that you want feedback the engineer thinks oh you aren't feedback and you and you want like facts and stuff right because that's what feedback would be like so d'amour went and wrote this like thorough memo and gave it to them he said well you know this is what I think here's some feedback and then it traveled around that he got no real response from the diversity people and then he posted it on one of these internal boards at Google where people can discuss things which people at Google do all the time so it was perfectly reasonable for him to post it because he didn't get a response from the diversity people he thought well let's see what other people think and then it was there for a long time until it was leaked into the outside world wasn't like tomorrow was trying to expose Google for for what it is he was just doing what an engineer type would do would someone asked him to provide feedback because he's not thinking politically he's not thinking oh they just want to hear what they already said he thought they actually wanted some facts anyways I think they picked on the wrong guy turns out to be pretty damn tough well he's very smart and a very kind guy when you sit down and talk to him he's not a sexist he's a he's a guy that's talking about facts in fact he wrote more than a page and a half I believe on the strategies for getting more women interested in attack he's not a sexist yeah this is just a guy that was talking about the differences in the choices that people make that it's based on just the the variations that you were just discussing well there's a good study done a while ago and unfortunately to remember the author but they were looking at junior high math prodigies and they're they're pretty equally distributed between boys and girls but by the time university came along the math prodigy boys they tend to go into the STEM fields but the girls wouldn't and it isn't because they lacked ability because they had stellar ability it's because they weren't interested and it turns out like the interesting turns out to be a big one so with personality alone if you measure men and women's personalities and then you add up all the differences in personalities you could tell with about 75 to 80% certainty by looking at a full personality readout whether a person's male or female so you'd be wrong 25% of the time something like that but if you add interest to that you can get it up to about 90% and so you know you say well are these differences large well individually they're not that big they make more difference at the extremes but if you add them up then you can almost completely differentiate men from women so by that token they're they're very large and the interesting actually turns out to matter a lot like it's probably the most important individual difference that has been discovered between men and women at the psychological level that has real decent explanatory power because you might say well men have a slight edge in spatial intelligence and that's why they're over-represented in STEM fields and women have a slight edge in verbal intelligence this is debatable but literature kind of indicates that and that's why they're overwhelmingly the majority fiction readers for example is that the reason that there's differential representation in the stem fields it's like no it doesn't seem to be it doesn't look like it's an intellectual issue which is also what the more pointed out by the way he never said once that it this was a cognitive issue but it's a matter of choice matter of interest and women tend to be more more people oriented now the thing is this is also being discovered in chimpanzees and other primates like if you offer baby or child chimpanzees juvenile chimpanzees the toys choice between thing like toys like cars or people like toys like dolls the males will go for the thing like toys and the females would go for the people like toys so you see that in primates and you think well is that surprising it's like well no it's not it's not that surprising really I mean women have to take care of infants tiny infants and you have to be really people oriented to do that because a tiny infant is an unbelievably demanding social relationship and it's a primary relationship for about two years you know and so women are tilted towards the kind of temperament that makes that possible it's like well is that such a shock really that's such a surprise so no it's not a surprise and what what's confusing to me is the narrative that anybody that points out these differences is somehow a sexist or discriminatory or yeah yeah yeah well whatever epithet they can well I think the other reason that the way the left the radical lefties have been going after Mia constantly is well there's one reason is is if you stand up against the radical radical left you're in a group that also has Nazis in it because the Nazis also stand up against the radical left so it's perfectly reasonable from a strategic perspective for the radical left is to say well you're against us how do we know you're not a Nazi it's like well statistically statistically I'm probably not you know so there's that but but you could say at least the question is open but but but then the next part of it comes is that it's motivated epithet slinging because if I'm reasonable and I'm standing up against the radical left and they admit that I'm reasonable then there has to be an admission that reasonable people could stand up against the radical left which kind of implies that the radical left isn't that reasonable and so while they're not gonna go there of course they're not that reasonable they're unreasonable beyond belief as we saw in this situation with Lindsay Shepard in Canada so at Wilfred Laurier yes let's talk about that real quick because that was a fascinating thing too and that also had to do with you so she was discussing you in class and you'd fill up everybody yeah she's in a communications in the communications department at Wilfred Laurier and they were talking about the the role of language in communication which is kind of what you would do in a communication class and she decided to show a five-minute clip from a program I had done for TV Ontario which is a public television station mainstream left-leaning liberal television station news program and a good one a good one and I had been on there with a number of other people including a professor Nicholas Matt from the University of Toronto who claimed essentially that there were no biological differences between men and women and that had been the scientific consensus for the last four decades so anyways she showed a clip from this and well she got hauled in front of two professors handed administrator Adria Jewell who was basically hired for that purpose and raked over the coals for daring to show this video and she had that wherewithal to tape it and then she made the tape public and in that tape they compared me it was it was really blackly comical you know they compared me to Hitler yeah and but then said well it's Hitler of Milo innopolis I thought you guys you're so damn a clueless you can't even get your insults right it's like you can't say that's like playing a video of Hitler or Milo you nobilis it's like first of all Hitler and Milo you know plus they're actually not in the same category right except that they're both human that's about the narrowness of the category and and then Milo's like a comic provocateur and you can hate him or love them or or be indifferent but to put them in the same category as Hitler just shows how muddle-headed you are and then to assimilate me to that category so carelessly like you don't mess about with epithets like that you know Hitler was one of the great super villains of the 20th century right I mean he was he's up there with Stalin and Mao in the in the panoply of satanic Lee possessed leaders you don't just toss that around especially not when you're torturing your teaching assistant for daring to show a video about language in a communication class and so that was a massive scandal in Canada it was the biggest scare I think it was the biggest scandal that ever hit a university in Canada and it got a lot of international attention and rightly so and she also turns out to be a tough cookie I mean the last I heard she was she had started a club at Wilfrid Laurier and I think it was last night or the night before maybe it's coming up they're gonna show the whole video from television Ontario at a club meeting and invite people to come and discuss it it's like they picked on the wrong girl there too so they certainly did she's obviously very smart you can hear that in her discussion with them and how flabbergasted she was by their take on things but this was essentially proof to a lot of people that were on the outside of how preposterous some of the dialogue was inside these universities and yeah well they couldn't have done me a bigger favor than having that scandal because when I made a videos about Bill see 16 15 months ago I said look here's what's going to happen because this legislation is written in an appalling manner and the surrounding policies are pathological said here's what's going to happen and and so I laid it out and then people came out and said no you're being paranoid it's like that's possible no the bill the legislation is going to have that effect no you're not a legal expert what the hell do you know etc etc you're crazy you're a bigot you're a transform you know they threw everything but the kitchen sink out me and like fair enough you know because there's not always a possibility that I was wrong but the problem was as I read the policies and I understood them and I knew where they were leading but I never imagined that one of the consequences of Bill c16 and that sister legislation was that a teaching assistant at a Canadian university would be pilloried and accused of breaking the law and then accused of all sorts of reprehensible political beliefs by two professors and an administrator hired for that purpose merely because she showed a video about two people talking about the law it's like that that paranoid as I am let's say that that exceeded the grasp or the reach of my imagination and then of course it was made public and people just couldn't believe it and then you think okay well what's the defense well they misinterpreted Bill c16 it's like no I don't think so they aren't representative of the university professor at administration well all of Pimlott and Ram Buchanan's colleagues rose to their defense the whole department the university when they apologized did it in a very mealy-mouthed way like there's no evidence that it was an anomalous occurrence so what had happened is they over extended the reach of Bill c16 in exactly the way that I said would happen it was inevitable and it wasn't an anomaly it was actually that's actually the way that the universities are and it is the way that they are it wasn't a one-off it was exactly diagnostic and it's appalling it's appalling the universities have so much to be ashamed of there there there well there was an article in The Boston Globe this week saying the same thing that all of this crazy postmodern identity politics equality of outcome nonsense is not only disrupted the university in a way that might be irreparable as far as I can tell but it's rapidly spreading outside into the normal say business world which was exactly what you see for example at Google well the tech industry in particular seems to be like more left-leaning than pretty much any industry there is and I guess it's because there's so many intelligent people there are so many people that have spent a tremendous amount of time and universities and they get indoctrinated into this mindset and you're seeing that in this the the CEO of YouTube's response to the James d'amour memo completely misrepresented it they're talking about harmful gender stereotypes that's not what he talked about at all but what's fascinating to me about all of this is it it just reeks of tribalism that these people on the Left have decided I mean and I'm mostly on the left which is really crazy I mean when it comes to most policies and most thoughts of equality and and the idea of just letting people be who they are I mean that's what the left used to stand for it used to stand for being open-minded it used to stand for being a reasonable person and it now it seems to be all about this very toxic tribal ideology and this is one of the reasons why so many of these attacks and you are so baffling to me that's because there's a willful ignorance or a deceptive narrative there there's a deceptive description of who you are and what you're saying of what you represent and it's this conveniently categorized not even convenient willfully a deceptively categorized into these category categories of homophobia transphobia sexism these are reprehensible categories that if they can just shove something that you're saying figure out a way to push you into this little narrow confined then how everyone has to disagree with you everyone has to insult you and everyone has to you like take that girl into their office and chastise you for even use not even speaking up for you right just which and she said she wasn't yes that's what was more fascinating about it than anything huh yeah they may give her hell for that it's like well you can't present something like that neutrally that's like presenting something Hitler said neutrally or maybe my lowly innopolis it's it's so strange but what they don't understand and this is what's really crazy it said the world is watching and that most people but maybe it's a 60/40 look we were talking about before when it comes to aggressive amendment women versus aggressive men I don't know what the number is it's almost 50 to 1 actually like I've been watching the comments on YouTube and so forth trying to track this is like I think that like I think that what the radical leftists are doing is overwhelmingly unrepresentative of the general population ever whelmingly but they're they're a very well organized and and verbal and prepared minority and they've occupied powerful positions in many many institutions HR and one of the things I really can't figure out right now and for anybody who's running a company that's listening they should think this through it's like to let these postmodern neo-marxists into your company through the guise of Human Resources is an absolute catastrophe you're gonna pay for that this the ideology that drives postmodern neo Marxism this identity politics what that the identity politics movement and its insistence on equality of outcome is a powerfully anti-capitalistic it's powerfully anti Western why you would let that into your company is so that you can look good socially let's say is beyond me it's a big mistake I agree with you but I don't think people are aware of it I think part of the problem is this battleground is largely ignored by the general population I don't think most people are aware of what's going on you are because you're obviously you're deeply embedded in the university system in Canada and you're you're obviously now branching out into YouTube and podcasts and all these different ways to get this information out but the average person that is a CEO of a company or they're they're concerned with their own company they're concerned with their own individual needs they're concerned with organizing things and keeping their bottom line and males are also concerned with looking fair and making sure that they're not prejudiced and all of that which is laudable and but I just don't think they see the wave come no they don't they don't see it coming they don't understand it and they're incautious about it but they're gonna pay for it well Google is a good example because now Google is in court on the feminist end for like being prejudiced against females and also on the conservative end for being prejudiced against conservatives it's like well so both camps are after them and I think well why is that it's like well that's what happens when you play identity politics this tribalism but this is really what I can't stand about identity politics and I've been warning about the consequences of on the right wing too because what I see happening is that as the left like let's say the left gets to define the linguistic territory which was what I was objecting to and Bill c16 when it came out I said look I'm not going to use these neologism Z&Z etc because as far as I'm concerned they have nothing people don't know what you're talking about yes well there's a different made-up gender pronouns to subscribe people in a non male or female that's right so there's like 70 different categories of non-binary gender or something like that generated now and there's lists of pronouns that hypothetically the people who are in those categories can choose to be addressed by and now that has the force of law and so and I don't care if they choose to be addressed by those pronouns whatever that's that's that's that's up to them and whoever else they can convince or ask or entreat or negotiate with fine as soon as it's law that's a whole different story okay so now I have to use a certain terminology so then I look at the derivation of the terminology I say oh that's terminology generated by the postmodern neo-marxists oh well I think those people are reprehensibly murderous so guess what I'm not going to say their words period because I know what they're like I know where that leads okay so but most people think that that's a gigantic step to go from saying you don't want to say Z user and these made up gender pronouns - these are murderous people huh the ideology is murderous the idea being Marxism yeah absolutely well Jesus how much proof do you need but most people don't understand Marxism like when you're saying this like when you were so adamant about and I had to start reading about it myself about how to start doing a lot of research about it myself and I think most people here Marxism and they think socialism yeah they think pooling all your money together you know making you know making things more even for ya like they are you in in Venezuela everybody has an equal chance to starve to death so you know how they you know how the Venezuelan government start solved the problem of kids starving to death in hospitals how they made it illegal for the doctors to report starvation as the cause of death right well that's Venezuela in a nutshell yeah that everyone's equal there they all have the same number of bones to know on yeah that's a horrible thing yeah it's a horrible thing and undeniably but there's no like the connection between gender pronouns and murder this it's a big lead yeah that's that's for sure that's sure well that's why you have to look at the underlying ideology you know and you think well what's what level at what is the level at which these things should be addressed well is it economic is it political or is it things of these this ideology and you understand where the roadmap leads you understand the X at the end of the road yeah right absolutely well and I think that's why I recommended to people continually to read Solzhenitsyn school ugh archipelago so actually there's a set of books that let lay this out perfectly you read Dostoyevsky's wrote a book called the possessed or the devil's and it's a it's a description of the initial breakdown of the of Orthodox Christian society and in Russia in the late 1800s and the rise of radical socialist ideas so it's sort of like the prodrome ax to the Russian Revolution it's a brilliant brilliant book brilliant book and it concentrates on the personalities that are involved and then if you read after that Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago where he details what he did does in that book is quite remarkable so he says look there were tens of millions of people killed from 1919 to 1959 in the Soviet Union and as a consequence of internal repression and it's so dreadful that words can't do it justice I mean it's absolutely dreadful what happened in the Soviet Union I mean just for starters six million Ukrainians died in the 1930s because of enforced starvation in fact in in in the 1930s here's here's how here's how terrible it was so all the food that the collective farmers newly collectivized farmers had produced which wasn't very much by the way was taken from them and brought to the cities so all the farmers starve to death now here's here's how draconian it got so let's say you were the mother of some children and all your grain had been shipped off to the cities and you thought well I'm not going to have my children starve to death I'm going to go out in the field and I'm gonna on my hands and knees and I'm gonna pick up the grains that are left over that the harvesters didn't count yet and I'm going to feed those to my kids that was punishable by death you were supposed to hand in those extra bits of grain so that they could be shipped to the city as well so that was just the beginning of the fun in the Soviet Union and what Solzhenitsyn did was say look this wasn't a consequence of the Marxist system gone wrong this was a consequence of the Marxist system it was inevitable consequence of the axioms of the Marxist system and then he lays that out and and it's I think he got it right and what is Nobel Prize but what is the connection how much tyranny you have to impose in order to produce something like equality of outcome the the and Thomas Sowell has talked about this a little bit too he said you need what the people who are agitating for equality of outcome don't understand is that you have to cede so much power to the authorities to the government in order to ensure equality of outcome that a tyranny is inevitable and that's right and the other probe another problem with equality of outcome this is also a big technical problem is like well what measure of outcome you know there's lots of outcomes like how happy are you how much pain are you in how healthy are you how much money do you have how much opportunity for movement forward do you have what's the width of your social connections like what's the quality of your friendships do you have exposure to art and literature like you know you can multiply the number of dimensions of evaluation between people innumerably right because there's there's all sorts of ways to classify people you're gonna get equality of outcome on every one of those measures it's like everyone going to have to be equally happy in their relationship and if not why not what why why stop with economically why stop with pay there's no place to stop so and that's it and that's a huge technical problem because there is no place to stop there will be no stopping it's like nobody can have anything else nobody can have anything that everyone else doesn't have at the same time that's the ultimate outcome of equality of outcome well you think about what that would mean it's terrible well instantly you think oh well there's nothing but a tyrannical system could impose that have you ever debated a Marxist supporter have you ever debated someone who is Pro equality of outcome no they don't debate me well the only the closest thing I think was to that was the debate I did at the University of Toronto about the c16 issues but they didn't actually have a debate they had a forum which is the postmodern equivalent of a debate it's supposed to be friendlier I suppose but no I haven't because people don't do it they don't ask me to do it but what is it about that idea or that ideology about Marxism that's so attractive to young students and to University Park that's a good question I think it goes back to the issue of inequality and and this is something that has to be dead seriously addressed like you might say well why is the left wing necessary let's let's put it that way and so and then a subset of that would be well why is the left wing attractive well the left wing is necessary because inequality does spiral out of control and so there has to be a political voice for the dispossessed and you you don't want people to stack up at zero you know where they can't play the game at all it's a bad idea not only do you not if people stack up at zero they're too poor to get ahead at all let's say they're too poor to open a bank account they're too poor to buy enough food like they're stuck at zero and they can't get out of it it's a really bad scene because first of all that's a lot of suffering and that's not so good second of all well at least in principle a lot of those people might be what might have something to offer the world or their children might and you want to open up avenues of opportunity to them so that they can succeed but so that everyone else can benefit from their success so and then the next thing is well if the inequality gets out of hand too much then the whole society starts to destabilize because if you get enough people stacked up at zero especially young men you get enough young men stacked up at zero they think Oh to hell with it we'll just flip the whole board over and it'll settle in a new configuration and maybe we won't be stuck at zero in the new configuration so at foments revolutionary thinking so there's lots of reasons to be concerned about inequality and so you need a voice on the left to say look we got to parameterize the the tendency towards inequality so that it doesn't destabilize the entire society so that it's everybody has an opportunity to advance like yes right you need that okay so that's the technical reason for the necessity of the left and then I think it's attractive because well because young people can be resentful partly because they're at the border of the heap so to speak they're not because they're young like look you want to be you want to be poor in eighteen you want to be rich in eighty what you gonna choose must be was gonna take poor T oh yeah especially if you've been rich at 80 and you understand you can get back there yeah well that's the thing you know is that most of the people who are have a million dollars or more in the United States are old well why is that well really do we need an explanation for that it's like you've had a lot more time to make money how would that be that's the explanation so that's one of the big drivers of inequality it's just simply age but it's not obvious that the old rich people have an advantage over the young starting out people so so anyways but any anyhow maybe you're resentful and irritated because you're young and you're still at the bottom of the heap and you know you've got other problems too it's more difficult for people of your race or ethnicity or gender at least you think it is and so you say well I want to make things fair and then that's also driven by some real compassion because nobody really likes that the consequences of radical inequality like nobody likes the fact that homeless people exist and have to go to the emergency ward you know to get treated and they don't have medical coverage and they have to live in tents on the street and so if you have some compassion then you think well we got to do more for the poor and dispossessed it's like okay that's that's an understandable sentiment but the problem is is that the people but the problem is is that it's that that that desire to help is contaminated by resentment and ideological certainty and then also by something that George Orwell pointed out so nicely in his book road to Wigan Pier it's like the typical middle-class socialist this was his diagnosis and he was a socialist by the way his diagnosis was the typical middle-class intellectual socialist doesn't like the poor in fact they don't have anything to do with the poor they're contemptuous of the poor but they hate the rich and I think it's even more devious than that because I think who they hate are the successful some of the successful are rich but really who they hate is the successful it's it's like Cain and Abel it's the retelling of Cain and Abel and so there's some positive motivations for being engaged on the left and there's a lot of negative motivations as well and the people who are really driven by the radical left ideology the real radicals they're almost all driven by by resentment and hatred as far as I'm concerned now the let's look at both extremes so back to the idea of the of the ideological and verbal territory I said with Bill c16 that I wouldn't speak the language of the radical leftists because I don't think that that language should define the game but let's say it does so here's the game the world is a battleground of groups and the they're battling for power that's it that's the game and some of them win and they oppress those who don't win so that's how we're gonna view the world okay now the left is say okay well here's the oppressed people the oppressors the patriarchy type patriarchal types they should be ashamed of themselves and give up some power the right-wingers the radical right wingers look at that and they say oh I see so the game is ethnic identity is it its identity politics okay we're white males we're not gonna lose that's the right wing version of identity politics it's like screw you if we're gonna divide into groups if we're gonna divide into tribes and I'm in my tribe I'm not gonna get all guilty and lose I'm gonna get all cruel and win and that's like then you think well there's people in the middle they're kind of looking back and forth which side of the identity politics spectrum I am I going to fall in do I want to go with do I want to go do I want to be driven primarily by compassion and I'm am I going to accept guilt for my historical privilege so that's one possibility and then I'm the oppressor I'm the member of the oppressor group or am I gonna say Oh to hell with that I'm just gonna play the wind well then I'm gonna go to the right it's like well my sense is how about we don't play either of those games and the reason we shouldn't play them is well the Soviets played the left-wing game and like killed who knows how many tens of millions of people you can't even count it accurately the estimates range from twenty to a hundred million those are pretty big error bars and that the Maoists maybe a hundred million certainly 60 million so okay that didn't work out so well then there's the Nazis like they played ethnic identity politics and racial superiority it's like why do we want to play that game see what I've been trying to do really what I've been trying to do for the last 30 years is say look there's heavy temptations to play those sorts of games but that's not the only game in town it's a much better game to play individual it's like get your act together stand up in the world make something of yourself stay away from the ideological oversimplifications set your house in order that's rule 6 in the in this book so I have a book rule in there says set your house in perfect order before you criticize the world and it's a very dark chapter about the motivations of the Columbine High School killers and this other guy named carl panzram who is a serial rapist and arsonist and murderer and these he wrote an autobiography and the Columbine kids also wrote about why they did what they did they're resentful to the core bitter bitter resentful terrible and well I'm suggesting that people stay away from that resentment resentfulness and bitterness even though life is hard and and there's malevolence in the world it's like yeah you can you can tell a story where everyone's a victim because we all die we all get sick you know and and and things happen to us that are bitter and terrible betrayal deceit lies like people hurt us on purpose you know so it's not just the tragedy of life its malevolence as well it's everyone's a victim you can tell that story the problem is if you tell that story and you start to act it out you make all of that worse that's the problem and it's so this is why partly I got attracted to Christian imagery at least in part because there's an idea in Christianity that you should pick up your goddamn cross and like walk off the hill and that's dramatically that's correct that's the right answer it's like you've got a heavy load of suffering to bear and a fair bit of it's going to be unjust it's what are you gonna do about it accept it voluntarily and try to transform as a consequence that's the right answer it's the right answer because the rest of it is tribalism and we're we're too technologically powerful to get all tribal again what's exciting to me is a this is the first time in my life that I've ever seen so much communication on these subjects and I think so much recognition about the consequences of tribal toxic tribalism this tribal thinking that everyone seems to be engaged in on the right and on the left I mean in America you need to go no further than going back and forth from CNN to Fox News to say something's wrong here these are these are supposed to be news outlets you have two completely different narratives and that has nothing to do with what we're talking about with gender politics and and radical left socialism and Marxism but what you're seeing in universities though is a radical departure from what I always considered universities great for what I always considered universities great for is separating from your parents challenging belief systems and being engaged in the the works of brilliant people who you can compare all of their findings and their discoveries and and sit down and debate them in class and when I was a kid when I was in high school I went to a very good high school Newton South High School in Newton Massachusetts and one of the things that they did is they put on a debate between a guy from the moral majority which was this right-wing Christian group that I don't even know if they're around anymore but there this was 19 I was 14 so 81 and Barney Frank who was that congressman is now one of the first openly gay guys in Congress and and you got to watch these two people in this auditorium debate their points and this moral majority guy had this you know right-wing Ronald Reagan sort of point of view and Barney Frank who's kind of crazy he's got busted in some male prostitute scandal and but the gay community that's not that big of a deal and just Barney Frank took him apart it was brilliant to watch but it was a real debate it was fascinating and he got to see a mediocre mine versus a great mind and he got to see this little thing and I was like wow this is one of the things that's always attracted me about the the idea that two people with differing viewpoints can get together in front of a neutral audience and these people can sort of decipher which which way these people are thinking and why they think yeah well and bad as that is and rife with conflict as that is the alternative is to separate as you pointed out into two camps that don't talk yes and the thing is the the consequence of not talking is that you fight that that's the end game because the only way you can stop from fighting with other people is by negotiating with them and you know one of the things that's also interesting and this is partly why Silicon Valley leans to the left is that a fair bit of your political preference is determined by your biological temperament it's a strongly influenced so if you're a creative type who's kind of disorderly then you're likely to be on the liberal left end of the distribution and if you're a non creative type who's orderly and and especially if your orderly then you tend to be on the right-wing end of things and so and well why is that why do those variations exist well they exist because some of the time your best strategy is to do what other people have done and shut the hell up and just do it run the algorithm write the pathways already laid clear it works stay in the damn rut and move forward okay so that's the conservative approach and when things are going right it's the right approach the problem is is that sometimes it's not the right approach because something is shifted and so something new has to emerge and so then there's a bunch of people who are adapted to the new and those are the entrepreneurial and creative types and of course they dominate Silicon Valley because it's a very entrepreneurial it's a very entrepreneurial what would you call it geography and so they're gonna lean to the left but they have to understand people have to understand that the left and the right need each other the Liberals and the Conservatives need each other liberals start companies conservatives run them and the problem with the Conservatives is well they can only run a company in one direction because they're conservative they don't think outside the box but so if the company is working in the product line is good and every stable like hire some conservatives because they'll maximize efficiency and then move down that track but if the track is no longer going in a good direction because something's change the environments change well then you gotta bring in the creative people and so we need each other and the only way that we can survive the fact that we're different and the fact that we need each other is by continually talking they have talked constantly it's like well how much of what we're doing should we preserve versus how much of what we're doing should we transform and the answer is we don't know because the environment keeps changing so what do we do about that we talk know I was on a CBC Canadian Broadcasting Corporation interview a couple of days ago and they took me to task I tweeted out this this invitation to the Keck boys to fill out this program that I developed called future r3 and it helps people make up my voice yeah well they're they're an online group they're there they I know it is they run kekaa Stan yeah it's this fictional polity it's a it's a satire of identity politics essentially we're gonna we're gonna be our ethnicity highly demonize that time I highly demonize sound right cut and with good reason for with some individual examples of racism Nazism there's lots of misbehave yeah yeah it's like graffiti it's like online graffiti something like that so and and the qeq boys are the ones who are often using the Pepe memes for example and you know the left regards Pepe as a hate symbol that be the frog Pepe the Frog feels good frog that's right that's right kind of reprehensible frog and so I tweeted out to them I said kak boys seek your fortune rescue yourself from the underworld use code Pepe for future r3 so it's free for one week so they had to figure out what it meant and then I showed this picture of Michigan J frog which is the Frog from old Warner Brothers cartoon dancing frog that wouldn't perform when any was watching him so CBC hauled that out and said well look aren't you aren't you like appealing to the radical right and I said well no what I'm doing I said look these people are attracted by the radical right although they're satirist sand juvenile satirist sand grafitti types and you know they're they're playing a weird Saharan cough I'm being naughty that's exactly what they're doing they're they're provoking and I my sense was well why don't you develop yourself as an individual and get the hell out of the ideological trap so here's my program which helps you write about your future and that'll help you decide who you are as an individual because that's the way out of the ideological trap it's like and that's the way obviously what's the way out of tribalism first the way out of tribalism is not to never join a tribe you actually have to join a tribe as you mature right because what happens is first of all you're an infant and then you have your parents to to make a relationship with but then when you move from your parents you have your tribe you have your group maybe it's the music you listen to it's the gang you hang around with whatever you have to be socialized into the tribe you have to because otherwise you stay dependent infant okay but now you're socialized into the tribe well is that where it ends it's like no the next thing to do is differentiate yourself from the tribe well still knowing how to behave within the tribe well that's the call to individualism and that's I think what the West got right is we figured that out it's like you're more than your you have to be a member of a group because otherwise you're not socialized you're not good for anyone you know I have to be able to play on a team man you have to have team loyalty okay but that isn't where you should stop you should take the next step and become a fully developed individual and see the problem with being just a group member is that the group it's the problem with conservatism the group is a fixed entity it has its rules and its regulations and if you remember that's all you are but the group can go badly wrong so the group needs individuals to keep the group alive and revivified so you have to become an individual so you can revivify the group that's the cult that's the call in the West to heroism essentially to the noble way of living is to develop yourself past your group identity so that you can reconfigure the game when that becomes necessary and I think that there's a very influential line of developmental psychology pioneered by Jean Piaget that laid that out as a developmental what would progression first your a child then you're a member of a group then you're an individual if I get to the individual level that's the solution it's a solution to tribalism but you have to accept responsibility to do that and this is what your future authoring program is basically all about I mean it's it's a wonderful program it's in a long with this book rules and guidelines for life I think that's one of the things that a lot of young people are lacking is a structure to how to go about establishing who they are in the world yeah well that's you know what's really cool and it's being really quite remarkable I would say is that what I've noticed when I've been speaking publicly say over the last year and a half because there's a hole in our culture where there should be a discussion about maturity truth and responsibility no one's talking yes out okay so now I'll come up and I'll start talking about that I'll say look like what should you do with your life well take care of yourself but take care of yourself in a way that also means that simultaneously you're taking care of your family and that and also means that simultaneously you're taking care of the broader community so that's kind of your goal so orient your work self towards that personal success but in a way that your success breeds success because if you're gonna establish a name why not establish like a really good date and that's a good one it's good for you it's good for everyone else yes okay that'll give your life some meaning now adopt make a plan generate a vision that's what the future authoring program helps people with make a develop a vision of what your life could be like if if it was worth living despite all its suffering it's like what would you need so that you would be happy to be alive you'd find your life meaningful so you don't get all bitter and resentful and cruel and hostile and ideologically addled and like murderous and genocidal it's like none of that you think real hard how would you have to configure your life so that despite its suffering and the malevolence that's part of it that you would regard it as worthwhile so that's up to you to develop a vision then put a plan into practice and so when I talk to people about this and most of my audiences are young men it's probably about 65 35 more and more women are showing up but that's about what it is right now the halls are dead silent you could hear a pin drop because nobody's said so clearly for like 50 years that all all the meaning that you will need to get you through the hard times of your life is going to be a consequence of adopting responsibilities not of rights and impulsive action impulsive freedom like fine rights yeah got it freedom no problem even freedom to do impulsive things fine but that isn't where you're gonna find the meaning that keeps you sustained through the storms of life that's gonna be you take care of yourself you take care of your intimate partner you take care of your damn family you don't run off you take care of your community you rescue the wisdom from the past you stand up straight and you be courageous despite the fact that life is tragic and tainted by malevolence it's like that's the that's ancient wisdom that's what that is when understanding that there's structure and discipline and that you know I am in a lot of ways both of those things you described earlier I'm in a lot of ways my mind is I'm creative and I'm always sort of half paying attention to things but I'm also disappear right and it's one of the reasons why I think I'm so relate to both sides of this issue yeah because I one of the reasons you're successful I could have easily been some hardcore right-wing asshole I'm a competition oriented person you know I've been since I was a child yeah I grew up competing in martial arts tournaments I mean that's and you have to be a hard person to do that you have to understand what discipline is but before that I was an artist I wanted to be a cartoon I wanted to do comic books that's what I wanted to do I wanted to be an illustrator if it wasn't for one bad teacher in high school that totally shied me away from art I probably would have went into that as a living mm-hmm when I look at both sides I see myself in both sides yeah yeah well yeah the other thing I've been telling young men is that and and this is something I think that you could relate to tremendously as I read this New Testament line well it decades ago and I could never understand it it's the line is the meek shall inherit the earth and I thought there's something wrong with that that line it just doesn't make sense to me meat just doesn't seem to me to be a moral virtue and so I did a series of biblical lectures this year like 15 of them that was also a weird little experience that we can talk about but I was looking through the these these sayings these Maxim's and that was one of them the meek shall inherit the earth but I've been using this site called Bible hub and it's very interesting it's very it's organized very interesting so you have a biblical line and then they have like three pages of commentary on each line and so because people have commented on every verse in the Bible like to the two-degree that's almost unimaginable so you can look and see all the interpretations and all the translations and get some sense of what the genuine meaning might be and the line the meek shall inherit the earth meek is not a good translation or the word is moved in the three with hundred years or so three hundred years or so since it was translated what it means is this those who have swords and know how to use them but keep them sheathed will inherit the world and that's another thing I've been tell ya no kidding that's a big difference it's so great and so like one of the things I tell young men and young women as well but the young men really need to hear this more I think is that you should be a monster you know because everyone says well you should be harmless virtuous you shouldn't do anyone any harm you should sheath your competitive instinct you shouldn't try to win you know you you don't want to be too aggressive you don't want to be too assertive you want to take a back seat and all of that it's like no wrong you should be a monster an absolute monster and then you should learn how to control it do you know the expression it's better to be a warrior in a garden than a gardener in a war right right exactly that's exactly it yeah and that's exactly right and so when I tell young men that they think well lots of them are competitive they're low and agreeableness you know because that's part of being competitive temperamentally so cuz there's something wrong with being competitive there's nothing wrong with it there's something wrong with cheating there's something wrong with being a tyrant there's something wrong with winning unfairly all of those things are bad but you don't want people to win what's the difference between trying to win and striving you want to eradicate striving what's the uncomfortable feeling that people associate with losing when they've personally experienced it they look at losing as their they've been oppressed or they've been hurt but what they don't understand is that is the motivation for growth and one of the most beautiful things that I think a young person can get involved in his martial arts because martial arts teach you that in a way that very few things do they teach you it and especially jiu-jitsu because jiu-jitsu is so complex and there's so many possibilities to it that it attracts a lot of really smart people if you think of jiu-jitsu you would think of like brutish individuals engaging in this hard martial art do you go to a real good jiu-jitsu school you see nerds mm-hmm you see a bunch of like really smart kids that really get obsessed with the possibilities of this physical language this physical language also teaches you the consequences of not working hard of not being prepared of not understanding positions of not doing due diligence and doing the work and it's it's an amazing amazing scaffolding for developing your life teaches you I lose yes you know and that's very more definition of a winner is someone who never let losing stop them yes you know and and the idea that a single loss in the competition is somehow a defeat is completely insane first of all well let's say you're a hockey player and you're good player and you and you lose the tournament's like well so what you played the game you're increasing your skills it's like there's always next time and one of the things that I've also been telling people informing people about is the idea that life isn't a game it's a series of games and the Wright ethic is to be the winner of the series of games and part of that means you all you have to learn how to be a good loser because you're not gonna win every single game but you also have to embrace those losses as learning experiences and the people that have never lost or afraid of losing they're afraid of learning you're afraid of that feeling that terrible feeling that you get from losing is so beneficial its aided me in so many ways like it's one of the reasons and also one of the reasons why I talk so openly about bombing on stage and I do it with other comedians I always want to tell people yeah I'm an established comedian I've been a comedian for a long time let me tell you about like when I was two years in or five years in or or four years ago it can we tell you about some horrible moments on stage where it went wrong so so you understand like those things took me to another place yeah because I realized I don't want to ever feel that feeling again and so I write everything up and then I went back to work and I went over my notebooks and I went over my mic recordings and I figured out what I was doing wrong and and I tried to improve upon it but if it wasn't for that horrible sick feeling that's the same feeling you get when you get tapped out in jiu-jitsu class same feeling you get when you lose on martial arts tournament or and anything else losing is important well you might also say like let's say that you could pick your leg you can pick your level of competition in life to some degree okay so let's say you pick a level of competition where you're always winning it's like well all that means is you've picked the wrong level of competition because you know like let's say you're a grandmaster chess player and you're all you do is play amateurs and every night you go home and congratulate yourself and what a genius you are because you just stomp these people left right and center it's like you're not a genius you're dimwit right what you should be doing is playing people who are beating you like well as much as you can tolerate right so maybe that's 40 percent of the time maybe it's 60 percent of the time but that way because to be a winner you want to be disciplined you want to know what you're doing and then you want to be on the edge where your skills are being developed and if you're going to be on the edge where your skills are going to be developed you're you're at a place where where loss where losing is always a possibility because otherwise you're not pushing yourself beyond your current capacity and so one of the things that I've outlined in 12 rules for life is a theory of meaning because meaning as far as I'm concerned that sense of meaningful engagement is the antidote to malevolence and suffering essentially because you want to have a life that's so engaging that you think despite the fact that I'm limited and that we're mortal and that life is tragedy and there's evil in the world despite all that this is worth doing and I think that that there's there's a there's a technical meaning that that that genuinely exists and that's the meaning that you get when you're in a domain where you have some discipline and some skill so you're laying out your competence and your irritability but you're simultaneously pushing yourself to develop past where you are that's really engrossing and what's that do it what did that is doing is expanding your competence and so life is suffering and betrayal in in in many senses of the world but you can adopt a way of Traverse through life that is more powerful than the tragedy in the malevolence I agree and I say too many people that what what is going on in your life is you have a series of human reward systems that are in your body encoded in your body in your genetics and it's the reason why human being survived to 2018 in in order to be happy you have to feed those things you have to feed all of them you have to feed the one that wants to overcome difficult tasks you have to feed the one that wants to solve problems you have to feed the one that wants to be with a loving tribe of people that you care about you have to feed the one that wants to procreate you have to feed all these things you have to feed the love you have to feed the competition you have to feed the discipline and that to me is the only way to stay balanced or with me with my body in my mind that's the only way I've been able to stay balanced and when either more any of those things get out of whack I get out of Wow yeah well so so part of that is so imagine this so imagine that you're this loose collection of all these things that need to be gratified that need to be fed it's a perfectly reasonable way of looking at it biologically okay so now you have to conjure up a mode of being that satisfies all those necessities simultaneously but then and this is this is a technical explanation of why the postmodernist insistence that there's an infinite number of explanations turns out to be wrong and an infinite number of interpretations there's a very finite number of viable interpretations so the first constraint is what exactly what you just said you have these inner demons let's say all of which need to be satisfied but they need to be satisfied in a very particular way not only do they need to be satisfied today but they need to be satisfied today in a way that doesn't interfere with satisfying them next week next month next year and in a decade so because there's no point in you betraying your your future self to gratify your present self right it's a stupid game okay so you're constrained by the necessity of satisfying yourself but of maintaining that satisfaction across time but then it gets even more that's hard enough but it's like there's an infinite number of yous extending indefinitely into the future and all of them have to be satisfied simultaneously but then it's worse because it isn't just you do you have to figure out how to gratify all those internal demons in a sustainable way in a way that other people not only don't object to but probably help you with and that benefits them at the same time well then you think you think well there just aren't that many ways of solving that problem and we know some of them one of them is reciprocity you know like if you go out of your way for me it's incumbent on me to notice that and to attempt in some manner to to repay you and like if if we're good friends that's what we'll do if we're good brothers that's what we'll do that's what you do with your wife it's a reciprocal arrangement and that keeps things flowing properly across time so there is an there is an ethic this and this is the answer to the postmodern conundrum it's like well is life meaningless is everything just Niall Niall is is is nihilism the right answer or maybe you know the what would you call identification with an ideology as a counter position to nihilism so nihilism is wrong life is meaningful that and that's what twelve rules for life is about the first meaning of life is suffering and malevolence there's indisputable realities okay well what's what's after that well there's a noble way of being that allows you to exist properly despite that and also not to make it worse so can your life be meaningful enough so that you what is it confront chaos voluntarily establish and revivify order constrain malevolence that's a good three-part doctrine for life there's things to do and so that's what I've been talking to the audience's that I've been seeing over the last year it's like get your act together stand up forthrightly that's rule one stand up straight with your shoulders back there's a vulnerable position right because you're open but it's a powerful position because it means that you're brave enough to take what's coming and it isn't like what's coming isn't dangerous it's dangerous so but your best bet is to be dancing on your feet and ready for it pay attention and be awake and to treat yourself property that's rule 2 is figure out how to yourself as if you're someone worth coming to the aid of to detach yourself in a bit and say okay I'm gonna set up my life so that it it's good for me and good for other people as well as that's a corollary to that so the book is all about all about the meanings of life the negative meanings suffering malevolence those are indisputable realities and then a mode of being that integrates the sorts of things that you were talking about these underlying needs with everyone else's and like doing that voluntarily it's a call to responsibility and meaning and I actually think it's not the thing that's been so exciting for me for the last three decades looking into these things is that I believe that there is a genuine human ethic it's not arbitrary it has to do with reciprocity for example has to do with honesty that's another thing is that you should speak the truth because your life turns out better if you speak the truth and so does everyone else's so in this biblical lecture series I did I looked at the first chapter in Genesis and there's a theory in there it's really interesting theory and the theory is that there's three parts to being there's chaos and potential and that would be like the potential you should live up to because everyone says well you should live up to your potential it's like what the hell's that you can't measure it or touch it taste it feel it it's this hypothetical thing that everyone regards is real it's like it's like the future what's the future well it's not here yet you can't measure it what makes you think it's real well we act as if it's real and that seems to work there's the poster so there's potential that's one that's chaos chaotic potential then there's order and that's the structure that you need in order to to confront the chaos and you'd be born with that biologically and then there's your ability to to call forth from the potential new order that's what you do with your speech and that's what that's what happens in the first chapter of Genesis is that God uses God order let's say uses the power of truthful speech that's the logos to transform potential into order and that's what people are made in the image of so there's this theory it's a lovely theory that's laid out right at the beginning of the Bible that says that if you tell the truth you transform the potential of being into a habitable actuality that's how it works so we say well how do you want it how do you make the world better tell the truth because the world you bring into being as a consequence of telling the truth will be a good world and I believe that's true I think it's true metaphorically I think it's true theologically and I think it's true like at the practical and scientific level as well I think it's true and all those levels simultaneously so that's been ridiculously exciting to just sort through I think this notion and one of the things you said that I think really resonates is that there's not a voice out there that is advocating for responsibility and that is talking about how important this is and I think this is an inherent principle that most people are kind of aware of and it feels good to them to hear I get resonates so you feel it you you when you when you're saying this clean your room you know put your house in order like yeah yeah how come I'm not hearing this right I'm not hearing this well it's so funny because one of the things psychologists have done for the last 20 years especially the social psychologist has pushed this idea of self-esteem you should feel good about yourself and I think why would you tell someone 20 that it's like you should feel good about who you are it's like no you shouldn't why should you feel good about who you are it's like you should feel good about who you could be that's way better cuz you got sixty years to turn into who you could wait a minute are you what your accomplishments are or are you dis individual going through this journey I mean I don't think there's anything wrong with feeling good about who you are as long as it's tempered by an understanding of potential and what you have accomplished versus what you can accomplish well I think having confidence is a big part of it it is it is and I'm not saying that people shouldn't have confidence but like often you take young people say there are sixteen to twenty two and they're not really feeling that good about who they are right because their life is chaotic and and disorder and they don't know where they're going and they don't know which way is up a call so there could be bad parenting going on and I think that's one of the reasons why presen eights with people this idea of be happy for you about who you are right feel good about who you write but but the thing is it has to be stated with precision it's like yes it's like Lucia you should treat yourself as if you're valuable especially in the Ho's Angela but you should concentrate on who you should become especially if you're young and so let's say you're miserable and nihilistic and chaotic and depressed and all of that now and you have your reasons you know terrible parenting abuse all of those things it's like well you should feel good about yourself it's like no no it's it's not it's not the right message is that it's more like you should understand how much potential there is within you to set that straight and then you should do everything you can to manifest that in the world and it will set it straight and that's better than self esteem it's like you're you're in a crooked horrible position okay fine there's a lot of suffering and pain associated with that yeah you can't just feel good about that because it's not good but you can do something about it you can genuinely do something about it and I think all the evidence suggests that that's the case yes so I'm telling telling young people look there's no matter how bad your situation is I'm not gonna pretend it's okay it's not okay it's tragic tainted with malevolence and some people really get hurt by malevolent people like you know terribly hurt sometimes they never recover it's really awful but there's more to you than you think and if you stand up and face it with with the positive with a with a noble vision with discipline and intent you can go far farther to overcoming it than you can imagine and that's the principle upon which you should predicate your behavior and I think that one of the things that's really nice about being the clinical psychologist is that this isn't just guesswork like one of the things we know two things in clinical psychology one is truthful conversations redeemed people because if you come to a clinical psychologist who's worth is salt you'll have a truthful conversation the conversation is well here's what's wrong with my life and here's what caused it you know maybe it takes a year to have that conversation and both of the participants are doing everything they can to lay it out properly here's how it might be fixed here's what a beneficial future might look like and so it's a completely honest conversation if it's working well and all that's happening in the conversation is that the two people involved are trying to make things better that's the goal let's see if we can have a conversation that will make things better okay so we know that works it does make things better and then another thing we know is that well let's say there's a bunch of things that you're afraid of that are in your way so you have some vision about who you want to be maybe you have to you know you want to be successful in your career so you have to learn to talk in front of a group it's like okay well you're afraid of that no wonder you don't want to be humiliated so okay so what do we do about that well maybe we first get you to speak in front of one person and then three people you know for five minutes and then for ten minutes like graduated exposure to what you're afraid of voluntary graduated exposure to what you're afraid of is curative and that's true it works the documentation is in it's how people learn so so to to to tell people that if you confront the world forthrightly if you speak the truth and you expose yourself courageously to those things that you're afraid of that your life will improve and so will the life of people around you like as far as I'm concerned that's as close to undeniable fact as we as we've got and it also dovetails nicely with the underlying archetypal stories the heroic stories it's like go out there find the dragon confront it it's a dragon it might eat you it's dangerous but it's worse to cower at home and wait for it to come and devour you go out there confront it get the gold share it with the community it's like yeah it's the oldest story of mankind I think one of the factors in the resistance to these ideas of discipline and of taking responsibility for yourself and of a lot of the things that you've been saying in regards to you know all the things that we discussed earlier is people recognizing that they're not doing that in their own lives and they get upset and instead of looking internally they try to attack the thing that's upsetting them they've attacked your message they attack the philosophy behind it rather than look internally and objectively and having some sort of introspective point of view where you go okay am i reacting to this because this is resonates like I'm missing this aspect of my life is this guy does does this diminish me or is this guy pointing something out that I can benefit from very few people are willing to do that very few people are willing take that critical moment to look at their own behavior and look at their own thought process and wonder if the actual adverse reaction they have to this person's message is because they know that they're wrong yeah what's know was it's there's a couple of reasons for that one is well what makes you think that you're someone we should listen to it's like hey fair enough you know so you got to be poked a bunch to see if that's true and then the next thing is well it's it's painful to understand how much of what you're doing isn't productive so I'll give you an example so I've done this a couple of times with classrooms full of students usually when I'm lecturing about career development say okay how much time do you waste so then I get the class to vote how many of you waste 10 hours a day it's like 10 percent of the kids that put up their hands and it's interesting cuz I don't define what constitutes waste I just ask the question so they're diagnosing themselves right I'm not saying you're wasting 10 hours a day I'm just asking it's like given your own attitude how much time are you wasting 10 hours a day it's like 10% of the people put up their hands well when you get to like 6 hours a day 80% of the people put up their hands so then we do the arithmetic it's like because I like doing arithmetic with people people hate arithmetic but I like doing it it's like okay 6 hours a day it's 42 hours a week so let's call that a workweek 40 hours a week so so that's that's a workweek let's say what's your time worth you're a university student well it's certainly worth minimum wage because obviously but it's worth way more than that because if you spend a productive hour when you're 20 then you gain the benefits of that hour for the rest of your life so there's the compounding effect of time spent when we were young so I say well let's assume your time's worth 50 bucks an hour which i think is an underestimate but whatever let's call it 50 we call it 25 but we'll call it 50 so that's $2,000 a week you're wasting it's $100,000 a year it's like how much better would your life be if you weren't wasting $100,000 a year it's like what is that over 40 years four million dollars it's like you're rich you don't even know it quit wasting time by your own definition it's like people shake their heads like well I never thought about it that way it's like yeah think about it that way don't waste your damn life and then you think well why would people be resistant to that message it's like well you really want to wake up and figure out that you're wasting half your life and you know when people do that kind of wasting they actually hate it you know and I've had lots of people come to my clinical practice who were chronic procrastinators you know and so they're watching YouTube videos say but but not ones that are good for them although sometimes they will do that but just browsing in that kind of mindless way that you do when you're not paying attention and you're trying to kill time and people doing that they feel bad they get depressed they feel anxious they can't get away from it they feel kind of quasi addicted what you're saying about social media now huge with young kids absolutely but there's this feeling of kind of internal rot and corruption that goes along with it it's like yeah well you're wasting your life it's like so it's painful it's painful to recognize that then it's painful to think oh my God look how undisciplined I am I don't know anything I can't use this schedule I can't I can't stick to a calendar I don't have any aims I don't know anything about the world right and maybe there's a part of me that's bitter because I haven't got everything already and I'd like just like to say to hell with it that's the recognition of the Union shadow it's like that's what makes you vicious and and and and untrustworthy all of that no one wants to look at that and no bloody wonder but hey the alternative is worse so the problem is you say like just saying you stop wasting your life like I think that that's not enough I think this is one of the reasons why I look like this is so important like the idea of discipline in most people's eyes it's like if you're not a discipline person it's uncomfortable it's it's gonna be painful it's it's frustrating you you have to force yourself into these things it's a muscle it's and it's a muscle that has to be developing these patterns have to be developed in in your own mind ently yes yeah well with so you're right just telling people not to waste their lives is not enough and this is another reason why I have so much enjoy being a clinical psychologist because clinical psychologists do don't stick with high-level abstractions especially the behaviors they're really practical it's like okay you want to get your act together it's like well how about if let's say you're not studying well and so we do a real analysis of how much you're studying you say well I go to the library four hours a day it's like yeah yeah okay how much time do you actually study in the library well you know I waste time I have to travel there I look at my phone it's like okay well how much 15 minutes half an hour how much is real studying well maybe we figure out it's fifteen minutes say okay so what you're gonna do for one week is you're gonna study for half an hour that's all you don't get to go to the library for four hours you have to sit down we'll figure out a time 10 o'clock in the morning whatever we'll put it in your schedule try to study for half an hour no more and then just come back and let's have a conversation about how well that worked and people come back and they say well you know I managed it's four days and one day I went over and one day I couldn't do it at all it's like okay that's better instead of 75 minutes of studying you know 15 minutes a day for seven days what is that fifteen seventy 105 minutes you've managed about 210 minutes so that you've already produced an improvement of 50% in your bumbling horrible way you've got a 50% improvement in one week it's like that's deadly it's like so in the future authoring program what we ask people to do is well think about your life along six dimensions what do you want for your so that the goal is this you're gonna take care of yourself you're gonna have a life in three years that justifies its suffering that's the goal so you can invent the damn life but you have to think what you would be satisfied with so you wouldn't be all bitter and resentful it's like okay what do you want from your family what do you want from your friends how are you gonna educate yourself what do you want for your career how are you gonna use your time outside of work how are you gonna handle drugs and alcohol and other temptations like that how are you gonna keep yourself mentally and physically healthy these are open questions like you get to answer them the idea is you can have whatever you want but you have to figure out what it is has to be realistic and you have to figure out what it is it's okay so now develop a vision what's your life going to be like in three to five years so you write it down then we do something else which is okay your bad habits and your resentment and your bitterness and all of that your procrastination gets completely out of hand and you auger down and you're in your own personal version of hell in three to five years what does that look like well everyone knows that it's like everyone can look into the future and think well if I keep going on this dark path this is where I'll end up well then you've got little hell outline for yourself to run away from and you got a little heaven outline for yourself to run towards and then you're motivated because sometimes you know you're just hopeful I would like a good thing to happen it's like yeah but you know I'd like to drink half a bottle of whiskey tonight - it's like so which is it gonna be well just being hopeful about the future might not be enough but then you think oh I see like there's that little hell thing that I outlined it's waiting for me and maybe I'm afraid of taking the nips next step forward because it's demanding and challenging it's like yeah I'm afraid of that but I'm way more afraid of where I might end up if I don't get my act together and people should be that's why their conceptions of hell in so many religions it's like hell is a real place whether it's eternal that's a whole different question whether it's waiting for you in the afterlife that's a whole different question but if you've never met anyone in Hell you haven't lived very long you haven't had your eyes open yeah it's undeniable that feeling of total complete misery and deniable yeah especially when it's compounded by the fact that you know you did it to yourself that's the real fun that's the real fun part it's like I'm having a bitch of a time and I richly deserve it Jesus that's rough man this is another concept that is doesn't have a voice right now this is an another I mean this is a giant part of being human being instead of identity politics and right versus left I think these these right versus left battles often times what they are is is simply the the battleground for the conflicts in your own mind better to have the conflict in yourself that's another thing I really learned well not not only from the New Testament but a fair bit from that you know the idea is that well there's evil in the world of all sorts and some of it's evil and other people and some of it's the evil in your brother's heart but the part of it that you can really do something about that's the malevolence in your own heart you can actually do something about that and that's actually way more useful than you think so because if you can face it in you then you start to understand it and that also makes you strong enough to identify it and to fight it when you see it in the external world plus you don't do any harm it's like like there's lots of people all over the world going out and doing reprehensible things and you might say well you should go out and protest against them it's like then sometimes you should but most of the time you should think where am i falling short of the ideal my own ideal it doesn't have to be one that someone puts on you where am i less than I should be where am i bitter where am I making the world a worse place than it has to be like you ask yourself those questions you'll be in for a big shock say well what would happen if you stop doing that that's what twelve rules for life is about it's like stop saying things that make you weak stop telling lies that you know to be lies stop doing things you know to be useless and counterproductive aim high door up some responsibilities and then see what the hell happens it's like it'll work and that's what I'm hoping people will do yeah I'm hoping people do that too and I think the if more people live their life in this sort of a manner I think we're gonna have less differences in terms of our ideologies and more of an understanding that people have different ways of looking at things in different ways of living and this this combat between people this this internal strife that manifests itself and this combat between ideologies I think you are much more inclined to let other people live their lives if you're living your life in a satisfactory manner that that's exactly it that's that I have a chapter in there on raising kids it says don't like your kids don't let your kids do anything it makes you just like them it's like well that's first predicated on the observation that you're quite a monster and it would be better for your kids if they didn't get on your bad side and like again because I'm a clinical psychologist a monster why why do you use that term because I've watched families like I've seen families where it's as if every single person in the family has their hands around the neck of the family member that's close to them and they're squeezing but only tight enough to strangle them in 20 years but you're not always using it as a pejorative you you you've also used it you should become a monster you should be a monster yeah but that's that's you shouldn't be it it shouldn't be accidental that's the thing what so what do you mean by monster then in a positive sense like you feel a monster oh that's easy among a positive monster is somebody who says no and means it because when you say no what you mean is there isn't anything you can do to me that will make me agree to do this why is that a monster because you have to be because no one will take you seriously otherwise no one will take you seriously like no means if you keep pushing this something that you do not like will happen to you that's what no means you don't have any strength of character unless you can put up a fight you know and to be able to say no to something is to be able to put up a fight so and you can't do that if you're if you can be pushed around you'll just get argued into submission or you'll feel guilty because you're causing conflict or something like that but isn't there confusion using those terms as a positivism and a negative maybe there's another word instead of monster well there is there is the potential there is the potential for confusion you say well is that something that can be I think monster is a horrible thing I don't think of it as being like a wall like someone who is just rock-solid in their belief system and rock-solid and their understanding when you fight someone who's formidable say what do you think of the person that you're fighting like how would you characterize them they may have a monstrous side because they can think they can they can bring physical substantial physical force to bear on the situation and and be willing to do it so they're not naive and and harmless by any stretch of the imagination right they have a well-developed capacity for mayhem they think well is that monstrous it's like well I would say yes I would say fierce fierce fine let's go with that yeah because someone who's fierce and formidable it's not necessarily a monster you know just I think of a monster as being just an awful person who's done awful things and just you know okay well so fair enough well so back to the back to this situation with your kids while you definitely don't want to have your kids act in a way that awakens your inner monster right let's put it that way and so you need to you need to organize your family with a certain amount of discipline and a certain amount of structure so that you get to do what you want which is back to that to the point that you made earlier so that you're happy to have your kids around so that you won't take revenge on them and so you want to lay your life out so that well so that it's providing you what you need to not be bitter and to work for your best interests and for the interests of everyone else that would be lovely and I think it's attainable you know because the book is very dark and and I'm a very dark guy in some ways because I've looked at the terrible things that people do to one another that's the fascinating way of looking at you think you yourself as dark as I don't think of you as dark oh that's good I'm you seem a very friendly guy I think you're you're very serious and especially about these very complicated issues and I think that's one of the reasons why you have made this gigantic wave in online discourse and people discussing these very tumultuous times we live in is because you're a guy that did extrapolate your guy did look at that c16 bill and look at Marxism and go do you know where this is headed and you were the guy that had the courage to say murderous and and people like what the fuck is he talking about that doesn't make any sense and you had to spell it out and explain it and when you do you realize why this is so significant to you yeah well the tribalism issue that you discussed earlier doesn't seem to be all that what would you say debatable that if we degenerate into tribalism the probability of bloodshed becomes vastly enhanced it's like well that always happens when people devolve into tribalism so when I'm pointing to a particular kind of tribalism I guess the darkness is that you know I'm very aware of the terrible things that people not only are likely to do to each other but do do to each other all the time I mean what it's about 40% for divorce rate right yesterday let's go through a fairly fair bit of ugliness to get to divorce Canadians are nicer than Americans maybe you guys are 40 percent maybe maybe yeah I think actually it's 50 percent here somewhere run no one but yeah yeah you have to go through a lot that's really ugly too you know and Chris Rock had a joke about that he's like 50% of people get divorced he goes he goes but that's just the people who had the courage to leave you look how many cowards just stay and suffer and meanwhile he wound up getting divorced a few years later right horrible divorce so yeah true story yeah yeah but it's a good point yeah I think we need more people who are actualized human beings more more people who understand themselves more people who have gone through adversity both in real life and personal in terms of their understanding of their own growth of their own potential and their own understanding of how they've managed their their life their mind their their actions and the more we have people that have personal sovereignty the better we'll be able to have these conversations well that that'd be the hope you know one of the things I've been suggesting to people is that they pick something difficult to do I read this this funny little paragraph by Kierkegaard it was written about 1840 and he was thinking about his role as a student and writer and he was a student and writer forever you know he never really had a career apart from that and he said that he wasn't one of these people who was capable of inventing something wonderful to make life easier for everyone like so many people were doing you know and during the Industrial Revolution he said well maybe I'm one of these people whose benefit to society will be that I will make things more difficult for everyone because there will come a time when what people want not they don't want ease they want difficulty instead and I think well that is what people want that is what they want you think well I want an easy happy life it's like no actually that isn't what you want if you wonderful banas things that are difficult that they can overcome yeah right that's right they want an optimal challenge well there's a whole different thing when you overcome something when you do something difficult whether it's I mean I've never written a book but I assume when you write a book when you're done writing that book there's a great feeling of accomplishment because it's very difficult to do that feeling of a comput for me it's like when I put together a comedy special or when I you know just anything that's difficult there's a feeling I didn't I yeah yeah well in that one of the mysteries is why that feeling exists you know it's a genuine it's not a trivial thing that it's to say I did something difficult and that was worthwhile basically what you're saying to yourself is well there was a lot of suffering attendant on that along with the just general suffering of life but it turned out that was worth it that's what you want is like you want that sense that you're engaged in something that's worth it and I say well like I I try to I'm not a like a casual optimist about these sorts of things I mean one of the things I do in twelve rules for life is lay out the rationale that drives people like the Columbine High School killer's because I understand that rationale I've studied it for a long time I know why they did what they did and they have a powerful argument but it's wrong but you don't there's no sense in showing how it's wrong before showing that it's a powerful argument like light life is suffering there is lots of malevolence it's no wonder that people want to bring being itself to a halt they want to take revenge on it's not surprising it's the wrong way of going about it the right way is it's akin to the sorts of things that you were just observing is you take on a difficult task that pushes you past where you are already and you you succeed in it you get this sense that yes that was worthwhile it's like that's what you want you want to live in that place where things are worthwhile that's paradise on earth that's what that is and it isn't some happy little place where you know someone's feeding you peeled grapes that isn't what it is it's it's more like it's more like victory on the Honorable battlefield or something like that you have the the perception that people have of ultimate success and ultimate happiness is it seems motivated by what they don't have rather than an understanding of what success and happiness really is their their idea is that one day I'm gonna go and I'm gonna be in my golden years and I'm just gonna be able to sit around and do nothing and tell everybody to fuck off you won't be happy oh yeah I talked to one of the people that I was working with who had a like a vision for retirement said well what's your vision for retirement well I see myself in the beach you know some tropical country drinking margaritas and I thought first that's not a plan that's a travel poster it's like okay let's let's walk through this all right so you go down to this tropical country and he goes sit on the beach and you have a margarita it's like okay well how many margaritas like ten okay he's gonna do that we're gonna do that for six months you'll be dead yeah well you'll be this like pathetic sunburned like fat yeah I'm happy hungover Saroyan yeah yeah it's like that's huge rated so how long can you have a margarita on a beach like maybe you can do that once every six months for like ten minutes something like that it's not a vision it's true but when you are working and slaving away you think about that Beach with your feet up yeah and the waiter comes over would you like another margarita mr. Peterson yes I would but it's like this sixteen-year-old fantasy of your paradise it's like well and it just doesn't work out so yeah and and the thing the thing is is that the thing that sustains people through life really is the lifting of a worthwhile burden it's something like that yeah it's partly because we're social animals right it's like we're evolved to be useful to the people around us because they're much more likely to let us live if we're like that yeah so and and it's been very fun talking to especially talking to young men about this is like well and that's the other thing too is I think the world the world is full of darkness let's say and we could say each of us have a little bit of light and if we release that light if we let it shine properly Christ it's to cliched to go on with in some sense but the world is a lesser place if you do not reveal from within yourself what you have to reveal and the fact that the world is a lesser place actually turns out not to be trivial like if you want everything you could be more people will die more people will suffer more evil will be unconstrained more tyranny will reign more chaos will remain chaotic and dangerous all of that do you mean this by this in the sense of like the old proverb of the wings of a butterfly fluttering become a hurricane it's it's it's something similar to that but it can even be more local it's like your family is more messed up than it could be if you were less messed up than you are right so if you just got your act together like 10% more your family would be 1% better right like well do it and that would ripple off and demo people the day in there yes in Iraq yes and and it ripples fast yes that's the other thing that's so cool is that like people think well there's seven billion of us and each of us is just this separate dust mote like floating in the cosmos and what the hell difference does it make what you do anyways it's like that is not how we're connected it's like you're the center of a network and you know well you know way more people than this but let's say typically you know without you're gonna know a thousand people in your life well enough to have an impact on them okay and each of those thousand people is going to know a thousand people so you're one step from a million and two steps from a billion and we are Network technically that that's how human interactions work and so when you do something that you shouldn't do it's worse than you think and when you do something that you should do it's better than you think and so you think well this is why I've been telling people clean up your room that's like well your room is actually network two it's not that easy to clean up your room to set it so you want your room to be set up so that when you walk in there it tells you to be better than you generally are it's organized it's got direction everything is in its place you try to do that in a chaotic household you know I've watched people do this because I have students do these sorts of things as assignments I'd say look pick a small moral goal clean up your room and just write down what happens as a consequence so maybe these are students in a chaotic household the whole place is a bloody mess no one's taking any responsibility for anything and so they decide they're gonna start to clean up their room and then the people in the household notice well the first thing they do is get pissed off it's like who do you think you are like you think you're better than us he's like why do you think this is worthwhile who made who died and made you God all of that so just by trying to organize this little part of their life they immediately run into the people whose actions they're casting in a dim light by trying to improve themselves to some degree they might have to have like a thorough war in their household to be allowed to do something as simple as keep the room orderly they'll find out very rapidly that a that's way more difficult than it sounds and be that the consequences of it are far more far-reaching than people think so that's quite fun you know because maybe part of it is is that like everything around you is full of potential everything maybe more potential than you could ever possibly utilize and so maybe all you have is this little rat hole of a room in some rundown place in the world it's like fix it up there's more there than you think see what happens if you fix it up and you'll fix yourself up simultaneously because you'll have to get disciplined in order to fix up the room then you have a fixed up room and you'll be a more fixed up person it's like you think that nothing will happen as a consequence of that it's like all hell will break loose as a consequence of that really worth try it is worth trying and it's it's a concept that seems alien to people but if you think about it it makes sense well people don't take what they have right in front of them seriously enough it's like the wasting time thing they don't do the arithmetic you know and they'd also don't understand they devalue what they have right in front of them like another another client I worked with was having a hard time putting his kid to bed at night and so we did the arithmetic it's like well I'm fighting with my kid for 45 minutes a night trying to get him to go to bed okay so let's analyze that all right so what does that mean what means that both of you end the day upset that's not so good because why would you want that it means that you're spending 45 minutes fighting when you could spend 20 minutes doing something positive like reading to them say means that you don't get to spend that time with your wife so she's not very happy with you plus you're annoyed because you don't see her plus you blame it on the kid because he's the proximal cause it's like that's pretty damn ugly and then and then let's do the arithmetic it's like seven days a week 45 minutes a day let's call that five hours 20 hours a week 240 hours in a year it's 6 you're spending a month and a half of work weeks fighting with your four-year-old son think you're gonna like him you don't like anyone you spend a month and a half a year fighting with it's a bad idea fix it it's important get him to bed make it peaceful you do it like these things that repeat every single day that's a motif in this book to your life isn't margaritas on a beach and in Jamaica that happens now and then those are exceptions your life is how your wife greets you at the door when you come home every day because that's like 10 minutes a day your life is how you treat each other over the breakfast table because that's an hour and a half or an hour every single day you get those mundane things right those things you do every day you've concentrated on them and you make them pristine it's like you've got 80% of your life put together these little things that are right in front of us they're not little that's the first thing they are not little and they're hard to set right and if you set them right it has a rippling effect and and fast to way faster than people think I want to talk about the rippling effect because I know you got to get out of here at 1:00 but I want to talk about the rippling effect that you have had on people and how how that makes you feel I mean you were relatively unknown just a year and a half two years ago and now you have become I mean for lack of a better term you're an online celebrity and you're your reach is fantastic now this thing that you were talking about about how your impact can affect the people around you and in not verse a non insignificant way a very significant way what does I've been like for you and what does that adjustment than like oh I haven't adjusted to it how old you 55 so for 53 years you're relatively anonymous other outside of university yeah yeah I had a little bit of you know a little bit of exposure yeah I did some work with a public television station in Canada and you know I had my little flashes of public appearances that's prepared oh yeah this is just crazy what you've done on this show mean millions yeah million people have listened and watched each sing each individual episode yeah they're about two million views each and and then that's nothing compared to YouTube YouTube is nothing compared to the audio yeah so the audio is like five times that or something yeah so so that's yeah it's completely crazy no I haven't adjusted to it it's like I don't know I mean have you adjusted to your status I'm numb yeah but so what's it like when you think about it you wake up in the morning and you think okay I'm gonna get a billion downloads this I don't think that I think I'm gonna talk to Jordan Pearson what do I want to talk about that's that's how I handle it it's exactly the same thing for the last 15 months this is what I've done got up in the morning I've looked at the like 25 things I have to do in a mad rush before 7 o'clock at night I think I'm gonna go through them and I'm gonna concentrate on them do the best job I can then at 7 o'clock tonight I'm gonna have a rest I'm gonna take a look at what I have to do tomorrow and I'm gonna do the same thing that's what I've been doing and then when I stand back a little bit like when it sort of dawns on me you know then it's disconcerting like it's surreal I can't figure it out I can't understand it but then I but there's no sense dwelling on that because first of all I don't know how to conceptualize I don't know why it's happening exactly like I think what's happened is that two things one is that I said it there was something I wouldn't do with regards to this legislation and I meant it I actually meant it I wasn't going to use those words under legal compulsion period no matter what and actually meant that so there was that but then I think the more relevant thing is that I've been studying these old stories these archetypal stories for a very long period of time and they have power they really have power and they manifest themselves everywhere they manifest themselves in movies and in books and I mean Harry Potter's a mythological story and it made Roland richer than the Queen of England you know these stories have power and I was fortunate enough to study a large number of people large number of scholars who knew what that power was Carl Jung in particular and I could make it more accessible to people and so that's a big part of it but what overall significance of that is well I just it just leaves me speechless I mean there's Kathy Newman things a good example and I mean so many things have happened I've got involved I've been in a scandal of some sort a serious scandal of some sort probably every three weeks for a year and a half you know and there are things that are just well the did James tomorrow thing is a good example of that like that's a big deal you know that that explosion that that that emerged around him in the court case that's coming out of it it's a big deal and this thing with Lindsay Shepard that was the worst scandal that hit a Canadian University and then there was all the protests and and then there was what happened with with channel 4 the UK and it's like I don't know what to make of it I don't what what I'm trying to do is have a good conversation when I come and talk to somebody like you where we can have a good conversation try not to say anything stupid that's really what I'm trying to do is to not say anything stupid that's hard or too stupid yeah yeah well didn't it's being high stakes poker yeah you know for it's not quite so bad now because especially after what happened with channel 4 and some journalists like people have been trying to take me out for quite a long time and it's not it isn't working so far actually you actually believe what you're saying and it actually makes sense well you know that's that's it's not a bad start but it's rare in this world this is a especially in these ideologically charged times yeah this toxic tribalism that we keep bringing up it's well and I also decided like a long time ago and and I I think this runs through 12 rules for life is well I believe that people's decisions tilt the world towards heaven or hell I think there's no more accurate way of describing the consequences of each of your decisions than that you face potential that's what you face that's what you face in the world is potential it's not Material reality it's potential and every decision you make you're deciding whether you want to make the world better or worse and if you like the ultimate better is heaven and the ultimate worse is hell we know how to make the world into hell we've done that multiple times much of the 20th century was that it's like I looked it all out and I thought okay I would rather that the world didn't degenerate into hell and I understand why people wanted to degenerate into hell they're angry they're angry because they suffer they suffer unfairly and they suffer because people hurt them and so they think this is a bad game I'm not going to help make it better I'm angry I'm gonna make it worse even that's what the call of mine kids did you know that's what all the mass shooters do they say to hell with this I hate it they're so far behind the game they just want to flip the table yeah yeah worse than that they they want it obliterate the game yes and they want to do it with as much malice as possible just to obtain revenge and I understand that but I decided a long time ago that I would rather not play that game I think it I think that it's possible that we could make the world better I really believe they leave that too so I think well the so I'm I'm trying to tell people look there's more to you than you think there's more potential there's more than enough potential to go around there's definite suffering and malevolence in the world we could fix it you haven't got anything better to do that's a very big point that there's more potential to go around talking about more than people understand we're not gonna run now to put that no we're not and with this idea of the famine thinking is one of the reasons why people get upset at other people's success they think somehow another this other person's success takes something away from them yep yeah well there's and it's see the other thing too is that I've realized that people actually act like what they confront in the world is potential it's so funny because whatever potential is it's it's not materially measurable but if you tell someone you're not living up to your potential they go it's like well what is that potential that you're not living up to and then when you say well there's potential in front of you you know that you can walk out on the street and you go right or left or straight ahead like you're facing this thing that isn't fully formed and you get to decide how it's going to form and you can make it better and so my question is like the world's a rough place there's no doubt about it it's a harsh place but my question is what would happen if we start making it worse how good could it be if we stop making it worse and I don't know if there's an upper limit to that like it might be maybe we could make it really really really good why not and we don't have any better to do than that it's like aim at heaven start at home aim at heaven tell the truth let's see what the hell happens you know like it is the case clearly on the facts of the matter in 20 years there wouldn't have to be a single person in the world that was hungry in 20 years we could get rid of the 5 biggest diseases that currently plague the planet we could straighten things up and god only knows what things could be like that or we could let the whole thing DJ right into hell so in each of us is making that decision with each decision that's the other thing that I've understood so take your choice you want hell are you want heaven if you pick hell just remember you knew what you were doing when you picked it but nobody picks hell yeah just sort of let it slide yeah but they do it because they blind themselves you know you know when you do it you say oh yeah well you know I let that slide then you and then you don't think about it it's like you could think about it you could think about it you could know but you don't let yourself know is any of this all the pressure and the scandal every three weeks is this this is it way on you is it is it difficult how are you feeling like when we're not feeling strange thing yeah it's like it's like simultaneously the worst possible thing and the best possible thing that could happen well financially it's been a boom right yes it's which I mean the thing that I've I shouldn't say this but I'm going to because it's just so goddamn funny I can't help but say that I figured out how to monetize social justice warriors [Laughter] I just can't believe it it anyway it just every time I think that well it's just one of the surreal circumstances that characterized my life it's like I'm driving the social justice activists and Canada mad because if they let me speak then I get to speak and then more people support me on patreon it's like hmm that's annoying it's like god damn capitalist he's make more money off this ideological warfare it's like okay fine let's go protest so they go protest me and then that goes up on YouTube and then my patron account goes way up so it's like they don't know what to do and so one of the things that keep it easy yeah they keep accusing me of like hauling in the loot and I think well look here's the situation guys I give away everything I do online for free it's free and people are giving me money they're just sending it to me I'm not twisting their up not even asking them for it well I guess that's not exactly right as I set up the patron account but that's more complicated than it looks that a lot of that was curiosity and I thought well I could increase the production quality of my online videos well as also the potential of you being removed from the universe yes well that and that was your life tension oh yeah oh and yeah people wanted that oh yeah they would stop wanting that yes in in October when the Lindsay Sheppard scandal broke and it looked so bad for the left-wing ideologue it's like two hundred University of Toronto a community members signed a petition to get me fired again and I was kind of upset about that and this is what my life is be like it's so my son came over that day and I said Jesus Julien you know like 200 people at the faculty member at the University of Toronto petitioned the Faculty Association and then they sent in a petition to the administration to get me fired it was the Faculty Association that's my Union they didn't even contact me and Julian said don't worry about it dad it was only 200 people and I thought that's where my life is like it's like a day where 200 people signed a petition to get me fired as a professor my son can come in and say well that's not so bad it's like it's only 200 pizzas yeah that's right it's so it's so surreal because you could say that online and look what's happening and then the support would be overwhelming who knows how many people that yeah absolutely well in the administration at the University of Toronto like they didn't they didn't take it seriously at all called have me removed it didn't cause any didn't even cause a ripple now who needs 200 people and what was their motivation oh well they're hard to say what their motivation is or they read the transcript or listen to those recordings yeah how could they possibly be against you based on that oh because they think that the people who who conducted the Inquisition were right well that'd be madness oh yes but look look I mean I mean this formerly like 20 members of Pimlott sand Rambo Connors faculty that was communications at Wilfrid Laurier wrote a letter supporting them so that's why it's not an isolated incident it's like no no they thought that what they were doing was right it's masses yeah while there is an element of that that's for sure and there's certainly again I hate to bring this term up again but this toxic tribalism thing that's like they're they're supporting their own and they understand that their own ideologies have been completely connected to the same type of groupthink that's going against Lindsay Shepard in that meeting oh yeah when they tried to paint her as a radical right winger and which she certainly isn't of course not neither are you I mean the whole thing is ridiculous you're not all right you're not a neo-nazi you're not I've read a lot of crazy things about you mhm and knowing you personally seeing this stuff I'm like this is this is a fascinating time yeah that's for sure that's for sure yeah and it's been well it's been crazily well I'm what would I say crazily stressful it's it's the best way to describe it is surreal yeah like I'm it's like I stepped outside myself I can't I can't put this in a box I don't know what to make of it I don't know what to make of the channel for interview you know it's like what the hell really it's it's it's crazy well it's it's this these conversations are so limited by what you were saying before that they're trying to get this five-minute soundbite in and that's what television has become yeah it's a dying medium yeah it doesn't make any sense it doesn't make any sense to sandwich these commercials in every 15 minutes or whatever they do none of it makes any sense it's an archaic way of communicating ideas yeah well I think that is part of it too is that like I happen to catch a technological wave well like you did you know yeah I mean they're they're television offers nothing over YouTube nothing because YouTube offers everything but TV yeah well exactly yeah and there's no space requirements on YouTube so you don't have to do this twist the complex event into a short soundbite and entertain everyone right and it turns out too that there's this huge audience online for actual content like just genuine conversation because like one of the things that's happened between you and I when I've come down here is we've actually had a conversation right we're trying to figure things out you know we've got our viewpoints and everything but we're basically and then I outline this and there's a chapter in 12 rules for life called assume that the person you're talking to might know something you don't which is like the formula for a good conversation it's like there's a bunch of things I don't understand about the world I mean that's a big book things I don't understand about the world right that's a very thick book and I can come in here and talk to you about what's going on and hopefully we both emerge with better understanding we're not the same people that we were when we walked in and that's a good thing and then we have those conversations online and people can participate in that and I'm trying to do that my lectures too like when I when I did this biblical series because that was another thing that was so strange Joe's like imagine I walked into a like a venture capitalist organization I said look I want you guys to bankroll me I'm gonna do 15 lectures on the Old Testament and I'm gonna try to attract young men I'm gonna rent a theater it's like they just laughed me out of there see can you imagine anything less saleable than that so but I did that I went ahead with it I rented the theater and then I walked through these stories and I was learning a lot because like I knew this first stories in Genesis up to the flood I knew them pretty well I knew kind of understood what they meant but then all the stories from Abraham onward that I had read them but I hadn't done a detailed in-depth analysis and so I was learning a tremendous amount walking through those stories and they had a big like they've had a big impact man and so I'm gonna do Exodus soon because I want to do that but it's just another example of how surreal things have become but also the use the utility of a good conversation because like when I'm up on on on the podium say lecturing I'm not exactly lecturing I'm trying to figure something out and sharing that process with the audience which is so different than what is going on in universities that is freaking everybody out and see what what's going on is it's indoctrination into this group thing yeah it's like here's what's right memorize it right it's like my lectures are more like well I don't know what's right like here's some things I know and they seem to be working and here's how I use those tools to dig at this story and here's what it might mean and this is what I got from it and then here's some universal truths and the human beings that seem to be and then I try to explore that's like well should we believe this should we like when Abraham in the Abrahamic story for example I mean Abraham's an old guy and he's basically lived in his mom's basement that's that's really the beginning of the story he gets a call to adventure you know God says well get away from your family and your kin get out there in the world it's the call to adventure I think okay fine that's a heroic motif but then Abraham goes out and the first thing he encounters is like tyranny and starvation and then a bunch of guys want to steal his wife so it's it's been entertaining to take those stories apart and to see why they're foundational because they are foundational and they're not mere ignorant that what whatever they are ignorant superstition is not the right category how has this changed your classrooms well I haven't gone back teaching since all of this hit because when did you stop teaching well oh no I guess that's not true that's not true I taught from January to May of 2016 well first way it changed it was that I was like so shell-shocked when I went to to teach last January that and I was really sick like I've been really sick this year I had like last January Jesus it was just dismal I wouldn't know worst wish that on my worst enemy I had three weeks where I didn't sleep a wink try that that's really entertaining one long day of misery that's three weeks long what kind of an illness it looks like an autoimmune disorder do you think this is because of stress no I don't you don't think y'all connected at all well yeah I think it probably made it worse but no it's something that I battled with for a long time and it's something that really both my wife and I have autoimmune illness and my daughter got what autoimmune almost don't know exactly what it is I don't know what it is have you my disorder it manifest yes that's what's fixed what it what fixed it oh all I eat is meat and greens that's it no juice no vegetables no carbohydrates meat greens that's it and that fixed it that seems to have fixed it yes this is so many people I can tell if you've listened to the podcast I've done yeah well I've been following them because my daughter has a blog too called don't eat that and my daughter has a tear terrible autoimmune disorder it was awful I detailed that out in Chapter 12 she had 38 affected joints and she had her hip and her ankle replaced when she was 16 Jesus so she walked around on two broken legs for a year in excruciating pain she was on extremely high doses of opiates and so she was addicted to opiates which she like she just once she had her surgery she just went off them cold turkey and like suffered through the withdrawal for two months and compared to what she had been through that was nothing like what she went through man knew it was dreadful and that was just the surface of it like that was only the beginning of her illness she had all sorts of other things that were worse than that and so and we figured she was probably gonna die by the time she was thirty because my cousin's daughter had a similar autoimmune problem and she died when she was 30 so it was bloody dreadful but she figured out at one point that it was associated with diet and then she went on a radically restrictive diet and she Christ she she was on antidepressants she's not she had to take ritalin to stay awake she could only stay awake about 6 hours a day and she had to take high doses of Ritalin distill she what is this autoimmune disease well she had her diagnosis was rheumatoid arthritis right but she didn't have the blood markers for it but she had all the other symptoms anyway she she figured out this restrictive Dutch she only ate chicken and broccoli for about two months and almost all her symptoms went away and she's pretty much symptom free now and which is it's a complete miracle and she convinced me to try this diet about a year and a half ago and so I lost seven pounds a month for seven months that was the first thing which was just bloody amazing yeah it was unbelievable it was unbelievable and carbohydrates before that rich enough yeah rich enough you know pastas and bread bread bread bread in particular I eat a lot of bread so the first thing that happened was a quit snoring that happened immediately took took one week and I was snoring quite badly that so that disappeared in a week and that was amazing I thought oh that's interesting and then I had gastric reflux disorder that went away and then I lost seven pounds the first month I thought huh that's a lot seven pounds I had psoriasis that went away it's floaters in my right eye which is also an autoimmune problem that went away um I have had gum disease for thirty years that went away that went away that's amazing I'm 55 like my gum disease went away it's ridiculous so I figured all that out so my life in the last if it was so so strange eight cuz I'd get up in the morning and I think God all these bloody scandalous things are happening around me and I have to deal with that and then I think I need a break but I can't eat anything eat anything because if I ate the wrong thing it would like knock me out for a month so I was trying to figure out what the hell was wrong with my diet and I was feeling wretched and so it was like if I was like wolves at the back door and crocodiles at the front door or something like that so but but whatever like I'm down to the same weight I was when I was 25 Wow yeah no kidding and I've got lots energy I wake up in the morning and I wake up that's never happened to me my whole life I've always had to have a shower it's like took me an hour to wake up my whole life that's gone I'm not hungry I don't have hypoglycemia I've lost energy I can't eat anything but so I can't go out for dinner no you can't eat nonsense you can eat I mean I'm on the same diet meat and greens man I don't have a disorder like you did in the same regard but I take a day or I have a cheat day no I don't even do it every week well I'll have a cheeseburger or something like that yeah but for the most part that's the diet that I follow as well yeah well for some people it seems like like well for a massive amount of you well I think for far more people than we know I think people or carbohydrate poisoning themselves like they can't believe yes and along with all the other things that go along with it insulin yeah you know the blood sugar cholesterol in this this idea that cholesterol and saturated fat are the problems that people are experiencing it's not true no the real problem is sugar yeah cholesterol has been demonized you know I'm sure you read the article from the New York Times all the sugar industry yeah paid off scientists to lie about the results yeah yeah well I know to the to food scientists in the UK resigned about three years ago they were they were part and parcel of the organization that had produced the food pyramid they said it was the worst public health disaster the last 40 years it's pretty much got it backwards yeah and you look around you know you drive through the US it's really obvious in the US as people are overweight like mad like mad yeah crazy it's crazy keyless go to Disney Disneyland yeah exact same it is but you know and the reason is as far as I can tell the reason is is that they're they're poisoning themselves with carbohydrates it looks like and the thought process is so out of whack i retweeted an article today from Nina ty Schultz she tweeted it about this trend of eating only egg whites and how terrible it is for you it's a it's a health disaster and this idea that cholesterol from the egg yolk is bad for it's one of the most important things you can eat it's and then Weight Watchers is adjusted yeah see it goes Weight Watchers diet program now adjust their approach their protocol and they say that eat all the eggs you want it is now a zero point food which is fucking incredible so and the way I don't get hungry as I eat a lot of oil like a lot of olive oil yes so and that keeps fats so you're basically burning fat you're under like a ketogenic diet yeah you know and it seems to be well and that was complicated enough to keep me occupied for the last two years specially sorting it out with my daughter because she well that was quite the bloody nightmare I can tell you it was really something but I can't believe she figured it out it's amazing it is amazing and like she's really you know she's in pretty damn good shape she just had a baby like five months ago so that was that's amazing - yeah worse we're stunned man we're stunned cuz like it was it was rough well she sounds like an incredibly she isn't a tough cookie that girl sounds like it yeah many people are experiencing the same revelation that their diet is killed look I was tired all the time I'd I would hit a net I mean I was always very very active so I stayed lean because of my physical activity but by the end of the day I need a nap I would always take a nap for it go to jiu-jitsu I was like I have to take a nap or I can't train because of carbohydrate about two hours a day yeah and now I don't nap at all me too well I'm thing that's not exactly true when I've been Zoom I take like two minute naps when I'm in the airport or whatever oh that's all so you're probably not getting enough sleep yeah right exactly difference exactly so yeah it's been it's been remarkable so so why did you stop teaching oh well I took a sabbatical because of all this yeah well I told that I told my department chair I said look I had a sabbatical coming up next year I said look you know I there's too much going on it'll be better if I take the sabbatical this year then I can concentrate on my teaching next year so you take the entire year off yeah yeah yeah well then I always teach from I put all my courses from January to March I teach all them in the same semester and that enabled me to concentrate on my research and for the rest of the time and so technically I'll be going back teaching in January of 2019 technically technically you're not convinced well I can't think a year ahead at the moment right I don't know what the hell's gonna go back and teach the same way right because see at some point the technological transformation means you have to approach things differently and so now if I do a lecture online whatever the lecture happens to be I can get a hundred and fifty thousand people to watch it that's minimum so the first question would be well why would I teach 300 people when I could teach a hundred and fifty thousand that's just stupid who would do that those same 300 people also have access to the honey well exactly that's right that's exactly it and the next thing is well I taped my maps of meeting class in my personality class for three years running it's like it's there well I could do it again but why Brad's taped where I would rather lecture about new things so that's what I did this year I did this biblical series which I haven't done before but now if I'm gonna lecture again I'm gonna lecture about different things because because the technology has transformed the landscape we're not in 1990 anymore not even a little bit right so and this is something that brought up to Brett Weinstein and I'm hoping he falls along the same line same bet Weinstein not Steen I make that mistake often sorry Brett but the same thing brilliant guy restricted by his university big scandal yeah leaves and I'm hoping he follows the same path because he has so much to offer yeah and he has so much to offer for anybody who can get online well one of the things that's really fun about YouTube that and having my lectures on YouTube is that the only reason people watch them is one reason is because they want to learn that's it Brian and so it's you might think well where is the University well the University is where people want to learn Brian like okay well YouTube is the university because there's hundreds of thousands of people on YouTube maybe millions who just want to learn it's like fine I'm an educator I'll talk to people who want to learn because if you're an educator that's what you do is that most effectively done in the universities not self-evidently and so now I'm trying to figure this out you know like I like my job at the University and the U of T has treated me well apart from this scandal thing but they were kind of taken aback by they didn't know what to do about that you know was a new law and when I made the video criticizing Bill c16 I said I think that making this video is probably illegal in and of itself was their controversial moments in your career before that no Wow no I mean it surprised me because I've always I would say that the content of my lectures has been a typical but it's been a typical in a good way like the student response to my lectures has always been well extremely good extremely good I'm always surprised that I was able to teach what I'm teaching because I always thought that it was like insanely revolutionary but it was revolutionary in a really like in a scholarly way you know like I'm a careful scientist I'm a careful thinker I think things all the way through to the bottom and I'm really self-critical like when I wrote maps of meaning which was my first book I suspect I rewrote every sentence at least 15 times it's probably more than that and I really literally mean rewrite it so I take the sentence out of the paragraph put it in another document write like 10 variants of the sentence and then pick the one that was best and I did that like it took me 15 years to write I did that over and over and over and so what I was write a sentence and I think okay have I got all the words right every single word is that the proper words the proper phrase is the proper sentence do I believe that this sentence is true then I'd think like ten ways I could attack it and see if I could break it apart and find out what it was wrong and I only kept the ones that I couldn't destroy and like I was going out full force to destroy them because I wanted to come up with a you know come on I wanted to produce a book that I could not break no matter what I did and so I spent 15 years on that and then that was the basis well it's the basis for 12 rules for life it's been the basis for all the lectures I've done and so forth and like I can't see where it's wrong and mostly what I was trying to do is to see where it was wrong and I can't get underneath it I can't break it that's what's so fascinating to me about all this stuff and not to not to overly exaggerate the significance of this but just to be completely honest about it you're the right guy for the job and it sort of found you it's real weird because there's not a lot of people that are that meticulous about their thoughts and about their work and about their writing and about their criticizing their own ideas to the point where they break them down and try to break them apart I had a big problem so when I when I started to write maps of meaning I thought okay what's the situation this is the Cold War we've divided into two armed tribal camps and we've decided that settling the difference between us is worth risking being itself we could we could drive everything into extinction we're willing to take that chance what the hell is going on so I wanted to know two things what was truly driving the tribalism of the Cold War including its including the generation of that vast nuclear arsenal because that just seemed to me to be insanity taken to the final pinnacle so I wanted to know that and I wanted to know okay having figured out why that's happening what could be done about it so it would stop and at the same time I was also studying what had happened in Auschwitz with the Nazis and all of that and so it was a very serious and I actually wanted to have the answer I actually wanted the answer I didn't want to write an interesting book about it it wasn't even that I wanted to write a book exactly it was just that writing a book was the best way to figure out the problem because it's it's rewriting a book is so rigorous you know because you think but you can only remember so much you have to write it down then you can remember way more and you can write and then the next day you can go back and think okay I'm gonna take that goddamn argument apart I'm gonna see if there's anything about it that's weak and so and I think I did figure it out I think I did figure it out so and then when I when I well and then I started lecturing about it and the lecturers were always unbelievably well regarded like people the kids in the classes would always write for the evaluations at the end of year 80% of them would say and this happened for 20 years they say this class changed everything about the way I look at the world it's like yeah that's what happened to me too and I wrote that book it's like I didn't think the same way at all when I was done I started to understand what these ancient stories meant it was like shocking never recovered from it Wow listen you're out of time thank you always twelve rules for life an antidote to chaos Jordan Peterson I made a I made a discount for your viewers again for the future authoring program okay so what do they have to do rogon just use Rogan and how do they get to the website without far three.com okay yeah yeah and I'll send you a link for that thanks a lot yeah and also thanks for everything a really you are the portal into this weird world that I'm in and people say that all the time they come up say look I heard about you on children it's like and like thousands of people have told me that well it's been your fault you've been an honor I appreciate it yeah thank you you bet [Music]

Info

Channel: PowerfulJRE

Views: 5,053,358

Rating: 4.8659549 out of 5

Keywords: Joe Rogan Experience, JRE #1070, podcast, Jordan Peterson, Joe Rogan, JRE, comedy, comedian, jokes, stand up, funny, laugh, UFC, mma, Ultimate Fighting Championship

Id: 6T7pUEZfgdI

Channel Id: undefined

Length: 148min 53sec (8933 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 30 2018

Reddit Comments

Start picking up those Mountain Dew bottles full of piss, boys. It’s time to clean the basement.

👍︎︎ 446 👤︎︎ u/Ronald_Crump2016 📅︎︎ Jan 30 2018 🗫︎ replies

So what your saying is.....

Tremendous opener Joe.

👍︎︎ 489 👤︎︎ u/B1gWh17 📅︎︎ Jan 30 2018 🗫︎ replies

I laughed out loud when JP said “that reprehensible frog” when talking about Pepe.

👍︎︎ 70 👤︎︎ u/OctopussCrime 📅︎︎ Jan 31 2018 🗫︎ replies

Books mentioned in this episode:

12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos by Jordan B. Peterson
The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
The Possessed (Devils) by Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Road to Wigan Pier by George Orwell
The Bible
Panzram: A Journal of Murder by Carl Panzram
Concluding Unscientific Postscript by Søren Kierkegaard
Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling
Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief by Jordan B. Peterson