Jordan B Peterson on masculinity and the plight of young men | BBC Sounds

[Music] I first spoke to Professor Jorden beep Peterson at the beginning of 2018 we talked about many things hate crime feminism the far right but one thing that really struck me and him was when we started to talk about the plight of young men I was out this talk I gave and about a thousand people came in about 500 of them stayed afterwards and most of them were young man you know and just wanted them after the other comes up to me and they shake my hand and they say look I've been listening to what you've been saying for six months and it's changed my life it's like I was depressed I was addicted to drugs my relationships weren't working out I was hopeless I didn't have any goal I started cleaning up my room and telling the truth and working hard on myself and it's really working and I just want to thank you for helping me and I think God it's so it's so sad that so many of these men you know they've not had an encouraging bloody word a real encouraging word in their entire life it just takes a little bit of of encouragement and care so that they're willing to set themselves straight to some degree and start trying it's just a catastrophe that that's that's so rare in their lives we wanted to see what would happen if we took professor Peterson to a place which is associated with masculinity associated with tough lives but with discipline and with order so we took him to moss side fire station Boxing Club in Manchester then you know Moss side has a notorious order around it we started off by playing that clip that you've just heard of professor Peterson getting very very upset when talking about the plight of young men and I started off by asking him if he felt much had changed since we last spoke on a very regular basis daily basis wherever I am now people come up to me and it's often men and tell me the same sort of stories that I laid out in that clip you know they've decided to develop something approximating a vision for their life and to adopt more responsibility and to straighten themselves out and that and that they can see why that's necessary because you're you you you you can't just do it you also have to see why it's necessary because it takes effort to forego immediate gratification and resentment and aggression and and and short-term status seeking let's say to put something away for the future you have to understand that you have a moral obligation to do that that's paramount and and partly what I'm trying to do is to provide people with an explanation that that carries them through the difficulties because I do believe that every person who doesn't bring forth their potential into the world leaves a gap that's filled by something that's not good and not good for anyone not good for them not good for their families not good for the culture and it's a real problem and I believe that is the case for every single person and so have you become more emotionally robust towards the plight of young men or does it upset you as deeply now as it did then do you need to be more emotionally robust towards it no I don't think I need to be I think that it's I don't I don't think there's anything good about it I I can't tell you how deeply I detest the idea that a series of ideas you know that our culture is a oppressive patriarchy that's the best way to conceptualize it and that the appropriate way to view history is the domination the endless domination of women by men over the course of the last several thousands of years and that any attempt by young men to manifest any ambition or competence is equivalent to power and all they're doing is taking their place in the pathological culture all of that to me is it's it's it's one-sided to start with but I think it's appalling beyond description and so no I certainly haven't become any less what repelled by that and the fact that I and I also know more clearly than I did when we talked to what degree that's a minority view I mean there was a good political science study published week and half ago or so that the Atlantic Monthly commented on showing that only 8% of Americans hold the ideological position that would push that view forward and even 30% of them think that it's gone too far and so not only do we have this insane narrative that's driven by by ignorant and resentment but it's it's generated by a tiny minority of people most many of whom themselves even believe that it's going too far going back to the clip that we played of you and when I heard that it resonated with me for some time and then I came to this place I visited it because Nigel Travis who's sitting there who runs my side fire station boxing gym he came on my show and he said come down there it took me about a year to come down here so in light of it to take a while and I came here and then I thought what he's doing is not dissimilar to what you're saying in fact it's quite close what you're saying responsibility and meaning that's what we need not just men she's young man we all need that you know yes but Nigel saves young men there's two of them here Connor and Hampton here and he came in and I saw what he was saying to them and how he spoke to them to bring them order a sense outside of the chaos that when you come in here the very strict set of rules maybe more than 12 and I thought that it would be brilliant to bring a selection of men from different backgrounds for you to have a conversation Nigel I'd love to for you and professor Peterson or Jordan to have a conversation simply because there are things that you shared tell me about what is your philosophy that you bring here Jim is respect the whole ethos of our gym is is respects and as you walk in our gym there's a there are five standards that you need to adhere to they are bill around respects respecting each other especially yourself especially in the community respecting the gym and more importantly the coaches which I am one that's just people the respect that they give to each other bill builds bridges between communities gives gives credence to relationships maybe they never had they've never been so previously so I really like the idea that you've combined boxing with that that ethos you know because one of the things that is typically and thoughtlessly put forward is the idea that male aggression let's say is something that should be inhibited or suppressed or that perhaps boys should be socialized like girls which i think is a dreadful idea and in a boxing establishment obviously the capacity for aggression is something that's not only allowed but developed but it's brought under control you know and I think that sophisticated psychologists understand and sophisticated people understand that you don't make men harmless by making them weak you make them useful and responsible by helping them bring their capacity for mayhem and aggression under long term conscious careful control and that's part of the respect you know I mean one of the things about boxing and this is true of any sport I would say is that you have to learn to take a blow and you have to learn to control your temper and so and that's a big deal because a lot of aggression violent aggression aggression goes astray when it's impulsive and all the men that I've met who were or who were worthy people had a tremendous capacity for aggression but it was pained and controlled and so then they could use it carefully and voluntarily when it needed to be used and it gave them a certain amount of I would say dignity but it also was part of what made other people around them respect them very very rapidly you know and I've seen this at every level of the hierarchy of of different occupations even very sophisticated occupations and so to to integrate that aggression is much much much better strategy than to try to repress it out of existence well it's it's worth at this point professor Pierson actually speaking to to the boxes that we have here Connor and Hamden what do you think I'm Connor the boxing has given you actually give us a sense of your background if you don't mind your family back kind of way so I was or I got into boxing I was eight years old I was struggling at school I was physically good at that stuff but I couldn't mentally do it and so my mum took fire bring me down to the gym and it gave me like from walking in the gym the community like everyone in the gym it gave me like confidence my father no I wasn't really it wasn't that much about why it was there but it wasn't helping not doing nothing really but what's your model of where's a male role model in Fiji and was there one until you walked into here well when I joined the gym is like my coaches were like father figures to me I had some someone to look up to I said our firefighters sort of really good role models and yeah so why was it useful to you like when you came into the gym what changed for you you said it gave you confidence and what they worked through me so like I was good as finally good at something right something that's good at so I wasn't good at writing and read in all that so in school I struggled I used to punch the walls right so you found something you were good at and you had people paying attention to you for it and helping you develop that yes that was a pathway forward for you that was positive yeah it was right yeah right well it's unbelievably important for young people well for everyone to find someone to pay attention to them and you know attention is a funny thing because if you really pay attention to someone it's not like you're just being nice to them that's foolish what you want to do when you're paying attention to someone has helped them separate the wheat from the chaff you say look you know when you did this you didn't do it right and here's why you didn't do it right and here's what you could have done differently and so it's better for you if you fix that and then here's a bunch of things that you did that we're really good and you should do a bunch more of them and you know then you know when that happens to you know that what you've done is not is important enough your actions are important enough so that at least someone else attended to them and that can give you confidence that what you're doing is worthwhile as well as helping you you know hone your abilities and your skills and so and so how did that spill out into the rest of your life so it helped me light so my family a lie it helped me of other things as well so not just the confidence and stuff so in high school I was struggling with my GCSEs and I wanted to go to a box in college there's only like five around the country and stuff like that and you needed a certain grade in English and maths so I had to really work hard in those if I were to continue in success in this boxing I was doing boxing I don't what to go to this place is I had to really good too because then I mean it's it's very unlikely that people will do difficult and discipline things unless they have a goal Yeah right because difficult and discipline things are hard whereas useless and like impulsively pleasurable things are easy and so you need to have a goal and so you your story is you know people found and you as well found some things that you are good at you had the opportunity to develop that you could see that as a future that you actually wanted to attain and that gave you the the reason to discipline yourself so how did that work out so it works I did really well in my Jesus is I am like past where I thought I were to go and how come what it's different like I'd like I just got my head down because I really I had a goal and I had it set and I really wanted to get it done so and I don't you know you need a goal you need a go yeah and he's a national youth champion at boxing uh-huh so he's a serious guy right in there in the Watson for I mean it's it's amazing hundun what about your story then I'm from the manor so round the corner from here I only go into boxing I'd say five years ago properly where I'm from ISM there's a massive football base people so I didn't really know of the gym very much so every day I used to play football every single day and I thought I can't really go far it's cuz I wouldn't get the support from my parents even though my both parents were there they want it like let me I'd say take a risk if you know I mean if I wanted to do foot one there wouldn't be like but we'll let you do football everything put all your eggs in one basket that they were down the more traditional route go to university study education become a doctor become an engineer but not bad that's good yeah to be fair which is good but I feel like with me I was a light-sport as well a lot so once I started and when I was in high school I met Connor we only same high school so we've been friends a long long time and then I used to see him traveling the world going York and I was like I'm from the man I won't be able to get to places I thought let me walk down to the gym so got onto the gym and it was like it was it was an atmosphere it was everyone just working on had has done everyone was graphed in working hard and they were rewarded for it if you put everything you'd get rewarded it and with me personally I wasn't I wouldn't say I was a bad kid who was struggling I was a I was an ideal student but once I got angry when something like Kate off I'd really go hungry but with me for boxing it was if someone's allowed to punching you in the ring someone's smacking head and punch in your face and and they're allowed to do that but and if you can control your anger then then you can do it anywhere else so it was so good and control your anger outside yeah went once at once it went off I was off but um yeah and coming in was like having people invest time and effort into me and it made me feel like I've got to do that as well so right I'm a volunteer of the year I won this year so yeah so I've just been giving back to the community and caused us what I've in the last five years been given to me the time effort big game getting the coaches to teach me how to box doing very well and so I just fought off to give back to the community and so what's what's that done for you he's given me a lot of confidence cause a confidence to speak to kids where and I'll be able to say look if I can do what I'm doing and where I've come from from my side and from my side is there was a lot of gang-related activity and it's like if you if you can't do something well you are joining him like he said so that was kind of the aspect of the community and it was like most loads of people were going into crime and it was easy for everyone to go in to cry a lot easy so for me it was once I came out the system of joining a gang going out that route and I found certain I could do well in and so once the club gave me opportunities to excel for that we went to Brazil last year which is a great experience kids were looking at me like wow he went to Brazil I want to do that as well right so it was like giving them another pathway and then I was able to engage with the kids we've been in schools and saying you don't have to go down that route you have to take ownership of what you gonna do you can either go left or you can go right yeah so you have to take that ownership and you've got make sure you're getting doing the right decisions so we've been to schools where there's a lot of kids that can go into gang related activities and we've been teaching and mocks and we're telling them listen you can you can still do well even though you've got no GCC's you can still thrive thing is that young men need a gang the question is what the gang is going to be you know and it can be the local gang that isn't structured very well and that is getting into trouble all the time or it can be a higher order gang that's associated with some long term disciplined vision and so I mean everybody needs a community and it's important for young people to to learn how to interact with each other at a social level and that's either going to be structured properly and intelligently towards some high order goal or it's going to be kind of chaotic and and and violent but there's no getting away from it I mean the necessity for it yeah absolutely no it's so professor Peterson I do want to say he's from a Somali community which is pretty only represented in this area quite a lot of time they keep within the same communities so Hamlin's now finished out what that community into other communities he's actually building those bridges between communities so people may be from the small communities who may not want to mix with other communities they're looking around and thinking well it actually works because they've seen as he said the success of worry where he's being worried where he's been before I'm always going through in the future so they seem you know achieving in whatever stat whatever he's doing whether it's working not just words it's not just words it's actions they see it as proof that actually if you do commit and have those those those guidelines and those boundaries they need then you can also do it and we got into the gangs every gang has a purpose you know whether it's bad or good so it's about ideology what we have again what our gangs are different gang a gang gets up in the morning and we run together I can train together and we're all part of that part of a different gang our gangs you know a positive game right so that's just echo your Paul in because Paul hasn't spoken yet Paul you've heard everything saying you've heard what Professor Peterson has to say what resonates with you I think it seems I walked in and I saw the big sign on the wall and it is pretty much everything we've already said you know respect community and respect for yourself which I think ties in responsibility and what about male role models it is important for male role model for young men massively like you have that so I'm my my mom died married I had many years and we left when I was 8 and I didn't say meaning for like 20 years so he wasn't around and so like a lot of people I'm especially like my generation so I teach myself how to be a man and try to sort of figure out what it is and what it means and how I conduct myself so yeah I mean there were turbos uncle's I had to go on that raises but he died when I was like 13 which was pretty much hit and QB that's right when you write when you need them you know so yeah um I've put them when I was 28 like 20 years later um but there was a big gap there so so what was the consequence of that gap for you like what did it what did it leave you without I suppose you don't know what you didn't have um votes right right I'd say I don't know maybe I'd be a bit more safe but the same time I don't think my potato father would have been a positive impact on me life I'm very much of an older generation I'm interested in other things in terms of very violent involved with a lot of stuff when he was younger that wouldn't have been a positive impact on my life and I'm a different person because of it you know I've went on a totally different path about how he would have probably one is too so what have you done that's right as far as you're concerned what's worked for you I'm in business um I do love about politics now I'm interested in a lot more bigger issues I always remember a story when M when I was a child that I was thought reading a book and I mean it would have been a picture book you know with the late she's a baby any me father picked it up and so a crock that cost me a head and when you know what you read not for now that would have been the oh yeah that's rough man yeah there's a the German philosopher Nietzsche said that if you really want to punish someone you should punish them for their virtues so you wait till you see them doing something good and then you hurt them for that and then right brutal man so so yeah so that's stuck with you that well I don't remember I just know it wouldn't have been a positive it was effectiveness through school I was because I was saying his actions him coming home I was saying um you know I was acting violent in school as like I'm talking infant school like five six yeah and I'm Sam but then this gap and to that aggression Paul because professor Peterson has talked about that the aggression lives within us and how we learn to channel it and how we learn to control it is important how did you learn so literally the my mom and dad put the fear of God in it was after that incident and but it went back over where I was afraid to stick up for meself more through school because I was then scared to fight back which was ridiculous and I only sort of got out without enemy 20s and what late teens I started boxing fully nothing and doing Tai box and open open like where I'm from and but yeah the thing about anger and aggression is that it technically and inhibits fear so like it's easy fear tends to paralyze people and stop them from moving forward and there's lots of things to be afraid of because you can be hurt and undermined and terrible things can happen to you and so struggling with that fear in association with vulnerability is some problem that everyone has and one of the tools that everyone has at their disposal is well to have a goal because that that makes a big difference it means that confronting something terrifying is worthwhile because of what it might produce but anger as well and aggression also remove fear they help you overcome it so that if you can if you can integrate that into your life then that becomes determination and implacability and unstoppable 'ti and all those things which are you don't get without having that aggression integrated so and so you said that in your 20s you started to box and to fight and so and and also to stand up for yourself those went together yeah yeah so I'm like I was you know competitively but just that confidence have gone well you know I think I was just afraid to of hurting someone when I was when I was fighting back as a kid you know because I was told you know don't bully people like when I was like five and six yeah and now you know I got the point where I was bullied all through my teens because of that and then I didn't do anything but yeah well there's a lot of talk about among in schools about not bullying and it's often very unsophisticated because it doesn't help people decide what the difference is between opressing someone say and aggressing against them and standing up for yourself or even playing you know like in my kids school there was a rule this is a bad rule in Canada is that not only could you not throw a snowball you couldn't even pick one up which was a rule I told the children that they were welcome to break I said if you want to pick up a snowball and if you can hit a teacher in the back of the head with it and that'd be just fine with me but you have to take the punishment if you're willing to do it but I thought that was just ridiculous beyond belief you know the idea that enforced weakness was something equivalent to to to peaceable coexistence it's just a it's just an insane adage so so why did the boxing and the fighting help you you said it helped you distinguish at least in part between hurting someone and not hurting them like if you want to defend yourself you want to do it with minimal force you know and you have to have the confidence to do it how did the boxing help you figure that out um I'm unsure I just know that it gave us more confidence in in situations where I would have maybe been a bit you know I'm not sure how I described it but and you know a physical confidently I still hate confrontation I still hate confrontation like I worked in an industry that was very much lots of conflict arguing public Facebook's to it and it makes it feel physically sticking sick and it still does right and but it helps us on a one-on-one psst without confrontation a bit more than the fact I'm prepared for it and want to have you right not that I don't want to come across as someone like I don't even think I fight I can count fights on neo two or three like it means our life but I'm I don't seem like I'm sort of something violent mind I'm not um but yeah I think it was just the confidence I want to bring Kevin in at this point for first piece and because Kevin - tell us about your your background okay brief cat but yeah I mean it's you you've been to some very dark places now yeah yeah yeah so mine's quite similar texture to the two boys the two boxers um but I come from a single-parent home and I came to London at age of nine coming from Paris but both areas in which I grew up in were very put on Amelie known for violence poverty we were really deprived and that's how we grew up so with that with poverty comes crammed with comms force ideologies distorted ideologies so that's how I grew up essentially and coming to London it was really tough because I feel like like you just are so many things I've heard now I'm single parent home illness there's certain things I feel that are not that an individual isn't able to control but things I think the things that are you are able to control you should control fully but I think that kicks in when something has to happen so I think it comes from with the rifle yes from for me because you were in a gang yeah you were drug dealer yeah so for me the reason why I did that was because as I said I adopted food ideologies and I felt like if I can't beat them then I will have to join them and in order for me to transition something had to happen where from that things like moles could derive for me principles discipline because Aaron do you find out about like how did you make how did you draw that conclusion what what did you have to experience that taught you that so the turning point for me was at the age of 19 after drug dealing at 18 I was invited to a church service and a lot of people have attachments or such a spool but for me it was face because what it did it gave me core set of values so I was traveling with no direction but with the values that derived from going to church I had direction now I had rules you know I think without rules you can't really travel with directions yeah well there's not a lot of difference between rules and an opportunity it's something that people don't understand very well because they always feel that rules constrain them and interfere with their freedom but if the rules are associated with the discipline then they point you in a direction and then you have a direction and like life is can be a very dreadful what experience without direction so what why do you think Church had that effect on you because it doesn't know on everyone and and and why did you keep going yeah so the first time was because there was a friend of mine he was actually given a testimony of his life and talking about his transition and saying that faith has been able to make him transition and I think when you come from a dark place of a certain person you may tell yourself that you are happy in that place but you're not and I think if you can see light at the end of the tunnel through a person that you can resonate with right then you eventually want to be attached to that light so that's what made me transition here well that's like one of the things that I think is true for people is that you need someone in your life that is associated with that light at the end of the tunnel it's very very difficult to find it yourself it's very difficult to find it if no one around you can see it but if you're fortunate you'll see that somewhere in someone or parts of it in different people and then you can put it together and so so what's been the consequence for you what's changed for you so it's changed since changing so making the transition yeah so often making that transition I was doing that due to the fact that I left school with well we call it GCSEs hey so I left school with no GCSEs and so what I had to do is take ownership now like you say like man had to have to take ownership had to take ownership and from the from the good morals that I gained then a principal was actually you wanted to live a purposeful life and so in that two years later I was able to start a law degree so I was able to graduate in law I've been able to speak in various venues and write a book can I just bring kit in actually because kits at an interesting story of Professor fees and suffered from depression and had suicidal thoughts during his life it's pretty picking up on this idea about childhood experiences in an enforced weakness really I suppose my parents separated as well when I was quite young as I think I was nine years old at the time and really why encounter was a situation of enforced strength almost so a family member told me okay your dad's not in the picture at the moment you have to be strong for your mother and your sister you have to you're the man of the house now so you have this is your responsibility you have to take care of them and that's responsibility that it took very very very seriously so really from the ages of I suppose about nine until about 16 I never expressed a negative emotion I never allowed myself to feel sad or at least not express sadness or anger or any sort of negativity in the home because I felt was my responsibility to carry the weight of everyone else on my shoulders and that kind of thing takes a very very long time to deprogram and realize that actually this is sort of part of a narrative that we're told I feel as men that we have a responsibility to be strong and to provide for our families and really it's not always the case that were able to or position to and particularly you know at a young age and Rachel there was too much for other people in that situation and not enough for you in some sense the balance wasn't right balance wasn't right so yeah it's a lot of responsibility for I mean too much response is too much yes so you were you and it's interesting because it sounds like no one really also helped you in a sophisticated way distinguish between taking responsibility and still being able to have well your own emotions and your own problems exactly because those things don't have to compete yes no that's that mean since then I've obviously learned that that's the case but at the time you know I I just didn't have the the language or the ability really to process what my role was actually supposed to be and so I think I took on the most idealized possible the brave that role to being you know this perfect sort of father figure really in the in the home and it really it's such a difficult thing to to really talk about and to express because even looking back at it now it makes me feel sort of back in that place in an in a way it's very very strange well it sounds like you must have felt that if anything went wrong in the family that is your fault absolutely yeah yeah well there's a difference between fault and responsibility you know I mean bad things happen to people in life and that isn't necessarily anyone's fault sometimes it is but often it's not but the trick is to do what you can in the face of that but not to tear yourself into pieces because it happens sometimes and that's a really tricky thing to get right it is it's a fine balance to strike and something very difficult to do when you're nine it's atticus you were also struggling with loss yes yeah with the you know the loss of the the family unit and and the kind of a grieving process there what you never really completed until my mid-twenties really anything and yeah it's a very kind of a tenuous position that we use that we find ourselves sometime where things have you have you have you reconciled and that now yes case of a a year-long intensive therapy like sort of Dane visits to institutions sort of three times a week over the course of a year and that started to put me back together to the point where I could function on a day-to-day basis so it started to lift your depression what about it was useful particularly the ability to disentangle emotions from thoughts and also being able to give back anger I suppose to where it needs to be so it was that a consequence of having the opportunity to talk I think so yeah I think yeah well well you know one of the things that I've noticed in my clinical practice and for example but also in talking to people all the people that I've talked to I guess in situation something like this is that like people people think by talking and they need someone to listen and the reason you need to think by talking is because that's how you straighten out your psyche right and you do this precisely what you said is you start to distinguish emotion from thought and you put things in proper order but it's very very difficult to do that if you don't have someone to listen to you and that's also associated with this issue about paying it having someone to pay attention to you you know you talked about mentoring young people is like one of the best things you can possibly do with young people when you're mentoring is actually listen to them because people will people struggle down the proper path if they have the opportunity to express themselves but they need someone who's listening and providing some feedback because otherwise they can't do it alone it's very difficult to think by yourself yes I think that's the thing to an extent with the personal responsibility for for your own happiness and for your own well-being it is obviously a large part of it and I do agree with that I do think that we all need someone to lean on and to an extent we need off we need to have that community around us and really we need to build the communities for ourselves I think it gives the people around you a role to yes if you're doing everything yourself then there's nothing for them you know and that's not so good it's it's good to allow people encourage people to to help reciprocally that's really that's really the issue it's kind of well that's the ideal for a family right is that everybody's helping reciprocally and hopefully everyone is stronger as a consequence he wants out into friendship as well tops if you can manage it so you know the second third rule in my book is make friends with the people who want the best for you you know and that's part of that reciprocal issue is you want to look in your life and you want to find that part of you that's moving upward and then you want to find people who want that part of you that's striving upward to win and and and and often people are jealous about that or they're angry because it didn't work out for them or they're cynical about their life or they're bitter because they've been hurt or or they've learned that they can get what they want by taking it even though that only works in the short term and so then they're not allied with the part of you that wants to move upward and the the only thing you have in life that really is reliable is your desire to move upward as far as I'm concerned you've got that under all circumstances even when things break apart around you you still have that and and that's that you know that's that relationship between responsibility and meaning that everybody needs to know about Tim salmon was the author and broadcaster and journalist has been sitting there patiently throughout this and I think it's great to bring you in at this juncture actually as we get towards the final part of this conversation Tim because you wrote who stole my spear now you've heard now from various people roads don't worry we will speak to you as well with interest in about military service and discipline Tim what are your thoughts on the one hand it's it's amazing and it's heartwarming and I'm touched and I'm nodding a lot I'm kind of in this little church or back of the car dock nodding the whole time but at the other side I'm kind of maddened by the experience that I I see in society where we don't take men seriously you know when I for this station launched men's hour a number of years ago the response was what have men got to complain about you know people laughing in your face you know when I brought my book out it was like oh god you know what a men whinging about and it's absolutely infuriating that because men are seeing because there is a notion of a patriarchy and therefore all men are dominant and they are men are some monolithic bloc and therefore we all have access to everything it's an absurdity you know the male experience is as individual as the female experience and sure there are some men at the top in business and in government's who were doing very well and overrepresented but I've met an academia yeah well you know less less about men getting into universities now the worst education or outcomes at GCSE a white working-class boys but there's this kind of lazy notion to be generous out there that everything's okay for men and the men I've met writing a book traveling doing documentaries sitting here today I'm sure like you know akin said the people of Jordan Mad Men are having a really hard time at the moment you know and it's incredibly powerful and potentially toxic when men and boys don't feel like they can be boys and men and in my experience it gets channeled inwards into it in you know that and that brings about depression and anxiety and if if that's something you've ever had contact with in your life you wouldn't wish it on anyone else in the world it seems to get expressed outwards in this kind of anger and anger of the other whether it's different minorities or immigration or women and that's is incredibly fertile ground for driving radical politics you know you look at the rise of Donald Trump in America to some extent you know more men voted for brexit they're not over here look at the far-right in Europe and there's this male anger but at the same time as this people say what have men got to complain about and if you don't take men seriously there is a sort of societal time bomb there and it's going to be bad for men it's going to be bad for women and it's just about listening to seriously if you think about them as men you know that's the problem with that that view of the world that places everyone into their group identity you know because then it's while all men are the same which is of course absolutely preposterous it's I mean it's it's it's the same doctrine that drives racism you know all members of group X are the same and here's their negative traits you know it's a it's a complete abdication of responsibility for thinking and the truth of the matter is that people in general have difficult lives you know because well because we're all mortal and we're all prone to physical illness and mental illness and disappointment and all of those things people struggle through life and need to be encouraged and the and the idea that somehow men don't have problems is tangled as you pointed out with this doctrine of patriarchal dominance which i think is the most appalling ideological idea that's emerged in the last 40 years there's nothing about it that's useful I mean having said that hierarchies can obviously become corrupt and it's necessary to keep an eye on that and sometimes they can become corrupt because they're dominated by people who use nothing but power but to think that that's what all men do all the time when they're striving to be competent and that's the fundamentally appropriate description of our entire history is it's absolutely inexcusable and it's certainly a unbelievably widespread doctrine in the universities and but what's what's kind of heartwarming at the same time is hearing young guys and men being able to emote and express how they feel and not bottle which I think you know we haven't done ourselves the power of good over the years by men not being able to sort of say actually I need help or things aren't great or I'm not feeling a million dollars but you know I can still be a man and you know just hearing from some of the guys today and that sense of honesty I think is so crucial for our mental Health's you know it is to go and seek help and to say I might not feel great but there are people who can help me through this and there are ways around this I think you know it's incumbent on men and boys to kind of see owner ability as a problem we could also say that you know there's there's a difference between seeking help and guidance because a lot of the narratives we heard today our guidance narratives it's like well I'm lost or the pathway I'm on isn't as productive as it could be I need to seek out someone who's got a better offer you know and that's that's not even so much help as it is part of the proclivity to seek out adventure because like you guys have been on an adventure you come to the gym it changes your whole life you travel the world you know you you've had us Calculon successful young career you've mentored all these young people I mean that's that's advantage and opportunity and to seek guidance as to exactly seek that out and it's different than looking for help because help implies well that you're it implies to some degree that you're in a position of weakness and that's different than going out to seek your adventurous pathway forward one of the things that people don't understand - it's not laid out very clearly is that a virtuous path so that would be one that's oriented to some higher order goal is a lot more difficult and requires a lot more courage and discipline and strength than an impulsive criminal path even though even though there's a certain romance that's associated with that that's probably better than hiding in your mother's basement you know but that doesn't mean it's the highest order way that you can possibly be and so part of part of orienting yourself in the world is to heed that call to adventure and to try to make the adventure as difficult as you can manage and as productive in consequences you could manage and it feels if I can just say one more thing that it's got a change with school you know so much of the schooling system seems to play against boys and you know by the time you know boys are so many more times we like to be kicked out or suffer from a DD or all that sort of thing and there's something about the modern schooling system which doesn't suit boys properly and that's proclivity is the overwhelming tendency of a fairly large minority of boys to need a lot of boisterous activity and play and if that's not allowed then it's manifested in attention deficit disorder there's very good work done on that at the neurobiological level and the drugs that are used to suppress a DD symptoms also suppress play in animals and so a lot of that what's called pathology a DD pathology is a consequence of putting boys in environments that are absolutely not suited for them especially for the ones that are more active and then that's turned into some sort of medical condition it's really no it's quite good you say that professor Peterson because I interviewed someone who's son of Jamaican origin was told that there was ADHD in a school here in the UK this child then subsequently moved back to Jamaica and he's a straight-a student there was no change it was just that that energy they had was immediately classed and put in a box here and it was just normal there well what's normal about requiring very young boys young people for that matter to sit without moving for multiple hours in a day like who in the world ever thought that was a good idea what roads we haven't heard from you it's important that we do because it's quite interesting about discipline and where you found discipline in your life and the military helped so I come from Cyprus where we've had compulsory military service at there for the past 60 years or so I think so it's something that you grow up knowing and it's not imposed to you but everyone is aware of it that once you finish high school you go into there I wasn't particularly worried about it I knew that I was a very anti-establishment person and did not have great taste for hierarchies so I was kind of worried about that part but although that although most people think that the military is associated with discipline or structure there's an equally chaotic element to it so when you go through basic training there's an artificially created chaotic environment imposed on you so that potentially when you go into warfare you'll know how to cope with it and I understood that I could thrive in a chaotic environment all as as you would say with regards to the five personality traits I was very low on neuroticism when put into that environment and it also might have something to do with being quite an open person so by nature I'm very impulsive but at the same time it was it was almost an air of elation to understand that out of this chaotic environment structure could arise and meaning polarized regardless of your political perspective so whether you you don't like the function of the military itself at the same time I grew up in deeply religious family and I grew up rejecting religion from the very young age as Professor Richard Dawkins would say I became a militant atheist and then I grew up neck Greek is my native language and I was taught ancient Greek at school so I was exposed to the classics and that influenced my decisions in rejecting religion and the idea of God itself but then I found your lectures dr. Peter stone on the biblical series and suddenly I realized that it's not all bad and maybe the same work that Joseph Campbell did with regards to articulating the hero's journey maybe that's what the people that wrote and edited the Bible try to do and they were trying to give you a meaning and they were trying to convey a message beyond just belief in God then like Kevin said meaning can't be found in the religion but in I think it can be found in more than one ways there there is not necessarily they need to be deeply religious and adhere to the principles and doctrines of a particular church or religion just to find the meaning in those writings in various ways right partly in the military but partly what those religious stories are trying to relate to the degree that they can is that each person has a destiny that's actually crucially important and that in the pursuit of that destiny they start to they start to see what is associated with the highest orders of meaning one of the reasons that I believe that each person should take their place in life and that this is so important for each individual is that we have we all have that potential residing within us and it has the possibility of making the world more like hell or more like heaven and to the degree that we can have the courage and the faith to manifest that in a positive way then we tilt everything in a positive direction and that's not some naive sort of namby-pamby positive direction where everyone's nice to each other all the time that's like the ongoing march of civilization that makes the world that feeds people and Cure's disease and and helps take care of children and and keep suffering under bey and keeps malevolence in check and that's all part of that divine capacity that people have and religious systems are an attempt to do to communicate that across the centuries and you know it it's not an easy thing to divine from them but it's a very important thing to understand and I really do believe that you leave a hole in the world if you don't fill it if you don't fill the space around you with the destiny that's part and parcel of the best part of you and it's not good we're running out of time and I kind of wanted to end with asking you about meaning and what meaning do you think your life has I think that it's associated with vision first you you have to have a sense of you have to have two senses you have to have a sense of how terrible the world is and could be and then you have to decide that you're going to move away from that as much as you possibly can at least to move away from that and then to follow daily is that that your day-by-day is that your incremental progress that some may see well that's not trivial trying to move away from fascism and conceptualization hell yeah and to be properly terrified of that and to understand that that's a place that you can put yourself and drag other people into and that it's sufficiently real and that's the proper message of the twentieth century and then to think about how you might improve yourself incrementally so that that probability decreases and then you can start to develop a vision of what things might look like if they were better and strive towards that and partly what I'm doing now is for me trying to clarify the relationship between meaning and responsibility which i think is a of all the things that I've been talking to people about probably the most useful to help people understand that you need a meaning in your life to buttress yourself against the tragedy and the malevolence and the betrayal and that you find that fundamentally in the adoption of responsibility now that can become excessive you know if it's if it's too one-sided then innit and you don't see a part for other people to play but fundamentally you need to carry a weight that's Sisyphus and that weight should be something that you truly regard as worth carrying it justifies the sacrifices it Orient's yourself in life it provides you with a sense of meaning it constrains your anxiety gives you a certain amount of dignity and it puts the world it moves the world forward in a better manner and I do believe that a each of us every day decide with every decision whether we're going to make the world a better place or a worse place and so that's meaningful for me that's that's that's the essence of that's the essence of what I believe meaning to be the instinct that Orient's you towards proper action in the world it's a real it's the most real thing there is Thank You professor patient [Music]

Channel: BBC Sounds

Views: 629,369

Rating: 4.9180036 out of 5

Keywords: masculinity, psychology, jordan b peterson, jordan peterson, boxing club, BBCRadio5live, bbc radio 5 live, five live, 5 live, bbc sounds, bbc, mental health, mental health awareness, toxic masculinity, masculinity crisis

Id: MRjp1-DgMuA

Length: 54min 24sec (3264 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 31 2018