Jordan Peterson | How Social Media Affects Us

so our next speaker certainly does not 00:07 need any introduction he is the man you 00:10 cornered by his seat he is the man you 00:12 cornered in the foyer and he is the man 00:15 you cornered outside the bathroom so 00:17 please put your hands together for dr. 00:20 Peterson 00:21 [Applause] 00:37 so I was kind of perplexed about what I 00:39 was going to say today because I'm not a 00:41 media expert by any stretch of the 00:43 imagination but I was speaking with 00:46 Jonathan paggio this morning because 00:48 he's staying in the same same era B&B; as 00:51 my wife and I and he suggested that I 00:54 talk to you about my experiences with 00:57 media over the last year and I thought 00:59 well that's a that's something I know 01:01 about so it's always good when you're 01:04 talking to people to talk to some talk 01:05 about something that you know about 01:07 that's actually a really good tip for 01:09 public speaking right if well it's 01:12 really true you have to remember that 01:13 you should know about three times as 01:15 much about the topic as as you need to 01:18 talk about the topic and then you have 01:20 places you can go and you know you can 01:22 wander around a little bit and be a 01:23 little spontaneous so that's really 01:25 useful and but then I also thought that 01:28 makes sense because nobody knows 01:30 anything about the situation with 01:32 regards to the media now and so we're 01:34 all feeling our way and so because the 01:37 technological transformations are so 01:39 rapid and you know they're going to come 01:40 one after the other in the next 10 years 01:42 I don't think we can even imagine what's 01:44 coming down the pipes and we're all 01:47 struggling to keep up and you know we 01:49 don't even know how much of the current 01:50 state of more radical political 01:52 polarization is actually a secondary 01:54 consequence of technological 01:56 transformations that we don't understand 01:58 because I was thinking today about you 02:00 know about Facebook and about Twitter 02:02 and about YouTube and about the idea 02:04 that people are in an echo chamber and 02:06 I'm not really sure that's the right 02:07 metaphor I think we might be in an 02:09 amplifier rather than an echo chamber 02:10 you know on I've thought for a long time 02:13 that when I'm when I'm thinking about 02:16 the effect of the individual I read 02:18 something that Solzhenitsyn said at one 02:20 point and I think he was citing a an 02:22 ancient Christian theologian who defined 02:24 the universe as a place that's whose 02:26 circumference was nowhere and whose 02:29 center was everywhere and I really like 02:32 that idea it's I think it's actually 02:33 relatively true from a technical 02:35 perspective like from a physical 02:37 perspective but Solzhenitsyn pointed out 02:39 that each of us was to be regarded as a 02:42 center of the cosmos and and that 02:44 have the power that's associated with 02:46 that and I've thought about that a lot 02:47 because there's something about it 02:49 that's a that's it's either obviously 02:51 true or it's true enough so that we all 02:54 acted out when we interact with each 02:56 other because we treat each other like 02:57 conscious beings who have a destiny and 02:59 who have choices and who make choices 03:01 that are important and who make choices 03:03 that can be good or bad or even good and 03:05 evil we all act like that so we act that 03:08 out and I was thinking that you can 03:12 think of Network models in that way you 03:13 know you can think of human beings as 03:16 like nine billion dots in a row and 03:19 there's no connections between the dots 03:20 and then you sort of like a dust mote in 03:22 the wind and who the hell cares what you 03:24 think anyways and you don't have any 03:26 impact on things or you can recognize 03:27 that you're at the center of a networked 03:29 system and that you know you know a 03:32 thousand people or you will in your 03:33 lifetime or perhaps more than a thousand 03:35 people and then they know a thousand 03:37 people so you're separated by one person 03:39 from a million and two people from a 03:41 billion and that's a much better way to 03:43 think and we are seriously networked 03:45 together and we're networked together 03:47 more now than we ever have been and so 03:50 one of the things that that might mean 03:51 is that the choices you make are 03:54 amplified and distributed not only far 03:58 faster than they ever have been but with 03:59 far more impact and you know one of the 04:02 things that Carl Jung pointed out was 04:04 that he had this idea that when science 04:07 that that elk you know alchemy is the 04:10 root of science in some sense it's this 04:12 dreamlike substrate out of which science 04:14 emerged and but alchemy was kind of a 04:17 weird at mixture of religious thinking 04:19 and scientific thinking because those 04:20 two things haven't been differentiated 04:22 back when there were alchemists and you 04:24 believed that what had happened in in 04:26 Europe at least first was that the 04:28 scientific end of alchemy blew up and 04:31 expanded at an exponential rate and that 04:33 led to this advanced technological 04:35 civilization that we have but that the 04:36 moral dimension that was embedded in the 04:38 religious symbolism didn't develop at 04:40 all and so we're in this unstable 04:42 situation where we're far more 04:44 technologically proficient than we are 04:46 wise and that that's actually a big 04:49 problem because obviously the more 04:50 powerful the tools you generate the more 04:53 intelligent ethically you better be or 04:56 things are going to really 04:58 are going to go to hell in a handbasket 05:00 very very rapidly you know I had this 05:03 thought I think I shared it a little bit 05:05 last night that you know in the next 05:07 five years six years we're gonna develop 05:09 pretty viciously intelligent AI systems 05:11 and that's already happening you know I 05:12 mean they're monitoring YouTube and 05:14 they're monitoring Facebook and they're 05:15 monitoring Google and they're trying to 05:16 make ethical decisions these AI systems 05:19 and the problem is is that the ethical 05:21 presuppositions of the programmers are 05:23 being embedded into the infrastructure 05:24 of the net and that's a hell of a thing 05:27 to think because it means that for 05:28 better or worse we're building automated 05:30 intelligences that reflect our own 05:32 morality and we better be very careful 05:34 about what our morality is if we're 05:36 going to automate it because automated 05:38 systems are incredibly powerful so so 05:41 that's that's kind of that's where we're 05:42 at at least to some degree in terms of 05:45 the new technological transformations 05:47 with in in communication technology you 05:50 know it puts each of us at the at the 05:52 center of a wide web of connections and 05:54 makes the consequences of our moral 05:56 decisions much more immediately manifest 05:58 to each of us it kind of begs the 06:00 question to like how should you behave 06:02 on Facebook and how should you behave on 06:04 Twitter I think Twitter drives me a 06:06 little bit crazy you know I'm on it a 06:09 fair bit I'm not sure it's a good thing 06:11 and I tend to distribute things that are 06:15 alarming let's say in some sense maybe 06:17 they are alarming ideological or 06:19 ideologically they're disturbing and I 06:22 was thinking about that today in 06:23 preparation for this talk and I wasn't 06:25 really sure that was necessarily a good 06:27 idea because there are a lot of alarming 06:30 things happening all the time everywhere 06:32 obviously and now we can share all of 06:35 them always all the time and so that 06:39 means that instead of hearing about one 06:41 alarming thing a day you're hearing 06:43 about like 500 alarming things a day and 06:45 so then you know what are you supposed 06:47 to do about that is that does that 06:49 indicate the state that there's a state 06:51 of emergency well you don't know because 06:53 you don't know how to calibrate the 06:54 information so I was thinking well maybe 06:56 the right way to behave on Twitter is 06:57 only to forward good things that are 07:00 happening you know because there's lots 07:01 of good things that are happening but I 07:03 actually don't know the answer to that I 07:04 have no idea and I don't think anybody 07:06 else does either I do know that there 07:09 are studies with regards to Facebook 07:10 that show that the more time 07:12 you spend on Facebook the more depressed 07:13 you are and that it looks like it's a 07:15 causal relationship rather than just a 07:17 correlational relationship and it seems 07:19 to have something to do with the fact 07:21 that Facebook is one of those platforms 07:23 where everybody puts up an advertisement 07:25 for their life right it's like Here I am 07:27 with my new girlfriend in the Bahamas 07:29 being happy and Here I am in a mountain 07:31 being happy and it's like it's not you 07:33 like miserable with a cover over your 07:35 head unable to get out of bed you don't 07:37 you don't you don't broadcast that you 07:40 can think well that means you're 07:42 presenting people with a falsely 07:43 positive view of your life and then they 07:45 compare their lives to it and they come 07:47 up short and you think well that's a 07:49 kind of deception but by the same token 07:52 you don't stop random strangers on the 07:53 street and tell them how miserable your 07:55 life is right they don't want to hear 07:56 about that they they want to see a 07:58 facade of normality in in in you know 08:01 just casual day-to-day interactions and 08:04 so part of pro-social behavior is only 08:06 to put what's at least you know 08:09 normative and good forward so it doesn't 08:12 matter I mean so I don't think that's 08:14 necessarily deception but the mass 08:16 consequence of that is something that we 08:17 don't understand at all 08:19 and so well so with that sort of 08:22 introduction I'm gonna kind of walk you 08:23 through my experience with social media 08:26 and let's say the old media for lack of 08:29 a better word and I'll try to give you a 08:31 balance to count and to tell you well 08:34 and to see if I can draw some 08:35 conclusions about what's happened I mean 08:37 my life for the last year has been so 08:40 busy that I haven't had proper time to 08:43 reflect on what's been happening and 08:45 even if I did I wouldn't I'm not exactly 08:46 sure I would be able to understand it 08:48 anyways because it isn't sure I'm not I 08:51 don't think I have a framework of a 08:52 reference within which to put it so I 08:55 started working for this company called 08:58 television TV Ontario about 1516 years 09:01 ago I had talked to a producer his name 09:03 was what action Berg 09:04 he's a immigrated Polish Jew and a 09:07 really smart guy and he phoned me up at 09:10 the University and one of the things 09:12 that distinguishes me to some degree 09:14 from my colleagues is that I'll talk to 09:16 the press and that I'm actually not 09:17 afraid of them or distrustful of them 09:20 like a lot of my colleagues not all of 09:22 them are 09:23 like they're critical of the press 09:25 Hartley in an arrogant way and partly in 09:27 a defensive way they say well they 09:29 always get it wrong it's like well first 09:31 of all there isn't that they and they 09:32 don't always get it wrong and you know 09:35 they'll also shy away from the press as 09:38 if they're being intruded upon when the 09:40 truth is generally speaking the ideas 09:42 that they're putting forward aren't of 09:43 sufficient interest in draw public 09:45 attention anyways and so but I talked to 09:48 audit for a long time and he invited me 09:51 to go on a couple of shows and then then 09:55 I ended up on TV owes the agenda which 09:57 is a pretty good public affairs show 09:59 it's one of the few I would say deep 10:02 news shows left that that are on normal 10:05 broadcast TV and you know they go into 10:07 issues in some depth although they've 10:09 fragmented that up a bit in recent years 10:11 and I became a fairly common guest on 10:14 those shows and people seem to like what 10:17 I was saying which always surprised me I 10:19 mean but but it was good because you 10:22 know it must be pretty damn horrible to 10:24 put yourself out in the public eye and 10:25 face primary criticism for what you're 10:29 doing I think that would be unbearable 10:30 in some sense unless you were very very 10:32 strongly constituted and then well that 10:36 went on for a while and modak was 10:38 running this series called big ideas 10:41 which was actually quite prescient you 10:43 know so he had lecturers come to Toronto 10:46 and and he had all pretty much all the 10:49 major public intellectuals in the world 10:50 over a period of about five years or six 10:52 years or so come and deliver bare-bones 10:55 lectures of this sort fundamentally and 10:58 he'd taped them and put them on TV you 11:00 know and and that was sort of unheard of 11:03 the production quality was well high but 11:06 not over produced weren't multiple 11:08 cameras and edits and an intelligent 11:10 commentary from people in the background 11:12 it was purely content driven you know 11:15 and it actually got pretty popular on on 11:18 iTunes and you can still find the 11:20 lectures there but TV Oh couldn't they 11:23 they they pulled the show even though 11:25 their primary mandate from the 11:29 government was to educate the public and 11:31 this was a very low-budget show with 11:32 very high quality Minds that people were 11:35 actually watching and downloading a 11:37 on iTunes but they they didn't seem to 11:39 take the non-standard media with any 11:42 degree of seriousness and you know 11:44 that's kind of a common human attribute 11:46 which is that if you don't know about 11:48 something you don't take it seriously 11:49 right and it's because if you don't know 11:51 about it well it's just gray and fuzzy 11:54 right to you 11:54 you have no differentiated knowledge so 11:57 it's easy to oversimplify it and I think 11:59 part of the problem with the classical 12:01 media let's say trying to make a 12:03 transition to the digital age is that 12:05 they have no idea what the digital media 12:07 is like I was watching an MSNBC clip the 12:11 other day about this robot I think her 12:13 name is Sophia who who has a fairly 12:16 advanced degree of artificial 12:18 intelligence and who can manifest pretty 12:20 realistic human facial emotions and it 12:24 was a four-minute clip and at a 12:25 30-second ad at the beginning of it and 12:27 you couldn't skip the ad and I thought 12:29 there's a real arrogance on the part of 12:31 the MA MSNBC people to put that on 12:34 YouTube because anybody who's familiar 12:36 with the YouTube let's say culture knows 12:39 that well you get to put a 10-second ad 12:41 on and then you get to skip it after 12:43 five seconds if you want like you can't 12:45 ask people to pay 30 seconds of 12:48 attention for four minutes of content it 12:50 violates the norms and so it had only 12:52 had about 12,000 views and that's a 12:54 really interesting example of Marshall 12:56 McLuhan's idea that the medium is the 12:58 message right as you build a new 13:00 technological infrastructure and it's 13:02 sort of like the old thing because 13:04 YouTube is sort of like a TV network but 13:07 it's also not like a TV network at all 13:09 partly for example because when you put 13:11 something on YouTube it's permanent 13:12 that's way different than broadcast TV 13:15 like it's RIT seriously revolutionarily 13:18 different and so and it's also the case 13:22 to that and then this is a strange thing 13:25 and I don't think the classic media 13:27 understands this either is that YouTube 13:28 people don't like high production values 13:30 in fact they're very cynical about them 13:32 and I think that's because they've come 13:34 to identify advanced editing and glitz 13:38 as markers that the information is 13:40 actually being manipulated which of 13:42 course it is now for better or worse I 13:45 mean editing doesn't have to be 13:46 manipulating but it certainly can be and 13:48 so and besides that a lot of 13:51 more tech-savvy people that watch 13:53 YouTube can duplicate those sort of 13:54 special effects in their own home in 13:56 half an hour so they're not that they're 13:58 they're no longer markers of the kind of 14:01 competence and technological prowess 14:03 that would signal the sort of competence 14:05 that you could trust so so what YouTube 14:09 viewers seem to like is basically 14:12 ordinary people more or less trying to 14:16 have an intelligent conversation about 14:17 something confusing and important and 14:19 indeed the the attention span that 14:22 people are willing to devote to that is 14:24 actually quite remarkable for for a 14:26 medium that was nothing but cute cat 14:27 videos say five years ago the fact that 14:30 like a lot of my lectures and like Joe 14:32 Rogan's podcast like three hours long 14:34 it's like what the hell people weren't 14:36 supposed to have that capacity to pay 14:38 attention in this era of fragmented 14:40 attention you know and Rogin I don't 14:43 know if you know this or not he has a 14:46 hundred and twenty million downloads a 14:48 month now 14:48 so that's 1.5 billion downloads a year 14:52 and so the last time I saw him and that 14:54 was with Brett who just spoke I I asked 14:57 him what it was like to be the most 14:59 powerful interviewer the world has ever 15:00 seen because I think he probably is if 15:03 you think about it in sheer numbers I 15:04 mean maybe Walter Cronkite back in the 15:06 60s had some comparable influence but he 15:09 said I just don't think about it and 15:10 like what what the hell is he supposed 15:13 to think about it 15:14 because no one knows what to think about 15:16 that and so he just has the 15:18 conversations and posts them and away he 15:20 goes but he has no idea what role he's 15:22 currently playing in society and we 15:24 don't have proper metrics for measuring 15:26 it and we don't understand it at all so 15:29 anyways I did these big idea lectures 15:32 with with woad ekend and they were 15:34 ranked on on the TV old channel and the 15:38 five lectures or six lectures I did all 15:40 ended up in the top 20 which really 15:43 surprised me but was an indication that 15:45 there was something about what I was 15:46 talking about that for which there was a 15:48 market and now there's there's some 15:51 reasons for that I think you know when I 15:53 I wrote a book from 1984 to 1999 called 15:57 maps of meaning and a lot of the things 15:59 I talk about come out of all the reading 16:01 I did during that period cuz I was 16:03 reading and then 16:04 same amount and thinking really non-stop 16:06 16 hours a day like the only way I could 16:08 stop myself from thinking was to go 16:10 workout with weights I couldn't shut off 16:12 my my concern with the issues that I was 16:15 dealing with and I was spending about 3 16:17 hours a day writing and I did that every 16:19 day for 15 years and that was the 16:21 consequence that was the book and the 16:26 writing also helped a tremendous amount 16:27 because it helps clarify your thinking 16:29 writing you know because actually you're 16:32 smarter when you write because you can 16:34 externalize your thoughts and then you 16:37 can you can use your working memory to 16:39 analyze what you've written instead of 16:41 remembering the thought and so you're 16:43 externalizing your memory you can 16:44 analyze what you thought you can refine 16:46 it you can reorder it you can edit like 16:48 mad with a word processor which is also 16:50 a very new thing to editing is very 16:53 difficult if you have to do that with 16:54 pen and paper with a typewriter it's 16:56 like forget it you you get your first 16:58 draft and that's it and so but what I 17:01 was doing with maps of meaning was I was 17:03 trying to solve a problem and the 17:05 problem was it was the problem as far as 17:08 I was concerned that underlie the 17:09 conflict between the Western world and 17:12 the Communist world essentially and that 17:15 problem was well the reason it was a 17:17 problem was because we were so highly 17:19 armed even as we are now and of course 17:21 that problems manifesting itself once 17:23 again with North Korea that might render 17:25 everything we're talking about 17:26 completely irrelevant right we because 17:28 we don't know which catastrophe is the 17:30 one most worth worrying about but I was 17:33 interested in the conflict between the 17:36 Communist way of looking at the world in 17:38 the western way of looking at the world 17:40 and I think I actually had a postmodern 17:42 concern with that because one of the 17:44 things I was curious about was well the 17:47 world is susceptible to a multitude of 17:49 interpretations and opinions and the 17:52 communist interpretation is ones form of 17:54 interpretation and the Western 17:57 capitalist democratic form of 17:59 interpretation is another form of 18:01 interpretation and is there any grounds 18:03 on which you can determine that one of 18:06 those is superior to the other or more 18:08 correct than the other or is it a matter 18:11 purely of opinion and social 18:13 organization or maybe even warfare to 18:15 determine who's going to be the victor 18:17 maybe there's no other 18:18 determining who's going to be the victor 18:20 of an actual conflict it's certainly 18:22 possible and so I started to look 18:24 underneath belief structures and I 18:27 didn't know you could do that really to 18:29 begin with you know my first degree was 18:31 in political science and I kind of 18:33 wandered out of that when the 18:34 professor's kept insisting to me in the 18:36 upper years of my studies that all the 18:39 conflict between human beings was driven 18:40 by economic disparity and I just never 18:43 bought that because that's like saying 18:46 that people fight about what they value 18:48 and for me that just begged the question 18:50 of well yeah I fair enough obviously 18:52 it's it's it's almost self-evident but 18:54 the real question is why do they value 18:56 what they value because human beings are 18:58 quite a diverse lot and it's not 19:00 self-evident why we value some things of 19:02 it rather than other things like if 19:04 you're starving to death it's obvious 19:05 that you're going to value food but 19:07 that's a limit case you know it's it's 19:09 not that interesting so it's it's too 19:12 simplified so I didn't find that a 19:16 compelling explanation and I still don't 19:19 I think the economic explanation for for 19:22 human conflict is is shallow and 19:24 tautological even and then I started to 19:27 read some people whose writings really 19:30 gripped me and I think that's an 19:32 interesting phenomena you know and I was 19:35 studying psychology by this point I'd 19:37 switched into psychology and I was 19:40 starting to read the psychoanalysts and 19:42 I really got I really got interested in 19:44 what they had to say partly from reading 19:47 Freud because I was really interested in 19:50 his analysis of family dynamics and of 19:52 dreams but more particularly from 19:54 reading Jung and one of the things I 19:55 learned from Jung which really has never 19:58 ceased to shock me was his see he 20:02 basically made a point and the point was 20:04 that you're not master in your own house 20:06 that there are forces that are are 20:09 operating on you at an unconscious level 20:12 that determine for example the direction 20:16 of your attention so for example you 20:18 know how sometimes you'll read something 20:20 and to really grip you and then you'll 20:22 read something else and like you can't 20:23 even concentrate on it and you might say 20:25 well I need to concentrate on this 20:28 boring thing you know because an exam 20:30 depends on it or a promotion and there's 20:32 just no 20:32 damn way you you're reading it in your 20:34 attention Flitz all over the place and 20:35 and you know you're undisciplined and 20:37 all that but but then you have this 20:39 other thing and it just grips you like 20:40 this and you think okay well what what's 20:43 doing that it's not your will because 20:46 your will would be the thing that would 20:48 allow you to concentrate on whatever you 20:49 chose to concentrate on it's something 20:52 underneath your will that's actually 20:54 directing your attention and you could 20:56 say well it's random but of course it's 20:58 not it's maybe random if you have a 21:00 serious case of schizophrenia but and I 21:03 think in some sense that's actually the 21:04 definition of schizophrenia but it's not 21:07 random if you're a functioning human 21:08 being the thing that grips your 21:10 attention and directs it to one place or 21:12 another is something that's well it's a 21:14 deep instinct it's a manifestation of 21:16 what Jung called the self which is a 21:18 very interesting idea so Jung thought 21:20 there's such a cool idea he thought that 21:23 the mechanism that directed your 21:25 attention in the present was your future 21:28 self attempting to manifest itself in 21:30 the present world so you might say well 21:32 you have a potential and that potential 21:35 is what you could be in time and in 21:38 order for that potential to manifest 21:39 itself it has to be palpable in the 21:41 present and the way that instinct for 21:44 further develop manifests itself in the 21:46 present is by directing your attention 21:48 towards things that are likely to 21:49 increase your competence and further 21:51 your growth right now and that's just an 21:54 unbelievable idea you know it's like 21:56 you're your potential better self 21:58 beckoning to you in the present amazing 22:01 and I really can't think of a better 22:03 explanation for it than that that's if 22:05 that's a really good explanation but a 22:07 very frightening one because it means in 22:09 some sense that you're that something is 22:12 fundamental as your attention is more or 22:14 less controlled by processes that are so 22:16 deep that you don't have a tremendous 22:18 amount of voluntary control over them 22:20 like you can interact with the forces to 22:22 some degree but you know you're not one 22:23 of those perky creatures that can just 22:25 tell yourself what to do 22:27 life would be really easy if that's what 22:29 it was like right you'd it's time to go 22:31 to the gym three days a week two hours a 22:33 day it's like you know you're Superman 22:34 in two years you can eat properly and 22:36 you know you're not gonna drink too much 22:38 and you're not gonna take cocaine and 22:40 all of these things you just tell 22:41 yourself that and bang you quit and it's 22:43 kind of weird that it isn't that way 22:45 but it's really seriously not that way 22:48 anyways when I was looking at the 22:51 difference between the communist system 22:53 and the Western capitalist system I 22:55 started to get underneath the belief 22:57 systems to find out what was there it UN 22:59 was extremely helpful and other thinkers 23:02 that I'm sure you've heard me mention if 23:04 you've listened to my lectures Nietzsche 23:05 and and Dostoevsky and social Nets and 23:07 seem to be the people who had dug 23:10 deepest down into those subterranean 23:12 levels and what I found I think was that 23:14 the communist system was very was very 23:17 shallow it was predicated on a set of 23:19 rational assumptions that were generated 23:21 by a handful of people with no real 23:23 biological or historical routing and I 23:27 think that the fact that that was the 23:30 case was part of the reason why when 23:32 those ideas unfolded in real time they 23:35 were so murderous they just weren't 23:37 imagine that you know Karl Marx was 23:40 thinking well here's the game that we're 23:42 playing and here are the rules and so 23:43 that he laid out the rules explicitly 23:45 and then people made societies that 23:48 followed those rules and it turned out 23:49 that that game didn't work at all 23:51 he just got it wrong and like seriously 23:54 wrong whereas in the West the ideas 23:56 emerged from a an unbroken historical 23:59 process that stretches back probably to 24:02 the beginning of civilization say maybe 24:05 maybe all the way back to Africa who 24:07 knows how how ancient these ideas are 24:09 and there's there's an unbroken 24:10 continuity of ideas that emerged up and 24:13 that and they're expressed in symbolic 24:16 form and it's on that symbolic platform 24:18 which actually matches our biology and 24:20 our behavior that are more articulated 24:22 ideas rest upon and so I found that 24:25 extremely useful and surprising I mean 24:29 it wasn't what I expected and and at the 24:33 same time I was I was I had another 24:38 problem that he merged while I was 24:39 dealing with this and one was that I 24:41 come to understand what group identity 24:44 meant to people like you have to have a 24:45 group identity because you live with 24:47 other people and unless you have a 24:49 shared identity Jonathan talked about 24:51 this a bit unless you have a central 24:53 pole around which you're all oriented 24:55 it's all chaotic and confused and and 24:58 you're in constant conflict 24:59 in warfare it's like that's a bad thing 25:01 you don't you do not want that and 25:03 you're all confused individually and all 25:05 of that that's a state of chaos it's 25:07 unbearable but if you tighten up the 25:11 group identity to to grade a degree say 25:13 like the Nazis tried to do then the 25:15 probability that you'll come to blows 25:17 with other groups reaches a almost a 25:19 point of certainty right and so it 25:22 seemed to me that human beings were 25:23 damned if they did and damned if they 25:25 didn't on the on the one hand if you 25:27 dropped your group identity then you 25:29 fragmented and degenerated into chaos 25:31 and if you gripped hard to your group 25:34 identity then you you tilted towards 25:36 totalitarianism and group conflict and 25:39 then I thought well that was okay in the 25:40 past to tilt towards group conflict 25:42 because you know when we had sticks and 25:45 swords we'd have a war and lots of 25:47 people would get killed and lots of 25:48 people would get hurt but the entire 25:50 planet wouldn't burst into flames right 25:52 so you know this this this inborn 25:57 dichotomy of catastrophe that 25:59 characterized human existence wasn't 26:02 something that could spiral into 26:03 complete destruction and so we could get 26:06 away with it but now in a thermonuclear 26:08 age it's like we didn't we can't get 26:09 away with it but that's still what we're 26:11 like we're still like that and so for 26:14 months I thought oh my god I always 26:16 believed that if you could get to the 26:17 bottom of a problem you could solve it 26:19 because that was sort of the definition 26:21 of getting to the bottom of it you know 26:23 you solution would emerge and when I got 26:25 to the bottom of it as far as I could go 26:27 I thought oh it's group identity and 26:29 like group foster warfare and 26:32 catastrophe on the one hand and 26:33 degenerate nihilism on the other it's 26:36 like well jigs up there's no way out of 26:38 that and I had a prophetic dream at that 26:42 point which and I won't tell you the 26:43 details of that but it outlined a third 26:46 path to me that that I had already 26:49 picked up to some degree from reading 26:50 Jung and also Eric Newman who is one of 26:53 Jung's great students and that was that 26:56 had to do with the embodiment of the 26:58 idea of the hero and the individual as 27:00 the like the pathway of the courageous 27:02 individual as the mediating force 27:04 between the chaos of nihilism and the 27:07 totalitarian of totalitarianism of 27:10 authority and authoritarian certainty 27:12 the 27:13 there was a third path and then I 27:15 started to understand its relationship 27:17 to religious thinking mostly to 27:19 Christianity partly because that's my 27:20 tradition you know insofar as I'm a 27:23 Western person say and I understood as 27:25 well that it had something to do and 27:28 that this was what it was dramatized in 27:30 the in the in in the passion story in 27:33 the New Testament was that it had 27:35 something to do with taking 27:36 responsibility for malevolence because 27:39 Christ is our cotillion who takes the 27:42 world's sins upon himself and what that 27:44 means in some sense is that if you read 27:46 about history you read about Nazi 27:48 Germany you read about the Soviet gulags 27:50 you don't read as a observer looking at 27:53 what other people have done you read as 27:56 the subject and the object of the 27:59 history you're both the person who was 28:01 persecuted and the victimizer at the 28:03 same time and you you have to see both 28:05 of those inside you as actual forces in 28:07 order to understand history properly and 28:09 of course that's a very very terrifying 28:12 thing to do it's easier to take the part 28:14 of victim in some sense even though 28:16 that's terrible right because who wants 28:18 to be the victim of a concentration camp 28:19 obviously but maybe that's preferable 28:22 ethically to being the perpetrator but 28:24 when you're reading about auswitch 28:26 you're not reading about past history 28:27 you're reading about exactly what people 28:30 are like and that's a very terrifying 28:32 thing and so one of the things you have 28:34 to do if you're going to take 28:36 responsibility for the nature of your 28:38 being is to take responsibility for the 28:40 malevolence that's truly part of human 28:42 nature and that's that's part of the 28:45 encounter with the shadow from the 28:46 Jungian perspective and you know one of 28:48 Ewing's proposition was that the human 28:50 shadow reaches all the way down to hell 28:52 and you know we're used to thinking of 28:56 religious language maybe even as 28:58 outdated superstition but if you take 29:00 that sort of statement seriously from a 29:02 psychological perspective what it means 29:04 in some sense is that the malevolence 29:06 that resides inside you at least in 29:08 potential is of the same sort as the 29:11 malevolence that produces the worst 29:13 things that human beings is that have 29:14 ever done and so and I couldn't see any 29:18 way out of that argument I mean the more 29:20 I read about the gulags system in the 29:23 USSR and what happened in China and what 29:25 happened in Nazi Germany 29:26 the more it became evident to me that 29:27 these weren't top-down systems imposed 29:30 by tyrants on an unwilling innocent 29:33 population but decisions on the part of 29:35 entire cultures to go down a certain 29:36 Road often the leaders were following 29:39 which I would say was particularly the 29:41 case with Hitler which isn't to deny him 29:43 his criminal culpability but Hitler was 29:46 unbelievably good at letting the crowd 29:49 tell him what to say you know he was a 29:51 he was a mirror for the crowd and he was 29:54 a good orator but he paid attention to 29:56 the crowd and so when he said something 29:58 that made everyone cheer you know their 30:01 dark hearts would come out in the mob 30:02 and cheer about something he said that 30:04 was say dramatic room or vengeful well 30:07 then he'd say more of that and the 30:09 things that he said that were peaceful 30:10 that produced no emotional reaction from 30:12 the crowd he just said less of and so 30:14 the crowd taught him over time exactly 30:16 what to sell them and not that can be 30:19 good in some sense if a leader does that 30:21 carefully that 30:22 that means he's integrating what the 30:24 crowd wants with his style of leadership 30:26 but it can be terrible if the mob is the 30:29 crowd and the mob is outraged and out 30:32 for blood and that's what happened in 30:34 Nazi Germany and so you can't blame it 30:36 on Hitler that's just not reasonable 30:37 it's distributed through the entire 30:39 population and it's a individual level 30:42 of analysis that's most significant and 30:46 well so there's malevolence that has to 30:49 be contended with and then the other 30:50 element is that you have to contend with 30:52 the tragedy of life and that's so in the 30:54 in the passion of the christ' did that 30:57 in that story Christ of course 30:58 encounters Satan in the desert and so 31:00 that's and is tempted there and so 31:02 that's the encounter with evil architect 31:04 lease peeking and then the crucifixion 31:06 itself is the encounter with the tragedy 31:08 of life right it's betrayal and death 31:10 voluntarily accepted and so I understood 31:13 that that was a symbolic representation 31:15 of the logos and that that was the what 31:19 would you say the embodied manifestation 31:22 of this heroic path that mediated 31:24 between these two extremes that was 31:26 really useful like that was a really 31:27 useful discovery for me and because 31:30 there was implications to it too and and 31:32 and profound implications that also seem 31:34 to work out in relationship to what I 31:37 was learning about clinical psychology 31:38 so for example one of the things you do 31:40 if you're a clinical psychologist as you 31:42 help people learn to encounter things 31:46 that they're afraid of in a controlled 31:47 manner and they get less they don't get 31:50 less afraid they get braver 31:51 so you actually act out the process of 31:53 confrontation with tragedy voluntary 31:55 confrontation with tragedy and that's 31:57 curative it doesn't matter if you're 31:59 exposing them to their past or the 32:00 present or things they're worried about 32:02 in the future as long as they decide to 32:03 do it voluntarily they get stronger and 32:06 better so you think well what's the 32:08 limit to that well the limit is to 32:10 accept the limitations and catastrophes 32:13 of your own mortality voluntarily and 32:15 and that's the potentially the proper 32:18 pathway through life or at least it's 32:20 the least bad pathway through life which 32:23 is something you know and then I think 32:25 the same can be said fairly decisively 32:27 for the willingness to grapple with with 32:30 malevolence on a personal and individual 32:34 level you know on so anyways I started 32:37 to lecture about that and and to lay out 32:39 those ideas more and more clearly over 32:41 the years as I've been lecturing and 32:42 that's what I did for TV Ontario and I 32:45 think that that's why the lectures 32:47 became popular because you know I'd put 32:50 some words to ideas that people already 32:52 knew and could revitalize a symbolic 32:54 vocabulary that people had become 32:56 divorced from and and that there is a 32:58 hole in the culture exactly where those 33:00 ideas needed to be and so people found 33:02 that they were well people tell me when 33:05 they come and talk to me they said well 33:07 when you're talking it's like I already 33:09 know what you're saying but I don't have 33:11 the words for it it's like well that's 33:13 exactly what our archetypal story is 33:15 like is that you all know the story you 33:17 just don't know you know it or you know 33:19 at a level that you can't articulate but 33:22 you still recognize it when you see it 33:24 and you still act it out and you see it 33:26 in other people but it's really really 33:28 really good to have the words and that's 33:31 partly why you should be very careful of 33:33 what what you say and particularly 33:35 careful about what you write know anyhow 33:39 after the big ideas thing Waldeck came 33:43 into my classes and taped maps of 33:45 meaning and made 13 30 minutes TV shows 33:48 out of them and that was pretty 33:49 interesting and they were broadcast and 33:52 kind of evanescent because at that 33:54 point they weren't put on the web so 33:56 they're broadcast they pretty much 33:57 disappear right and so so so so fine so 34:03 and I got some degree of what would you 34:07 say I got I was exposed my ideas were 34:10 exposed to a large number of people tens 34:12 of thousands of people as a consequence 34:14 of that and that seemed to go pretty 34:15 well and so then YouTube came along and 34:18 I thought well I don't know what this is 34:22 this YouTube thing and you know the 34:25 comments section makes you like what 34:28 would you say wary about being human I 34:31 would say generally speaking and you 34:33 know there was a lot of well there were 34:37 a lot of things that it would be easy to 34:38 be contemptuous of on YouTube like the 34:40 canonical cute cat videos but I'm 34:43 actually not so contemptuous of that or 34:46 the interesting animal videos because I 34:48 think they actually speak to a part of 34:50 people that's actually quite good 34:52 we like cats we like dogs we think 34:54 animals are kind of cool and you know we 34:56 take a break and look at look at 34:57 something that's Pleasant and cute and 34:59 maybe that's not so bad 35:01 it's not serious but it's certainly not 35:03 malevolent and that's something so I 35:06 thought okay well I'll find these old 35:09 videos I did for TV oh and I'll put them 35:12 up on YouTube and maybe I'll just tape 35:14 my classes and so I set up because I 35:16 have this theory that if it's worth 35:18 doing it's worth doing badly which you 35:20 know it's true but it's also true that 35:23 if it's worth doing it's worth doing 35:24 well you just need to know when to apply 35:26 those two principles and if you're 35:28 loathe to do something and 35:30 procrastinating then sometimes it's 35:32 better to do it badly and I thought well 35:34 I can't get a whole production studio up 35:36 and running and because I just don't 35:38 have the time I'll get an iPad and learn 35:40 to use it and get a lavalier mic and 35:43 just set the thing up or maybe have a 35:45 student film it and so I did that for a 35:48 couple of years for my personality class 35:50 in this maps of meaning class which is 35:52 the class where I outlined the sorts of 35:54 ideas that I just described to you and 35:56 last April I noticed that I'd had a 36:00 million views in about 15,000 36:03 subscribers 36:03 no one I thought huh million views a 36:07 that's an actually a lot of views it's 36:09 like if I have never write a scientific 36:12 paper that's been read a million times 36:13 no one has that just never happens right 36:16 that's happens zero times if it if you 36:19 have a paper that's cited you know 36:21 someone else refers to it and one of 36:22 their scientific papers a hundred times 36:24 it's like that's a homerun and a 36:26 thousand times is a miracle so and then 36:30 if you write a book you know there's 36:31 think one point two million books 36:33 published last year something like that 36:35 and I think five hundred of them sold 36:36 more than a hundred thousand copies so 36:39 that's a sea of books right it's an 36:41 ocean of books and all of them fail 36:44 really so so many of them fail that you 36:46 might as well never write a book because 36:48 the probability that it will fail is 36:50 like 99.99% and that would be very 36:54 depressing if it wasn't the case that 36:55 that's the case for anything creative 36:57 you ever do so it's just baseline 36:59 probability but I thought well if I 37:01 wrote a book and it sold a million 37:03 copies man I'd be out dancing in the 37:04 street probably not but you know you get 37:08 the idea so what does it mean to have a 37:10 million YouTube views well who the hell 37:13 knows right I mean we don't have metrics 37:15 for that we don't know what sort of 37:17 influence that's having we don't know 37:18 anything about that we don't know 37:20 whether we should take it seriously or 37:21 or if it's or who you're talking to or 37:24 anything but I thought well still it's a 37:26 million and that's a lot and I thought 37:29 well maybe this is this is more serious 37:31 thing than I initially envisioned and 37:35 then I really thought about it and I 37:37 thought oh I get it 37:40 here's a hypothesis you know back in the 37:43 medieval times and before if if you 37:46 wanted a book someone had to copy it by 37:48 hand and so there weren't many books and 37:50 they were very expensive and so and then 37:53 Gutenberg came along and invented the 37:55 movable type press and it was like poof 37:57 books were inexpensive and everybody 37:59 could have them and not like was that 38:00 was a major revolution right within four 38:03 hundred years almost everyone in the 38:05 Western world and then very rapidly 38:07 almost everyone in the entire world was 38:09 literate and could read silently even 38:12 which was something that before that was 38:14 reserved for a very small number of 38:15 people because most people read out loud 38:17 when they read at all 38:19 so that was a massive revolution and 38:20 then I thought wait a minute maybe 38:23 YouTube is a Gutenberg Revolution 38:26 because it allows the spoken word to 38:29 have the same reach and longevity as a 38:32 book for the first time in human history 38:37 spontaneous speeches can reach an 38:40 infinite audience for a for an 38:43 unspecified duration of time well that's 38:46 a whole new thing that's a that's an 38:48 entirely new thing and maybe it's easier 38:51 for people to listen than it is for them 38:53 to read you know I mean I'd rather read 38:55 than listen because I can read way 38:57 faster than I can listen but people will 38:59 listen to a YouTube video at twice the 39:01 normal speed sometimes more so you can 39:03 circumvent that and then also with a 39:06 youtube video if you convert it into a 39:08 podcast let's say which I'll get to to a 39:10 moment you all of a sudden have way more 39:13 time than you used to have because you 39:15 can listen to a podcast while you're 39:18 doing other things so you can do mundane 39:20 the mundane things that you have to do 39:21 from day to day like commute and so on 39:24 but you can listen to a podcast and I 39:26 found that my students my young students 39:29 are now listening to podcasts instead of 39:32 music and that's really something you 39:35 know because music of course has been an 39:36 unbelievably dynamic cultural force for 39:39 maybe the the primary artistic cultural 39:42 force for what maybe maybe since the 39:46 1950s anyways and that's being 39:49 supplanted to some degree by podcasts 39:51 and that's really something and then it 39:53 also turns out that people have an 39:54 appetite for long detailed podcasts that 39:58 are deep and informative 40:00 it's like who the hell would have 40:01 guessed that like no one it's it just 40:04 sort of came out of nowhere and so I 40:07 thought well maybe this is worth taking 40:09 seriously and then like at the same time 40:12 I was interested in I've always been 40:15 interested in entrepreneur types and 40:17 creative types and they're they're high 40:18 in this big five personality trait 40:20 called openness and there are the people 40:23 from whom all innovation flows but it's 40:25 very hard for creative people to 40:27 monetize their creation because to 40:29 monetize something you have to have the 40:31 idea and then you 40:32 have to translate it into a product and 40:34 then you have to bring it to market and 40:36 then you have to sell it and then you 40:37 have to develop customer relationships 40:39 and you and customer support and it's 40:41 like by the time you do all that if 40:43 you're the creative person you're either 40:44 you've either been bought out and 40:46 shunted to the side or you're dead so 40:49 you don't get to have the money you you 40:51 produce the value but you can't monetize 40:53 it it's a big problem that's why it's so 40:56 frustrating to be a creative person 40:58 often you know so I was looking around 41:01 for ways that creative people could 41:03 monetize their production online mostly 41:06 because I'm like far too curious for my 41:09 own good and my wife went off to visit 41:13 her her her father for about a week and 41:17 I had a bunch of time I could stay up 41:20 till 3 in the morning which I shouldn't 41:22 do and work and I found this site called 41:25 patreon and patreon allowed you know how 41:27 patreon works it allows people to make 41:29 voluntary donations to support creative 41:32 people who are basically usually making 41:34 their work available for free which is I 41:36 thought well that's pretty interesting 41:37 it's appealing to the basic human desire 41:40 for reciprocity like people actually 41:42 don't like getting something for nothing 41:44 it kind of puts them in existential debt 41:47 and so they people generally feel that 41:49 if they've received something of value 41:50 that they would like to give something 41:51 of value back now not everyone but most 41:54 people most people and I thought well 41:56 what the hell I'll set up a patreon 41:58 account and see what happens so it took 42:00 Lea about like 6 hours or something like 42:02 that to figure out how to do it exactly 42:04 and how to make a little what a banner 42:08 on the YouTube videos that was linked to 42:10 the patreon account there was all sorts 42:11 of little weird tricks that you had to 42:13 learn behind the scenes and I thought 42:14 well whatever we'll see what happens and 42:16 then at the end of that month I had 42:19 about 50-60 subscribers and about $500 42:23 us a month and I thought huh that's 42:26 pretty interesting you know I don't know 42:28 what to make of it but I could take that 42:30 money and increase the production 42:31 quality if that keeps happening and and 42:33 I'll just run this and keep seeing how 42:36 it works 42:36 so ok so that was pretty interesting and 42:40 so I thought through what it meant what 42:43 YouTube meant that it was a Gutenberg 42:45 Revolution 42:46 deserve to be taken seriously and then I 42:48 found this platform for for monetization 42:51 for creative people then the two things 42:53 were married and that was April last 42:56 year and then at the same time I was 42:59 writing a book which is called 12 rules 43:01 for life and some of you may have or 43:03 there's some Flyers that are going to be 43:05 distributed that tell you about the book 43:07 but in any case I was reading this 43:09 chapter in the book called don't bother 43:10 children when they're skateboarding and 43:12 it took me deep into the polarization of 43:15 society because I wasn't very happy 43:18 about the fact that children are over 43:19 protected and that adventurous children 43:22 like skateboarders for example are often 43:23 shut down when they're manifesting their 43:26 bravery and their stupidity often but 43:29 that's not always distinguishable from 43:31 bravery right because you that that's 43:33 like the trickster figure that Jonathan 43:35 was talking about earlier you know and 43:36 he it's not always that easy to 43:38 segregate the people who take 43:40 unrealistic unreasonable risks from 43:42 those who are courageously 43:43 extending their competence into the 43:45 unknown and so anyways for reasons I 43:48 won't tell you about that took me deep 43:50 into the into the political polarization 43:53 landscape with with the you know with 43:55 the increasing tension between the left 43:57 which I think has becoming increasingly 43:59 totalitarian and the right and and also 44:02 with what seems to be something like an 44:04 assault on well Jonathan called it the 44:07 logos which I think is exactly right 44:09 which i think is a reflection of 44:11 Nietzsche's death of God and an assault 44:13 on masculinity which is often now seen 44:16 as toxic or part of the oppressive 44:18 patriarchal part patriarchy etc etc and 44:22 so this was kind of making my blood boil 44:24 while I was all I was writing this you 44:27 know because he'd get tangled up in that 44:29 and it it's kind of emotionally 44:31 distressing and I saw the spread of 44:33 these sorts of radical leftist ideas 44:39 through campus and I thought we'd killed 44:41 all that off back in the 1990s you know 44:43 there was a spike of political 44:45 correctness in about 92 and I was in 44:47 Boston at that point and and and it kind 44:50 of got pushed back and it disappeared 44:51 and I thought well that's good that's 44:53 gone and then the economy boomed like 44:55 mad in the US and people had other 44:57 things to concern themselves with and 44:59 then all of a sudden 45:00 you know three years ago or so it was 45:01 like wow this is back with a vengeance 45:04 it's like we ain't seen nothing yet 45:07 and so that was bothering me and then in 45:10 my clinical practice I had a couple of 45:12 clients who had been bullied into poor 45:14 states of mental health by social 45:16 justice warrior types at three different 45:18 workplaces and they were quite different 45:20 people you know some of them more 45:21 left-leaning some of the more right 45:23 leading but all had the same story as 45:25 they were sensible people and now they 45:27 were required to do things at their 45:29 workplace that they just couldn't 45:30 tolerate doing you know like sensitivity 45:33 training or unconscious bias training or 45:35 here's one story god this woman this 45:39 woman that I was working with this is 45:42 the stupidest story I wouldn't even 45:43 believe it except she showed me all the 45:45 emails she worked at this large 45:47 bureaucracy we'll leave it at that and 45:50 the the people at the bureaucracy would 45:53 make presentations with those you know 45:55 those boards that you can set up that 45:57 have big pads of paper on them well 45:59 those pads of paper that you can flip 46:01 are called flip charts okay and so but 46:05 somebody got it into their head and this 46:06 was the manager of this of this 46:08 particular client that flip was a racist 46:11 term because apparently you can call 46:14 Filipinos flip I didn't know that and 46:17 and so flip chart is actually insulting 46:20 to Filipinos and so and so then she 46:23 showed me this string of like 30 emails 46:25 that had gone back and forth within her 46:28 company from the management and a bunch 46:30 of people you know this Jenny the the 46:32 typical suspects were all concerned 46:34 about this and they ended up banning the 46:36 word flipchart and you know she was 46:38 coming to talk to me saying look this is 46:40 actually driving me crazy I can't 46:43 believe this is that people are spending 46:45 their time doing this and that we're 46:47 required to ascend to it as if it isn't 46:50 insane which of course it is it is and 46:53 so then then I got wind of Bill c16 and 47:02 I'd been looking into the Ontario Human 47:04 Rights Commission already at that point 47:06 and I wasn't very happy with the Ontario 47:09 Human Rights Commission I think they're 47:11 it's fascist organization mask 47:14 under the guise of compassion which is 47:16 very very typical and very intelligent 47:19 like if you're gonna be a power-hungry 47:21 or authoritarian who wants sensorial 47:23 control the best way to allow yourself 47:26 to be able to look at yourself in the 47:28 mirror without screaming is to wear a 47:30 mask of compassion which is exactly what 47:32 I think's happening and Bill c16 came 47:35 out and it purported to add transgender 47:37 rights to the list of protected rights 47:40 in the Canadian Human Rights Code and in 47:42 the Criminal Code and like it it was one 47:45 of those Trojan horses that Bret 47:47 Weinstein just talked about you read the 47:49 legislation it's only two paragraphs 47:51 long you think oh yeah Canadians are 47:52 being nice to people who you know are in 47:54 a strange category and get oppressed 47:56 that's that's the surface of it but then 47:59 I went back and I read all the either 48:01 because they said on the federal website 48:02 that it would be interpreted in 48:04 accordance with the policies developed 48:06 by the Ontario Human Rights Commission 48:08 so I went read those policies and I 48:09 thought man first of all they were 48:12 completely incoherent they were 48:13 extraordinarily poorly written they were 48:15 philosophically appalling and they 48:18 couldn't have been designed to get more 48:20 people in trouble if that would have 48:21 been the purpose of the design so for 48:23 example if you're a business owner 48:24 they're not they're not pro capitalists 48:27 let's put it that way if you're a 48:28 business owner you are as responsible 48:30 for the utterances of their of your 48:32 employees as if you were uh Turing them 48:35 yourself if the employees utter it's 48:37 caused offense whether or not they meant 48:40 the offense and whether or not there was 48:42 any offense taken on the part of the 48:43 person that was being offended was like 48:46 my god really that's really the that's 48:49 really the rule and that was like one of 48:51 them and thought there was another rule 48:53 in there which was that the Ontario 48:54 Human Rights Commission could suspend 48:56 jurisprudential tradition in pursuit of 49:00 their goals it was like clause 13 a you 49:02 know just 13 a it's just a little clause 49:04 we can ignore all legal precedent so I 49:08 was reading this and I thought what the 49:09 hell this is absolutely insane and then 49:12 at the same time the university HR 49:15 department and equity right equity 49:17 that's that's that's you hear that word 49:19 you're someone uh ters that word and you 49:22 know their ideological II possessed so 49:25 you move away from them 49:26 right you move away from them because 49:28 equity is a terrible it's a terrible 49:30 word it's one of those words that 49:31 masquerades as compassion it is a 49:33 dreadful terrible word so anyways the HR 49:38 an equity department had decided that 49:41 you know the university was rife with 49:43 systemic racism and that was all 49:45 implicit in our unconscious biases and 49:48 that all the HR and all the staff HR 49:50 staff would have to undergo mandatory 49:53 unconscious bias retraining well then I 49:56 thought okay okay come on really first 50:00 of all you're using the implicit 50:02 association test right and I can tell 50:04 you a little bit about that test but 50:06 only tell you a little bit to use a test 50:09 to diagnose an individual the test has 50:12 to pass certain standards of a 50:13 reliability which means it measures the 50:15 same thing within the same individual 50:17 the same way across time because it's 50:20 like otherwise you have a ruler that's 50:21 made out of rubber it's not helpful 50:23 right it has to produce the same results 50:26 with repeated administrations and it has 50:28 to predict behavior in a way that's 50:31 consistent and with some degree of power 50:34 okay well the IIT is not reliable 50:37 not nearly reliable enough to be used as 50:40 a diagnostic instrument and it's not 50:42 particularly valid it predicts a little 50:45 bit of behavior but not much like a 50:47 fragment of behavior maybe enough to 50:49 even have a significant effect from from 50:51 time to time but it's a small fraction 50:53 like so your unconscious biases which 50:56 are actually indistinguishable from your 50:58 perceptions or maybe even your in-group 51:01 favoritism and people are characterized 51:03 by in-group favoritism which is why we 51:04 like our families and it's not easily 51:07 distinguishable from your from your 51:09 reaction to novelty as well because your 51:11 your implicit racial prejudice under 51:13 some conditions is indistinguishable 51:15 from your preference for familiarity 51:17 over novelty so like the likely the 51:20 psychological community is by no means 51:22 United on what the implicit association 51:25 test means by no means and it has plenty 51:27 of severe critics and even the people 51:31 who have produced it admit that it 51:33 shouldn't be used for diagnostic 51:34 purposes wink wink wink so and then 51:38 there is no evidence whatsoever that 51:39 unconscious 51:40 bias retraining especially if it's 51:42 mandatory first of all reduces 51:44 unconscious bias which you can't measure 51:46 very well anyways or has any positive 51:48 effect on explicit behavior and so I 51:51 thought the the attempt by the HR 51:53 department to make that mandatory was an 51:56 unwarranted intrusion on the civil 51:58 rights of the employees using 51:59 pseudoscience as a mask and so I was 52:02 thinking about these things at like 2:00 52:04 in the morning and I thought well I 52:06 can't sleep and and I learned when I 52:09 can't sleep to go right and this time I 52:12 thought no I'm not gonna write this down 52:13 I'm gonna make youtube videos instead 52:14 see what happens yeah so I sat in front 52:24 of my computer and I made these like low 52:26 quality videos and the content was 52:29 pretty good I laid out why I was 52:30 irritated about Bill c16 and talked 52:32 about the background you know context of 52:36 the legislation and and then I made 52:38 another one telling the HR department at 52:41 the University that what they were doing 52:42 was completely unwarranted and that they 52:44 had no business doing it whatsoever and 52:46 that they should stop and so then I 52:48 released the videos and I thought then I 52:52 went to sleep and you know the reason I 52:55 made the videos was because I wanted to 52:57 think these things through right so so 53:00 like I'm doing on stage right now I'm 53:02 thinking things through it's like 53:04 something was bothering me and so I was 53:06 trying to lay out the arguments and 53:08 trying to figure out why it bothered me 53:09 and to put a logical you know to arrange 53:12 it in a logical manner and to try to 53:14 communicate it and you do that partly 53:15 because you think well this is bugging 53:17 me and here's what I think it is is like 53:19 is it bugging you too and how about you 53:21 and if it isn't bugging any of you well 53:23 then I'm probably crazy but if it's 53:25 bugging all of you to then you know 53:27 maybe there's something here and so 53:29 that's why you have to be able to speak 53:31 freely right because you have to be able 53:33 to bumble around with your thought and 53:34 formulate things and then see how other 53:37 people respond to it and they'll 53:38 criticize you or maybe agree with you 53:40 and you get to modify what you're 53:41 thinking and so and plus I was 53:44 experimenting like I often do I was 53:46 experimenting with youtubes like well 53:48 let's see what happens well that was 53:52 quite something 53:58 well the first thing that happened was 54:00 there was a big demonstration like an 54:03 anti peterson demonstration so I've had 54:06 my own demonstration and that was in 54:09 front of the building I worked at and 54:10 not too many people came but they were 54:12 people the people who came were calling 54:14 me the sorts of names that Eric was 54:16 called or the Bret was called you know I 54:19 was a bigot in a trance phob and a 54:20 racist oh I was a racist because the HR 54:24 department at the University had taken 54:26 advice from black lives matter in 54:28 formulating these policies and black 54:30 lives matter in new Toronto was led or 54:33 established by two women who I thought 54:36 were reprehensible and had nothing to do 54:38 with their race like I don't care who 54:40 you are you can be reprehensible and 54:42 they were reprehensible in my estimation 54:44 and there was plenty of documented 54:46 evidence for that and so I said well why 54:48 the hell are we taking advice on our HR 54:50 policies from from these people it's 54:53 like when did that become acceptable and 54:55 so that's why I was a racist so and and 54:59 and so you know all of these accusations 55:01 were thrown at me and I thought about 55:04 that a lot in the last year it's like 55:05 what was that reasonable and it's 55:07 actually kind of reasonable in a weird 55:10 way because Canada is a stable country 55:13 and has been for a long time it's pretty 55:15 peaceful and things work pretty well and 55:16 so if you pop your head up and say 55:18 something stupid and reprehensible is 55:21 going on the Canadians say no this is 55:23 Canada you're crazy and which is the 55:27 right response right and so then they 55:28 throw a bunch of things at you that 55:30 might match the kind of crazy you are 55:32 and if one of them sticks then well then 55:36 they can ignore you and and you know I'm 55:38 obviously being a bit facetious and it's 55:40 not like the people who were doing this 55:42 to me didn't know exactly why they were 55:43 doing it and it isn't like they were 55:45 we're trying to bring me down and 55:46 destroy me because they certainly were 55:48 and then 200 faculty members and 55:53 graduate students and the like from the 55:55 disciplines that you'd expect wrote a 55:58 petition saying that I had made the 55:59 university an unsafe place and and then 56:04 there was a counter-demonstration 56:05 that 56:06 the these students who decided to 56:08 support free speech setup and they asked 56:10 me to speak and Lauren Southern to speak 56:12 and a couple of other people and they 56:14 had an open mic session so that anyone 56:16 could speak and it was out in front of 56:18 the same building and there was quite a 56:20 few people at doubt there was about 200 56:21 people and and I went out there and then 56:24 there was some bad guys there you know 56:27 there were just your typical students 56:29 who were confused and squawking away and 56:31 chanting but peppered among them were 56:33 the types of people who were seriously 56:36 looking for trouble 56:37 and I can I'm a clinical psychologist 56:38 I've worked with all sorts of people I 56:40 can identify people like that they're 56:42 not very common thank God but there were 56:45 plenty of them at that rally and they it 56:48 could have been any kind of rally where 56:50 the possibility for trouble was emerging 56:53 and they would have been the type that 56:54 was going to be there so I was keeping 56:56 my eye on them and they were blasting 56:58 white noise and they were unplugging our 57:00 PA systems and and stealing the mic and 57:03 and you know just behaving in a manner 57:06 that should have been shut down by the 57:08 university authorities but wasn't but 57:10 the university authorities were taken 57:12 off guard by all of this and they didn't 57:13 really know what to do and they weren't 57:15 really unaware of the underlying legal 57:17 transformations that were going on in 57:19 our society and anyways they unplugged 57:22 the mic and so then I talked very loudly 57:25 about the necessity for free speech and 57:29 that was recorded and went online and 57:31 then I left and I came back about two 57:35 hours later to talk to the cops and to 57:38 see if anything I didn't was hoping that 57:40 nothing you know of any significance no 57:43 one was hurt so I wanted to go talk to 57:45 the cops and see if it all went okay and 57:47 I went talk to them and then when I came 57:49 back this group of trans activist 57:54 protesters who claimed to be speaking 57:58 for the trans community which doesn't 58:00 exist there is no trans community 58:02 they're not a homogenous group they 58:03 don't all think the same way and besides 58:06 you don't become the spokesman for a 58:08 person by claiming that you're the 58:10 spokesman just because you happen to 58:11 share some of the attributes of that 58:13 group but we're so guilty about the 58:16 treatment of our minorities that we're 58:18 willing to regard anyone who 58:20 plays that particular card as worthy of 58:22 listening to and that's a big mistake 58:24 because you know there's valid 58:26 representation and invalid 58:27 representation anyways they surrounded 58:30 me and videotaped the exchange and was 58:32 one particularly noisy person there who 58:34 was quite dismissive and insulting and I 58:37 tried to have a conversation and the 58:40 first thing this person said was that 58:42 Peterson what do you think about the 58:44 Nazis that were at your rally and I 58:47 thought you know you have to really look 58:51 hard in Canada to find a Nazi they're 58:53 just just aren't that many of them you 58:55 know so so I thought it was preposterous 58:58 to begin with and I said well I don't 59:02 know what do you want me to say it's 59:04 like welcome Nazis it's no it's like I 59:07 said I don't like Nazis you know and and 59:09 she said well what about you know the 59:12 fact that they were here and I said well 59:15 I can't control who happens to appear 59:18 somewhere and it was old it was all 59:22 false none of that was true at all it 59:24 wasn't even a little bit true but you 59:27 know it's an easy weapon to to haul out 59:29 and so they she he no I'm not being 59:37 smart about that it was like this was a 59:39 trans person and I don't know exactly I 59:42 couldn't figure out how to refer to 59:44 we'll say her and I got health without - 59:47 and I tried to have a conversation and 59:51 it was just she was just blaring 59:53 non-stop ideological like nonsense at me 59:57 you know and just it just hurt because I 60:00 like to talk to people you know but I 60:01 really do not like having ideological 60:03 slogans blared at me I did really I find 60:06 it I find it I don't know what exactly 60:11 how how I find it but it's like it's 60:16 like it's like really loud white noise 60:18 it's something like that or maybe it's 60:19 worse than that's like static it's like 60:21 really loud static it's jagged and I you 60:26 know like quit that it's like I can't 60:29 I'd like to talk to you but I can't 60:30 tolerate that you know what 60:33 slogan means slogan is derived from two 60:37 Welsh words slew egg and garam and it 60:41 means battle cry of the Dead so that's 60:46 really we're thinking about man the next 60:48 time you want to like have a slogan on 60:50 your t-shirts just remember who you're 60:52 standing for it's like you're the 60:53 skeletal army of zombies come to life 60:56 man and they're possessing you right 60:58 it's their words you're mouthing it's 61:01 nothing alive and it's not something 61:03 that likes life it's a horror show 61:05 that's what a slogan is anyways they 61:09 videotaped all this and they're gonna 61:10 put it online to show what a 61:12 reprehensible creature I was so they did 61:14 and that didn't work out things being 61:18 viewed about three and a half million 61:19 times now and the positive comments 61:22 outnumber the negative comments like 61:24 ninety nine to one something like that 61:26 and so that was an interesting case of 61:29 that inversion that Jonathan was talking 61:31 about you know how everything's 61:32 upside-down and so they tried one tactic 61:36 and it just flipped on them completely 61:37 and so yeah but but here's here's 61:40 something to think about like if one 61:43 person who is nominally supporting me at 61:46 that rally would have done anything 61:48 stupid whatsoever that was captured on 61:51 videotape I would have been sunk right 61:55 and so we're in this situation where the 61:57 actions of specific individuals have a 62:00 determining effect far beyond what we're 62:02 accustomed to you saw that in 62:04 charlottesville where that guy ran 62:05 somebody over with a car and it was like 62:07 political polarization in the u.s. 62:09 increased instantly by 10 percent right 62:12 and and that's part of the I said like 62:14 social media isn't an echo chamber it's 62:16 an amplifier and so well so I was very 62:20 fortunate and then this person also said 62:24 that she had watched all my youtube 62:25 videos and I looked at her because that 62:28 was ridiculous because there was like 62:30 200 of them online by that point like 62:32 you some people I presume have now 62:35 watched all 200 of them but it's like 62:38 500 hours of content so I knew that that 62:40 was complete rubbish and I'm basically 62:44 said as much 62:46 and anyways it went well for me and it 62:48 didn't go so well for the protesters and 62:50 then the University and so that was my 62:52 first encounter with YouTube and its 62:55 tendency to amplify and and also what 63:00 the tight rope line is when these sorts 63:02 of things happen you know and for a 63:05 whole year it's not quite so bad now 63:07 although it's just about as bad I lived 63:08 an absolute terror of ever of two things 63:11 ever saying the wrong thing even if it 63:14 was clipped out of context right or 63:16 having something on earth that I said 63:19 before that was the wrong thing even if 63:22 it was taken out of context now luckily 63:24 and this was kind of unique I already 63:26 had two hundred and sixty videos two 63:28 hundred videos up and so when I was 63:30 being accused of all these things I 63:32 could say well you know have had her 63:35 there's five hundred I've said to 63:37 students in the last 20 years has been 63:39 recorded if you want to find some Nazi 63:42 propaganda it's like have a doorman good 63:45 luck to you and of course it was not 63:47 only false it was it was antithetical to 63:49 the truth because I've been teaching 63:51 people about Nazi atrocities for thirty 63:55 years and trying to help people 63:57 understand how it was that it would be 64:00 likely had they been in Nazi Germany 64:02 that they would have been on the side of 64:03 the Nazis and not on the side of the 64:05 Jews you wouldn't have been the hero you 64:07 would have been the perpetrator 64:08 statistically speaking and that you 64:10 really need to understand that so I was 64:13 fortunate I was protected by that 64:14 backlog of information and so that was 64:16 really good and then the University did 64:19 it another thing that reversed 64:21 you know they wrote me a letter saying 64:23 you know all these people are 64:24 complaining you're making the campus an 64:27 unsafe place you have to and you might 64:30 be violating our code of conduct and the 64:33 law and I thought I didn't know what to 64:35 make of that letter I told them to take 64:37 the letter back because I said look if 64:40 you're gonna go after me cuz I actually 64:42 like the University of Toronto so if 64:43 you're gonna go after me you should go 64:45 after me correctly and this this 64:47 document is actually untrue in that it 64:50 contains sins of omission because you 64:52 may have got letters from the staff 64:54 saying what a reprehensible person I was 64:56 but you also got 15,000 64:59 signatures on a petition and hundreds of 65:01 letters from people supporting me and 65:03 you didn't say anything about that in 65:04 the letter so how about we you know you 65:07 write a letter that says well some 65:09 people aren't very happy with you and 65:11 other people are but we've decided that 65:13 what you're doing is too risky and you 65:14 know you should stop but they wouldn't 65:16 take it back so I read it online and 65:19 that's what's interesting too because 65:20 now if something happens to you it 65:24 doesn't have to be secret I didn't even 65:26 comment on it except maybe with raised 65:28 eyebrows from time to time I just read 65:30 it and say you draw your own damn 65:32 conclusions here and so and I was 65:34 actually I wouldn't say secretly happy 65:37 about it because I wasn't because my job 65:38 was at risk and and that wasn't all that 65:40 was at risk but my job certainly was but 65:42 I had said when I made the video 65:46 criticizing Bill c16 that the act of 65:48 making the video was probably illegal 65:51 and then the university came out and 65:53 said what you're doing is probably 65:55 illegal 65:55 and so my claims which the press the 66:00 press was very divided about this and 66:01 they thought well maybe I was being too 66:02 radical in my claims but then the 66:04 university came out and said well you're 66:06 probably violating the law and you 66:07 should shut up and I said huh I told you 66:10 that that's how this law was constructed 66:12 and so and then they did it again but 66:17 and I know how HR departments works it's 66:19 like one letters like shut the hell up 66:20 second letter is we told you once 66:23 already to shut up 66:24 third letter says we told you twice you 66:26 didn't so like now you're in trouble and 66:28 then the fourth letter is see you later 66:31 and if you're a tenured faculty member 66:33 and you break the law that's sufficient 66:36 to be not a tenured faculty member so 66:39 they were gearing up to do this and well 66:43 then well to say that well man that was 66:47 really something then what happened was 66:49 there were reporters at our house for 66:51 flight for months lined up just all the 66:55 time literally eight hours a day 66:58 the reporters coming in and reporters 66:59 going out there's about 250 newspaper 67:02 articles published in Canada about this 67:04 over about a two and a half month period 67:05 and that didn't count the podcasts and 67:07 the radio shows and the TV coverage and 67:09 like it just it went absolutely 67:12 it was absolutely insane I've never seen 67:16 anything like it and see I was trying to 67:19 figure out what was going on at that 67:20 point because my sense when I made the 67:22 videos was this had nothing to do with 67:24 transgender rights this is indicative of 67:26 a deep war of ideas and this is just the 67:29 latest manifestation of that deep war of 67:31 ideas maybe it was a war in a 67:33 philosophical level or even a war at a 67:35 theological level which I actually think 67:37 it's such a deep war that it is award a 67:39 theological level and that was sort of 67:42 the level at which I was going after it 67:44 and I believe that subsequent events 67:48 demonstrated that that was the case 67:50 because what should have happened I 67:51 always think of counterfactuals you know 67:53 if a client comes into my office and the 67:56 first time I see them and they're all 67:57 upset because they couldn't find a place 68:00 to park and they're late and they're all 68:01 apologetic and I think okay well now I 68:03 know something about you because you 68:05 could have come in here and said why the 68:06 hell didn't you tell me where the 68:08 parking was I'm late or E or you could 68:10 have said thought to yourself well this 68:12 is my time anyway so I don't have to 68:13 apologize so you run these 68:15 counterfactuals it helps you understand 68:17 the world better and I thought well what 68:21 should happen was that you know I made 68:24 these videos to in the morning to 68:26 fifteen minutes long there's a little 68:28 flurry of interest and then it's like on 68:30 to the next thing but that is not what 68:32 happened that didn't happen even a 68:34 little bit what happened was so opposite 68:37 from that that I 68:38 I still don't know what to make of it 68:39 and of course this is part of it the 68:41 fact that I'm here talking to all of you 68:42 people and and so and then what happened 68:49 was that the press flipped and came on 68:52 my side so 200 Canadian newspapers 68:55 there's a consortium came out and said 68:57 well we support Peterson and then a huge 69:00 number of mainstream journalists like 69:02 that the powerful independent mainstream 69:04 journalists Barbra Kay Antonella 69:09 Vanilla's last name can ever remember 69:11 names so embarrassing Margaret went a-- 69:14 Conrad black at crazy Newfie he goes on 69:18 CBC at night what's his name Rex Murphy 69:22 yeah they all came out on on my side 69:25 because 69:25 what they did they did the journalistic 69:27 homework and they went and read the 69:29 things I read and they found out that if 69:31 anything I was understating the 69:34 catastrophe that was written into the 69:36 Ontario Human Rights Commission website 69:39 so for example one of the catastrophes 69:41 was they wrote in a social 69:43 constructionist view of gender identity 69:46 that's law in Canada now and like it's 69:49 hard to say exactly how significant that 69:51 is if you don't know what it means is 69:55 maybe is that to have a view that 69:58 biology is the primary determinant of 70:01 gender identity is now illegal now I 70:04 don't know that for sure and you can say 70:06 well maybe that's alarmist but hey I 70:09 know how ideas unfold across time you 70:12 know you have an idea you put it in the 70:14 law the law is a living thing it's got 70:17 lots of tentacles nobody knows how it 70:18 unfolds you throw something new in there 70:20 you don't even know what it is you're 70:21 throwing in you throw a demand that a 70:24 social constructionist view of gender 70:26 identity is now legally true so what do 70:28 you do with all the evolutionary 70:29 biologists like like Brett who say no 70:34 that's wrong it's partly socially 70:37 constructed like everything is among 70:39 human beings and so anyways the 70:40 journalist went and wrote read that and 70:42 they thought oh well this guy first of 70:46 all isn't any of those things that he's 70:48 been accused of one of the funniest days 70:50 of my life was I went to this lecture 70:53 where I was being accused of like being 70:56 a racist and the transfer band a bigot 70:58 and all of these things and the same day 71:00 literally the same day there were 30 71:02 people in my house on the third floor 71:04 and about 15 of them were from this 71:07 native tribe quak quak a walk they live 71:10 on northern tip of northern Vancouver 71:12 and I'd established a relationship with 71:14 a carver there named Charles Joseph who 71:16 recently had a huge totem pole erected 71:18 in front of the Montreal Museum of Fine 71:19 Art I'd established a working 71:21 relationship with him he was a 71:22 residential school survivor and I'd been 71:25 buying a bunch of his art and I built a 71:26 replica a modern replica of a Quaqua big 71:30 house on my third floor with his help 71:32 and filled it with totem poles and all 71:33 these things he brought a bunch of his 71:35 people to the to Toronto and had the 71:37 induction ceremony and I was inducted 71:39 to their tribe and that was the same day 71:41 it was like what do you make of that 71:44 it's it's such it was so surreal you 71:47 know to go from one of those worlds to 71:49 the other and and I had many surreal 71:51 days like that anyways then I had this 71:56 debate at the University which the 71:58 university graciously decided to host 72:00 and I talked a lot to the Dean and we 72:02 kind of came to some terms and they 72:04 basically decided that they would leave 72:07 me alone and I had a terrible 72:09 catastrophe of Health in December I just 72:12 it was absolutely unbearable I don't 72:14 exactly know what happened but I could 72:16 barely get it get going to teach in 72:18 January I was very shaky for for like 72:21 two months but I but I it it went 72:25 forward and and the students were very 72:26 welcoming and inviting so that was very 72:28 good but then all of this crazy 72:31 background media explosion didn't quit 72:35 at all it just kept snowballing and 72:37 snowballing and snowballing and you know 72:39 and then I was talking to people GAD sod 72:41 was one of the early people who 72:43 interviewed me you know and I'm gonna be 72:45 speaking with him at November eleventh 72:47 in Toronto and I'm actually quite afraid 72:48 of that because I think the radicals who 72:51 shut us down at Ryerson I know full well 72:53 they're planning to come out in full 72:55 number and I really don't I'm really 72:57 concerned about that and if you know 72:59 anybody who's going and who's 73:00 purportedly supporters let's say of what 73:03 we're doing I really would like you to 73:05 encourage them to like keep the keep 73:09 themselves in control it's like I know 73:13 there might be agent provocateurs in the 73:15 crowd because these people are certain 73:17 and capable of that but I don't want 73:19 anything stupid to happen now we're not 73:21 gonna cancel it because because we're 73:23 not cancelling it and that's that but I 73:26 don't want anything stupid to happen it 73:28 would be better if it didn't so anyways 73:32 I talked to God sod and then a whole 73:34 bunch of other youtubers and then I got 73:36 to be aware of this whole YouTube 73:38 universe that you know that that 73:41 Jonathan was talking about and that's 73:43 been an unbelievably bizarre experience 73:45 because it is the case that there's 73:48 nothing really uniting us in some sense 73:50 we're very different people like I'm 73:51 very different than 73:53 then Jill Rogan for example and I was on 73:55 this show called h3h3 the other day and 73:58 he's this crazy Israeli clown comedian 74:01 you know and and Dave Rubens and a 74:04 married gay guy and you know and well in 74:09 God's out is a Lebanese refugee 74:11 basically if there's nothing about us 74:13 that's the same except something is 74:16 uniting us and we all kind of know about 74:18 each other now and we're all 74:19 communicating and and I don't know what 74:22 that means exactly I don't know what 74:25 that means and then at the same time so 74:29 that's all being extremely strange this 74:31 multiplication of voice that the 74:35 internet provides you know for better or 74:37 for worse and I think that is what it is 74:38 it's a it's a moral amplifier and I also 74:42 think that these AI systems that we're 74:44 building our moral amplifiers and and 74:47 they're they're gonna be moral 74:48 amplifiers to a degree that we can't 74:50 even imagine even knowing how much 74:53 Facebook and Twitter and so forth our 74:56 moral amplifiers so we bloody well 74:57 better be careful because we're building 74:59 super intelligent machines and they're 75:01 going to be patterned on us so so we 75:07 have to watch our step and that's 75:10 basically what I've been telling people 75:11 you know because I've been trying not to 75:14 be political about this in some sense I 75:17 think it's a degeneration because I'm 75:20 more philosophically minded and it's 75:22 when things become political around me 75:25 it's like I'm at the wrong level of 75:26 analysis I'm not facing things properly 75:29 but I've also found that and this has 75:32 been a strange thing to see I've been 75:36 talking to people about responsibility 75:38 and truth and the and religious topics 75:40 as well now for really intensely for the 75:43 last year really for my whole career but 75:44 really intensely for the last year and 75:46 one of the things that's strange and 75:48 this is another way the world is 75:49 upside-down is that after being fed a 75:52 non-stop diet of freedom and rights for 75:54 60 years people are starving to death 75:57 for a diet of constraint and 76:01 responsibility and who the hell would 76:03 have ever thought that was saleable you 76:04 know and I have people coming up to me 76:06 all 76:06 the Timelords it already happened many 76:07 times today they say well you know 76:09 you've talked about responsibility I've 76:11 been listening to your YouTube videos 76:12 it's really straightened out my life I 76:14 now have a purpose I'm not nihilistic 76:16 and when I talk to people about 76:19 responsibility and rights especially 76:21 young men in my audiences are mostly 76:24 young men man you can hear a pin drop 76:26 you think well what's going on there 76:28 that's so weird it's like it's this it's 76:31 this crazy inversion it's the least 76:34 saleable thing possible has become the 76:37 thing that's most in demand say like 76:39 have a hard life do something difficult 76:41 get yourself get your act together quit 76:44 blaming other people assume that you're 76:46 the problem start small with like non 76:48 heroic activities don't broadcast it in 76:51 public right pick up something heavy and 76:54 assume that you're contributing in some 76:56 important manner to the destiny of the 76:58 world and like let your soul quake when 77:01 you understand what that means and 77:02 everybody's thinking yes that's exactly 77:04 what I want to hear it's exactly what 77:05 it's like what the hell 77:15 you know and then there's these biblical 77:17 lectures and I thought I thought this is 77:19 another upside down thing I thought okay 77:21 as I put business plans together before 77:24 and you know I know how you evaluate a 77:26 business plan so here's the business 77:27 plan I'm gonna lay out $60,000 to rent a 77:31 theater for 12 weeks and I'm going to 77:34 deliver a series of lectures on the 77:35 Bible and that's a profit generating 77:39 enterprise do you want to invest it's 77:42 like you know get this guy needs 77:45 anti-psychotic medication and he needs 77:47 it quickly and so so I thought well I'm 77:52 doing this because I want to walk 77:53 through these stories and the reason I 77:56 want to walk through these stories is 77:57 because they're foundational stories I 77:59 understand that they're they're are 78:01 foundational stories for better or for 78:03 worse and we can't get rid of them 78:05 without getting rid of the foundation 78:07 and that's a bad idea 78:09 so at least we better understand them 78:11 before we dispense with them you know 78:13 and that goes for me too and so I 78:15 started doing that and they're 78:17 ridiculously popular like they always 78:19 sell out that the audience is dead 78:21 silent when and and the the atmosphere 78:24 of the room is really really positive 78:27 not that namby-pamby you know wretched 78:30 harmless way but in the sort of charged 78:33 energy looking for a good thing to do 78:35 way and the questions are really 78:37 intelligent and so and and deep - and so 78:40 that's really cool and then you know I 78:41 release them on the net and the most 78:43 popular video I have ever made is an 78:45 introduction to the idea of God which is 78:47 the intro to this biblical series and 78:50 it's got like eight hundred and fifty 78:51 thousand views and and then I get all 78:53 these like Jonathan said he's got all 78:55 these atheists supporting him he's a 78:56 bloody Orthodox icon car Virts what the 78:59 hell's up with that and like a 79:02 tremendous number of the people who are 79:04 writing me uncommon on YouTube are also 79:06 atheists they're saying well you know 79:08 I'm an atheist committed atheist and but 79:10 I've been really interested in what 79:12 you've been saying about these religious 79:13 stories and so that's another indication 79:15 of the fact that everything is upside 79:17 down and so and I'm gonna keep making 79:21 those biblical videos because I've been 79:23 trying to sort through my priorities and 79:25 I don't know what my priorities are 79:26 because my life is completely 79:28 surreal like it's like I'm in a it's 79:32 like I stepped into a parallel universe 79:33 you know and so I've been trying to 79:38 figure out what should I be doing and 79:39 one thing I do know is that I'm going to 79:41 continue with those biblical lectures 79:43 because I think they might be the most 79:44 significant thing that I'm doing okay 79:48 and then I'll just close and say well 79:49 you know with my colleagues I've also 79:52 been working on these programs that help 79:54 people get their lives together like the 79:56 self authoring suite for example which 79:58 some of you might be familiar with and 80:00 of course one of the things that's been 80:01 a consequence and we've done research on 80:04 especially the future authoring program 80:05 really helps people you know if you give 80:07 it to university students especially the 80:09 ones that don't know what they're doing 80:10 and are kind of alienated they're way 80:12 more likely to stay in university and 80:14 they get much better grades so that's 80:16 really cool and so the the internet 80:19 these new communication channels has 80:21 also made it possible to deliver 80:23 reasonably high quality psychological 80:25 interventions that are devoted to 80:27 helping people improve their lives and 80:29 straightening themselves out at 80:30 extremely low cost or extraordinarily 80:32 widely and so now thousands and tens of 80:35 thousands of people have done those 80:37 programs now and so I get letters all 80:39 the time from people saying this has 80:41 really helped me and you know I was on 80:42 the verge of suicide and this brought me 80:44 back from the brink and like it's really 80:45 nice to get letters like that you know 80:47 and here's something else that's 80:49 interesting you know people have been 80:52 assuming that I've been deluge by hate 80:54 mail you know so they're feeling kind of 80:56 sorry for me and like I've like had five 80:59 pieces of hate mail in the last year and 81:02 that's it so like I don't understand 81:05 that it's I don't know what it is maybe 81:07 the SJW types don't have the energy to 81:09 pen a hate letter although they 81:10 certainly seem to but for some reason 81:13 although they'll come out in protest 81:15 like they did it McMaster they are 81:17 they're not they're not really directly 81:21 going after me with those sorts of 81:24 channels of communication someone 81:26 spectacularly reprehensible just 81:28 littered my neighborhood I actually know 81:30 who it is littered my neighborhood with 81:33 community safety warnings you know 81:35 claiming that I was well you know the 81:37 general Satan himself in various 81:40 manifestations 81:41 essentially and one of the things that 81:43 was so funny if you find these sorts of 81:45 things funny is that they have this 81:46 picture of me that's the background of 81:48 the poster like I'm looking really 81:50 aggressive a yelling like like really 81:53 like I'm gonna bite a child and so 81:54 that's the that's that's the community 81:57 safety warning rights look out for this 81:59 man and here's here's the way they play 82:03 fast and loose with the truth so that 82:05 picture was from that free speech rally 82:07 I told you about and the reason that I'm 82:09 yelling is because the same people 82:12 because I know who did it the same 82:14 people were the ones who took the 82:16 microphone in the PA system and so the 82:18 only way I could communicate with the 82:20 crowd was to yell and so I looked kind 82:22 of aggressive and I was kind of 82:23 irritated a it's like what the hell 82:26 white noise you're blasting me with 82:27 white noise and you're taking the amps 82:29 and no one's doing anything about it 82:30 it's like I'm not gonna stop talking 82:32 because you're because of your dopey 82:34 tricks and so I was you know reasonably 82:37 fired up and and I had to talk really 82:39 loudly because there was white noise 82:41 blaring and so that's the picture that 82:43 they used to show the demonic side of 82:46 Jordan Peterson and that's such a lie 82:48 hey that's the lies embedded right in 82:50 the poster it's like the only thing you 82:52 could find that would make me look 82:54 reprehensible is an action that I took 82:56 as a direct consequence of your 82:57 misbehavior in a public forum but they 83:00 don't care they don't care or maybe they 83:03 do care and maybe they're happy that at 83:05 the base of the poster is a is there an 83:07 extraordinarily deceptive falsehood you 83:10 know they're happy about that 83:12 so all right so let's sum up you know 83:19 I'm not gonna make a case for the 83:20 antipathy of the old media to the new 83:22 media because I've actually been treated 83:24 pretty well by the old media and I can 83:26 tell you that the Canadian journalists 83:28 the ones that you respect are very much 83:31 afraid for their personal safety for 83:35 their reputation and for their 83:37 livelihood and so they're actually quite 83:39 brave Margaret went is a good example of 83:42 that but so are the other people that I 83:44 listed Christie Blachford is another one 83:46 and it's and it's an Antonella I still 83:50 didn't get it 83:52 anyways so it's not like they're 83:55 high-and-mighty people who have a 83:57 tremendous amount of power who are like 83:59 misusing their status that they're not 84:01 there they're walking on eggshells all 84:03 those media empires are crumbling 84:07 crumbling like mad The Globe and Mail is 84:09 crumbling CBC is crumbling they can't 84:11 get anybody to watch any of their stuff 84:13 online because they don't understand the 84:15 the the the ethos but like I don't see 84:21 it as a polarization exactly between the 84:24 old media and the new media I just see 84:26 it as we're in the brave new world of 84:28 instantaneous permanent verbal 84:31 communication and no one has any idea 84:33 what that means 84:35 and so it's producing all these strange 84:37 phenomena like these new YouTube stars 84:39 that have really come out of nowhere and 84:41 and and people are attracted to them 84:45 because of the rawness and their and 84:47 their unedited quality you know when Joe 84:49 Rogan posts hosts posts a video it's 84:51 every bit of it's posted so you you get 84:54 to make up your own mind about what 84:55 you're going to conclude and so that 84:58 seems to be a really good thing so maybe 84:59 that means that free speech is alive and 85:01 well you know and maybe it's even 85:03 flourishing who knows so I can't draw 85:08 any real conclusions about where we're 85:11 at with regards to media except the one 85:14 I started with which which is and it's 85:17 sort of related to this message of 85:18 personal responsibility which is your 85:22 voice is amplified far beyond what it 85:24 ever has been in the past and for every 85:25 single one of us and it can get 85:28 amplified if you're not careful it can 85:29 get amplified way more than you'd ever 85:31 hope or suspect like you know if you 85:34 make the wrong mistake in your life at 85:36 some point you could be the next viral 85:38 video you know and that's pretty 85:41 terrifying thought and it's no wonder 85:43 people are anxious about all of that but 85:45 I do think it amplifies your effect on 85:47 the world and so it's all the more 85:49 reason to get your act together and to 85:51 be careful with what you say and be 85:52 careful with what you do because now 85:55 we're at a point in history where the 85:57 fact that you're intimately connected 85:59 with the rest of mankind let's say 86:01 present and future is manifest almost 86:05 instantaneous 86:05 and we need to take that seriously and 86:08 hopefully we can take it seriously 86:10 enough so that we ramp the polarization 86:13 back you know and figure out how to 86:16 communicate with one another and put 86:18 things straight again at a deep level so 86:20 that we can move towards a positive 86:22 future because we could have one you 86:23 know like things are shaky and chaotic 86:26 right now and strange and surreal on 86:28 multiple dimensions but we're also on 86:31 the cusp of a technological revolution 86:32 the likes of which no one can even 86:34 conceive and maybe things could become 86:37 incredibly much better if we're if we 86:40 walk carefully and think carefully and 86:42 orient ourselves properly and and and so 86:46 that's what I hope that we all do and 86:48 that's what I'm trying to promote when I 86:49 do my videos and all of that so and that 86:53 seems to people seem to find that useful 86:55 and they actually seem to be doing it 86:57 and I think that's better than engaging 86:59 in the polarized wars and trying to be 87:01 right and win the arguments and all of 87:02 that because I just don't think that 87:04 that's gonna work so so be careful and 87:09 be awake and pay attention to what you 87:12 say and clean up your rooms and that's 87:16 good enough thank you 87:18 [Applause] 87:30

Channel: The Free Speech Club

Views: 314,897

Rating: 4.8724151 out of 5

Keywords: jordan peterson, social media, jordan peterson social media, jordan peterson lecture, jordan peterson vancouver, jordan b peterson, jordanbpeterson, psychoanalysis, existentialism, psychology, maps of meaning, university of toronto, ubc free speech club, free speech, deplatforming, censorship, lecture, archetypes, clinical psychology, 12 rules for life, peterson, crime and punishment, conscientiousness, jordan peterson ubc, jordan peterson free speech club

Id: L6Wx_1daQJM

Length: 87min 33sec (5253 seconds)

Published: Sat May 11 2019