Jordan Peterson on Cancel Culture, Comedy, and His Battle With Depression | The Russell Howard Hour

[Applause] my first guest tonight is one of the most influential academics on the planet jordan peterson is a psychologist and author whose work went viral in 2017 through a combination of youtube lectures podcast appearances and tv debates is gender equality a myth men and women aren't the same and they won't be the same that doesn't mean they can't be treated fairly he quickly became a lightning rod in the so-called culture war earning legions of fans and detractors alike selling 5 million copies of his book 12 rules for life in the process if you over coddle people if you protect them from everything that's sharp you make them dull and stupid and and and narcissistic and it's a really bad idea he's made no secret of his own battle with depression and in 2020 found himself in a coma due to a prescription drug addiction following his wife's diagnosis with cancer now he's on the road to recovery having just released his latest best-selling book beyond order 12 more rules for life so i joined him in central london for an in-depth chat you're such a fascinating figure because clearly you mean a great deal to a huge amount of people but there's also people that are outraged by you there'll be some people that are upset that i'm even talking to you yeah no they're not they're angry with who their imagination has made me out to be right that's all like i'm a figment of their of their imagination why do people presume that your purpose is somehow to create these angry um alt-right in cells where i've read all your work i don't hate women i hate everybody yeah yeah well that's good that's even-handed but but i'm fine but i'm [ __ ] around but yeah how frustrating do you find that you know it's easy for me to be the representation of the corrupt and tyrannical patriarchy right i mean that that that projection fits on me very easily because i'm white because i'm older because i've been successful and if you believe that that human hierarchies are basically a consequence of dominance and oppression and that people who are malevolent and manipulative are most likely to rise to the top none of which is even vaguely true by the way it's just not the case then i'm the avatar of that particular image at least for some people and usually people who think that of me are people who've only heard about me second or third hand they've never actually listened to anything i said or read anything that i wrote it feels like the there's projections from the left and unfortunately some of the things that you say are then turned into uh well there are also projections from the right into this kind of like click bait do you know what i mean like jordan peterson eviscerates woman yeah yeah yeah yeah and you click on it you go oh actually no he didn't there was they had an interesting conversation does that frustrate you as well there's an element of it that's terrifying right because one of the things that really threatens the current stability of our societies is tit-for-tat ideological escalation yeah right so you might think if you're on the right that the far left is your fundamental enemy and if you're on the left you'll think that the far right is your fundamental enemy but what's everyone's enemy is you know i tap you you poke me i slap you you punch me those processes can get out of control very very quickly and that sort of click baity enticement to engage in political dialogue is an enticement to tit-for-tat responding it's a tremendous danger to us all forgive me for this but you could whittle your books down too life is not turn off i'm gonna forgive you you don't give a like but life is tough and the only way to make it less tough is to try and be the very best version of yourself well how could it be otherwise i mean but but my point being and my point from that is that's what i've taken from from your work you know i've read both your books particularly during the last lockdown and the whole concept of finding a purpose i found particularly inspiring and i don't know anybody's life who isn't enriched by finding a thing they adore and going for it yeah well i mean you you set what's great against what's tragic yeah i mean what else could you possibly do and so then you say well how do you find what's great in your own life and part of that is you watch it's like when is it that i'm doing something that alleviates my suffering right it's a real on you have to ask that question to yourself honestly you do this as a cognitive behavioral psychologist let's say if you're dealing with someone who's depressed or anxious it's like so because you don't know why they're depressed or anxious and neither do they not really it's mystery it's complicated you know but one of the things you have them do is say well why don't you just watch for a week like watch yourself like you don't know who you are and just see when you're not quite as miserable yeah and then let's see if we can figure out what it is about what you're doing in that situation that's lifting the gloom it's like okay okay there's something in that that's curative right and that's something in that that's curative is related to well you might say your purpose it's like maybe part of the reason you're depressed is because you're too isolated well now we can work on that so let's see if we can increase the amount of time you're spending with your friends by like 20 percent or maybe you need a couple of new friends or maybe you need to work on your comic material you know because you can set that against the tragedy of life yeah i was gonna talk about specifically you had um you know some pretty full-on health issues and i was curious were there any kind of um any of your any of the chapters in your book that helped you get through that kind of traumatic well i wrote the last book almost entirely when i was i was so ill i could barely make it to the typewriter yeah so the computer and so but it was it's look man when you're in the depths of of catastrophe you have the support and love of your family if you're fortunate and you're friends and i had no shortage of that thank god but i was writing this book and you know i wanted to write it and and as far as i was concerned it was important that i do it and um that gave me something to live for continually and you need something meaningful to set against suffering that's what you have to set against suffering not happiness sometimes you don't have that's not an option sometimes happiness is like no i i don't think i had any happiness at all for three years pretty much it was dire well my wife she she spent a year hovering on the brink of death in a variety of different ways before that my daughter had catastrophic health problems which have mostly resolved and then i got extremely ill so we've been in and at the same time we were facing social pressure of like an unparalleled magnitude people trying to you know bring this enterprise to a halt i suppose if that's probably the right way to think about it most of that time i was hoping that i would die i've been grateful for the good things that have happened to me but i don't think i was grateful enough before just for mundane normality you know yeah and you know you think you don't have everything you could have and perhaps that's true but if you can sit down and breathe there's lots of people who don't have that yeah and i read somewhere that you you couldn't even listen to music oh no no no what and just why why well nope i had no positive emotion at all and and it was too sensory like i was very sensitive to anything that was any sensory input at all i mean last year when i was in florida i i would get up at about eight in the morning because i couldn't sleep anymore and then i would i'm pretty much on the couch till three but i had to have your earplugs in and uh like a covering over my eyes that that point i could still lay down so i i could well i wasn't resting but i at least wasn't moving so i'm curious with you do you remember the first song that you were able to listen to when you came out of your illness i think it was probably something by arcade fire right so i really like arcade fire i think they're great yeah um and so that must have just been to be able to oh man it was such a relief and now i've been listening to music like my wife and i we spend about five hours a week dancing upstairs in our that's all right like for a long time two years every evening i spent with her i thought would probably be the last one yeah so the fact that that's not the case anymore and that we can listen to music i have these long playlists that i've been curating for years that we have all these romance playlists that's jazz singers from pretty much the 20s through the 50s some 60s stuff i'm curious as well you know when you're kind of cr curating these kind of like playlists are you able to be in the zone or are you are you watching her reaction to the music because that's always the thing well i tend to put the playlist together and then our rule is she has veto power and so you know if there's a song on there that she doesn't want to listen to repeatedly when we're driving in our car or whatever then i'll take it off yeah and she is very good at deciding when something shouldn't be around anymore and getting rid of it yeah so which was always terrifying by the way to our children when they had friends come over because when they first come over we'd tell them we're really happy that you're here you know and you're welcome and we meant it i think teenagers are pretty funny with their caustic sense of humor and their proclivity to misbehave but the second part of the message was but but if you do anything stupid and we never have to see you again that actually isn't a problem for us is that how you would greet them with that yes that is [ __ ] terrifying yeah well it was so funny though because they were terrified of me when they first came over which was a good thing but after they'd been over five times they weren't terrified of me of course but they were definitely terrified of tammy right yeah because she she has a stronger spine than me in many ways because i'm a very as it turns out i'm a very agreeable person i don't like conflict at all yeah and she's she's she's a little more stiff stiff spined in that regard so i you described comedians as being uh canaries in the coal mine yeah what did you mean by that well you know in a in in a king's court the fool is the only person that can tell the truth right that's the purpose of the fool if the king can't stand the fool then he's a tyrant that's how and that's one of the best ways you can tell if people are fundamentally tyrannical that comedian should be shut down how dare he say that it's like oh yeah okay we know who you are you're not the fool you're not the comic you're the tyrant she said i think the other day there was a death metal performer and she uh she got someone out the crowd and the bloke led down and she urinated on him now i don't go to death metal gigs um it's not my thing but i would imagine if you're a fan of death metal and the the singer of your band pisses on your face probably never wash again well no but the point being that made it to the papers and that became a shocking thing and it's like how the [ __ ] are we shocked by what happened to a deaf metal geek and and the singer had to issue an apology and and the thing that fascinated me i doubt the guy that was peed on was upset i doubt the audience were upset and yet we are now because it's come to the mainstream you shouldn't behave like that it's rough eh because artist types always push the boundaries yeah i mean they actually exist technically on the boundaries so there's the personality trait openness to experience and it's an evolved trait and it's it's the trait that we associate with creativity yeah and those creative people live on the edge and they cause trouble out there right they're mucking about with categories and traditions all the time but also improving them and updating them and inventing new businesses and all of that i'm making mistakes yeah that's right and making that's that's right you know generally when you're engaged in a creative project there's quite a bit of accompanying mess yes and how could there not be because you have to learn and you have to learn through trial and error you have to overshoot the mark that happens with comics all the time and it's that it's not optional that laughter and comedy we live in an era of cultural division so how do we kind of how do we heal that well i think one of the things that we could do is try hard to see when those across the political aisle from us do something that we at least regard as not entirely stupid and offer a little reward yeah i mean as far as catchphrases go that's long yeah but but it's but isn't that but there you go but it's it's such an interesting because it feels like because of the way communication is set up where you do like social media yeah like you say everything's flying around most people are in a constant state of becoming a bit confused and yet it feels like how do we the confused middle get to some place of solution unless you're living in paradise you're stupider than you should be and because you're stupider than you should be you're probably wrong about something and the person most likely to correct something you're wrong about is someone that you disagree with because they know things at least in principle that you don't know but that's the core of it isn't it that's the core of making things better we don't know everything we open ourselves up to the possibility of learning and updating and free speech is one of the mechanisms by which that occurs one of the primary mechanisms by which that occurs if not the mechanism itself yeah you have to be ignorant but you don't have to not admit your ignorance the idea of traveling again and and touring again that must fill you with joy oh yes it's an unbelievable privilege and opportunity i mean we planned all this when i was still like 98 dead because we tried to live as if life was possible yeah and one may be touring in the sort of uk and europe june june and july and then in september again fantastic yeah absolute joy thank you sir thank you real pleasure my pleasure you

Channel: Russell Howard

Views: 2,775,484

Keywords: Russell Howard, Russel Howard, Russell Howard Hour, Russell Howard Good News, Russell Howard Full Episodes, Paul Chowdry, Mo Gilligan

Id: PYM-sS-0-yg

Length: 14min 55sec (895 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 04 2021