Jordan Peterson on Gender, Patriarchy and the Slide Towards Tyranny

hello I'm Anne McElroy and welcome to the intelligence squared podcast teamed up this week with economist radio you can find out about intelligence squared podcasts and live events at intelligence squared comm my guest is Jordan Peterson a clinical psychologist and professor at the University of Toronto he's just written 12 rules for life an antidote to chaos rule number one is stand up straight with your shoulders back rule number four compare yourself to who you were yesterday not to who someone else is today rule number six set your house in perfect order before you criticize the world I've already felt that one and rule number twelve pet a cat when you encounter one on the street so far so modern folksy but Peterson is best known these days as a scourge of much modern liberal thinking a stance that's brought him at last following of fans and detractors it all began when beyond the lecture hall Peterson took to answering questions in an online forum he says his procrastination induced musings hit a nerve they certainly did he now has hundreds of thousands of followers on social media his YouTube channel has over a million subscribers with videos such as identity politics and the Marxist lie of white privilege and the psychological significance of the biblical stories he wants to bring order to a world of chaos Jordan Peterson welcome thanks very much for the invitation why do you think that your book twelve rules for life on the bestseller lists already and the online videos with it have struck such a chord what's at site-geist because I'm firmly on the side of my viewers and readers and I'm doing everything I can to help them understand how to live responsible and meaningful lives and that there's a and that there's a conjunction between those two issues of responsibility and meaning that hasn't been addressed properly in our culture for a long time and when you say your viewers and readers are you thinking here of a specific group of people are these targeted on a particular group no no I wouldn't say so I have more male viewers online but on YouTube the standard viewer is male so it isn't obvious that that's a consequence of my philosophy let's say more than an artifact of the technology I think that male activity is viewed with far more skepticism than is warranted at the moment and that's certainly a problem and that's part of the viewpoint that assumes that what our culture is is best construed as oppressive patriarchy of some sort and that any activity within that is to be regard regarded as a manifestation of that proclivity towards tyranny which is an absolutely appalling viewpoint in my estimation and I make that make that what would you call it opinion quite clear but for me most of this is a matter of psychological endeavor not political endeavor we might come back on the proclivity towards tyranny later on and how that relates to how you see this argument but just on your interest in young men particularly in in the young male in Western societies you often talk beyond that but mainly I think that's your focus wouldn't be fair to say that your focus is on how men feel in societies and where no their honor I don't think that that is my focus I think that my focus is the focus that you'd expect from a clinical psychologist and an educator which is to help individuals regardless of their group identity live better lives I think the fact that what I mean being doing is being construed in that manner is a consequence of the absolutely overwhelming influence of identity politics and and post-modernism for that matter on our political and philosophical discourse what I'm doing is constantly being viewed as a manifestation of identity politics and so people talk about my particular attraction for young white men it's like sorry not true there's there's virtually no evidence for that the audience's that come to see me are and I hate to even categorize them in this manner because it's part of playing the same game but very diverse ethnically and and and with regards to gender as well so the problem is is that the way that our discourse is framed right now it's impossible to avoid being shunted into an identity politics box and I think that that's I think that there's nothing about that that isn't reprehensible you said I mean I really interested in point in exploring what you know where you're starting for but you sound isn't quite angry what do you feel like well I'm I'm I'm appalled at the role the universities have played in this to to to form to to to have influenced the culture so that this is the manner in which our discourse is conducted that the primary issue is which group is what you're saying targeted towards like my group why what I'm saying isn't targeted towards groups in fact it's precisely construed as an antidote to the idea that your message should be targeted as group at groups I'm interested in the individual and and it also makes sense given my background first of all you met professors so I teach individual students and second of all and perhaps not in that order I'm a clinical psychologist not a sociologist and not a politician none of that concentrating on the development of the individual and when I go do my talks I have thousands of people coming to my talks and I meet I meet thousands of people as a consequence of doing that personally and none of them talk to me about politics all of them say the same thing they've been watching my lectures online or they've been reading my book they were in a dark place in their life they've been trying to adopt personal responsibility and a vision for the future and as a constant and and to tell the truth to the degree that they can to take responsibility for their own behavior and to improve their lives of their families and their communities and because of doing that things are much better for them and that's the story I'm interested that you chose a self-help kind of trip here with the book the rules for for life takes us back to Samuel smiles and Victorians sort of self-help manuals in some senses in a tradition but you're someone who doesn't like to be told what and you think you know a lot of modernity is kind of telling a bit finger-wagging or telling people what to do so why would you accept your rules would you accept Jordan Peterson's rules if you weren't Jordan Peterson oh good good point yeah well you know you you might also ask in some sense how I can get away with that because you know for example last year I did a series of lectures on the Bible on on on the on Genesis and it's very easy to make that sort of thing into a finger-wagging morality but I'm not not including myself in the list of people who need improvement I'm not talking from a pinnacle downwards to my audience you know I'm I'm stating a fairly blunt fact which is that we have plenty of we have plenty of tragedy and malevolence to contend with in the confines of our life and we need to figure out how to deal with that properly without becoming bitter and cruel and resentful and these rules are guidelines to help people avoid those pitfalls rather than finger wagging moral injunctions designed to make them feel guilty and so that's why the elections are attractive because that that kind of top-down morality is actually absent from them and one view of this large popularity that you are enjoying it at the moment the moment if you like that you wouldn't be the moment is that you captured a kind of space between what many people think and what they're being told to think does that ring a bell with you and do you think that's a fair description is that something your graph aiming to do well I think that people are have a sense that again that the manner in which our public discourse is being conducted has as tremendous danger and the danger is essentially the elevation of the collective over the individual and that that poses a danger both on the left and on the right and I think that by appealing to the notion of individual sovereignty which I would say is the primary would you say it's the meta message behind all of the things that I've been writing about that people find that to be a great relief even though what I'm asking them to do is to bear more responsibility for what they do then they might typically be inclined to and so but it's all it's you see look I I'm facing some of the issues that that people confront in their lives very squarely I believe the the fundamental religious truth of the idea that life is suffering it's suffering because we're mortal and fragile and because we're also subject to malevolence at our own hands into that at at the hands of others it's a it's a constant existential problem and that can make you bitter and can make you hopeless and nihilistic and depressed and anxious and pro and likely to abuse substances various sorts as a medication or an escape it can augur you in in in a very large number of ways and I'm suggesting to people that there is a way out of that and the way out is to confront that forthrightly and to adopt responsibility in your own life and to try to make the world a better place and that it's necessary to do that and that if you don't do that that things go badly and it's a relief to people to hear that because they know it they already know it so get a grip on yourself well it's it's more find something in your life that's so worthwhile doing that the fact that you're going to suffer is justifiable but if that something a value were for instance or someone to decide that they are a radical feminists or a radical trans campaigner that would be something of great value in their lives but these are not positions that I think you think have been if you do not have great value in their life because what they're doing is abdicating their personal responsibility to live by their own truth let's say to adherence to an ideology and I'm not a fan of ideologies I think they're unbelievably dangerous and I don't really care whether they're on the left or the right so to be a feminist or a trans activist or to adopt that that group fostered view of the world I think is generally an a mistake and I don't think it does people any good not usually and it also allows them to adopt and and this is something else that's very very gone very wrong with our political discourse is that it allows people to adopt and unearned an unearned sense of moral superiority and also of omniscient knowledge because in India all she offers you that and there's just nothing in that that that's helpful so what you have right mints but then what you have isn't an ideology or no it's not an easy ology and there isn't a strong collection of ideas in a sense always an ideal no it's not it's not and it's a mistake to think that way because all that means is that the way that you construe the world is a battleground between different ideologies and if an ideologies is only that which serves a power elite let's say which is part of the postmodern Neel Marxist construal then all it ever is is a battle of opinions and there's nothing underneath that and it's all power and and that's just not an appropriate way of looking at the world first of all there's lots of forces at play that aren't mere power competence is one of them assuming that there are some things that are worthwhile doing and then with regards to ideology I wrote a book about that the first book I wrote is called maps of meaning and it's a it's a description of the relationship between archetypal or mythological thinking proper religious thinking I would say and the parasitical structures that emerge from that which are basically ideologies and they can be technically differentiated what do you make of liberalism I would consider myself a classic liberal you would consider yourself oh yes yes although Jesus also has beliefs attached right it comes out of a tradition of evolution of beliefs but there also there is also a radical liberalism which feeds into feminism which believes that progress is a better thing than the lack of progress I really the economist is founded on those basics and that people can argue about what they want to to take or leave but do you include then liberalism as one of the isms that you would say is in crisis at the moment always got itself into well well it depends to some degree as you pointed out on how you define liberalism but one of the things that I like about the classic liberal take on the world which which I and to which I think we owe Britain a great debt of gratitude for developing perhaps more particularly than any other country is that the individuals is to be regarded as the sovereign entity in the political understanding but that's not really a political claim it's a claim that underlies politics it's actually a theological claim it's derived from the judeo-christian tradition and because India judeo-christian tradition the suffering individual is the sovereign entity and we established a political system based on that metaphysical axiom and so I would say that to the degree that liberalism acts out the idea of the sovereignty of the individual it's not an ism it's it's not a political stance it's far deeper than that what it's predicated on and the the idea of the sovereignty of the individual is an idea that emerged with great difficulty over tens of thousands of years or longer than that has an immense developmental history that radically predates let's say the Enlightenment or or any articulated political beliefs it's far deeper notion than anything that can be encapsulated politically but if we look at the great some of the great classic liberals of the 19th century and we look back to male for example you have individual liberty very strongly in there from Locke onwards a sort of the sense of the sovereignty and no one from the monarch down has it has the right to unfair sovereignty another man or a woman but you also have a strongly kind of progressive sense that that develops as liberalism develops and takes you towards women's franchise towards actually in Mills case a fairly out-there feminism if Jess mill was sitting here instead of me would you be seeing eye to eye on whether that was a good idea well again I think it depends on what what you mean by feminism I mean the idea that it would be a good thing for the world to arrange itself so that the talents of women were as available to use by the collective let's say by the group or by society as the talents of men then obviously that's all for the good I don't have any problem with that whatsoever because talents in short supply and and it's a foolish society that wastes that no matter where it manifests itself racial divisions or ethnic divisions or any of that equality of opportunity I can't see how you can be a sensible person and nor do women have opportunity so we do women have equality of opportunity than broadly across Western societies compared to what look compared to not having equality vote compared to a hundred years ago yes compared to fifty years ago yes compared to most places in the world throughout history yes compared to a hypothetical ideal no but I'm very very good idea or a bad idea well it depends on how you define equality if you define it as equality of outcome then it's a catastrophic ideal see this is something to you know one of the things I've been struggling with recently is the idea of boundaries let's say we know absolutely and and this is relative to you relevant to your question zone progressivism we know that the Left can go too far and we know that the right can go too far I mean I would say that's the abject lesson of the 20th century both can go too far and we kind of know when the right goes too far we probably think the right goes too far if you had to boil it down to one thing when people start making claims of racial or ethnic superiority that seems to be the marker but we don't know when the Left goes too far and the left to be frank about it isn't very careful about differentiating itself into those who are pursuing a reasonable progressive agenda and those who have seriously gone too far and I would say that when people push an equality of outcome agenda they've gone too far even though it's not as blatantly horrifying let's say as claims of ethnic or racial superiority the consequences of playing that idea out in the world are seriously not good but surely they are you know they're two kind of door stops it's the far ends of the arguments I mean very few people I think on the left and there would be some who would advocate for absolute equality of outcome and everything it would take to achieve not so clear dissimilar so there may be lots of things that are wrong both on the left and on the right that don't involve the right being overtly racist and the left wanting absolute equality of outcome it's a space surely in the middle that matters and that's why I suppose people feel that sometimes your argument is also sort of its driving towards picking the fight rather than liberalism would I suppose encourage you to take the best and we can have the argument about what's the best and what's the worst of every it's in between no I think that the the left poses a far greater danger than your analysis suggests I certainly see this in the universities and the the drum is being beat very very hard perhaps not so much here but in North America for equality of opportunity or equality of outcome under the rubric of equity and equity is essentially a doctrine that Foster's the notion that equality of outcome is not only desirable but should be pursued as an an object or as an explicit aspect of public policy the idea being that if the there aren't there is an equivalent representation of all possible groups at all possible levels of all possible hierarchies that that indicates a tyrannical prejudice that needs to be rooted out and that's having an absolutely pernicious effect on on institutions especially educational institutions in North America that's not a and it's an increasingly widespread view and I think it poses far more danger than is anything is it possible that views become more attractive when something is dissatisfied and when aspirations have not been met which are reasonable aspirations to have and you can then say that the answers are wrong or that they oh but say if this is such a popular view to cite your example on campuses in North America it may be that there's something out there that existing society has not satisfied what hasn't satisfied the ever-present human tendency towards envy and resentment that's for sure that's always driving it not at all but it's a tremendous amount of what's driving it and a lack of absolute lack of gratitude for what we've managed to accomplish and what we have in front of us I mean unfairness does that figure well unfairness is a very ill-defined term I mean it's not so obvious either it's not so obvious what's fair so for example you know I got embroiled in a dispute the last time I was in you in the UK about the issue of the gender pay gap and you know from from a social science perspective the idea of the gender pay gap is it's it's it's so poorly formulated that it's almost staggering to me that people can even conceptualize it in this manner it's not a univariate problem it's a multivariate problem men and women don't make breakage and then we can get you know not only could we we have to and and we can't assume that just because in all situations women don't make as much money as men although there are some situations in which the reverse is true by the way that the reason for that is prejudice and depression there's many reasons for it one reason so there's a book by wit by Warren Farrell for example called why men make more and he outlines like 42 reasons why men make more money than women one of them is that men are much more likely to take dangerous occupations not at 42 and then some of the reasons but perhaps just start by talking a bit more about gender with you that unsure on fraught territory always seems to go up do you agree with people who hold that broadly gender is a social consequences for STUV all that's an axiomatic pronouncement rather than a consequence of the analysis of the empirical data and I mean what do you mean a social construct genitalia aren't a social construct differences in height aren't a social construct difference is what we did you said Italia is to an extent constructed it well because there's environmental and and cultural effects on anything that's complex and that's certainly the case and differentiating what those are is a very difficult thing to do but the psychometric work on that has already been done and done well and when I what do you mean that a second metric look I mean psychologists in particular have spent 40 years sorting out an empirically derived model of personality that's the Big Five model which is well accepted among personality psychologists in the mainstream most of who lean left by the way by an overwhelming majority so there's no right that might be five yeah but it's but one of the things that's interesting about the taxonomy is that it was a theoretically derived it's purely a consequence of statistical analysis and so I'm not sure where that's taking us so well how far gender is socially constructed okay so for the first thing to do is to figure out what the parameters are when you talk about something like gender so the parameters are say parameters of temperament because you said well we're not going to talk about by all we're going to talk about what's derived from that so we might say temperament okay so we know the temporary mental dimensions we know that they differ between men and women and they differ cross-culturally but more importantly this is the crucial distinction well we don't know because I mean I'm just looking at a piece of recent research on the brain which concludes the Ranaut's two types of brain in there are there are others who did the research it's the new scientists construe there's no such thing as the male or female brain just so you know what you yeah baby no nobody who has any sense would ever claim if there was a male and female brain ok these differences aren't absolute what do you want so should we just take that as a question you want to engage that question on two types of brain and then we can be a bit clearer well there are nice types of brain and men and women are more the same by personality than they are different by a substantial margin there's more similarities than differences if there's more similarity than difference but that doesn't mean the differences are irrelevant so let me give you an example so if you pick two people at random out of the population and had to guess which who is more aggressive and you guessed the man you'd be right 60 percent of the time that's about the magnitude of the difference between men and women that's six sixty forties and that's exactly right less but but but and this is where things get more sophisticated all right so then imagine that you had to pick the one in a hundred most aggressive person and put them in jail which is what we do they're all men so even though at the midpoint the difference between men and women isn't that extreme at the extremes the difference is extraordinary and most of the activity are much of the activity in complex situations happens at the extremes so men are more interested in things than women are and women are more interested in people than men are on average and those differences are largest in Scandinavia by the way so there's no evidence that there socio-culturally constructed and one of the consequences of that is is that if you leave men and women to make free choices well let's put aside that Scandinavia is no choice it's not just one country that has lots of different cultural political differences sure but the point is is that and this is the fundamental point is that the more egalitarian the country the bigger the differences between men and women the bigger I have no idea how one could possibly you rain you rank order countries by their socio-cultural policies from egalitarian to non egalitarian and then you look at the magnitude at the differences in temperament in men and women in those countries and you do those on your definition of temperament but this but there isn't a definition of temperament that exists that valid outside of the psychometric community locked into a particular definition within what you call the psychometric community and other people may simply say look I experienced the world very differently and I have evidence from my dealings whether I'm a man whether I'm a woman whether I'm looking at how we get along together and what we do to improve matters that doesn't conform to that you know the question is then what is the evidence the fact that someone has a lien about it isn't relevant you have a relevant issue is whether what the evidence suggests unless you're willing to throw out the scientific enterprise which I wouldn't recommend not I'm certainly not doing that but I do think there to pin it to a narrow definition of psychometric test not merit it's five dimensional it's not narrow the whole world only has four dimensions five dimensional model is actually extraordinarily sophisticated it's got four dimensions and then weave into five that's magic well you have five dimensions there's many multi-dimensional spaces but reality itself has four dimensions and we there's plenty of complexities come back to you I mean you're a bit you know absolutely come back to evidence but also to what you make of the evidence because Trading's well all I make of the evidence is moral reasons for gender difference so what do we then do with this let's say that we decide that there are differences and we can argue whether that's about the average I mean who is the average woman am i the average woman mm-hmm in some ways probably in other ways okay good good to know so what do we do with it so it takes us into this an argument about what progress should look like and the gender pay gap was a good example of that as you say lots of different ways of describing it lots of different approaches to dealing with it the challenge to you would still be I think do you think that situation that we have is broadly fair in workplaces and that women are self-selecting out of progress up the paid chain rather than being to an extent under pressure of child-rearing that is not probably accounted for or that they're not properly helped with is it really all about their decision or might structures not play a role here when doesn't hold structures defeating this right no no no what you have to be completely mad is to reduce the whole thing to gender and to assume that it's a consequence of oppression there's multiple factors at play and prejudice is one of them the question is to what degree prejudice or an arbitrary categorization let's say and and the lack of provision of opportunities for women is contributing to the pay gap and what to what degree other factors are contributing so there's other factors like I said already men are much more likely to do dangerous jobs they're also more likely to do jobs that scale so for example because women are more interested in people on average than men are they tend to work in people oriented enterprises and those are hard to scale and because you can't scale them it's harder to multiply the income men are likely more likely to move than women are men are more likely to take on trade positions they're more likely to work with heavy machinery they're more likely to work outside all of these things add today if you catch that up to them if you if you took out working with heavy machinery which some women do but more we can say right more men will and will elect to do that there's quite a lot of things in there where there being not you know we're all nudge throughout our life to to certain choices we don't have to accept the nudge but then would you accept that women have lacked opportunities that they've liked that nudge has not operated in the same way so but you to say oh well they end over what time spa you can choose cheesy tights and say 100 years if you like well the time span the point is are women in a sense already being going through it all going through a number of gates in in in life and wider than others complicated I mean I think men men were directed down narrow pathways in ways that women weren't so for example they were much more likely to be conscripted into Wars for example which actually happens to be a non-trivial phenomena because it resulted in the deaths and ended and and the demolition of many men and so both both sexes are subject to the arbitrary strictures of culture and perhaps you argue that women had the worst time of it although it's not that easy an argument to make I would say that the extra pressures of child-rearing and the inevitability of pregnancy played a very large role in that and we didn't deal with that effectively till 1960 and so one of the things that I really don't like about the men women were oppressed by men throughout history narrative is the fact that both men and women were terribly oppressed by nature throughout history and that's not being factored into the equation and I think that what men and women did for most of history the decent ones anyways was team up and partner up and try to make life the least amount of miserable for both and yet we read this narrative backwards and we say well the reason that men and women weren't operating equally in the socio-cultural landscape was because men were oppressing them it's like sorry no that accounts for a tiny fraction of it or some proportion of it but it had much more to do with the fact that everyone was poor and miserable and that women were locked into a reproductive cycle from which they had no practical escape I mean we didn't fix that till the 60s what might irritate some working women indeed some women whether they work or not is you you can either sort of look at something like the gender pay gap and sort of pick apart how difficult it is or you could say well that's let's try to to fix this and let's have an intelligent argument about how we best fix this thing and the argument that women are self-selecting out of the workplace actually becomes you know becomes a bit of a roadblock but women do self-select out of the workplace all the time well if you look at the legal profession that's that's absolutely crystal clear women are over represented at the lower ends of the legal profession but they stop they stop operating at the high ends in their 30s and it happens in all sorts of professions and there's good reason for it I mean well because women in their late 20s tend to decide that they don't want to work 80 hours a week they would rather have a family and devote some time to that which is a perfectly reasonable thing to do another possibly reasonable thing to do is for the child-rearing roles of men and women to come more into balance then allowing with some trade-offs life being imperfect allowing women to come back earlier assuming that you put you know you put it on the window no no not at all that's not a fair characterization in the least your argument is predicated on the idea that the advantage to women isn't coming back to the workplace but many women decide especially once they have children that having their children and spending time with them is actually more valuable than going back to the workplace and that's a reasonable thing to decide in fact you might think it's the intelligent do then come back into the workforce and they pay that's something that you had mentioned earlier and the fact that women pay a disproportionate price with regards to long term career earnings if they become mothers that's a very narrowly focused problem and it's a problem that might need to be addressed but that's not the same as the gender pay gap it's a much more defined problem yes and part of the problem is how do we best can we get you to carry a benefit for that part of the feminist tree saving not if it's part of the feminist crusade no because that would mean I'd have to carry a banner for what I regard as a rather reprehensible ideology but I do feminism is a reference now well what percentage of British women regard themselves as feminists no 7% question I would guess well know whether did the the reasonable the reasonable measurements of it estimate there is something like that it's a very small percentage yes really it's a it's a very small minority even if it's not 7% and part of the reason for the - make it inherently wrong I mean I'm not sure it's 7% and you know I think I said we'd all go and ban Giovanni isms but would it necessarily be such a bad idea I mean you must have sometimes stuck up for minority rights even if the idea you say in your book women are no minority by the way you're actually a majority precisely safe so in that sense they're not minority rights that we're talking about here if we're talking about women female rights have I stuck up for minority rights I don't see the world you've seen a 7% example would suggest that even a small group within women thought that feminism was it you just decide yourself where the feminism is a good thing or no it doesn't really matter well I think it's not a good thing because it plays identity politics games and I'm not a fan of identity critics games and the collectivist viewpoint I don't think that men should be set against women I don't think that we should view the world as a competition between men and women I don't think we should view history as a as a structure that pitted oppressed women against the oppressor men I don't like that story I think it's I think it's a nasty story and I think it's designed it's it's destined to divide us in ways that will not be good I think it's a it's a story fundamentally predicated on resentment I don't think it's an accurate view of the way things unfolded in the past and I don't think women were as powerless or as unable to contribute as the feminist claim they were before like 1960 you thought things did come into balance for women in the 60s so watching her story was good about the sixties yes I thought that the birth control pill was invented and the reason that women have far more flexibility let's say in their lives now is fundamentally because they have more control over the reproductive status and that never really happened until the 1960s they may have built other conclusions on that other than that great I can control my fertility it's great I can control my fertility now what is the question that what else well that is but that but that that's exactly it that is precisely the question that we're dealing with but but the but the causal order of that is oh now I can control my fertility now what that's a biological revolution but that has consequences for men as well as women of course it does and their constant watch the men have to change we've had we've had a lot of focus here on how women have had it better than that perhaps you think that feminists modern feminists think they have I don't I don't know need to change I don't know if women had it better than modern feminists think they had it I think that if women had it hard in the past which they certainly do that the amount of that was that was attributable to male oppression is small/small far smaller than the feminists claim because Nature had her hand in that you know the average person in the Western world in 1895 lived on less than a dollar a day in today's money that's below the UN guidelines for poverty so life was very hard for men and women for almost all of human history and to view that as part of an oppression narrative on the part of men I think is one of the things that that is very hard on young men for example when they're trying to take their place in the world so what how would men have to change because women have control over the reproductive function that's an open-ended question I don't know casual sex is much more available than it used to be that's one way that men have been able to change they haven't had to take on responsibility for adopting a long-term monogamous relationship in order to get sexual access so that's a big change it's also enabled men to not grow up to quite a great I'm not sure if you're welcoming that I'm not that I'm not I'm not saying it's a good thing just very concept so movements that bring you that whole difficulty of the mating game hookup culture into the debate must therefore be a good thing and it presumably you would also you know I don't think you maybe but would you welcome that I think there's very little good about the hook-up culture I think there's very little good about casual sexual relationships I don't think they're good for men or for women and I mean where do you stand on the me to campaign good thing I think that it risks damaging the presumption of Emma's innocence I mean there's plenty more to it than that oh sure women women women face the the arbitrary admixture of sexual advance and workplace and workplace performance all the time it's a very complicated thing to sort out we don't know how to sort it out exactly because you know I mean NBC for example the American TV station has has made it policy that you're not to hug your coworkers which you know may be true although I don't think it's the sort of thing that a corporation might be deciding for people but we don't know exactly what the rules are for governing fail male and female behavior in the workplace because we've only been working together for about 35 years we don't know after 35 years to figure something out not when you're talking about a transformation in behavior that that's that's that profound I mean we don't know how men and women can work properly together in the workforce it's very complicated men and women across the world but you are the ones that asked about me too will you with your other one hear me - is it well me - is an expression of the fact that men and women are having a hard time regulating their behavior in the workplace it's the only reason I responded to that because the question I think is more broadly suggesting that some men are having a grave problem with what is the lesson of the Harvey Weinstein story for you someone should have said something about Harvey Weinstein much sooner but we could start somewhere else we could start with Harvey Weinstein was wrong to do what he did before we go - yes other people should have spoken out second order is fair enough fair enough I thought that went without saying there are going to be psychopathic predators they're going to exist and what has to happen is that people have to stop them because they won't stop themselves and so I thought that was sort of implicit in the statement obviously he shouldn't have done what he did but you don't think that the culture in which he was operating that there was particularly in his Hollywood in his world and in many other worlds that there was a culture of you know like this guy's a powerful guy he's the great silverback gorilla here let him get on with it oh I think that culture was everywhere in Hollywood which is why I wait well Hollywood particularly I mean the casting couch idea has been around for a very long period of time and I think that the Hollywood types who are all upset about this should look to their own devices with regards to the role they played in fostering the culture that managed that so culture we talked we were talking about cultures so I mean it's certainly that the Hollywood what's the sensible thing for women to do about me - to your mind and what's the less sensible thing that that's a hard question and it isn't obvious to me exactly what men and women have to do in the workplace to make that kind of sexual predation much less likely with all also subjecting themselves to restrictions on the sexual element aspect of their existence that would be unbearable it's very difficult what would be unbearable about - how about everybody wears the same uniform to work that's what the Mao as well look if you want to eliminate the differences between men and women sexually at the workplace you have to constrain the sexual differences I mean men wear suits to work we don't have to eliminate the sexual differences for people to work together with respect you have to eliminate them to some degree why I'm Jenny because you're trying to your tribe the question here is to what degree should sexually related behavior be impermissible at the workplace well it depends on how you define it should you be able to dress attractively and if you can dress attractively what do you mean by attractively exactly like precisely like organized I mean I dress nicely today you look very well dressed to me right your man and I'm a woman with based nicely dressed now we're getting on with the interview what's the problem well the problem is is the boundaries of what constitutes nicely dressed because there's look because part of what constitutes attractiveness part of what constitutes nicely dressed is sexual attractiveness because you can't separate out human attractiveness sexual attractiveness from human attractiveness and so then the question is exactly where are the boundaries and that's what the discussion is about where are the boundaries the dinner parties to switch are described in a foreword to your book where friends enjoy debates and disagreements do you think in the broader conversation we've lost that spirit or in danger of losing that spirit oh I think I think we're always in danger of losing that spirit right because lack of freedom is much more probable than freedom we have to be very careful to maintain that because it's always under threat but I do feel that it's under threat now I think that people are very careful about what they say in ways that aren't good I think the fact that many comedians won't perform on university campuses now is a very good indication of that that's a canary in the coalmine scenario that but let's just stick for a moment on kind of polarization it effects someone like you or someone with your message in one sense we're arguing that polarization of society is a bad thing if people no longer have a shared space or shared understanding even of debates and disagreements and nuance and yet you part of that problem you're absolutely the culture that up votes that down votes in everything at the sort of sideline on one of your after your youtubes and there's a lot of Jordan Peterson destroys so-and-so kills someone yeah it seems to me a very odd and reprehensible cut this is a consequence of some of the way that your argument is presented and do you feel any responsibility there well I feel responsibility I suppose the question is what the question is what's that what's the proper level of analysis let's say well okay so first of all people are making four thousand videos out of my videos a week on YouTube and so we're going to expect that there's going to be a tremendous amount of variance and how people do that and they're competing for views just like the mainstream video media is competing for views and one of the ways to compete for views is to become sensationalistic and to capitalize on polarization and I think that's a very bad idea and I think a lot of that is happening do you think you ever fall into that trap ever sure I think I fall into that trap although I wouldn't say video well you know I because of my distaste for what's happening on the university campuses and my embarrassment at being associated with with with that because of my my academic standing let's say I perhaps become more irritable about the fact of of identity politics that might be optimal although I think in the main I'm quite careful and often under extreme duress and I think that that's what you have you eat fed and I think this is a social media environment sometimes pushes many of us in this direction in advance what have you said that about identity politics or possibly when you you ended up in broad a big argument about trans rights have you said things that you regret it I may have become more emotional about things that might have been optimal in terms of things that I've said no that's been okay so far and I've been very careful about what I've been saying and do you think that people hear things the way that you see them I just watched a lot as you say a lot of videos been made and they're often sort of cut from lectures or appearances but when you talk say about domestic violence and there's a sort of thesis behind it and I'm putting it in a bit bit of a nutshell here so feel free to rephrase it that men in the end if men are pushed too far by a too aggressive effeminate ism there will be a backlash and that there is you know there's a sort of undercurrent of violence be advised that Sam Ordnung Nora Nora that's a warning suggests that there may be sort of faults in those who push progressivism too far they will get a backlash some people of course see that as a bit of a permissive environment for bad behavior well people tend to confuse describing the likelihood of something with supporting the fact that it exists and I'm describing the likelihood of something not not supporting the fact that it exists if you push too far on the left you're going to get a backlash on the right that's how things work and this is just a derivation of that as far as I'm concerned how does that domestic in the context of domestic violence oh I don't I don't think it's applicable in the context of domestic violence at all I don't I think those things are completely separate issues I mean you were mentioning to me just as we were and I was speaking only politically with regards to the backlash that was that that was a comment on political backlash and it had nothing to do with domestic violence that's a whole different issue but violence often pops up in you in your work or something you think drives things that you I think you've said in relations between men are more regulated by a background threat of force and it's that's that's why men have difficulty with women is it no that's why it men have difficulty with women who are completely out of control but women who show women well other women themselves men society just like everyone is controlled I mean you're controlled by society I'm controlled by society and thank God for that I mean part of funny I mean you described yourself as a liberal and I think a liberal doesn't think the society controls women woman well let's say regulates I'm a psychologist as well a woman what is this creature how do we know when we met one I'm sure that you've met women in your life that that that acted towards you and bullying and detest Manor it's very difficult for women to cope with that because they don't have any real recourse and female bullying can be unbelievably vicious and usually that takes the place of takes the shape of reputation destruction innuendo and gossip it's well documented it's very difficult and you know men do it too but men know it a new view oh no sir yes when yes disproportionately women that's what the data indicate I mean if men are data on innuendo gossip well it's among antisocial behavior among adolescents it's well documented field so because people look at aggressive and anti-social behavior in women and in men and in women intends to take the expression of innuendo gossip and reputation destruction and in mana take tends to take the form of outright physical aggression there's a whole literature on that it's not a surprise to anyone this has been known suffer for thirty years I mean the rates of ethics right here the female Agosta probably predates thirty no doesn't make it gospel but people have no it doesn't but people have looked at how women express it look women have to express aggression somehow unless you're willing to say that they're not aggressive they tend not to do it physically not to the degree men do so they use other channels and what other channels are there other than physical aggression if you're going to be aggressive well you go after people verbally you go after them with innuendo and gossip and reputation destruction and that's how it that's how it works and just to be clear that you think that's predominantly a female made it so probably it isn't that I think that it's the clinical literature indicates that it's that I think it well not interviewing the clinical engineering you would use well I'm a psychologist and a scientist and I tend to and I tend to base my opinions on what I've read in the broad relevant clinical literature I'm not making this stuff up I studied antisocial behavior for like 15 years I'm actually quite an expert on it and so we know that men are more likely to look look look at it this way all right women are much more likely to try to commit suicide and men are much more likely to kill themselves and the reason for that is that men use lethal force and women don't now that's a big difference okay so then you say well women manifest aggression towards them selves to others but they don't use lethal force they don't use physical force the same way men do so they have to do it some other way whatever way to something some other way that people are in war against your base your hope is Ian like normal half and half half Hobbes half Rousseau that's why I'm not an ideologue because I don't think that people are good or evil I think they're both I don't think that culture is security or tyranny I think it's both and I don't think that nature is benevolence or catastrophe I think it's both and that's why I'm not an ideologue I need you to cite rule now because I've got 28 bits of paper here but I'm just gonna carry on in the meantime because we need getting towards the end and nicely warmed up you rightly picked up on the disruptive effect of social media but also the technological shifts in in media and mass media consumption my argument was that this might be you know leading to polarization the people like you who are immensely successful within this mill year also driving your book sales you know you just just I think just as I'm talking to you hit the top of the Amazon list here in the UK but there is that you know that the point that you become part of the problem that you've put a finger on yourself you want people to get along together you want men and women just sort of trade off we don't agree entirely where these trade offs are but you know we're here in arguing about it and yet at the same time you succeed most when you say something very provocative that goes viral sort of no I don't think that's when I succeed most so for example one of the one of the incidents that propelled me to - just a success let's say in terms of public recognition in the UK was my interview with Kathy Newman and the reason that that propelled me to success wasn't because I said something provocative but because I refused under substantial duress to say anything provocative and so the part of the reason that I've become popular to the degree that I have been is that I'm actually very good at keeping my temper under situations that would would would not under situations where there's substantial reason not to let's say and I would also say that the the good that I've done regards to my online lectures far outweighs whatever harm might be done by the fact that people are cutting them and making provocative titles out of them and construing this as some sort of fundamental political war but it's not just other people if you look at something like that the model that you partly you know used to promote your work is the crowdfunding site so the more you incite a reaction the more loyal at your patreon site the more loyal the subscribers become now the more money is raised for causes that you want to promote no that isn't how it works the reason that first of all I give away all my content online for free so the people who subscribe to pager and are subscribing to nothing they're there supporting me and then they're not supporting me because of my political stance primarily they're supporting me because they've watched my videos and they've been helped by them as individuals and they're hoping that that can happen to a lot of other yeah if you want if you see the self help and you want to give it away for nothing then why bring money into the equation at all and why I have this sort of high-octane sort of it is your crowdsourcing does rely on people coming to you wanting to pledge their money why put money into it at all isn't this an area where well I think it might be better left at I am an evil capitalist after all and I don't really make any apologies for that I set up my patreon site mostly out of curiosity because I've been interested in for a long time in how creative people can monetize their creative productions because that's actually part of my technical interest because it's very hard to monetize creative productions because they have long term benefit but it's hard to show why do you want to monetize well because I can do useful things with money and partly because I'm curious partly because I need to live partly because my job was at risk for a long while and that's not going to happen to me again partly because I had to give up my clinical practice because of other considerations partly because I have a family partly because I want to using money to for a cause or is it about raising money for you well I don't separate myself from what I'm doing so I can't really answer that question I mean for me what am I going to buy a yacht no you know like I'm not a luxury kind of guy I'm not looking to live the high life I'm 55 years old for God's sake what would I do with that you know I have lots of things that I would do with with some money one of the things I want to do is build an online university but it's not the only thing want to do and so I would put the money to good use I suspect or at least a reasonable use and the reason that people are providing me with this money which they don't have to do is because they hope that I'll continue to do what I'm doing and that is exactly the reason they're providing it with me and my leftist critics have been you know been saying for consistently it's actually quite comical well look at all the money that dr. Peterson is generating with his patreon account it's like well I'm not selling anything all the stuff I do online is free it's not even advertising supported so if people want to support me on patreon because they think that what I'm doing is helpful then like more power to them as far as I'm concerned and do you feel it when you the response you get through that site and then others that your judgment is equally good when it comes to spotting sort of things that gone too far and this of can't of a far left and attitudes that come from the right the far right all right and I'm not mixing up these categories with you you you can differentiate which well do you some do you feel that you're kind of hearing works better in one direction than the other ah no I don't think so I mean this week for example I was accused by a Jewish newspaper of harboring Nazi sympathies which was rather miserable but at the same time an alright article came out today telling me that I was a stooge and a shill for the Jews so you know I figure I'm pretty much in the middle if I can attract that sort of criticism on both sides and so on with regards to the right-wing issue the right-wing does not pose a threat to the integrity of universities in North America and Europe but the left-wing certainly does and that's well documented and not by me there are no conservatives in universities in the social sciences and the humanities they don't exist and that's not a good thing and the radical left in universities absolutely exists and has throughout early threatened the integrity of those institutions and so to the degree that I've concentrated on the radical left it's because the radical left has has usurped the universities that well might say in the global context and authoritarianism which often turns rightwards is a threat to race PhD universities to the rules absolutely and I've written extensively about right-wing authoritarian threats to Liberty extensively let's let's not ignore the the the big American elephant in the room Donald Trump you do you see him as an expression of a lot of the attitudes the kind of unhappiness discontent no not rude or something suey Jenner is something different will make of it well first of all you know Americans have voted 50% Republican and 50% Democrat for like five elections in a row nothing changed the Republicans had Trump as a candidate and the Democrats had Hillary and that's the way it turned out and I mean it was a 50/50 split so I don't see that there's been a massive shift in the American political landscape that's for sure yes definitely that that's that's that that's the that's the interesting thing I mean Trump did something very interesting in the primaries and and and is in his grip on on the on the Republican nomination eventually and I don't know really what to make of it it's it's certainly to some degree the fact that he won was an expression of the fact that people were discontented with the Democrats tilt towards identity politics because they lost a fair bit of their working-class base but I think that can be laid entirely at the feet of the Democrats they made a big mistake doing that because the working class needs a political voice and the Democrats decided to play identity politics so he blamed them is anything wrong with with Trump or anything is wrong with Trump you know I mean it doesn't take a genius to lay them out while he's rather bombastic he seems to be somewhat on the narcissistic side he's certainly a master at manipulating the media I mean so it and and and he's a very peculiar character it doesn't take a genius to list his faults what Trump signifies I I don't know I can't I can't put my finger on him yet let's conclude with I don't think he's a great coming of Satan you know I don't think that the America is any more polarized than it was in 1972 and and the economy in the u.s. is booming at the moment and he hasn't got us into any particularly idiotic Wars yet so I'm pretty happy about that liberalism what needs it what they need to change you said earlier on that you were casting it really it's hustled a bit about what that might mean in terms of what causes you supporter used to dissociate itself from the radical left which it refuses to do it won't undertake the conceptual difficulty of deciding when the left has gone too far and I've got to ask you have you got a favorite feminists do I have a favorite feminist I don't think of things that way I'm not a favorite video logs do I have a favorite admirable woman who would be my favorite admirable woman I'm sorry I have a difficulty difficult time bringing names to mind the woman who established nursing as a profession in Britain it's nice yes Florence Nightingale it's like it's good for Florence she thought I think men were unsuited to Nursing because she she had gender stereotypes should we be telling her off well some men are unsuited to Nursing and some aren't and unlikely any unlikely heroes or heroines I'm a big fan of Tom Waits don't Waits I think we can agree on that Jordan Peterson thank you very much thanks a lot for the invitation you

Channel: Intelligence Squared

Views: 2,985,630

Keywords: #jordanpeterson, #annemcelvoy, #economist, #economistradio, gender, tyranny, metoo, #metoo, identitypolitics, #12rulesforlife, liberalism, jordan peterson, jordan b peterson, jordan peterson interview, jordan b peterson 12 rules for life, jordan peterson 12 rules for life, jordan peterson relationships, jordan b peterson interview, intelligence squared

Id: 7QRQjrsFnR4

Length: 59min 24sec (3564 seconds)

Published: Thu May 24 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/DiabolikDownUnder]

Could you link us to some of their comments on it?

[u/Hjoerleif]

JP fan here. I liked the interview.