Well I'll tell you a couple of strange things that the things that I don't really understand the first is when we've done the analysis Of the effects of the future authoring program it has had a different It's differential impact on men and it's had a particularly differential impact on what I would call excluded men, and so that would be non-western ethnic minority men or or What? Majority, man who are doing very well so for example at Mohawk College The future authoring program had a particularly robust effect on Mohawk College students who were men who hadn't done very well in high school And who hadn't picked a major that had a destination a career destination at its end so you can imagine those people are they have an ambiguous relationship with the idea of education and They're not oriented specifically towards a goal. They're not very motivated Now why did it have a differential effect on men? That's a good question Well first of all the women are doing better so It might just be a matter of the fact that it does better for people who aren't doing as well and at the moment most Of them are men I don't believe I think that might be part of it, but I don't believe that's all of it I think that part of the reason that women are doing better is cuz they're agreeable and So if a system sets out a structure and says here's a pathway to attainment The women won't rebel against that they'll go along with it and that's working very well for them at the moment the men especially the men on the disagreeable end of the distribution And there's way more men on the district disagreeable end of the distribution, then there are women right That's what you get from if you look at overlapping normal distributions, so there's the male district female distribution for agreeableness male distribution for agreeableness tremendous overlap Okay, women are higher all the really agreeable people are women all the really disagreeable people are men And maybe the real differences occur at the extremes right so so and it's it's a very interesting side effect of overlapping Distributions, so they people can be mostly the same But that can still produce radical differences Disagreeable men won't do anything they don't want to do They just say up yours I'll go home and play video games With you no. I'm not listening to your stupid and Why should I work for you? I'll just go have fun I'll do my own thing I don't think they're motivated and so then if you take the men who are like that and you say, okay. What do you want? You can have what you want But you have to figure out what it is So then they write down what they want they think oh hey well that might be worth having so maybe I'll put some effort into It that's what it looks like to me now You know that's weak evidence, and this is a weak argument, but I'm trying to stretch out my understanding to account for this But I'll tell you something else that's really weird. I don't understand this either, so More than 90% of the people who watch my videos on YouTube are men now that's weird because not about 80% of psychology students are women so that is not what you would expect right you would expect that the Majority of them would be women and you might say well it's because of the political stance I've taken and I thought well that's possible so I went looked at the demographic data because I have That well before I did any of the political videos 85% of my viewers were men so it's actually increased a bit, it's increased by 6% and that's not trivial But it was still overwhelmingly men, so that was interesting. I thought what the hell why is that exactly and then now I've been watching crowds when I've been talking to them and The crowds that have come to see me in person this happened at the University of Toronto free speech debate and I actually noticed it and Commented on it before the debate took place because I was talking about intrinsic differences between men and women and I looked around the room And I thought hmm hey 80% of the people in this room are men So I had all the men's women and women stand up and then all the men stand up I said look like here's a natural experiment For some reason 80% of the people who showed up to this or men now everybody thought I was kind of cracked to to do that and it was a risk You know what and all right, but I thought no weather something going on here And then what's interesting now is that every public appearance that I've made that's related to the sort of topics that we're discussing is Overwhelmingly men it's like it's like 85 to 90% And so I thought wow that's weird like what the hell's going on here exactly, and then the other thing. I've noticed is that? I've been talking a lot to the crowds that I've been talking to not about rights But about responsibility right because he can't have the bloody. What are you doing? You can't have the conversation about rights without the conversation about responsibility because your rights are my Responsibility that's what they are technically so you just can't have only half of that discussion And we're only having half that discussion and the question is well What the hell are you leaving out if you only have that half of the discussion and the answer is what you're leaving out Responsibility and then the question is well What are you leaving out if you're leaving out responsibility and the answer might be well, maybe you're leaving out the meaning of life That's what it looks like to me. It's like here you are Suffering away, what makes it worthwhile, right? you know you're completely out you're completely you have no idea what you're You it's almost impossible to describe how bad an idea that is Responsibility That's what gives life meaning It's like lift a load Then you can tolerate yourself right because look at your useless Easily hurt easily killed. Why should you have any self-respect? That's the story of the fall Pick something up and carry it pick make it heavy enough so that you can think yeah well Useless as I am at least I could move that from there to there well What's really cool about that is that when I talk to these crowds about this the man's eyes light up, and that's very good I've seen that phenomena because I've been talking about this mythological material for a long time and I can see when I'm watching crowds people You know their eyebrows lift their eyes let light up because I put something together for them. That's what mythological stories Do so I'm not taking responsibility for that That's what the stories do so I save the story people go click click click You know in their eyes light up, but this responsibility thing That's a whole new order of this is that young men are so hungry for that it is unbelievable And one of the things I've been talking to some of the people who've been Running for the conservative leadership in Canada, and I've been talking to them about well the difficulties They have communicating with young people because conservatives What what the hell are they going to sell to young people right because being conservative is something that happens when you're older they can sell responsibility No, one's selling it and the thing is for men. There's nothing about responsibility You know I was watching The Simpsons the other day I watched the first Simpsons episode And I deconstructed it and so it's really interesting so what happens in the first Simpson episode is that? It's Christmas and homer and Marge are going to buy some Christmas presents, but Homer doesn't get his Christmas bonus And so he's absolutely crushed by that and that Actually is a recurring theme in The Simpsons where Homer loses his job or something like that or can tonight make enough money He's completely crushed even though he's kind of useless bumbling Laughing fool of a guy. You know the thing that gives that show its soul is that he's still oriented towards his family That's what makes him honorable is that? Foolish as he is he's decided to adopt Responsibility for his family and to try to bear that and so he's not he's a holy fool He's not a complete fool And it's so interesting watching the story because he suffers dreadfully as a consequence of not being able to fulfill his responsibilities well That's for men Women have their sets of responsibilities. They're not the same Right because they're complicated because women of course have to take primary Responsibility for for having infants at least but then also for caring for them there they're structured differently than men For biological necessity even if it's not a psychological issue and it's also partly a psychological issue women know what they have to do men have to figure out what they have to do, and if they have nothing worth living for then they stay Peter Pat and Why the hell not? because the alternative to valued responsibility is Impulsive low-class Pleasure and you saw that in the Pinocchio story right that's Pleasure Island, it's like well Why lift the load if there's nothing in it for you? That's another thing that we're doing to men. That's a very bad idea and to boys it's like You're pathological and oppressive. It's like fine. Then why the hell am I going to play That's that if that's the situation if I get no credit for bearing responsibility It could bloody well be sure I'm not going to bear it but then you know your life is useless and meaningless and you have you're not you're full of self-contempt and nihilism and and That's not good, and so that's why I think all right That's what I think's going At a deeper level with regards to men needing this direction a man has to decide that he's going to do something He has to decide that yeah, well. You know partly what you're trying to do in the future authoring processes say, okay well What's your highest value? Right it's the star. It's like. Okay. What are you aiming for you can decide man, but you know there's some criteria It should be good for you. It should be good for you in a way that facilitates your moving forward Maybe it should be good for you in a way. That's also good for the family in the community it should cover the the domain of life I mean there's constraints on what you should regard as a value, but you but within those constraints you have the Choice you have choice Well the thing is is that people will carry a heavy load if they get to pick the goddamn load So and they think well I won't carry any load It's like okay fine But then you're like the sled dog that doesn't have a sled to pull you're just gonna You're gonna tear pieces out of your own legs because you're bored. You know you need people are pack animals They need they need to pull against a weight, and and that's not true for everyone it's not true particularly say for low conscientious people I mean maybe they're open and creative or extroverted and some other things but for the for the typical person They'll eat themselves they'll eat themselves up unless they have a load this is why there's such an opiate epidemic among Dispossessed white middle-aged guys who are unemployed in the u.s.. It's like they lose their job. They're done Right they despise themselves. They develop chronic pain syndromes and depression and the chronic pain is treated with opiates It's like that's what we're doing so Yeah, that's what it looks like to me is you you have to and it's so interesting to watch the young men when you talk To them about responsibility, there's a god damn thrilled about it. It just blows me away. It's like really. That's what's that's the counterculture Grow the hell up and do something useful really I could do that oh I'm so excited by that idea no one ever mentioned that before it's like rights rights rights rights Jesus It's it's it's appalling. It's a it's and and I feel that that's deeply felt by the people who are who are coming out to To listen to these sorts of things - they're they've had enough of that So and they better have because it's it's a non-productive mode of being Responsibility man that's where the meeting in life is so
I'd be interested to hear thoughts on Jordan Peterson in this group. Obviously very popular right now with the far right, I would say that he comes off very traditionally conservative in his writings, but there are major areas of overlap with communitarianism.