Jordan Peterson: The collapse of our values is a greater threat than climate change | Off Script

global and even national attempts to deal with climate change are going to cause way more trouble than accumulated carbon dioxide not because accumulated carbon dioxide isn't somewhat of a threat but when it becomes a global planetary threat that's a crisis then well then it's a justification for virtually any political action hello and welcome to offscript my name is stephen edgington and today i'm joined by dr jordan peterson the internationally acclaimed clinical psychologist and best selling author we're going to be talking about radical ideologies covert 19 lockdowns the legacy of communism and the mainstream media why are you a phenomenon [Laughter] oh god that's a really good question i don't i don't really know how to answer that i guess i'm it's a it's a puzzlement to me i mean some of it some of it is chance and and situation you know but some of it isn't and i mean i i sprang i emerged into broad public consciousness as a consequence of getting caught up in a political battle and although i i wasn't particularly political before that and i wouldn't really think of what i was doing as a political move and i think it happened when it happened and that was the free speech issue with bill c-16 in canada where i was objecting to my federal government's insistence that they had the right to tell me what words i had to use and i didn't think that they did have that right and so and that that was a hot political topic and and so that became very very notorious let's say but at the same time in the background i had been building a presence on the web i had a 100 hours or so of lectures uploaded already at that point because i was playing with youtube and i had also worked with a television station in ontario uh they'd filmed some of my classes which was not a standard thing to have done and i think what happened was that people came to see what i was up to on youtube because of the political controversy but they stayed because of the content and then shortly after that i had a book published and so it was like a perfect storm in some sense but the fact that i had already uploaded a tremendous amount of content to youtube was the reason that i wasn't just around for 15 minutes during the political controversy and then the next thing that happened was a series of interviews that become became rather infamous or famous depending on how you look at it and they also had a strange political element that caught the public's imagination that was particularly true of the interview i did with kathy newman because it was so preposterous the whole the whole uh phenomenon to use the word you used was so preposterous the interview was so absurd it was so palpably ridiculous that while it it couldn't be believed it was surreal and then since then my my life my whole life has just been one surreal event after another since then so i that's a as good an account as i can get get give for it i mean my lectures at harvard and the university of toronto were extremely popular with students i mean the reason that my maps of meaning course was turned into a 13-part series by this small ontario television station tv ontario was because the typical student comment on the post course evaluations was and i'm not making this up this was this was 95 percent of the student comments over a 20-year period were the same all the students said this course changed the way i looked at absolutely everything and so that was lurking in the background and and and that's definitely part of what's driving this continued notoriety let's say or or fame popularity i'm not sure how to characterize it it's not just the political though is it it's also a personal thing for many people and you've helped with your book and through your lectures millions of people around the world i'm sure you've seen letters and things like that from you know the most amazing most inspirational story right well it's only political i would say in some sense because what constitutes the political has become far too broad a category in our society and so i'm speaking to individuals when when i started working on my first book on maps of meaning i was trying to solve a problem and the problem was it was the problem of the auschwitz guard i suppose how could you be like that and the problem i was addressing was how could i be like that and then what understanding that let's say then what could be done about it so it was less likely to occur and my conclusion from that was well it was a conclusion that was mostly psychological and and aimed at the individuals like we it's necessary for us to recognize our capacity for evil to deeply recognize that and to become better people were too powerful to to not be better and and and i that's political in some sense in our climate because the discussion about the proper level of analysis for political conversation for public conversation has become political should it be the group should it be the individual well i think as far as i'm concerned about the individual and for people who are politicizing based on group identity that's a political statement but i don't think it is because the political isn't everything so i don't think it's a political statement it's deeper than a political statement and look you asked me a question you know you asked me why i'm so well known i suppose or popular i don't know how what word to use um why do you think it is i mean you wanted to interview me what the hell do you think's going on well listen i've got personal you know i don't like to use kind of personal experience in an argument but i think it's interesting i i've read your books and i've um you know i found you so interesting as a sort of young white man uh that sort of cliche thing and i think that you you just speak to so many people these days who feel nihilistic who as i said earlier don't have meaning or don't feel that they have purpose in their lives and you must know that you have spoken to millions of people and changed many many people's lives and i do want to talk about this phenomenon and you are a phenomenon if i may say because i want to ask whether you feel that there's a danger in that that there's a danger that people listen to yes they're terribly dangerous terrible absolutely because i the the point is people like all sorts of terrible people well any of them let me describe one of them um people people may listen to you you know these are young people people forming their opinions about the world they miss they may listen to you uncritically and they may view you as a sort of idol so do you worry that you can become that there may become a sort of jordan peterson cult as it were i can't say that i've had that as a specific worry because i would have to really participate in that for to really happen and i don't want that to happen and and i know why i don't want it to happen and and i've known for a long time i read this paper by carl jung years ago called the relations relations between the ego and the unconscious and and he talked about exactly this phenomenon and and he talked about he wrote extremely lucidly and carefully about the the danger of over identifying with let's say religious ideas so people come and listen to me lecture and and so then the question is well who are they listening to well in some sense they're listening to me because there i am but in some sense they're not i i'm the embodiment of a of a set of ideas just as we all are we're all embodiments of sets of ideas and those ideas aren't mine they're the they're the collective ideas of the human race in some sense and to the degree that i can articulate them properly for this time and place to the degree that i could be wise in my generation a biblical phrase a very an astute biblical phrase then i can transmit i can communicate those ideas to myself and to other people but i don't want to be mistaken for their source i'm not their source and i'm very aware of that and i i do what i can to make that clear to myself and my family helps me out with that a lot they understand the danger as well and i mean there's danger there's danger to me in this as well i mean i think part of i've been very ill for quite a long time and i it's not obvious why but i think one of the sources was that i've i just was overwhelmed by insight into misery so many i saw so many people that were so well grateful is part of it to me in the manner that i just described it but it's very uh affecting when that happens it's very it's it it's it's uh it's not trivial it's not a trivial experience especially when it happens thousands of times and you know i i'm a reasonably astute observer of people because i had so much practice as a clinical psychologist i can see what's going on with people pretty quickly if i really watch and that is my proclivity to watch that's why i've been able to maneuver reasonably well in these interviews where people have tried to skewer me so if you're if you're up to something i can switch into clinical mode and watch you and i can usually figure out what you're up to and in any case when people approach me so i can see reasonably deeply into them and they usually approach me in a pretty open manner so they're not defended but it's it's it's a lot of emotional weight i mean i had some some somebody called me this week and he just got my number so randomly and he said uh who is this i answered the phone he said who is this i said no no who is this since he was calling me and he said he told me his name he said are you dr peterson i said yes he said really and i said yeah it's yes really and he just burst into tears and he just sobbed like for like five minutes uncontrollably apologizing and then he said his grandmother had died his mother and that he had become suicidal and you know that his last my lectures he'd watched a lot of them and that that had helped him guide him through that and well i've seen a lot of that and that's dangerous you know it's dangerous i'm not unhappy about it i'm not unhappy about it it's an honor to be able to help people really it's a privilege and i'm thrilled that that's what's happening but by the same token it's a lot of it's a lot to see i have to be very careful to see all that and to be able to handle it and so and it's very dangerous because if i make a mistake of any sort i'm i'm i'm in so much trouble so i have to walk very carefully and you understand the responsibility that you have because just the fact that some random person could call you up and say you know say these most personal things to you and you have to react to that and you have to listen to them and try and you know you you sort of offered your own advice and your own opinions i don't know what you did in a specific case but that's been your whole career hasn't it trying to help people well i think you know i that's it that's what i've tried to do you see the other thing that protected me i think with regard to the political controversy was that because i had so many hundreds of hours of my lectures up on youtube already it was very difficult to actually pillar me successfully because virtually everything i ever said to students was recorded and public record and so if my those people who felt that they were my enemies wanted to demolish me they could go into that vast archive of material and find something i said that was reprehensible that's happened to lots of people but no one could do that and i think the reason for that is i never said anything reprehensible to students ever so i hope you know i mean ever is a long time and i taught for a long time and but and so i think the other thing that happened was that people came to my website because i was so controversial and then they listened to some of the things i said and they thought hmm this isn't how this man is being described what what's going on here exactly this is ridiculous because this is nothing like i expected at all and so then there's a mystery there as well and and that mystery has gone deeper in some sense and it it hit its ultimate conclusion this year i think it hit its ultimate conclusion in some sense when i was satirized let's say or parodied in a captain america comic book as like the king of this magical super nazis you know it was it was i said my life has become surreal that was one of many surreal things that happened it was so i mean when i saw the image someone sent it to me on twitter and uh i thought this just this is there's no possible way this is true this cannot be real someone must have photoshopped this it was such a shock it just about like it staggered me literally just about i just about fell over and it took me a long time to recover and it took a long time for my family and i to work out what to do about it it was very very tricky and we we've faced dozens of those situations where one misstep and and we were just we were just in in boiling water so you've listened to these awful stories of people's lives but also hopefully some inspirational stories as well and those are often just as difficult in some sense you know because the inspiration is contrasted with the misery that made it a redemptive story and so it's great but it's but it's not nothing like you just don't have it's not that often in your whole life typically that someone will come up to you and bear their soul you have to know them very well and people are doing that to me all the time they do it on the street all the time yeah absolutely so and obviously you mentioned that you've been through this awful illness recently but also in your life you know reading your uh your books you can tell that or you know people will know that you've been through difficulties like anyone else but i think in particular you've had you know some very tough times and people will be wondering how did you get through these moments how did you get through these this recent this recent illness what kept you going because if you read about what happened to you it just sounds like hell on earth it was it was it was unbelievably bad and and it was it was complicated by the fact that my wife was also very ill during part of that and so was my daughter and also i was under extremely uh brutal political attack pretty constantly so it was a perfect storm in some sense how did i get through it well um that's a good question i i have some answers to it my family has been unbelievably helpful to me unbelievably supportive my parents my extended family my wife my daughter my son that they've been behind me a hundred percent and and and then my friends as well have gone above and beyond the call of duty for me in a way that just staggered me as well so helpful to me i mean i had a friend a good friend of mine from college and and we we stayed in touch over the years but not as intensely as we we were roommates in college um way back in northern alberta you know 30 years ago 40 years ago and uh he he walked with me every day for five months like five miles a day literally five miles a day because i couldn't sit still i had to walk and and that's just one example many people went way out of their way for me and so and then there was tremendous public support too which is also very helpful when my wife was extremely ill there were people writing all the time that they were praying for her and my sister printed out a lot of those and put them up on the hospital wall and like all of that it was other people really really saved my life you know and and my the people who've been watching me online were part of that because they were so helpful and so you know offering words of encouragement and and uh well all that was was a big part of it and good medical care some of it not good some of it could some of it really good and and good fortune and and and divine providence i don't i'm much better i've been much better the last month something has really changed i seem to have recovered from this hellish condition which i still don't understand but i'm much better and so we're praying it lasts and i'm planning to travel again i'm planning a tour in january throughout the united states throughout europe australia new zealand asia all over the world starting in cambridge and it was so peculiar too that you know the place i got disinvited from was the it was the divinity school at cambridge i mean that's a great place to get disinvited from it's like the best place to be disinvited from in some sense they changed the entire university policy on inviting speakers they had a a a vote of everyone concerned and 85 percent of the people who voted voted in the direction of free speech and even even though no one would speak publicly in almost no one would speak publicly in favor of the uh of the proposed changes the vote carried ex extremely powerfully so that that disinvitation may have been a very good thing all things considered but it was another surreal event you know your life is is one roller coaster of pure surreal events i think to be fair um it's it's it's yes it's it's for that also exacerbated my illness to some degree because i literally could not believe the things that were happening to me they were so they're so absurd they're so over the top that it's jaw-dropping and in both directions right terrible things and absolutely wonderful things the whole expanse sure and you know i'm just going back onto this issue of you sort of almost being a prophet in a way do you view yourself as that i mean as religion declines you go on this world tour millions of people read your books billions of people probably watching the videos online do you see yourself as a sort of new religious phenomenon for people not new not new and i see myself as fortunate that's how i see myself that i have the opportunity to do this but are you a prophet see to say yes or no i have to think about how i think i have to think about how i might be conceptualized how what i'm doing might be conceptualized no i think i see myself as a psychologist and fundamentally i am a psychologist i'm a behavioral psychologist and i'm very interested in i got very interested in psychoanalytic thinking especially the union variants and and i'm a professor and i'm doing that you know on a much larger stage let's say but that's really what i'm doing and so it's a combination of those two things and there's a i mean i speak about religious matters but i don't see myself as a religious leader i don't want to make that although i speak about those things are you worried that that could happen that you could become a kind of a sort of pseudo-religious figure to people well you know this has been going on for quite a while and i i don't think it has happened and so no i don't think it'll happen and and and and i think there's ways of of mitigating that if with careful attention and careful speech i mean it's and i don't want it that which is also something because if i wanted it then you know that unconscious desire would or conscious desire even would shape the way that i speak but but i don't want that and and and i'm trying to point to things that are clearly beyond me they're clear and i i know they're beyond me and and and that's what i want and and and i want the thing i think part of what protects me against that i suppose is that i'm not trying to produce followers i am actually trying to help people discover what it is their relationship with that that part of them that aw calls out and i believe that exists in everyone i really do believe that and so in and so in that sense i'm i'm i'm on equal footing with everyone that i'm talking to and i do believe that if they brought that out into the world they can bring that out into the world and if they did that would be immensely beneficial for everyone and so so it's not that easy to produce a cult of individuals and and so i think the fact that my focus is the individual is the best protection against that i'm not asking for people to follow partly because they need to figure out where to go for themselves they really need that and i don't know where each person should go because each person is different importantly different so no i don't i don't think i don't think that that's if that was a real danger i think it would have already happened it's quite a while now i mean this has been going on for five years and i it does in some sense continue to get bigger i think it's not that easy to see especially during covid but i don't think that that's going to happen you mentioned clover there and i think it's a really interesting topic to move on to were you surprised by the level of compliance that western western societies had to these lockdowns that came in within a matter of weeks removing fundamental civil liberties i wouldn't i was so ill during the time when that was all happening that i really didn't have the opportunity to think about it from from above in some sense you know so i was probably maybe at my worst when covid first hit maybe it's hard to say so i couldn't think about such things and i'm i'm start trying to sort that out in my mind now i mean we certainly imitated totalitarian china almost instantly right which is quite striking now it's possible that we're primed to imitate the first actor in a crisis right like a herd and so in a herd one animal gets spooked and runs and they all follow because well running means you won't get eaten and if there's nothing there well then you're just a bit out of breath you know so it's not a bad mistake but we did imitate a totalitarian country and he accepted these lockdowns but everybody was in a state of crisis and and terror and so who knew how dangerous the covid virus really was and then by the time we sorted out how dangerous it was to the degree we have well all of that had already been swallowed um i am having said that i am surprised it i am still surprised at the level of desire for those sorts of lockdowns and the fact that i i was talking with i think it was steven crowder this week and about the app in australia i'm hoping i get this right i believe you take a photograph of yourself and you send it to the authorities the police and they know where you are and they know if the background is that place so you're there and i was thinking how do we know that app's not more dangerous than the virus because i think it might be it could well be and i mean this i'm dead serious about that i'm dead serious about that that is really something that app it's really something and it can spread it spreads electronically far faster than the virus and it infects the political system to god only knows what an extent and so yes i'm very concerned about that i don't like the mandated vaccines i think that's a dreadful error i think it's a terrible mistake and i think i think it it's an in-depth indication of failure of policy especially in a country like canada because everybody could just go to the pharmacy and get the vaccines so in some sense the government and health authorities have already done everything reasonable they can do here's the vaccines we think they work it's up to you and if you don't take them we're going to open up and away we go like nor like back to our normal lives that's how i think it should go and i think the mandated vaccines are a terrible idea i think they're going to cause far more trouble than than any good they can do you've studied the regimes of communism nazism of the 20th century how sophisticated societies can fall into the most authoritarian terrible genocidal places and i think a part of that is government's using fear to persuade people to comply and i don't want to compare the lockdown style discuss and discuss discuss which is fear contamination comparison right is some of well you know the comparisons are there i mean a lot of what the nazis did were were public health their guys they were in the guise of public health i mean eradication of the unfit that was public health that was justification and and a lot of the nazi horrors grew out of that initial justification i'm not trying to make a you know cheap comparison to what's happening in the western society with kovid but but you know the problem is is that if you're if you're justificat see the problem in some sense is if you're acting in accordance with some high ethical standard i'm going to protect you and and because you need to be protected you deserve to be protected your health is is paramount and even one life is too many it's like well yes but because that's become an absolute of some sense in some sense it's hard to say what that doesn't justify that's the problem what doesn't it justify and the whole reason we have rights well there's a lot of reasons we have rights because we're we're we're of intrinsic value and societies that don't recognize those rights collapse very rapidly so it's not like they're granted to us we we fail to recognize our intrinsic value at our peril that's the real truth of the matter but when you make those rights explicit and and grant what limit the ability of law to transgress against that you do that to not allow the sorts of things that are happening now to happen and so it's never danger and here's the thing we do about it that's safe it's danger and here's something we could do but all that also has its dangers and then the political conversation is well which danger is worst and i happen to also believe firmly that global and even national attempts to deal with climate change are going to cause way more trouble than accumulated carbon dioxide not because accumulated carbon dioxide isn't somewhat of a threat but when it becomes a global planetary threat that's a crisis then well then it's a justification for virtually any political action so look out man because that's well because of the dangers of systems boris johnson is currently in new york urging um the u.n to spend a hundred billion dollars on uh fighting climate change and but joe biden is saying the same thing and you know this is a huge global movement as you say and one of the other things that they talk about recently and and i want to link this in with the idea of government using crisis and what they call existential threats in order to pursue their own kind of agenda and you know recently it was the 20th anniversary of 9 11. this was another event in which you know terrible events but the u.s government the way that they reacted many people criticized them for passing legislation which was infringing civil liberties and to this day some of those led some of that legislation is still there uh mass surveillance from the nsa for example and today this year this year 2021 uh in on the 6th of january there was what the media described as an insurrection right and even on that 20th anniversary uh of 9 11 george w bush was sort of comparing trump supporters with the taliban you've got other democrats well he's a republican but democrats comparing trump supporters to terrorists and calling for a second domestic this time domestic war on terror are you concerned about this this rhetoric of describing your political environment very concerned about it well part of the reason part of the argument that i want to outline in my new book and i'm going to talk about this at cambridge and oxford because i'm also going to oxford at the end of november so how much fun is that i can't believe i have those two invitations it's so wonderful my daughter is also going to speak at oxford we're going to speak at the same on the same day so that's ridiculously improbable see i'm interested in what in what's underneath those problems i'm really and one one of the things that's happened to us is happening to us is the religious the political has collapsed into the religious so there's this new testament statement that christ make it's an unbelievably impactful statement it's it's it's a statement that is in some sense miraculous in its effects you render unto caesar what is caesar's and unto god what is god's and you know the entire the entire formal separation of church and state in the western world is a consequence of that statement you just think of that how impactful that statement was that's literally the case i don't care if you're religious or not it's irrelevant historically that's the case that statement did that so that's a that's that's a miracle you know in in some real sense well let's say that's true psychologically as far as i'm concerned as well as politically is that there's a there's a there's a domain that's sacred and there's a domain that's profane and that's true psychologically and if you don't keep those separate separate then the sacred contaminates the profane or alternatively the profane gets gets inflated into the sacred and that's that's not that's a catastrophe because then everything becomes emotionally overwrought because you're no longer a political enemy you're an emissary of satan i mean that's essentially what happened to be with the red skull you know but that it got pushed that far it was right to the point of ultimate absurdity it's like really like nazi isn't a bad enough epithet i i have to be a magical super nazi and really that's really necessary well what's going on well obviously because red skull you think of that red skull red skull is satan for all intents and purposes it's a matter it's only a matter of nomenclature and so it's not like the marvel universe is christian but it is in a profound sense i mean all those movies have underlying religious themes fighting off the you know the the the demonic extraterrestrial aliens that are invading the earth it's all it's all played out in the domain of religious ideation i mean thor is a god for god's sake it's not it's not like this is hard to see well if the profane becomes inflated with the sacred then you demonize your enemies you know and then maybe you so you sacralize yourself as well and that's not so good you know you're an environmentalist it's like well you sure you're not the messiah are you sure that's not what you're doing you're the savior of the planet it's like are you sure that's so good for your ego and it's not it's it's not it's not you know the earth has to orbit the sun in young's terminology or if it falls into the sun it's a catastrophe and all sorts of discussions we're having are becoming inflated with with religious concerns and then you know on the materialist atheist side this let's say the scientific side although it's not really that there's this insistence that religion is nothing but a set of mistaken scientific propositions about the nature of reality which it's certainly that's that's not a very sophisticated analysis and i i've seen this sort of thing start to happen to people like richard dawkins i mean he's he's fallen prey he's become victim to the collapse of the religious into the political it's not good and and this has nothing to do with arguments about you know do i believe in god or does god exist it's like that's not the point of this that's not the point that's not that's not the issue here the issue is we have a religious instinct and and then the question is why and then the question is well what happens when it's not nourished where does it go what does it do well the rationalist idea is well if we get rid of all that superstitious claptrap we'll just be like straight rationalist materialists and the world will move in a positive direction it's like it no no wrong too simple that isn't it where do we get our values and that's the conversation i'm trying to have with people that that's a big part of it is look the do science does not provide values we need values or or nihilism or rains and and you want that no so where do we get our values and if there are values are some values higher than others and if so what are the highest values and what are they opposed to and how do we embody them these aren't conversations for children this is serious stuff and it's underneath all this noise and terror that that we see playing out so destructively so you see what that does to your soul you're on twitter you get tangled up in these political arguments it just it just hurts you it's not good for you and so i would like to i'm trying to figure out what's going on underneath that and and what we what we need to do about it and that point about sorry distortion drop but that point about um being on twitter and sort of uh getting embroiled in these arguments we've all done it we've all got really angry we've all got really depressed about about certain things i think um and and you see many many people around you you know i've got sort of friends family members who i'm slightly concerned about because they're getting so radicalized by this stuff they're getting so angry that they can't remove themselves from the issue and i was speaking to my friend uh before this interview you know what kind of question should i be asking you and i we had this debate and it was it was this when you're on twitter and you're angry about these issues or even if you're not on twitter and you're angry and you're angry about wokeism for example or identity politics what do you do so like we came up with two solutions and i want you to comment on both i said well look the thing that helps me is to switch off i just turn off all my devices i go for a run i go for a walk i go on holiday and don't think about these things and i feel so much happier and i come back refreshed and unfortunately i have to think about these things my job but if i didn't i probably wouldn't think about them as much as i had to my friend said no it's our it's our duty to fight this stuff it's our duty to try and change the the way that society is heading it's our duty to try and get involved in this debate and get involved in this argument so what what what is the solution what should we do who's right yeah i think you're both right you know i mean you have to see how much you can take and not take any more than that and so shutting off and and and protecting yourself against the electronic onslaught let's say which is all new technology right we have no idea what its psychological impact is and especially of something like twitter because twitter is a radically new form of communication and we don't know what it is we have no idea like does the fact that you can only communicate in 200 i think it's 280 characters now does that radically increase the probability of the exchange of highly irritable comments possibly i mean it looks like it i i've read some research that seems to indicate that and so and we don't understand that and by the time we do well we'll be on to some other form of communication that we don't understand so it won't even matter because we won't have time to understand and get adapted to twitter before something else comes along we're in this time of such stunning transformation that no one can keep up and so unplugging that's really necessary and it's very hard for for any of us to figure out well how much can you take i'm up in this northern lake now and i'm really i'm i'm i i didn't know if i would ever get up here we bought this place in february and i was so sick i didn't think i'd ever get to see it and i came up here about a month ago when i started feeling better and like i haven't left i thought oh looks like i live here who had expected that but it's really nice to be out of the city way better than i thought i needed it way more than i knew and it's part of this connectedness right it's great it's wonderful but man it comes at a price and then with regard to responsibility well your friend is right it's like you have a religious responsibility you have a political responsibility you have a communal responsibility and you need to you need to shoulder those responsibilities for a variety of reasons partly because none of those systems will work without you and you won't work without them and so you you you ignore them at your peril truly you ignore them at your peril partly because you won't be what you could be without shouldering that communal responsibility and then you'll pay for that in your individual life because you'll be shallow and immature and weak and clueless and a puppet and and a sheep and all of that and so and and it's not a simple matter to get that balance rate i mean it's awesome because and one of the things that i think is a is a danger for people when they take on that responsibility and they see these issues and they want to solve them for example which may start with trying to solve the problems in your own life is it's difficult to know where to stop and where and how do i word this correctly that was pretty good well they need to you well i think that what i'm trying to say is people can can become radicalized and people can become you can go too far down the rabbit hole and you can become entrenched in these issues do something that's part of the danger that's part of the danger of the contamination of the profane with the sacred it's exactly that because you see there's an instinct that pulls you into that say conspiratorial and and radical and over committed form of thinking you're what you're doing is manifesting religious devotion to to a set of ideas let's say that don't warrant that worship and worship what is worship worship is what you imitate that's what it is to worship something is to imitate it that's what it means most fundamentally well be careful what you worship be careful and you think well i don't have to worship anything it's like oh that's what you think is it well don't be so sure that all those people who lived before us who insisted that you did have to worship something and that you should be very careful about what it was don't be so bloody sure they were stupider than you and so you see you know so many people well lots of people for example are radical about their atheism and somebody wrote me the other day and said oh no it was a youtube comment um said you know i was one of those radical atheists this is what the guy said and but i was like brutalized by fundamentalist religious people when i was growing up and lots of atheistic people are like that and and i wrote back briefly and said yes you know point take and i understand that the excesses of a certain kind of religious ideation have produced this counter reaction this emotional counter reaction but that's religious fervor so let's say that we're prone to religious fervor because we need to be committed to what is important well then we need to figure out where that instinct should be oriented this is why i'm so interested in the idea of the logos because that is the western world's attempt to answer that question what is this logos well it's the root word of logic so rationality is embedded in it it's it's a it's a very important part of that it's also that element of consciousness that interacts with the ground of being to produce phenomena to produce experience the world of experience it's a it's a it's it's a world engendering force it's an ethical demand as well so you see that in in in your wrestling with your conscience which is a virtually universal experience like what the hell is that exactly wrestling with your conscience why can't you just tell yourself what to do and you listen well you're not like that something in you resists well what is that thing that resists and what's it related to that's the union self by the way technically speaking it's it's the totality of what you could be manifesting itself in objection to your narrow-minded rational fervor let's say something like that or it's something like that but so so you you want to be religious about the right things and that's partly again why my emphasis is on is that as on the individual i've struggled in some sense with committing to the spiritual or the political my whole life it's always because i was interested in politics since i was like five like really really young and i always considered a political career and many people have asked me i don't think i have the emotional stability for it uh frankly speaking i don't think i could tolerate the stress and but in any case every time i've had a choice i pick the psychological it's what i would like to i would i've devoted my life to what would you say well psychologists work on individuals and that's what i decided to do is and and that's the it's safer in some sense to do that as well right it's it's who doesn't wouldn't it be better for everyone if if there were more better people how could that be worse we're getting to the 2024 election well we're not but in america you know they start election campaigning very very quickly and very very soon unfortunately uh and and people were talking about donald trump running again would you be concerned about that would you do you think that could cause and not just because of the man himself but also the kind of reaction from his enemies i mean we saw from 2016 to 2021 the media were hugely um hyperactive and i think you know we saw a lot of division and we saw a lot of polarization so are you concerned we could see a repeat of that if he runs again it would surprise me if he doesn't run again i think it'll happen i i'm i wouldn't claim to be a particularly astute political seer you know in i've made many mistakes in political prediction in my life and and it isn't obvious to me what should happen it wouldn't surprise me if trump ran again and yes that will there will be an exacerbation of these differences because there's an underlying problem and the problem i think is the one that we've been discussing and and unless we get that straightened out which is very difficult very hard very very challenging thing to do because in some sense we have to become more conscious of what was once religious and unconscious we have to start to understand it explicitly and that's ex unbelievably difficult i mean i learned a lot of what i learned about the psychology of religion by reading carl jung and hi and some of his students eric neumann in particular who's extraordinarily brilliant psychologist it's very very difficult intellectually i mean there's a lot of psychologists have contempt for young they think of him as a mystic and my experience has been i don't i've never ever met someone who understood young who criticized him that way every single person i've ever met who had that attitude had absolutely no idea what they were talking about and i think a big part of that is it his books are they're very difficult and making this stuff conscious understanding it explicitly i mean even with my maps of my book maps of meaning there's been four variants of that book written by four different people i wrote one eric neumann wrote the origins and history of consciousness it's the same book jung wrote symbols of transformation that's the same book joseph campbell wrote the hero with a thousand faces that's the same book and to explain what's in that book in some sense that took me like 100 hours of lecturing and and i never got to the bottom of it it's so we have a daunting the daunting task before us is to understand the source of our values explicitly and then to have an intelligent broad scale intense public discussion about the ranking of those values what's that what's at the top what's at the bottom and and this is and people are cap people are captivated by that discussion that's partly why they're watching my lectures and so we have to sort that out because otherwise it'll just manifest itself in this uh ideological fractionalization demonization and increased polarization and and increased conspiratorial thinking this is another thing i've really become aware of so many people i know very intelligent people uh extremely capable people have fallen prey to conspiratorial thinking it's it's it's a real psychic plague and it's it's i believe it's caused by the same issue again it's it's this conceptual collapse of the sacred into the profane and it's a it's the major challenge facing our civilization as far as i'm concerned it's it's much more crisis than the climate that if we solve this other problem we'll solve that problem if we don't solve this other problem we'll just make we'll just make it worse way worse worse in ways we can hardly imagine um so and i see this also making it impossible for us to take any into almost any intelligent environmental action because everything becomes so hyper moral instantly that you can't have a reasonable discussion i mean i look at what happens with bjorn lomberg who's a very reasonable person as far as i can tell you know he he accepts the reality of of human-induced climate change even the ipcc projections but he doesn't agree with the economic analysis he doesn't think it's a crisis and and he's laid out what seems to me to be the most rational and straightforward uncontaminated map of the territory and suggestions to move forward with a methodology for that and it doesn't doesn't gain any traction at all because that isn't what it's about so with or without donald trump we're going to be divided anyway and we're going to face this moral crisis anyways basically i think what you're saying um just one last question yeah trump didn't cause that no exactly exactly but but but but the media has sort of hyped him up as this awful uh divisive figure who has caused these these these terrible problems um but anyway listen one more one more question and i i want to ask about uh something you mentioned earlier in the in the interview which is one of the reasons you became famous and you did these interviews with kathy newman you did an interview i think with helen lewis from gq yes that that's a very interesting interview worth watching absolutely but i just well oh sorry go ahead let me just quickly ask the question and then and then you can comment on all of that okay um it's interesting because these are british i don't know if that's relevant left-wing female journalists who will really grill you and go for you and people found watching those interviews entertaining interesting and they went hugely viral i mean i'm talking about tens and tens of millions of people watching this stuff why still oh well it's extremely interesting all of that and it isn't irrelevant that they're british at all because of your there's a particular viciousness about british journalists that's quite unique and and it's not all bad but but some of it's bad um it's both of those interviews are extremely interesting psychologically uh independent of politically with the kathy newman the kathy newman interview is simpler what's going on psychologically is simpler so i can tell i'll tell you what happened that day okay because it's relevant it's relevant to why it's i think it's been watched 30 million times it's still being watched like the numbers grow and grow and grow because i keep an eye on those two interviews the helen lewis interview is now much more widely watched than the kathy newman interview and that's because it's what's going on there is deeper the kathy newman interview was simple in some sense so i got there with my wife i was doing a bunch of interviews that day we sat in the green room and kathy was in there and she was very friendly in a professional sort of way and and that's interesting because not all the journalists who've you know come after me were friendly and professional to begin with but she was and and good credit to her and then we went on air and she she just flipped and came after me but i'm a clinical psychologist and i just turned into a clinical psychologist about two minutes into the interview i thought oh i have learned that if you say something to someone and they don't listen and that happens a couple of times then you are not where you think you are and you're not talking to who you think you're talking to something you're somewhere else and you better clue in quick or you're going to make a fool of yourself at least and so i just watched her and i thought oh i see what's going on here and so then the interview wasn't the problem and she was she's animus possessed in in the in the technical term and and i i don't want to get into that but it but it's it's a kind of emotion driven it's possession by an emotion driven argumentative spirit and the the desire of the spirit is to attain victory it's not to have and and dominance essentially psychological dominance and the arguments that are utilized are tools to obtain that end they're it's not a rational discussion it's not designed to further understanding of a particular topic and so that's what was happening there and it didn't work because i saw what was happening and i didn't do that and i i was lucky because fortunate because i could maintain my sense of humor during that interview as well and that protected me and so but she wasn't all that sophisticated in her ability to do that i mean she's she's very extroverted and somewhat disagreeable and could poke and and was willing to do that so that was part of her temperament but she wasn't armed with very sophisticated arguments and all she could really do was come up with you know absurd things that i might believe and tell me that that's what i believed right and so yeah and and so they were so preposterous that it was easy to defend myself now with with helen lewis helen lewis is more sophisticated thinker and she's deeper she's better educated and she was still doing the same thing and maybe even in a more vicious manner because when i came to that interview i could tell as soon as i walked into the room that something was up and she was not friendly to me she was hostile way before the interview even started and she like she had something personal against me and and her professionalism couldn't rise above that with kathy newman it was more of a game that she was playing you know it's not that i'm justifying it but it was more of a game lewis was a lot more serious i got under her skin or what she thought i thought had gone under her skin a lot more deeply but she was way more sophisticated but she was still doing the same thing she was using intellectual arguments to win a dominance battle and that's and people see that when they're watching the video and that's partly what they're watching even if they don't know it that's partly why it's still attractive and so much and that's so much of our political discussion has that aspect of it too it's victory over a perceived enemy and and the desire for dominance and and there's some gender issues happening there as well that are contaminating the whole situation psychologically so and she was she was much more sophisticated and that's why that interview has had has over the years attained greater popularity than the original kathy newman video so well listen we've got to end it there because it's getting late in the uk and uh i really appreciate your time and i think you've had a really interesting uh perhaps unfortunate insight into the world of journalism and how journalists work particularly in britain um yeah well i've i've had great experiences with journalists too you know absolutely i think it does seem like the whole gamut well i think it does something to people you know that this industry i think it really changes people um and not necessarily in a good way but anyway look thank you so much jordan for your time i really appreciate it well thank you for the invitation and for the questions and for the for the courtesy it's much appreciated

Channel: The Telegraph

Views: 3,559,705

Keywords: Telegraph, News, jordan peterson, jordan peterson motivation, jordan peterson 2021, jordan b peterson, jordan peterson interview, psychology, jordan peterson 12 rules, existentialism, jung, jordan peterson podcast, jordan peterson advice, jordan peterson gq, gq jordan peterson interview, jordan peterson gq interview, jordan peterson new, psychoanalysis, jordan peterson climate change, global warming, greta thunberg, climate change peterson, peterson climate change

Id: q4zZ2ker1iI

Length: 56min 24sec (3384 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 24 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/Jimmydeansrogerwood]

Yes, he is correct because climate change is natural/cyclical. Fuck anyone who says different. Does that mean plastic and litter in the oceans and everywhere else is ok, no…

[u/Ketoisnono]

Climate change is no threat. Running out of ketchup before I get to the end of my fries is a greater threat than climate change