Provocations: Nicole Arbour interviews Jordan Peterson

oh my gosh this is the silver fox himself jordan peterson is here i am so excited to finally meet you how are you sir hi nicole it's so nice of you to invite me i'm i'm very excited so the new book is beyond order 12 more rules for life we'll flip that in the screen uh not to be offensive thank you for sending it to me but i personally like this one more than the first one are you hearing that a lot um i'm hearing that more than i expected and i'm happy about that i mean you hope that each thing you do is somewhat better than the last thing you did if you're fortunate and it wasn't obvious to me that it i couldn't tell if it was the same quality worse better i tried to make it better uh and i would say that's the general response so far yay it's like michael jackson putting out thriller and then putting out thriller two and thriller two is somehow better so yay for you i love it okay what we're going to do today is 12 questions with jordan peterson to celebrate 12 more rules are you ready everybody always celebrates more rules everybody always celebrates more rules i love rules because then i get to break those rules just like you talked about with the harry potter characters which we're gonna get into okay here we go rule the first no i'm just kidding question the first and i just want you to be honest with me if you could kill anybody and get away with it like off with their head queen styles just one person who would it be [Music] i don't think i can answer that question you mean in my darkest fantasies i won't tell anybody i don't i have no idea how to answer that nicole that's a lie i can see you thinking of someone in your head but that's okay we'll skip to the second question i had a feeling okay how do you like your steak cooked medium rare to medium barbecued barbecue specifically well it's best barbecued i think i have a barbecue in the backyard and use it all the time are you a good barbecuer um yes okay and i watch the meat very carefully and i don't let it play flame up and cover it with charcoal and and dirt and and and that horrible oily grit you get sometimes in a barbecue and i worked in lots of restaurants and so and i miss cooking because i eat so little now it's just meat still but uh but i'm careful with the meat that's i'm not that good i got my dad a tomahawk steak last year for father's day and it flamed all the way up the barbecue up the side of the house right right well yeah that's generally not good you don't want your barbecue incinerated or cremated um that's a whole different thing right i agree okay next question um can i eat steak with you sometime anytime you're near yeah all right i feel like i'm winning this interview already once restaurants open again or i could barbecue you one would you barbecue me a steak i suspect i probably would yes i suspect that would be awesome okay oh i'm a fan i'm sweating i have been around a-list celebrities i've been at the emmys i've been all these around all these rock stars and all these crazy people and everyone asks me who the one person is that i would fangirl over and i always say it's jordan peterson so i'm having like a hard time right now i'm sorry if it's awkward for you have that professionally evaluated i would say not the sweating the the fangirling yes yeah aren't you a professional evaluate that quickly for me i'm just going to evaluate it as flattering and and assume that you're credible in your evaluations it's based on listening to your own stuff so yeah it's i think it's pretty good um do you know what a milf is yes okay we don't have to say it out loud so then you know where the filth is a dilf yeah i i think i can guess okay what i'm you're pretty smart so i'm sure you got it so you're being you know people say that you're kind of in like that silver fox range do you know what a silver fox is it's preferable to dead fox or senile fox yeah well it's more of like the george clooney like hot older man who's intelligent and awesome you get put in that range a lot and i totally get it not trying to flirt with michaela's dad because that's weird but i'm just i'll bring her in on this and sicker on you no that's michaela's my friend that would be so strange um but how does it feel to be put as like an intellectual like sexual superhero in that way like you get like that category well i can't say that i've dwelled on that intellectual sex symbol status jordan peterson has that ever occurred to you not consciously let's say look i can tell you one okay i'll tell you uh yeah okay okay omega watches contacted me um two years ago and they asked me to be a spokesperson and at the same time they had uh daniel craig daniels it's craig daniels right james bond daniel craig sorry yeah yeah it's okay opposite dad and i thought yeah that would that would be cool that i had to that got me i thought i it would be something i'd never imagined but to be on a billboard for omega watches when dan when when daniel craig is also their spokesperson you know yes that was very flattering and i i was very very tempted to do it i didn't you do it well there was a variety of reasons i wasn't sure it was appropriate that i mean there was a fun element to it you know and and and and it was really attractive for that reason and there was a surreal element to it because it wasn't something i expected at all and but i i felt that it would i was ambivalent about it i suppose not and it's funny because i actually own an omega watch now i got it as a present and i have three or four watches but i wear this one and i like it so um and it's interesting to me that i wear it because i didn't expect to but i feel like you over thought your way out of that awesome opportunity well a lot of other things were happening at the same time too that would have complicated it so it wasn't a straightforward it wasn't a straightforward decision but it was something i was i was very tempted to do it was very flattering and very unexpected and so my support right now you know it's very difficult to say but i would probably come to the same decision i'm i'm a little bit i would be a little more tempted to do it now because i actually have an omega watch and i actually wear it and like it whereas before i wasn't familiar with the brand and i'm not averse to i'm not averse to capitalistic enterprises let's say yeah yeah well but i also have to be i strive to be very careful in what i do and i and so that you know i was talking to stephen fry yesterday and he's an extraordinarily admirable person in every regard and he's done all sorts of advertisements it worked out fine for him and i don't have anything against it per se from a moral perspective but in the position that i'm in as much as i can understand that position i have to be very careful with what i do and so if i'm doubtful i tend to say no when in doubt leave it out that's what i try and stay with as well just for a general life rule if i was writing my own 12 rules when in doubt leave it out however i firmly believe that we need more intellectual rock stars we have a-holes up on billboards selling whatever we need some people to look at the younger generations can look at and be like that's a badass i want to be like them i want to get that watch like them they're intelligent they have good moral values they've come through hardships that's what i think you could exemplify so maybe think about it again you know i don't work for omega you're sure about that eh yeah yeah i don't i don't work for them but i'm just saying we do need some more badass people to look up to that you know if you were on the front cover of people magazine's sexiest man of the year and it's because you're smart and do intelligent things and share wisdom i think that's badass so might be a different way to look at things just saying yeah i'm listening very carefully good i'm glad i taught you a thing jordan okay um so i asked you that one oh you know what there's there's something about what you said that's right like i was talking to um yeah say that again for all the guys i used to take jacquel willink two weeks ago and i'm going to release a podcast with him soon and it was a really fun conversation and he is this you know monstrous character unbelievably physically intimidating and strong and also that psychologically and characterologically um and he we had a very intense discussion about literacy and he's the perfect person to have it a credible intense discussion of literacy and he really insisted on it he told me that he got an english degree and i kind of skipped over it and in in the conversation and he said i i want to i'm surprised that you didn't point out the surprising element of me pursuing an english degree after i had been in the navy seals and so we went down that particular road and then he made this incredibly powerful aggressive case for the value of literacy and it was extremely useful and he isn't the sort of person that you see doing that and when you see someone like that doing that it's really powerful exactly exactly so in my perfect world there would be jocko's and jordans those are the people that i would love to see on the billboards instead of just some singer who can hit some notes singing someone else's song that wrote it who's actually the intelligent musician behind it but they're not cute enough to promote the single so they got some singer guy to do it and now he's on the cover of the magazines he's selling the watches and this is who society looks up to there's another element of this that's worth talking about i think too is that i've been thinking a lot about the idea of casual contempt when i watch people fail one of the ways that they fail is by being casually contemptuous of something so they don't know anything about it and they're not good at it but instead of no noting that their own inadequacy and noting that there's an opportunity there and that the people who are pursuing it actually know something they get casually contemptuous of it dismiss it and then they can't then and so here's a here's some places i've seen that so college professors are casually contemptuous of business people okay there's jealousy in there and there's envy but there's there's also this disdain for their domain of of of expertise let's say and and maybe some anti-capitalism mixed in just for good moral measure but the business people are frequently contemptuous of academics because they're in their ivory tower and they're protected and they have a secure job and all they have to do is lecture you know two courses a week and how easy is that so they're each casually contemptuous and then they can't learn from each other and so that means the academics for example aren't and then within business maybe you'll have the engineers and they'll be casually contemptuous of the sales and marketing people and they're casually contemporaries of the engineers and it's not helpful at all and so i'm not contemptuous of sales and marketing and i'm not contemptuous of advertising because sales and marketing and advertising are all forms of communication yes and you should get good at them and then you can communicate and if you have ideas you need to communicate them and if you're no good at sales and marketing let's say then you're no good at communicating so what you're saying is you're going to do the omega app it does kind of come back to that doesn't it myself in comedy i ended up in the marketing and advertising world because i could convey messages better than brands could because they were coming from it at sales and i came to it as what are we giving the audience entertainment edutainment advertisement make them laugh make them feel something connect to their lives and then they'll want our products or services and all these suits couldn't get that so the little blonde girl when i was 22 had to go into the molson office and explain it to them and say you know stop being so inauthentic let's actually give people a dope ass party and bring in their best artists okay so you mix two things there you said stop being so inauthentic and let's be so what how do those two things go together the the authenticity and the entertainment how do you see that operating together i believe when you invite people over to your house you want them to have a great time you want to put on a great event party dinner party whatever that's hospitality hospitality yeah okay that's what advertising is missing and marketing you should genuinely want to entertain and provide value to your audience with entertainment edutainment or you know just having a good time if you're throwing a big party or whatever from molson for nike whoever it is okay and what's what's the where's the authenticity piece in that as far as you're concerned actually caring about people actually yeah that it actually matters to you yeah because right you're just a number and they're just a dollar you don't give a but if you actually care about providing something awesome and an awesome experience and building a community even though it's buzzwords now around your people they're gonna feel that they're gonna keep coming back to buy your product or they're gonna at least tell someone else to get your product and i think people feel the same way about you you provide an experience you're you're a badass renegade in these interviews around the world you stick to your guns that's an experience for us you give us edutainment not just the the facts i'm entertained when i see you go against someone that i know can't possibly touch you it's really fun to watch um and then you know you have any idea why it's entertaining um because you pick a team for i'd say for you it's entertaining because i pick a team and i picked your team because i saw you as sense versus the growing nonsense so if i could buy jerseys with peterson on the back and musk i would but they don't sell those and i'm not that into sports so instead i promote your book i tell my fans to follow you i i love elon musk and i promote him well you know we have a murder we have we have a merchandise section and this is why it came about yeah it's on my youtube channel and i've been ambivalent about it too but but i but i'm not and what happened was that as my popularity or notoriety or or or reprehensibility i think they all go together well apparently they do um as as that expanded people started offering merchandise all over the place t-shirts and and and stickers for your computer and posters and and a lot of it was very creative and original and there was a lot of it and i thought at one point well there's obviously a demand for this and so then you ask yourself well when you're trying to communicate with people and you know there's a demand what's the appropriate thing to do and you might say and and this is a question worth asking well that's not the manner in which you've chosen to communicate and that's not your bailiwick and stay out of it and don't cheapen the message and don't sell out and all of that buzzword those are all cliches those though like all cliches they carry a kernel of truth it's something to watch for so we set up a merchandise and which my son runs and partly that was also an experiment because i'm always curious about how things work and so we thought well let's do this and see what happens and we have posters and and mugs and and tights with lobsters on them and that's so funny they're also it's also funny there's an element of foolishness about it and that's the place where the ideas meet the popular culture but nothing bad has come about and i've left the merchandisers who aren't me alone like i think if you can take something that i've done and you can figure out how to package it and you make a certain amount of money on that and you're not you know you're not twisting what i'm doing and you're not bending it and exploiting it um that's fine go go right ahead and i don't see any problem with that at all in fact i would wear a piece of grip i would i would if there was a jersey like an actual sports jersey it said peterson if there was like an intellectual league that we could almost have our teams and wear those jerseys i would totally do it that'd be fun but at the same time for years i didn't have merch that said nicole arbour on it because i think one part i thought it was pompous and one part i was almost insecure about selling stuff yeah well that's exactly what i'm telling talking about is that casual so with you it wasn't so much casual contempt it was maybe lack of confidence it's like who wants to put my name on their body it turns out a lot of people that's interesting and so what do you think about that you've obviously decided to do it and why did you think that that was either okay or desirable and how did you how did you settle your moral qualms well i went back to quality and giving them that hospitality experience if people want to cheer for me and be on my team my whole thing is go team i that's my mantra that's what my fans are i don't have fans i have a team and i can cheer for fans either i have viewers and listeners and watchers and readers i don't have fans yes and i don't want fans i like walking down the street and running into people who enjoy what i do and they just want to have a conversation they don't always just want to scream i'll fangirl for you and you need to let me have my moment because it's the only one i'll do but in general it's i can cheer for you because i'm awesome too i want everyone who follows me to be successful i don't want to be put up on some strange pedestal i want it to all be friends i haven't met yet and if my friends want to wear a shirt with one of my slogans on it because it makes me feel like a badass let's do it if it makes them feel awesome let's do that if they want to buy the lipstick that i always wear because that's them being part of my team let's do it i've just reached the point where i'm like yeah let's however you want to cheer for me and be part of this team i'm going to help you do that so we're also looking really hard at the whole social media universe and this is again a sales and marketing issue in some sense but really it's a communication issue it turns out and you probably know this already that one of the things that makes video really different than text is that you can cut video into very small sections and it still works it's like you can it's as if you could as if you could sell a book by the sentence and there's all these forms that have popped up instagram and tick tock that that focus on video lengths of a video of a certain length well that's also a communication mode on twitter of course is was famous for 140 characters you get these weird limitations that produce all these opportunities and so we're actively going through my current interviews and my back catalog finding one minute pieces two minute pieces five minutes of course people are doing this all by themselves because i saw at one point and i think this is still happening that about 200 videos a day are being made and posted up on on youtube from my video content not my team but people just doing that and so so that's an also an in interesting yet in that in the classic hero mythology which i think classic hero stories are reflections of um optimal human behavior the hero goes out into the unknown or fights a tyrant those are the two main themes goes into the unknown and comes back with something of value like the hobbit um going off to fight the dragon and coming back with the gold but that's only half of the hero story the other half is the distribution of what's been found to the community so it's productivity and generosity that's one way of thinking about it or it's um exploration and finding the treasure but then sharing it and hopefully sharing it so that it grows and the communication part is just as important as the exploration and discovery part and and if you have casual contempt for the communication forms then you can't communicate and it's a really bad time to have that casual contempt because all these new communication forms are emerging out of breath taking piece isn't it fair to say you maybe had some of that casual contempt for social media at the beginning but now you guys are more getting into it no i don't think so i think but there's a reason for that so i have a product before i became well known i produced this software to help people write about their lives to write about their past and their present and their future it's the self-authoring program and um i believed when i first made my first products that if you made a good product it would sell itself so i figured the product problem was 95 of the problem but after trying to sell various things especially the corporations for like 10 years with really no success and i mean zero i realized that product is like five to fifteen percent of the problem and sales and marketing which is communication is 85 and i lost any contempt i had for sales and marketing right then because i realized it was unbelievably difficult and absolutely necessary and when you're creating a product you should actually be talking to your market continually during the process of product generation to make sure that you're something that people want so by the time yeah story going to ask my audience as we go like what designs do you want what slogans do you want what would you like this to be i asked them as we go so that by the time i get there i'm delivering something they already wanted there's no reason right right well yes and i'll test it as i go you know exactly well that means that stops you from producing something that really works but has no ecological it has no ecosystem to to live in yeah and and that's deadly and so i learned all these things luckily although and it was very difficult to learn them it really took me 10 years of of failing to learn these things by the time all this came along especially after i had experimented with youtube because when i started putting my videos up on youtube um you know it was a place for cat videos essentially and so it was a it was it was easy to to you know it was amateurish and it was just getting going and it was before it was bought by google and no one knew what to make of it and most of it was cat videos and so yeah well you know everyone likes a good cat video and they're warm and touching and funny and all of that so fine but um i started to experiment with youtube and then i started to understand what it was and i still haven't really understood what it is because it's a revolutionary technology video video on demand everyone's now a tv producer if they want to be and and there's no barrier to publication and there's no administration there's no bureaucracy there's there's infinite bandwidth there's the possibility of dialogues with your audience like i saw this some one one thing i had was released on on i think it was i think it was tick tock but i might be wrong um i think you can do these things called duets on tick tock yes yes so someone will we should do a duet on tick tock i'm just saying but go ahead well i just found out about them but but they're part of the a conversation with the audience so michaela and i were talking about this finding that if a for every 15 points a woman's iq goes up over a hundred she has 35 percent less chance of being married and the reverse is true i was going to talk to you about this because michaela and i have discussed this as well and i i tried to push back on her i'm like no because my iq is doing quite well i'll say it that way um and you know the dating stuff i've found it hard because i have dated people who are very intellectual and maybe you know in the looks area they're not what someone would expect me to be with and they eventually get upset with the way i look or that people say you guys don't match together like i don't i don't get it you must have money or something but they were an intellectual match for me and then when i kind of dumbed down to date someone else i end up getting bored really easily so yeah do i have any hope jordan can you introduce me to someone well i can't there's no one i can think of that i can introduce you to but i've worked with women who have who have expressed exactly the same issues that you've just expressed and so also the duet issue well let's get back to that issue we will but the issue was interesting because mikhail and i were discussing it it was only about a 30-second clip or a minute on tick-tock i believe and then there were all these duets of women watching this and responding and i thought well that's so cool you know you think well that's trivial but it's not it's not trivial because all of a sudden video has become something that enables a dialogue and for my entire life video was a one-way street right it was the television station out to the consumer but now it's a dialogue and so it's awesome these technological revolutions are masked by their apparent triviality but they're not trivial they're fundamental they're fundamentally revolutionary and so we're attending to all these social media forums and trying to master them because they're they're very sophisticated modes of communication and if you have casual contempt so because we thought through some of the things that you're talking about you know you're talking about you know intellectual esports who are rock star all of that it's like well how about ideas that are advertisements yes maybe i can teach someone i can teach someone something in 30 seconds yeah so fine so fine then there's the 30-second niche on tick-tock because is anyone making one-minute idea videos and the answer to that is essentially no they're creative they're down and maybe there are many many people that i don't want to see you twerk but no offense but right well yes yeah i don't want to see that either definitely i i don't know who does well maybe there's a niche maybe they're on tick tock there's undoubtedly a group out there who would like that too much because out there is a group that likes anything too much let's not service them that's like that's why i never have bare feet in any of my photo shoots or i try not to because too many people have asked me for feet photos over the years that i think is a little strange i don't want to give that to them that sounds that sounds wise to me that might be something you don't want to cater to thank you okay i would love to fly through a couple of these quick questions so i have it to clip together and then circle back to the question about the dating stuff sure you good all right so this is a fun one for me i've noticed that angry unmarried ugly women don't like you and write cruel articles or fiction about you there's not really a question i just wanted to say it out loud for you oh god okay okay that's all okay next one i think that shocked me so badly that you might have to repeat it just so that i'm sure that i got it anyways no problem i've noticed that angry unmarried ugly women don't like you and write cruel articles of fiction i just wanted you to know that i've noticed it that's well not even a question but i would like you to know that if you want me to fight someone for you i'll do it like i'm like pretty good that also might be an audience that you don't want to cater to fighting on behalf of jordan peterson i was oh yeah i don't want to do that but i just wanted you to know that i noticed what kind of people consistently write hateful articles about you i wouldn't want to be their friend anyway so don't worry okay next question what's it like having a badass daughter well it's been it's been a lifesaver literally yes that's awesome cool literally yeah michael is amazing and yeah well gold michaela you know i mean it worries me because she is she's like you in many ways she's extroverted and enthusiastic and and open all of those things and people it's easy to make because you're doing many things you're very curious and maybe somewhat disagreeable um you and you need that to be a comedian often um because you have to you have to say things that aren't polite to be a comedian you have to do that um it's easy to make mistakes and so i worry about her making mistakes as she's exploring but you know you have to make mistakes and i try to listen to her and talk with her to feel out the landscape and but she seems to be powering along through it and and and so hooray for that thanks do you ever get nervous with it i feel like yes and he's like ah when i was just like what are you gonna say are you are you sure wouldn't you just want to be an entertainment news host that'd be so much easier but there's no way we're nervous all the time like in a constant state of of terror because of the scale of the communication and and also the vitriolic nature of some of it you know every time there's a hit piece of some sort and michaela's been featured in a couple of those now again by a woman that's uh you know i looked up i do it instantly when i see someone write something negative about people that i think are awesome i go i google right away who the reporter is i want to see what they post i want to see their photo i want to see what their bio is and nine times out of ten it is exactly what i want or exactly what i assumed and one time it's a an empty bubble and there's nothing in it and it's a fake person writing it so they're either a coward or they're an and i don't respect their opinions anyway so i hope that you guys can take that into consideration when you read this stuff about you this is something else that just happened this is something else that's happened recently that sort of flipped the power balance with regards to new media because before when when i was younger it was all top down but now you can do exactly what you just said so if a journalist writes an article you can do an investigation into the journalist and people absolutely do that and the younger they are the more likely they are to do that because they're at a much more equal place with regards to their access to communication technology and so it's increasingly the case that if you it it's harder and harder to do things top down it's harder and harder and that's that's all to the good i think i think it's great i think it's fantastic there's a level of accountability to it that we might not have had before the internet and being able to search these reporters so i like it again i'll fight for you guys don't worry okay here's a very this is like a very very important question you mentioned harry potter in the new book i as a potterhead got very very excited i also have a marauders map on my wall because i love it and i also solemnly swear i'm up to no good if you were a character in harry potter who would you be [Music] this is so important potterheads are gonna love this well i had a certain affinity for snape i could totally see that i can totally see that okay you'd snape it up he's an interesting character and and and i think the the the um actor who played him did an absolutely brilliant job yeah that sort of intense darkness and but i mean he he he harnessed that for good and my my experience with men in particular is that the best men i ever knew were those who could have been the worst but decided not to be yes that's in unerringly being the case and they're very respectable but you respect people like that instantly as soon as you meet them you think don't cross him you know that but but the powers for good right that's exactly it baby i love that that's a good answer okay who do you think is the most important character in harry potter i think we might disagree on this so that's why i'm setting this question up the most important yep i love that you're stumped on this well the i'm i the obvious answer is harry but i'm trying to think of an answer that's useful and not obvious it's hermione because harry well that's the issue okay so why hermione in every film it's hermione saving harry's ass he would have been dead in the first film if it weren't for her there wouldn't even have been a series so all the way along she helps him and saves him guides him teaches him things well it's funny and i i i i feel bad that you said that because that was what i was going to say and now that i beat you to it yeah that's right exactly what it is that's right you got to the punch line before me well she's a great role model i mean i know rowling didn't write harry potter characters so that they were role models because that would be dull and those books aren't dull and she captured the imagination of an entire generation you know i've got a lot of a lot of the criticism that i've received from intellectual types let's say um have focused on my what would you say stoned undergraduate interpretation of harry potter and i think that's so funny because it's another example of this casual contempt you know because i look at what jk rowling did and i think okay look this woman produced seven books correct is it seven i believe it's seven yeah i think it's seven and they're all the ones they're all this thick they're all two inches two and a half inches thick like 500 pages long and every kid read them or wanted to read them or had them read to them and most parents too and she could fill a stadium and read and so she promoted literacy like no one else she dominated the popular culture for 10 years she produced a movie uh enterprise that produced billions of dollars worth of value and the movies were very high quality and entranced and a whole other audience and it's absolutely and she was a single parent if i remember correctly who was unemployed it's like it's a cinderella story and a real cinderella story and it's a magical story and it had this immense cultural impact and people think that the people who look at my analysis of that and criticize it not for its content but for me merely doing it are so blind importance of that that they don't notice that they're missing a mystery it's like why did this happen why did what she do work so well and it's because her mythological imagination is perfect there's something to be said for fun and being able to cheer for someone again you know we got to cheer on multiple levels within those books which is what people love to do we got to pick what house what house would you be in jordan do you know what house you would be well you'd have to be slytherin wouldn't it i think you'd be a slytherin i have a feeling that we we would still be friends i think what would happen is that i'd get the sorting hat put on me and that's what it would suggest and i'd refuse it perhaps to go where to slytherin okay slytherin i've done the tests i'm half slytherin half gryffindor so i think i'd have to talk to the hat as well because i i can go the dark side i i'm very cunning in that way but i prefer to be the happy hero so we get to cheer for what house we're in we get to cheer for harry we get to cheer for good versus evil there's so much that we get before with the little kids when the younger grades start coming up we get to cheer for them when they fight back against the bad guys there's so much to cheer for that it just sets you on fire it makes all the underdogs rise and for intellectuals to not be able to see that so quickly to me goes back to intellectuals overthinking which i know is what intellectuals do but it's no it's the contempt it's the refusal to even think about it you should think about it because it like clearly because something happened and she put her finger on something instead i think about it maybe they should feel about it well maybe yeah there's my thoughts oh harry potter people are gonna love that clip okay almost done sir i got your daughter in there oh here comes some real question um okay we have an intellectual one do you think canada's in trouble i'm also from canada i'm from hamilton originally and then toronto for most of my life do you think canada's in political trouble right now no not really things were way more unstable when the when the separatist the two separatist uprisings let's say occurred i mean the country could have easily been torn apart both times it was very very very close and it was intense um i don't think we're in any more trouble than the west is in trouble crisis and opportunity fundamentally but and trouble compared to what compared to other countries in the world no the historical reality no no so all things considered things are pretty good okay i like that answer it makes me happy and i feel like it's correct awesome okay now we're gonna go into something else i have a theory i'm gonna read this one because i have to write it down i have a theory that gender dysmorphia is similar to body dysmorphia in that it only exists because we have something to compare ourselves to and that young kids wouldn't naturally be comparing themselves to anybody else unless someone called them to do it and that you know by transitioning every little boy who wears a dress into a woman we're actually killing off what might be the future gay population did that make sense a bunch of that's a bunch of questions yeah there was multiple things in there i can unpack that first with body dysmorphia do you feel it might be similar that's i would say that's the that would have been the psychiatric consensus before the recent rise in political correctness cool i thought i just came up with it so i like hearing that professionals thought it okay and then do you believe that if kids never heard of it they would they wouldn't be doing it oh there's all sorts of examples of psychiatric contagions so if you read there's a book called discovery of the unconscious which is a great book it's a great book and anybody who's interested in psychoanalytic thought it's also an extremely interesting book he documents the rise and the contagious rise and then fall of multiple personality disorder over about 300 years it cycles and so it ha what happens is there's a case report it gets a tremendous amount of attention then there's all sorts of case reports it just emerges and and distributes itself everywhere and there's hundreds of case reports and then and then cynicism about it or criticism of it and skepticism starts to set in and then the cases disappear and then the idea vanishes and then it reemerges and that happens over and over and um there are personality types um histrionic is the technical term who seemed particularly susceptible to psychiatric contagion now i don't know if that's the case with what's happening right now but another example of that is that generally speaking and i hope i'm i'm still correct in this uh um if you put a suicide hotline in a town and you start to publicize suicide the rates go up not down the same thing happened with cutting which is extremely widespread yeah that's a contagion yeah it happened with eating disorders so there's there's a imagine that people have emote intense emotional troubles of of a non-differentiated sort that's that's common no matter what the historical time and place is let's say the way that manifests itself is going to be shaped by the current culture and the cultural narrative from culture to culture and within cultures itself and so there's always this interplay with psychiatric diagnostic categories between the biology and the biological let's say pathology that might be associated with an illness and the way that's expressed the culture shifts and turns that and there's there's no doubt that ideas psychiatric ideas can be contagious and i do believe that that's the dane one of the dangers in um disturbing settled ideas of gender is that i smile when i i'm already agreeing with you and these are thoughts that i have had but you are expressing them better than i knew how i'm smiling like a crazy at you right now yeah clearly it's clearly the case that some people suffer unduly from a cut-and-dried gender binary because there are people many people who don't fit neatly into those categories and it is partly because there's a biological sex and there are personality traits let's say that are associated with gender but not tightly linked to it so on average women are more agreeable but some women are more disagreeable than some men on average women are more enthusiastic but some men are more enthusiastic than some women and so you can have a man enthusiastic and agreeable so he's he's got some feminine traits and and and the binary distinction is is harder on people who is hard on some people fine fair enough true enough the question is what happens when you blur the binary and my suspicion is that you confuse and hurt far more people by destabilizing that than you help i agree that's been my observation i like to stand back look at what's happening before i form an opinion as much as i possibly can without you know getting emotional with the internet and that's what i've seen happening so i'd like to go to the next part of that question was i grew up in dancing and cheerleading and lots of little boys would love to put on the dresses and they would run around with the fairy wings and 100 of those boys have grown up to be gay and um probably not a hundred percent of the of the ones i saw in the dancing the ones that i called it that they were gay okay and my mom would be like don't say that about them well they're all gay now and the openly gay happily married whatever now my thought is that if we're every little boy who's putting on a dress and dancing around and kind of you know having those same mannerisms we're now encouraging them to transition to a woman is that killing off our future gay population for a lack of better words to that discussion that discussion is being had in the lgbt community definitely come up with anything the discussion continues you know it's not an easy discussion to have because just having it makes you hated no matter which side you come down on and so it's very difficult to have a discussion when no matter what you conclude you're going to be hated yeah that seems to have i mean both of us i think i think in some sense that that conclusion is virtually inescapable if the pre-politically correct data on children with gender dysphoria is true because the pre-politically correct data there's a scientist in toronto who is pilloried for for supporting this data but it was this psychiatric state of the art at the time and i don't think think's been superseded by any new knowledge that's more valid it was 85 percent i believe of children with with gender dysphoria um accept the biological reality of their body by the time they're 18. and so the the the if you accept the hippocratic oath which is in some sense uh first do no harm sorry that might not be the hippocratic oath i i can't remember exactly at the moment but it's it's a medical it's it's a it's a one of the hallmarks by which medical intervention might be justified first do no harm um the the appropriate advice for a parent who has a child with gender dysphoria is wait don't do anything radical when the cost of doing something radical is so high weight now the pro transition opposition to that idea would say well it's so damaging if you wait that you're actually hurting the child more than you would if you went ahead with the radical transition but i don't think that evidence on yourself what's that i don't believe they have the data to back that up yet to say that it's going to be so wildly harmful because we haven't had the test groups to even conclude that is going to happen in the future because this is still a newer issue ish does that make sense to you that's how i stand back and look at it is we don't have the data yet guys so we shouldn't be making big giant decisions when we just don't have the data yet and this is a lot of kids there's a lot of kids that are transitioning now so it's it's an interest it's not a trivial matter the transition now if you can argue that it's not a trivial matter to not transition if that's your destiny and not to do it early but um i don't think well i the data suggested that 85 percent of children with gender separation accepted their biological reality by the time they were 18. so but but a substantial proportion of them did end sorry this is and this is the answer to your question a substantial proportion of them did end up gay and so yes if you're transitioning the more transitioning children medically if all of the rest of that is true then those are children who would have been gay who have now transitioned yes that is if those other propositions are true that is what's happening we're in trouble already i can feel it for having this discussion that happens it just keeps happening um do you think i i'm off i'm often in trouble for having discussions like this too but do you think you and i maybe are missing something that we should have where we should care that people are upset with us for having these conversations well i do care and it's very difficult for me generally to have these conversations because i do understand the uh anguish let's say that these issues produce and and i understand why people are motivated to take the positions they take um but there's there's there's catastrophe on both sides and so i weigh the catastrophes and try to pick the route that's less catastrophic you know when when i don't think that the current theories of identity that are part and parcel of the culture wars are adequate theories of identity i think they will do the people that adopt them harm now they think well i'm that person and i don't think it's harming me and who are you to say and the answer is well i'm a clinical psychologist and i've looked at the literature and i've watched this for a long time and that's my professional judgment it's like i could be wrong but and your argument is well you have your experience and and fair enough you know it's your life but but i don't see that it's a good move i don't well i certainly don't believe that the theory of identity that is coherent or adequate it's it's neither it's incoherent and inadequate and your identity isn't merely what you feel about your sexuality say or even your even your biological identity that's it's silly it feels silly i feel like we've gotten to the point where a lot of the arguments are just silly and the same thing i feel for the people who these subjects affect and they affect their families deeply and everyone's you know i get that these are big subjects but i feel like if we can't have honest conversations where ideas are explored without chopping down everybody who might have an idea we're gonna get stuck and then there's no innovation anymore we have to be able to have these ideas and you've been so brave with your ideas i just want to say thank you for that first of all yeah and then my last question is i'm gonna bring it back to okay this intelligent woman dating thing help help because i've gone through the i've gone through the different things like i said you know i've dated guys who maybe aren't as intellectual as myself and i get bored i get they're super cute and they're hot and they might be athletes and they do really well with what they do but i'm bored and then i've gone the other way and i've noticed that they tend to get really insecure about dating someone who might be physically more attractive than them or people thinking that that's what that is so i'm not sure where to sit if people are like what's your ideal man i'm like i have no idea because i'm smart i think that the data suggesting that women mate across and up hierarchies is true and that men made across and down that that looks to me to be true it looks like it's true cross-culturally although it varies to some degree and people who are unfamiliar with that idea or doubt it you could read bus the psychologist buss and he's a credible authority in my estimation and so the problem then comes is that imagine there's multiple dimensions along which you might evaluate someone's attractiveness there's personality there's intelligence there's athletic prowess there's socioeconomic status there's productive capacity um there's creativity there's lots of dimensions so then imagine that you're above average on three or four dimensions well that makes it easier for men because they're made across and down those hierarchies but it makes it harder and harder for women because with each dimension they're above average on if their fundamental desire is to find someone who's of equal or higher status they shrink their dating people i know yeah well that's i think that's exactly right well i also think and i've seen this when i've when i've counseled women who were intelligent creative and attractive and young all and that's four like killer attributes men were often so intimidated that they never got asked out i've noticed that happens a lot too a lot of my gorgeous amazing talented female friends who are just they just kick ass at so many things guys won't even ask them out that they go for this hardly because the closer to your hypothetical ideal someone you're attracted to is the more pain you suffer when you're rejected so that's why that happens and so men are a lot more afraid of women than women think especially women that they're attracted to well it's a total rejection right it's a really comprehensive rejection you know it's it's it's you know the the comical end of it is well you're okay for a friend but i wouldn't want your genetic material to propagate itself to the next generation that was the nerdiest thing you've ever said okay i just imagined you courting mrs peterson okay never mind no no fine fine but so well so it's it's an intractable problem to some degree and and you know i think that part of the reason that human beings are the way they are it's part of the reason is because female human beings are choosy sexual selectors unlike chimpanzee females for example and so we a fair bit of our evolutionary development across time is a consequence of the high standards that women place on eligible men but it's harsh and it also it's it's hard on women too because well they shrink their dating pool for example yeah now what's the solution to that there's a solution my fan base is predominantly female most are college or university grads uh just saying they tend to be hot and smart and awesome and creative and be in multiple dimensions and i get the same questions over and over because they have the same i guess one of the things i would say to women who who aren't being asked out let's say well do they asking flip it like you have to take it in you have to take it into your own hands like if you're not being asked figure out what you want this is something that women women all everyone should do but let's talk to young women it's like okay well first of all figure out what you want what you actually want and you should talk to someone your friends or someone you trust and and spend an hour figuring out what you want and try not to lie to yourself you know do you want kids and when you're 19 it's fashionable to say no but that's likely a lie now it might be true when you're 19 but the probability that it's going to be true when you're 29 is almost zero and no one will tell young women that it's like i don't care what you think now that you're 19. you don't understand as you mature the desire to have a baby will become unbelievably intense and you need to know that and if you decide not to have children that's your decision but you should be informed that this is what's coming and in all likelihood you want more you want children more than you're willing to admit even at 19. so well all right so yeah that's what you said caught this idea that well motherhood isn't as high status as an occupation as it should be that's that's a cultural failing but we're also you just got so many moms following you you just got so many more fans and just like this you know when my wife had little kids it was often the case that she wasn't well treated in restaurants and so forth especially if i wasn't there so and that wasn't good i thought that was a sign of real cultural sickness that a mother with a young child isn't is treated badly that's very bad idea that's part of this casual contempt so anyways when you're 18 or 17 or 19 or 22 it's like what do you want exactly what what do you want and that's that's a i wrote about that in chapter three of this new book beyond order don't hide things in the fog you have to let yourself know what you want well so you make a list of what you want and and what is that well you want someone who's productive and generous and honest that's a real good start you want someone that you're physically attracted to yes um you want someone who's education and intelligence roughly match or exceed your own i should stop reading [Laughter] daddy peterson's dating rules can't keep going well and then if you find someone like that and then that's who you want right and and you should know that and you should you should notice that because then at least you're looking in the right place like there's some maybe you could also put into one of your podcasts or things because you i know a lot of young men follow you so ask the girls out there i do i i tell them all the time so i get out there and ask and say in my clinical practice too it's like you're not going to find someone unless you ask and you know for all their there's a lot of criticism uh aimed at the uh um you know those those the men's movements that teach men how to be a player how to attract women how to there's a lot of negative press aimed at those and i can understand why because there's kind of a psychopathic element to it but one of the things those movements do do is to really encourage young men to overcome their fear of approaching women and and even asking them for their phone number for a date or for a conversation or for a coffee and put a profile up on um on a dating profile dress up nicely get a professional photograph taken you know put your best foot forward and have enough courage to approach some women and maybe get over your fear and yeah it's so but i would say to young women if you find someone who you think fits your criteria and you're not being asked out ask them fine i'll do it and i will report what's the alternative to wait and wither on the vine that doesn't seem very useful i don't want to do that no that sounds horrible i didn't want to say horror but then i did dang it okay no i don't want to do that i love that thank you so much i have a question for you and this is a stupid question perhaps but no go i've been very curious about apps like tinder and i talked to abigail schreier about this the other day because there's some evidence that young people are having much less sex than they were 20 years ago um and so i've wondered with with apps like tinder if if what's happening is that a small number of men are getting a tremendous amount of sexual attention from women and a huge number of men are getting none at all and the guys that are attractive say on tinder then have their selection they have women who've already said yes because that's the only people you communicate with on tinder if i if i understand it correctly um and so they have all these women at their disposal essentially and then almost no incentive unless they're mature to have a committed relationship and so that puts the women in a terrible bind too because the men that they find attractive are uncatchable in some sense because the competition level is too high and i i have no idea if that's true if that's actually something that is happening i feel like it's partially true i feel like there's that level to it exactly what you just said but then there's also a psychological element that i think we aren't discussing which is that men aren't necessarily attracted to uh prey that walks up to them and lays down dead the hunting is gone so i feel like a lot of times men can swipe and know i i can hook up with this girl this girl this girl tonight well maybe that's another conundrum it's like so and i'm too old to be involved in any of this so i don't understand it anymore but um if tinder for example facilitates hookups yep what happens if you're if you go on a tinder date and you're female and you say no like are you out of the pool then are you no longer so are you pushed constantly for instant sexual sexual favors let's say tinder is hook up central that's what you're going on tinder for hinge is more looking for a relationship maybe more okay so they're sorting themselves out the apps sorting but there is there's there's levels to it for sure where there are certain apps like yeah if you're not going to hook up with them you don't meet up with them that's what that's for this is our instant sex app and then see i just can't see that being i don't think that's in anybody's good interest i but i particularly think it's not in the good interest of young women i also don't think it's in the good interest of young men because i think it teaches them to be psychopathic predators fundamentally no i mean that i mean that i mean there's any way out of this because if you're if you repeatedly practice taking sexual intimacy out of the broader context that's what you're practicing well how is that not it's it's shallow because it's shallow by definition because it's only the pursuit of hedonistic pleasure decontextualized you don't know the person you don't know their story you're not involved in an ongoing adventure you're not contributing to one another's lives you're not dependent on each other there's no relationship there so it's just a quick hit yep it's a quick content contextless hit well so then what what is it so then is it if you practice interacting with women but also with men if you're a woman as if they're a source of instant context free gratification how are you not training yourself to treat human beings as if they're nothing but instant sources of context free um gratification which is the same as the porn addiction which is why i also feel like men are having less sex is because they can just go on to any porn site at any time of day or even instagram and see these all these porn stars and naked women get what they wanted out of a you know an interaction with a woman do it themselves and then they have no reason to go on a date they already got off they don't care and this is what i feel like myself and so many women i talked to have been sorting through is a lot of these guys are already getting what they think they need so when i might date a guy i'll look at his instagram if he follows tons of porn stars i don't even bother that's that's wise i would say they of course go that's insecure why why can't i look at all these girls are you insecure i'm like no no that's that no it's so amazing to me that anyone would even think that that was that that wasn't a valid thing to do i can't believe you'd ever get criticized for that that's you know i was talking i talked to um theodore dale rimple that's not his real name it's anthony stevens a psychiatrist you know and he was he worked with he saw 15 000 people who tried to commit suicide yes wu is right and these were people who were at the bottom of the economic hierarchy devastated lives and these the women were often out with like psychopathic brutes they were getting beaten all the time and there were markers for that shaved head scars everywhere tattoos on their fists love and hate that sort of thing like obvious markers you know oh yeah i should see those as obvious markers they became so fashionable i just thought it was fashion but keep going well and that that that sort of thing also does happen but his point was there were these obvious markers but they weren't being paid attention to it's well what you just described well that's an obvious marker to me it's so obvious that i can't believe that you would be criticized for and to say that that's a mark of insecurity you know and i would also say it's look here's here's one way of thinking i thought about this it's like what's what's the proper domain for sexual morality what are the right rules don't do anything with anyone that you couldn't talk to them about if you feel uncomfortable talking about what you're doing you don't have a level of psychological intimacy that should allow for that level of physical intimacy obviously jordan that's good also it's a rule of thumb i would also say that general generally if you're female and young and attractive it's in your best interest and in the best interest of the person that you're dating to say no for as long as you possibly can if for no other reason then it's without that well where's the game where there's no game and you talked about the chase you know and like we have no idea how much deprivation proper romance requires but the answer is definitely not zero because look why otherwise what you meet up with tinder let's say you see you go to a special room you both watch pornography you each have an orgasm that's your date well why not do that if if that's what it's about that's simple there's no mess well there's some but only if it was fun so but obviously nobody thinks about that is ideal and that would be the extreme case of contextless sexual gratification but that's really it's really wrong it's wrong it just doesn't serve anyone it's terrible and it's it's that's the case with this endless stream of available pornography it's a catastrophe that's what i think i feel like we've rewired especially young men um women as well but especially young men that are just men in general that they're not even looking at women as people most of the time because even scrolling through instagram you're seeing naked people constantly it didn't used to be like that 10 years ago to see some a woman naked it was playboy it was almost still special and not i can remember the first time that i saw a naked woman on in in a video in a film in film was actually if i remember correctly it was in the life of brian the monty python movie because there's a scene where where one of the girlfriends of one of the uh revolutionary types opens the curtains and she's naked and that's the first time i saw i think i had seen playboy pictures before that but it just blew me away i can remember and i think i was about 13 or so and you know it was a revelation of sorts obviously and now that's nothing that's nothing it's nothing that that's that's they're in in droves any boy can see more sexual imagery than anyone ever saw in their whole life 30 years ago and i know that it's not directly necessarily linked but do you feel like that could be i this is my observation is a rise of narcissism do you think any of this could be linked to the rise in narcissism and self-involvement or is that still just linked to early childhood stuff i don't know i don't know i mean to the degree that sexual gratification through pornography makes it possible to avoid the complexities of a relationship the advantages of a relationship in modulating sort of immature narcissistic selfishness disappear you know and i do think when it's it's absolutely appropriate for young women to insist that they be treated the way they would like to be treated you should insist upon that well your partner should as well insist upon that treatment for him but so you have to sit down and think about well how would you like to be treated if you could have what you wanted actually have it chapter three yes well that yes and it's for precisely those reasons that i that i wrote it but i love that it's a funny thing to i i do believe though that that's the case that that you that know is the right answer most of the time it it's it's disciplined that's part of it it's provocative that's part of it it's guarding a secret it's it's it's it's defending a treasure it's adding some of the game it's and it's a demand that certain preconditions have to be met and it's the insistence that you be regarded as a complete person yes and now you know it is going to be tempting to young women too to separate their sexuality and say well i can go for instantaneous gratification just like a man but i do believe that men and women both pay a tremendous price for instantaneous sexual gratification i'm i'm absolutely convinced of that but i do believe that women pay a higher price and the reason for that is that sex is more dangerous for women and so it's it's it's it's it's it's capacity to produce catastrophe is heightened in women and how could it be otherwise because yeah that was like a bar that was like wrapping what you just said it's a catastrophe that i liked it i'm gonna rewind this and listen to that later i personally like i i was all about yeah i can act just like the guys and i can hook up with all these people like when i was much younger i was like i can be just like them because that's equal power that's equality and then i looked at all these female role models that i had these pop stars these madonnas these whatever none of them are doing okay now the one you know like kind of the generation or two generations above me that were promoting super promiscuity none of them have a life that i want now well look i'm old now hey i'm 60 and my wife is 60 okay so we're grandparents and i can tell you what makes our lives worthwhile go on well i'm really attracted to my wife get it girl well we've been uh sorry don't be sorry we've been uh isolated from each other for a long time because we're both so sick it's been two years really and the physical intimacy element of our marriage is extremely important we're very careful about that and value it extremely highly and pay a tremendous amount of attention it's really important that the sexual element the romantic element those ten those two things when they're properly handled they're indistinguishable and if you think that sex is okay without romance you don't know anything about romance because sex is so much better with romance that it's not even the same thing so so that's all important but as you get older what's important is that well you have a family you have your children you have your grandchildren you have a continuity of narrative you have a long-term relationship that you've built yeah like that's that's what's important and when when you're doing things impulsively when you're young you're you're not paying attention to the old you you have to have the old you in mind you're going to be old and you have to be building towards that or you're going to be old and things are going to be a catastrophe so don't this this you know this idea that you said well i can be just like those men it's like well you don't even that isn't even the man you want yes why would you imitate the man that you don't want yes yes jordan you just i didn't even mean for this conversation to go this way i think what we've talked about in this topic is so important we're gonna rock some women we're gonna rock some people back to reality that's exactly what i did i was impersonating men that i didn't even want they were the douche bags they were you know the the vagabonds the whatever we want to call them the oh look look there is okay so there's something else which there's something else we should sort out okay there is an undeniable romantic attraction that men and women have to each other for rule breakers yes okay so you see badass women who are very highly sexualized in the movie screen all the time but and so women do have some preference for men who are are wilder and who are capable of breaking rules but and that should be that should be noticed and not ignored but that doesn't mean that they can break rules in other ways see being a bad boy they should be able to break them yes but you can break a rule by breaking a record by selling an awesome freaking book and getting a new york times bestseller that's still breaking rules that we should be looking at that as just as hot which is why you have to be doing the billboards well i think i think i think i think that i think that i think that by and large women do if they see that they do respond to it but there's a disconnect sometimes the simple rule breaking isn't differentiated from the sophisticated rule breaking and so you you want to watch that because that can get you in trouble right because you'll be attracted to the rebel anti-social type because you think he's a rule-breaking hero but he's not he's broken yeah that's yes that's exactly right he's not a conformist yeah but he couldn't fit in yeah that's not the same thing you want someone who could fit in but breaks the rules well that's back to hermione i mean that's her gift isn't it that's her and all the whole harry potter crowd for that matter is they they can fit in in fact they're very good at it they choose when to break the rules and it works out yeah yes exactly and it's what makes them attractive characters as well yes jordan peterson this was on my bucket list to have a chat with you so this has been freaking awesome this is 12 questions with jordan peterson for beyond order 12 more rules for life i freaking loved our conversation thank you so much my pleasure and i i do think that we did something different from the interviews that i frequently have so that was very interesting and entertaining

Channel: Jordan B Peterson

Views: 675,113

Rating: 4.8328729 out of 5

Keywords: Jordan Peterson, Jordan B Peterson, psychology, psychoanalysis, Jung, existentialism

Id: qGgEF-SlSEU

Length: 76min 56sec (4616 seconds)

Published: Tue May 11 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/The_Number_12]

She’s trash

[u/marlinjsmith]

His time in rehab really made him become disconnected to current events. Use to listen to him alot, still love him, but ya.... This is kind of low lol. Shout out warmode.

[u/HelmuthvonDoom]

Psychiatrists don’t die, they just get rehabbed in Russia and fade away...

[u/AspiringNormie87]

That moment you realize: maybe I can interview Jordan peterson.

[u/rebelsound72]

Strictly CanCon

[u/imjustaidan]

https://youtu.be/w2bfw5WneRk

[u/Frunk2]

Is the inevitable end game of conservative academics today to just take interviews with young blondes who fangirl and call them silver foxes?