Russell Brand & Jordan Peterson - Kindness VS Power | Under The Skin #46

my guest on under the skin today is dr. Jordan Peterson clinical psychologist professor of psychology at the University of Toronto and author of books including maps of meaning the architecture of belief and his recent bestseller 12 rules for life first garnering mainstream media attention in 2016 when he objected to compelled speech legislation in Canada he has steadily been making a name for himself as a voice of the anti political correctness movement and has cultivated a slew of predominantly young male followers touted by some as an academic rockstar and the most important thinker in the West and by others as a provocateur and firebrand of the alright he is also part of a new internet savvy group of controversial thinkers that have been deemed the intellectual dark web Jordan Pearson thank you for coming on under the skin thanks very much for the invitation I'm excited to speak to you because my interest in your work was either prior to or somehow abstract from the controversies that have brought you to mainstream attention and I said I was thinking then as a clinical psychologist I was wondering about how interwove in the relationship between psychology and and mythology and archetypes is well one of the things that happened I think was that when the political scandal broke around me in Canada which was in September 2016 people came to chair you know because of the scandal but they stayed because of the psychology by that time I already had about 300 hours of YouTube lectures which probably saved me in some sense because when I was being protested against say and warned by the University about what I was doing because it was hypothetically contravening the law people went on my site to find out what sort of person I was and I had pretty much everything I'd said to students in the last 30 years taped and and ready for for what public viewing my website had already had about a million hits then and people got very interested in the psychology and it's not surprising to me because what I've been teaching since 1993 is I think unbelievably practical no I'm clinical psychologist so I've always been interested in trying to improve people's mental health and I viewed putting the lectures online as a as part parcel of thoughts like there were a lot of smart clinicians in the 20th century they learned a lot about how you could put your life together decrease anxiety decreased depression orient yourself more effectively in your communication and with regards to your long-term plans and understand your dreams and position yourself properly in the world and it's been a real pleasure and a privilege to be able to bring that work to the broader attention of well if now it's millions of people it's it's not surprising it helps you know I mean these people were geniuses so the fact you're talking about what Freud frying yo Carl Adler Carl Rogers Abraham Maslow there's a slew of existential cycle so I call it just the 1950s humanists in the 1960s there's there's a probably a dozen or so maybe 15 of great clinicians who laid the groundwork really for clinical psychiatry and also for clinical psychology and they and and also develop well-developed psychotherapy and therapeutic conversations as we know it like emergent myths it must bear the inflection of the culture in which it was conceived this is why I am particularly interested in the areas of psychiatry and psychology that are resourced from older material such as mythology and archetypes and I know that particularly in the some of the names that you mentioned mythology is really used as a kata to supply a common language oh yeah well and that's I think that's the right way of looking at it to some degree it's like people we act out stories that's why we tell stories right that's why people are attracted to stories because stories are the best way of describing our lives and stories have a pattern or they wouldn't be stories I mean that's why there's comedy right that's where everything turns out the way everyone wants it to that's why there's tragedy when everything falls apart that's why there's adventure in romance and that covers a lot of territory right romance comedy tragedy and you know people like Carl Jung in particular he was he was the deepest analyst of stories I would say there's a Romanian guy named Archie Le ADA who is also a very historic of religions he was also very remarkable scholar and very useful if if you're interested in understanding the fundamental patterns of stories but Jung was very interested in the deepest structure of stories imagine that humans have languages every human culture has a language but languages have a commonality right they're all languages and they have a universal grammar that was that was Noam Chomsky's great discovery yes and stories are like that every culture has its own stories but the stories have a universal grammar and so Jung was the first person who who laid the groundwork for for for discovering what that universal grammar was and it's crucially important work no you could say that what a religious a religion is is a religion as a set of stories that comes very close to the grammar of stories so and so thus there aren't they aren't stories that you can dispense with heroes stories like that Jung you say did great early work in mapping out what might be the etymology or the sort of the ulterior truth from which these patterns emerge and my interest in this is that because when Jung works with image and your mandala in say for example the red book faces that what it's what is suggested by our ability to observe patterns and the fact that we respond to patterns is that there that there is some kind of universal frequency that we are responding to I had two clients who knew nothing about union psychotherapy both of whom were badly fragmented they were both women they both had I would say variance of post-traumatic stress disorder they had other problems as well and both of them produced spontaneous drawings that were first very fragmented and disorganized and then as they put themselves together and we're ordering themselves let's say they produce drawings that were increasingly symmetrical and regular and took on the Mandela like configurations that Jung described and so that was absolutely fascinating to watch that and he thought of those patterns as manifestations of spontaneous order and you see them in cathedrals yeah the great Rose windows and cathedrals are Mandela's and the Rose windows and the entire Cathedral structure is something like it's hard to describe exactly but a cathedral is something like the optimal balance of structure and light it's something like that and the Gothic could see the cathedrals are also reminiscent to forests right with their with their arching branches and the lights coming through like the light coming through the leaves it's reminiscent of that but there's something about the cathedral that expresses the idea of perfect structure and there's something about a Mandela that expresses that and something about music that expresses that as well and it's all they're all ways of trying to symbolically represent how things could be if they were put in the proper state of balance harmony harmony is the right wave combination I suppose all of these forms the idea that there could perhaps be across the various disciplines of strata and forms an expression some kind of golden rule seemed to infer a oneness a truth that in earlier forms of language may be expressed as the idea of God wholeness oneness where D where you stand on the I do you believe in God well the Union idea is that that there's not much distinction between what Jung described as the archetype of the self and the idea of God and the self would be something like the the totality of your being across time you thought of Christ as a symbol of the self and the reason for the which is a very profound idea it's an amazingly profound idea we gon unpack now oh yeah well you can if you if you think about the story of Christ from a psychological perspective what and and you strip it down to its essence what you essentially see is that the story of Christ is the ultimate trout and the reason for that is that the ultimate tragedy is the worst possible thing happening to the best possible person right that's the ultimate tragedy that's what makes it an archetype you can't go past that for tragic mmm so it's an innocent man who was completely sinless who was working on behalf of of only the good and the truth broken and destroyed early and young and betrayed as well so that's the ultimate tragedy and so then and then there's a there's a comedy a comedic element to it in the technical sense because the comedy has a happy manically wouldn't it require a flaw you know like for the for there for it to work comedic ly that would need to be a flaw in Christ was it that he is God made flesh is that the floor well there it depends on what you mean by comedy I mean we we tended as more of people to think of comedy as something that's humorous but technically if you're looking at story structure a comedy is just a story that has a happy ending right it has a positive ending that's really it's the resurrection story that makes Christ's story a car a comedy tada exactly exactly this went so badly but there's this possibility of Resurrection and the way that I read that psychologically and I'm not trying to make any comments about the metaphysics of it is that there's a part of people that's the self the young in self let's say captain s selves in count less self yes that that is capable of sustaining itself across successive deaths and rebirths and and everyone really understands this it's one of the things that's most fun to teach people because you know when when you're moving through life and you have a plan or a dream and it shatters you know someone dies or a relationship breaks apart or you you have a terrible upset in your career or you become ill in some unexpected way then everything around you falls apart and you plunge into a wall you plunge into a chaotic underbelly of the way exactly right yes exactly that and then maybe you stay there because it isn't necessarily the case that people get out you know people die people are in despair permanently but frequently something tragic and terrible befalls you and you fall apart and you learn something profound as a consequence and you put yourself back together and when you come back out you're more than you were when you went in and that's happening in a small scale every time you learn something you know you if you ever really learned something it's usually painful it usually means that you have to recognize that you're wrong in some important way you have to let that part of you that's wrong die and then you have to let a new part of you okay so the self imagine that you undergo a series of transformations in your life there are there collapses into the chaotic underworld and then read many resurrections that happens continually and that's what molds your character is his self is this thing that manages the transformations across all those across that manages all those transformations so you could say here's another way of thinking about it you could identify with what you understand that's what ideologues do you could identify with you don't with what you don't understand and that's what sort of seekers after truth identify with or you could identify with the process of moving between those states you know sometimes you know what you're doing you know where you are you you you're you're in control and and and you can become arrogant and identify with that and then become too static about it right or you can be in despair and everything is chaotic and you can identify with that in which case you're not listing or you can view yourself as the thing that moves across the transformations and that's that's the right way to to conceptualize yourself is your the thing that maintains constancy across transformations one imagines that your experience with the controversies around the linguistics and legislation in Canada must have felt like one of those plunges into the depths on some level would you say did you did you feel a sense of personal tragedy and fear and concern about consequence or that there may be no way back that it could represent a kind of death or did it indeed represent a kind of death for you for one for which you are subsequently grateful well I would say for the first four months when the political scandal broke it was very unsettling for a variety of reasons the first was that my occupation as a clinical psychologist and as a professor was definitely in doubt I mean the university sent me two warning letters and that's standard HR procedure usually you get three right the third warning is stop or their consequences won't be good you haven't if you work in human resources you have to especially if you're going to go after someone with tenure you have to document their misbehavior you have to provide them with warnings you have to tell them how they could get back on the right track and then if you have documented refusal to comply with the warnings then they have grounds for dismissal so that's very you apply see what clothes you were close today yeah to some kind of person or professional annihilation of certainly damage now just in case on the off chance that there are people that are unaware of the details I'll say as I understand it and then you can tell me how I've got it wrong the government changed the law saying that there are neutral nouns that will the mandatorily would be applied to people to identified as transgender you said that is an imposition on freedom of speech whilst I would make a decision whether or not I would if I was meeting a transgender person I would talk to them how they wanted to be talked to fact that you're making it law is an impediment on the freedom of speech and then it yeah that's that's that's a good summary of it yeah I would say I mean my sense there were two things are objected to one was that the government for the first time in the history of Canada and really in a move that was unprecedented in English common law under English common law actually mandated the content of voluntary speech and I thought I don't care what your Excuse is for doing that that's no go zone as far as I'm concerned that's not happening even though right this is what it seems to me likes of this right because what I'm always interested in I think is power and where power is and like you know subsequently look what your views are towards that of post-structuralist and the alt left and like a lot of things I think yeah you're right that you know I agree with that but but what I think the reason I think that the of the controversy had fuel on both sides the reason it had an engine on the other side is because it seems that and indeed having whatever interviews and the objections that other interviewers have presented to you it seems to me that like it seems that a transgender person is in a position of vulnerability but you're saying this is not about transgender this is about language and it's about pressure that's what you're saying that was my claim is that this wasn't about transgenderism at all and I'm about make sure you've got no strong view I'm getting on um I don't I don't have this sort of strong view that I would what think I was sufficiently qualified to make political statements about yeah like Carl goes I don't understand it but it's not much well I basically look at the research you know I mean the research for transgendered kids is quite clear is that most of them desist by the time they're 18 you know and I'm basically guided by an idea where they check that stuff out yeah that's right that's right now people have criticized that research like all research but it's the best research that's been done on the topic but well the other problem was with the legislation was that I felt that it was an attempt by the radical left to gain the linguistic territory and and to define the terms of the debate you know and and I thought that was very dangerous so I was objecting to that as well fooey now well the thing that I'm interested in here Jordan is I don't feel like the radical left is a very powerful group am I being naive here I mean possibly in the world of academia particularly Matlock I feel like they are sort of representative of a coalition bill around identity politics issues that would seem particularly important to people like my general view is if you identify something call no problem that's none of my business that's basically my opinion now I'll call you what you want me to call you I'm happy that you're speaking to me but like but like from but like that but do you see it sort of the sort of the sort of extreme left or as a powerful organization it like certainly in the universities we said what they can get what done they could for example they forget that legislation passed yes that but I think the situation is different in the u.s. than it is in other countries I think the political situation in the u.s. is actually more balanced than it is in most Western countries because I would say they the left the radical left has a has a pretty decent hold on a number of institutions and and first and foremost of those would be the universities but then the concern you know aren't without power in the United States which because they occupy most of their elected positions now to use your but that's not the case in Canada you don't want to be identified with any of those groups am i right like you wouldn't say that your person is on the right or the left or conservative or no you didn't so ever you believed in God well my political views are complicated because I'm temperamental II liberal because I'm high an openness which is a creativity dimension and people who are high in openness tend to be liberal because they're it they like free-flowing information and they like what would you say fluid boundaries because information can move back and forth across the boundaries so to inject like that ideologically you reject to these taxonomy and you identify basically on the base on the basis of research like empiricism in a sense you can say like you know I'm an open-minded tough person this language is clinical psychology so your faith is clinical psychology average well we've done a fair bit of research in my lab on yes the temperamental predictors of political predisposition and we can predict what parties people are going to align themselves with by studying their personality so liberal types liberal left types are high in a trait called openness and open people you're a very open person and you can tell because you think laterally you know you have an idea and then it reminds you of a whole bunch of other ideas and so you'll move laterally across ideas and a more conservative person they'll stay within the category you know and so your conversational style is is marked by by divergences now that's actually called divergent thinking it's a hallmark of three goodie well it's good if you want to be creative the problem with there's there's a price for everything hey the price for creativity is that it's hard to catalyze an identity because you're interested in everything that's the first thing and your interest will flip from one thing to another so one of the problems that creative people have while they have to one is they have a hard time establishing an identity and the second is they have a hard time monetizing their creativity it's very difficult to be a creative person and make money you can make money for other people but usually you're dead by them so it's not very helpful for you Jordan both of those problems are as a result of external structures the imposition of external structures on the individual ie make money you know a problem of capitalism and you know commerce more broadly and the other one of identity similarly you know something is is there a sort of a peculiar contradiction in around identity in that like it seems to be on one level that you reject taxonomy so you're saying that these systems eg if you say women are being paid less money your argument would be we'll hold on a minute there are other factors other than gender it here exact agree later today argument it's a funny thing because the intersectional feminists always always claim that you should take other factors into account right woman man isn't enough yeah black isn't enough well there's a there's a pay gap between men and women but it's not only to due to gender stood all sorts of things and you have to take them into account so it's really an intersectional argument no one's grateful for it he's an intersectional argument so I like so do you feel then cuz what I sense he's happening like trying to understand where like our worldviews would align and where potentially there would be opposition between you and I well I'm totally because it seems to in looking at your work you say oh I don't agree with the way that this information is being compiled I don't agree with the assumptions that you're trying to saddle that piece of data with it seems to me that it's about critical thinking a very post structuralist idea you know and but it also what I have noticed is that much of your many of your theories seem to be subsequently alloyed to some unpleasant ideas around the silver tradition conservatism oppression even how do you feel about that because it likely you know like it would be like it would be well easy for you to I think you have said I don't care about whether people have transgender or not I just don't want no oppressive laws around language but I would also be easy of you to say I don't think there's any you know I've heard you say on the news fairness fairness but it does seem that there is some mischief somehow in you around the issue such as gender inequality sorts of things but I think that mostly I look at the political landscape from the perspective of a informed biologically oriented social scientist and so when people lay out their particular theories they don't sound they don't sound outdated to me like one at one example is that the left for example tends to lay the blame for inequality at the feet of the Western hierarchical structure and capitalism that's just wrong equality inequality is a problem and it's the proper concern of the left I would say and it's a proper concern because inequality is a deadly problem but it's way more serious than anything you can blame on capitalism every single society that's ever been studied for as far back as people are able to study suffers from the problem of inequality this I work with this Native American tribe in in in northern Vancouver I'm a member of the tribe actually now they're called the Quaqua people and said again that's not so for Tokyo I have the same ones Clark Walker walk yeah tough language right there want to spell cuz I problem with me is that say too many quas mmm-hmm then they're broke they're they're brilliant artists they're part of that West Coast native tradition of art which i think is a great tradition what about that um well exaggerated eyes almost elute it's kind of a hallucinogenic art in science and these new family animals very are very graphic they're very graphically portrayed I would say they have large almond eyes and bright colors and the arts very beautiful hideout art is probably the best-known variant of it but the core work is similar to that and they used to have this ceremony called the part lodge and what you would do in a part Louch is usually you had to be comparatively wealthy to have a part match and you would give away everything you had well that was their solution to inequality because what would happen in the native societies just like every other society is that as time progressed everything would become owned by a very small number of people and that's a bad recipe for long-term stability so they would have these giant parties that would often last weeks where the rich would demonstrate their wealth and also I suppose their commitment to their own provision their own capacity to provision the future by giving everything away but and I'm only using that as an example to show that the problem of inequality is not something that you can lay up the feet of capitalism it's a way worse problem than that I agree with you and I understand you're saying that capitalism occurs far too late down the line to be all Genesis that's indigenous to you but what about some of these like in it and I would be very careful to like you know I don't know problem saying I believe in God all day long I believe in God but like I would politically I would be a little more cautious but about saying well I agree with this pie that way because I sort of don't feel that my political views are demonstrated within the sphere of mainstream politics because they operate on such a prohibited frequency because of the power of transnational organizations the irrelevance of national sovereignty when it comes to ordinary people a certain power so it you know become sort of kind of too complex for me but what I can see is interesting about say you know even if you take sort of socialism and perhaps you know like that I suspect or since that one of the issues you take is its of continual annihilation of like that take first to take out God then take out man then take out woman then take out everything to all we have is this is miasma of meaninglessness I wouldn't necessarily I just made it up well I wouldn't necessary be socialism what would you say that is well that's a complicated one I mean was it happening or did it am I wrong I think I think it's happened in many ways I think a lot of that is a consequence of the hypothetical conflict between science and religion do you think I'm hypothetical uh well it because I'm not so sure there is a conflict materialism and spiritual and a mental conflict because the world is one thing fundamentally right everything fits together so there can't actually be a conflict if the religious realm exists and the scientific realm exists they have to be unified at some point now the more materialistic scientists like or the what the more atheistic scientist types like Sam Harris would deny essentially that there's any validity to religious dogma although he certainly believes that there's a spiritual element to life so I think that what happened at least in part and this is why the work of young to return to Jung is so important is that we we weren't we didn't understand that truth comes in different forms depending on its application it's a tricky thing there's the truths that apply when you're attempting to describe the transformations of the material world and there's the truths that apply when you're trying to determine how it is that you should act while you're alive and those obviously those have to come into alignment but they're not in alignment right now and my sense and this is a sense that's being developed at least in part from reading the great psychoanalysts is that fictional accounts metafictional accounts even like biblical columns which are mythological are stories about how it is that people should act not stories about what the material structure of the world is like this is also where the fundamentalists have it wrong as far as I'm concerned because the fundamentalists like to think that the account in Genesis is a scientific theory it can be started up against other scientific theory short they are materializing the myth it yes that's right she's unhelpful well it's not a help well first of all it's not doesn't even make any sense because the materialist types in any real sense weren't around until about 500 years ago right this was only set by light heart and Descartes and and bacon and well Galileo was another player but those were the two the two major players established the scientific method there weren't scientists before then I mean there were very intelligent people who could analyze the structure of the world the ancient Greeks were obviously very rational and capable of philosophy but there was no science until 500 years ago and so obviously the people who wrote Genesis weren't scientists because there weren't any scientists so whatever and I also think that though the world they described is much more it's much better considered the world of experience than the world of material reality and well look here's an idea you can you can try this one on besides I'd be trying this on audiences for quite a long time so modern people say they think the world is made out of things but if you watch them that's not how they act they act like the world is made out of potential and so they'll even say things to each other like you're not living up to your potential you might say well what is this potential that you're talking about you can't doesn't have a color doesn't have a shape it doesn't have a mass it doesn't have a size I think there's nothing about it that's that has a material a material element yet you believe that you're not living up to your potential everyone feels guilty about that if someone accuses you of that you feel bad about it so then I might say well you also live not as if you confront the world of things but as if you confront a world of possibility and you hold each other accountable that way because I could say well you're not making all the use of the possibility that's presented to you because you're not living problem you're not living honestly you're not aiming high enough you're not making everything of that potential that might be made so what's that potential well in religious stories that potential and you see this in the first story in Genesis is that potential is what God creates order out of at the beginning of time that's the idea that's expressed in that book is that there's a potential whatever that is and that something acts on it to bring it into reality there's a deeper idea in there to which which is a profound idea which is that the potential the actuality that you bring out of potential with truth is good and so there's an ethical element to the story as well and I actually think that that's that's a great truth I do believe that's the case that the reality you bring out of potential with truth is good and I think that's one of the most that's one of the most profound discoveries of humanity the ability to articulate that idea was articulated in the first chapter in Genesis it's a brilliant idea that's associated with the idea that human beings are made in the image of God because God is that which calls reality into being out of potential but each of us do that as well in a small way from that seems to me to just be true of course all things that are in the fest world will once unmanifest right and many of the things that are unmanifest now will become manifest and we could choose that to some degree we have agency well we seem to yeah we do yeah well you know if I treat you like you don't have agency you don't like it it's not the grounds for a for a satisfactory long-term relationship while we're in the Old Testament I want to ask you something custom in the book of Job that seems right up your alley I looked at this book I can't remember who wrote anymore you may even know aspects oh you will it was a book of engravings from the book of Job by the British writer and poet William Blake Blake had done this series of engravings based on the trials and tests that job went through in this in these series of engravings Yahweh and Yahweh and Joe are depicted as a sort of identical you know they're ones in a celestial realm ones in the terrestrial realm at the beginning of the image but job and his family depicted in front of the tree of life the instruments hang in the trees the animals are sleeping by the end of the image after these various trials you know that after Joe has been tested this and we will to assume I suppose that there's been this journey of self catalyst realization we have through these trials the the instruments are being played the animals are awake you know and there's a sort of bright future in this sense of astronomical stuff ie the positioning of the Sun unknown is somehow meant to be significant also and the person that wrote this book is a Jungian now the thing that struck me deep deep deep and I've been struggling with it ever since is there's a moment where Yahweh shows the behemoth and the Leviathan to jove and he says these i made as i made thee right and then in this Jungian analysis of these engravings the writer says that the that God requires of us that we be good that goodness itself may exist that there is a something beyond buts comparable to neutrality in God the Creator the idea of God the Creator the image of the behemoth and the Leviathan in these engravings is terrifying the animalism of the behemoth its musculature its rawness the Leviathan sneaky dark deep terrifying thing this idea of agency and god this relationship between the unmanifest and the manifest as achieved through an individual's relationship with truth and expression seemed to me that it was saying something that was right on the precipice of my ability to understand and sounded to convey okay so the first thing I would say is well one of the indications that you're open is the way that you phrased that question because there's like 30 things happening in that question all at the same time one of the things that creative people do is they throw out like images because your your your question was full of images there's you're trying to map territory that you don't understand you say here's an image and here's an image and here's an image and here's an image and there's something uniting all of those but I don't know what it is it's like an artist's do by the way and so that's a preliminary mapping of unexplored territory and so we could take that apart a little bit I mean one of the things so job is objecting to his treatment because of course god has a bet with the devil basically that he can take job down and make him curse fate he basically bets the devil that he can turn Jobe into Cain and God says no no you God says no you the devil bets God that he can turned Joel indicate by tormenting us and God says nose jobs a good man no matter what you do to him he won't lose faith in being that's essentially the back and you think well that's a hell of a thing for God to do but then and Joe objects to go on to some degree and so he's got his reasons man I mean because everything's taken away from him and God says I made these things the Leviathan so that's like the terrible element of nature and I made the Bayeux moth and maybe you could say that's the terrible element of society it's like how dare you question me and that's a perfectly reasonable objection that's like really you're gonna doesn't matter what happens you're gonna question God really well so god objects to that then and then you you you you will although Joe Young believed that Jonah actually had the moral upper hand in that description because God behaved rather reprehensibly and having a bet with the devil I mean you wrote a book called answer to job which is very much worth reading it's it's quite a profound piece of work but then you also woven into the question this idea the ethical requirement to be good yes there's something in that that's unutterably deep because this is this is right at the limit of my ability to understand things too so it's speculative beyond belief but it seems to me that we are thrown challenges and that there that and that in some sense those are best construed as tests of our ethical ability so what Jung thought his idea was something like this that at the beginning of time people were unconscious and that consciousness emerged with all of its catastrophes consciousness of death for example and one way out of the burden of consciousness was to return to unconsciousness you can do that with alcohol you can do that by being dependent you can do that by failing to grow up you refuse the burden of consciousness by becoming unconscious again but there's another way forward which is to become even more conscious so the idea would be a little bit of consciousness is like an illness but if you can expand that consciousness upwards enough then it stops something it starts to become something that it's all that is its own cure and that partly what your goal is while you suffer through life is to heighten your consciousness to the point where everything gets integrated enough so that that's proper medication for the disease of self-consciousness and you believe that that was really the that was one of the ideas that ran through the entire well the entire structure of judeo-christianity although not it wouldn't be limited to judeo-christianity so it's it's more consciousness rather than less it's more attention and I I think I think there's something to that and some of that see the other thing you see in psychotherapy for example is that when you're trying to lead people forward out of the darkness let's say out of anxiety and depression and despair and and resentment and bitterness and anger and all of those things catastrophic interactions with their family is that you get them to stop avoiding confronting the terrible things that are in front of them right so basically what you do instead of saying to them you know those terrible things that are happening just ignore those and and find some peace right get your mind away from it that isn't what you say you say turn around and look at them even more than you've been looking at them there's a very paradoxical advice but of all the things that have been proven to aid people's recovery and movement towards mental health that's like at the top of the list voluntary confrontation with what you are afraid of or or what you despise even for that matter and so Jung had an axiom that he derived from the alchemist which was in sterk willingness infinite or which meant roughly meant that which you most need will be found where you least want to look which is well yeah well that's he that was also his explanation for why people weren't enlightened because you think well the California approached enlightenment to speak you know kind of satirically is follow your bliss it's like well that's easy if that was the case everyone would be enlightened but the union approaches no no you do what's meaningful and pay attention follow the truth and it will take you to the worst place you can imagine and then maybe there's some chance for enlightenment Campbell somewhat revoked that I follow your bliss mantra though I say wish he'd said follow your blisters you know like oh yeah the pain yeah all right yeah I didn't know you said cool isn't it yeah wicked put that on the scoreboard oh that's good well like a novel thing like I've been thrown because you've said that I could summon you didn't know it's unraveled my entire volton chow and now I've reached for a bit of German language to pull my way back in oh yeah her nan Millfield he'll help me out like so like I'm reading this Moby Dick it smashed my head up you know like and like um when he says in there's a toward the end of the book I have when he's hanging out with Pip and stuffies and he's really losing it now but maybe he's finding it - there's a bit where he talked about will who is it that moves this arm he says who is it that think these thoughts if the mighty son has no control over its movements what control as Ahab over his thoughts you know he's talking about fate and destiny and these ideas again seem to me very potent powerful themes my vision he struggles with a great whale right yeah it's the dragon of the abyss that's that's moby-dick because it's it's the hero against the dragon of the abyss he's obsessed with it right why should be obsessed with it it's what to be obsessed with is the dragon of the abyss that's the oldest story of mankind is that your proper obsession is the dragon of the abyss that's where the gold is yes that's where the gold is even though that's worth as our most terrifying also a bloody tragic ending except that as you take Ishmael as the protagonist in which case Ishmael survives and I have you know everyone died so I am but like I so it's a tragedy it's a tragic encounter with the dragon of chaos he's a failed hero figure outcomes he's about and these gates lost that limb and stuff and I'm sure yes or symboi just like Captain Hook and the crocodile here they have to have you know I love it for me it's very exciting when I see these patterns of perennialism and for me it is exciting because this tree is simplicity implicit in it is true for now that thing we were talking about a minute ago where we where I go excited because to follow your blisters the feel is going to say is like this says there's some sort of maxim I understand in Buddhism is like let it burn let it burn burn like tape away from me every right and there's the idea is also there in Christianity so there's an occult interpretation there's letters on Christ's cross INRI Jesus please that it means Jesus Christ King of the Jews and it was put there by the Romans but there's no cult interpretation in Latin which I can't reproduce but it means through fire all things are renewed and one of the one of the deepest ideas of Christianity is that you should burn everything off that's part of you that isn't part of that thing that can die and be reborn there's all sorts of baggage that you people say that there's baggage that you're carrying everyone knows that it's dead wood it's like that has to burn off and that's a lot of touch way more of you than you think who's way more than you think whilst you still haven't said whoever not yet are you believing God won't keep gun automatics I'm not one them type of people yeah so that I'm like it seems to me that you Revere truth and it seems to me that you are interested in the truth in Scripture and mythology then what this leads me to is something we touched upon briefly it's about the role of power and the function of morality and ethics and and and and green bead simpler ideas it will terms if not ideas such as compassion and goodness so when like you know it's interesting to me that you've written sort of an access abort or self-help type book that you know clean your room stand up straight stick your shoulders back stuff that you know like I would not query the only thing that I feel like I would like to ask you about because my I don't know if I even have a constituency but the people I finally you know I found myself talking a lot Muslim people young women self harming eating disorders these kind of you know your clinical psychology so I mention you have more access to that kind of information and those kind of experiences than I do I have this strong feeling that I am supposed to make myself available for the vulnerable for the powerless and for the voiceless so that's a fine idea this is the one is how do you do it how do we do what to do a huge bloody question sometimes they don't want me interfering in their lives is that majority at the time right certainly is that well there's an there's a maximum that's often applied by people who work in old-age homes which is never do anything for the residents that they can do themselves I can't steal their own money and that's the best sleeping buddy so isn't it so it's hard like the thing about the thing about compassion is it's not sufficient to produce solutions compassion is an unbelievably useful emotion if you're dealing with six month old infants what bow they're always right she's there in our soul now but like a it doesn't work no but what about I won't want to say is like I know you said all this thing about sort of good that the one of the isn't one of the essential themes ideas about the Christ myth being you know to burn away all that cannot be reborn but bloody ill may in the actual language all he bangs on about is kindness kindness love love kindness kindness love novel revelation hmm not in revelation he's a judge in revelation what are you still you're still taking that is what's the books beyond the Gospels your students as the word of Christ well I'm taking them as part of the entire corpus of the story I mean the reason that yon thought revelation was appended to the Bible was because the Christ in the Gospels was aired Deus too much in a sense on the side of mercy and not enough on the side of judgment because here's the settlement is a technical there's a technical reason though it's like without one attachment oh Jesus well you don't have a choice because if you have an ideal it's a judge like you have an ideal you and there might be an ideal that you have of you it's simultaneously your judge because you fall short of it I understand this cuz as funny enough I was talking to the fellow that taught me meditation yesterday Bob ruff so he's a student of the Maharishi you know that he said that when my Rishi was asked what is the one principle the one principle he didn't say kindness or compassion or anything like that I said discernment right discernment you know which part are we gonna follow there is the tension going yeah but judgment that's why in Revelation Christ divides the Damned from the saved and most are damned its discernment and and what that means in some sense is that there's a thousand there's a hundred thousand ways to do things wrong and only one way to do them right maybe the only five ways of doing them right but you know that in your own life is that the there's an infinite number of snares that you can tangle yourself up in and to find that pathway where everything is balanced that's very that requires continual discernment and attention and so you you can't have an ideal without it being a judge and you can't you can't live properly without discernment but that doesn't mean compassion and compassion isn't relevant it doesn't mean that at all I've got a skew something that sort of occurs to me see like I like you I found myself in different types of controversial situations various conflicts and maybe it much of the time is because Albert Maysles said tyranny is the deliberate removal of nuance I didn't even say that that's not a good phrase good share isn't it yeah that's right but like the thing right deliberate removal that's that's what makes it different than ignorance because ignorance there's no nuance in ignorance but it's excusable because you just don't know anybody yeah when it's deliberate that's a whole different story I think very nice who said that Alba Mays was filmmaker he made like Grey Gardens he made that ideas of documentary within very briefly and he he made that Beatles movie when the Beatles first came to the states he made give me show us the Mazal maze was probably like old guys now brilliant documentarian approval he invented much of the flying the wall verite style this informed subsequent documentary tyrannies the deliberate removal of nuance are works of himself briefly filming none other than President Donald Trump before people but like one of the things that I wanted to talk about was um if I like this is a thing I don't like all of the I don't like though I agree and I feel I don't know what you feel that you know that one of the neoliberalism abandoned its allegiance to and left his politics has in a sense abandoned the working class and I can understand their rage and but the feeling I personally have is when if I sense that I'd said things and I've done this so I know that I've offended women which I you know when I was more when I was a single person I was promiscuous and I know that caused me conflagration and conflict or when I've done things like you know in a spirit a few mother of had like a kickback I've always felt bad if I feel like I've offended people that I would I would regard or sculture alia regarded as vulnerable yeah so like around the like I when we make the conversation about the use of language tyranny and oppression in free speech you know obviously I agree with you but but I do take from you know the gospel version of Christ the idea that kindness love we can't you know like we have to continue to find resources for anger you know I won't we'll continue to fail we must continue to be loving so yeah what my question is is if you you have found yourself in a position where I kind of think some people are using you to sort of say [ __ ] you women or [ __ ] you transgender people and for me I think I would want to go on that's not my bag like so well where do you stand on that well I think I think that first of all the most fundamental part of the question which is this issue about love and like one of the things I've thought about a fair bit is the meaning of the Sermon on the Mount and as far as I can tell it's it's a it's basically a two part it's two part wisdom the first is that you should aim at the highest good that you can imagine and that would be a good that includes everyone right so if I wanted what was good for you say if I genuinely wanted it I wanted in a way that was good for you now I'm good in the long run and good for you and your family in your community and may be good for me too you know we could conceive of that as the desire and I think that's a good definition of love is that you actually want the best you want the best possible outcome and in the Gospels of course that's extended even to your enemies yes right is that okay if we're gonna have things good let's have it good enough for even the people that set themselves up against me because if the world was running properly things would be good for them too and that would be better and it seems to me that that's a very good way of looking at things it's a difficult way of looking at things and then the second part of the Sermon on the Mount is something like having established that as your aim which is no easy thing by the way right because you have to be pretty clear headed and single-minded to actually want that to be your aim then you can concentrate on the day and you can try telling the truth and you can alai so there's truth and love that are allied together truth love and attention it's something like that that are all allied together with regards to transgressing against the vulnerable I don't think that that is what I've done I think that people have claimed that but I don't think there's any evidence for it I mean first of all I know absolutely that I have brought perhaps thousands of people maybe tens of thousands of people but certainly thousands of people away from identification with the right because they write me all the time and tell me that I've received about 30,000 letters specifically from people have been watching my youtube videos since August and 25,000 of them are so we've tried to count are from people who said that they were in very dark places and that their lives are much better much oriented towards truth and responsibility and away from political ideology mostly on the right right that they were attracted on the right because I have more peace like that right me then people who say that I've say rescued them from the hell holes of the radical left I think that's more of a historical accident some in some in some why it's than anything else and but also with the transgender issue more specifically I've received now at least 40 letters from transgender people and the only one of them was critical and it wasn't that critical the rest of them all said we never signed up to be poster boy of the year for the radical left and it's not-it's been no picnic believe me all that's happened is that our lives have become much more difficult and I believe that and I don't see that I think one of the mistakes that the radical left makes and this is part and parcel of their flirtation with identity politics is that they fall all over themselves to believe that if a person identifies as a minority then they immediately have the right to speak for all the people who are in that minority and that's a claim that I reject completely I mean first of all there is no transgender community it's not a community because the community is constantly interacting and networking and has a shared purpose and all that transgender people are just as diverse as any other people it's like saying well there's there's no real black community there's not homogeneous political viewpoints across the black population I said I agree to a point that these taxonomy czar necessarily externally imposed because how would they be intrinsically experienced I understand that but also it seems to me that there is a thing called the experience of being an african-american and you can put into that high prison populations for young males lack of educational opportunity or work opportunity that they has available for that so while community may be an incorrect term literally there is a there was a strata that seemed to be underserved and another concern I would have about some of the war the repurposing you know as far as far as we know so far of much of your oratory and online work seems to me that it supports the powerful is a poor hegemony I would I don't agree that things are as simple as white men are in position pattern let you know though that you know like but I'm only interested in who is able to affect change who is able to influence who can you not attack in public what is positive like who is being controlled that's what interests me so like in a transnational corporations economic elites you know less of an how are they served by what I say or by what are you say ok so yes inequality problem oh yes you're saying it's natural which clearly well it's not you cannot lay it at the feet of capitalism that's absolutely clear that and the fact that it's now a Yelp in those I what's that capitalism doesn't help they sent me like you know Marx's critique well I understand better it'll irk is that capitalism is built on limitless growth from finite from finite resources and also Kapil ISM will always always be redirected and criminally misused and under this of the economics of our time it's up for me is demonstrably I know so if there are people say I know people are richer now than ever but like you know staying in LA for a while and there's ninety thousand homeless people and the greater LA area it seems like some sort of like the apocalypse is creeping in people are richer than they ever have been but the extreme extremes of inequality or hi to hmm and there's some evidence that there's some evidence well here's an example of how these things might work so imagine that people that people are getting richer there's absolutely no doubt about that but here's here like we've got more stuff even though I'm sure you'd agree there are V that's what's diving that's good obesity is a bigger problem in the world now than starvation right that's a big deal that's a big plus but here in a way it still implies that people are being underserved by the seat by their operating systems still inferred inequality also oh yes well well first of all there's no doubt that any social system has a tyrannical and arbitrary aspect I mean that's an archetypal training right any of course even though even well-functioning systems have a tyrannical aspect Department not mostly or at least merely what Native Americans who you're down with not Native America native Canadians that the quak quak yeah let them realize like how's their social system set up oh it's a catastrophe go on oh well I mean it's a catastrophe for all sorts of reasons I mean some of it yeah it is it is it's the situation is very catastrophic what he might be because well the reserve system was set up in Canada and it had a possibility of working when there was a possibility that small communities could work economically but small communities don't work economically anymore like if you go through Saskatchewan for example a central province in Canada in the 1960s there were thousands and thousands of small towns mostly Caucasian that is because if their dance capitalism no no it's not it's it's deeper than that it's the same prop well here's it might be deeper than it but in its current form it is company because I would agree that what is capitalism a manifestation of greed it's the same thing the same thing has happened all over the world like urbanization is taking place in a tremendously rapid rate it doesn't matter what the culture is or the form of government so you think that the politics is happening at a lower level the phenomenology that's weathered is where the significant is Hattie's is a bigger time and within it political systems are slowing about but that doesn't mean that's man all the ones we have in search of fairer more just better ones particularly if they are empirically not working come up with a way to reliably flatten inequality that would be a good thing but the empirical evidence suggests so there's a bunch of things it suggests first of all if you look at at the attempts to alleviate inequality over the last 200 years whether there were left-wing governments in power or right-wing governments and now made absolutely no difference whatsoever to the degree of inequality the only things that have been reliably demonstrated to flatten out inequality are catastrophes wars revolutions epidemics there's one other war revolution epidemics well it's gonna be some kind of postman yeah that's right it's another Horseman I can't remember which it is but but at a price of the price of radical redistribution seems to say yeah yeah there and no one has come up with you think that's because of health and our functions because like you know in an unequal system whilst there are many people that are suffering there are some people that are benefiting I'm in a tier that benefit yes from the current economic situation I Drive nice car you have nice house I go where I want well let's look at that for a minute like if you think about how that happened in your life I bet I can tell you how it happened go on well I mean this isn't a personal account but Bennett Bay you had otherwise I'm not interested it's that's in one dimension right hi success but because you were successful not to mention all sorts of opportunities came your way like my suspicions are that where you're sitting now you have more opportunities than you can deal with mmm is that correct yeah yeah opportunity right exactly well there see this is part of what seems to drive inequality is that as you get successful the opportunities that come your way start to multiply and they don't multiply linearly they multiply exponentially and so when you start moving up you start moving up faster and faster and faster and faster and then you'll hit a point where you have so many opportunities that you don't even know what to do with it and so it's a nonlinear improvement but the the downside of that is and you might have had periods in your life where that were like this to where let's say you start to get depressed and then you start to drink because you're depressed and then you start to isolate yourself because you're drinking and you're depressed and because you're drunk and depressed and your friends start to abandon you and then you lose your job it's like you're not going downhill in a straight line you're going downhill faster and faster and faster till you fall off a cliff and that seems to me how the world works is like there's a center point it's unstable things improve then they improve exponentially and things fall and then they fall off exponentially and that seems to be what's driving inequality you start to succeed and the probability that you'll continue to succeed starts to expand hmm and so and we don't know how to control that and well here here's some other examples of it though because I said you couldn't lay it at the feet of capitalism the same thing happens to cities a small proportion of the cities get all the people so some cities grow like mad and others fail catastrophically like like Detroit it it it applies to the mass of stars so there's a very few stars in the in the Milky Way that have most of the matter so it applies to the height of trees in the in the jungle right and you think if things are applicable in cosmology and in biology the way that they are their application politically and sociologically becomes less relevant because you see these phenomena as being broader then media don't human interaction I know you think it's less relevant I just see I don't think the left wingers are pessimistic enough about the problem they say inequalities of problem it see how you have equality as a problem like it's it's a terrible problem but then they say well it's probably a function of our political and economic systems and we could fix those it's like no it's not a function of our political and economic systems or if it is it's at such a deep level that we don't know what drives it and we certainly don't know how to control it like so but does that not mean Jordan that would you then reject any attempt to alter systems in favor of fairness because it seems to me that the focus is on like and as it would be for a clinical psychologist individual change now part of my personal experiences without individual change social change is sort of irrelevant and many great gurus would say yes because because I am concerned with inequalities and with social instability and I thought about it for a long time I knew that the left-wing approaches tended to fail catastrophically and the right wing of course isn't particularly concerned with inequality so that's the left wing fails and the right wing don't care yeah that's right we need today I don't see the danger sufficiently and the right wing also tends to think that the spoils go to who deserves them yeah that's kind of true but it's not completely true so that's that's part of that yeah because we're not all because of course and what I like from a leftist perspective would be that we're not starting with from a level playing field well in the system isn't perfect at selecting and this is why I think a spiritual solution but as something that is beneath or beyond material is the only way that true progress is likely to be achieved I was thinking of this something that you said before about when we were talking briefly about kindness and compassion and it occurs to me and this program will show very simplistic but the heroism itself by which I mean sacrifice the willingness to sacrifice yourself for a greater idea what excites me about that idea and I believe why the phenomena is so loaded is if someone is willing to die for something it's that they believe it's bigger than them in fact that themself their self is not the truest thing that there is something greater if I will give my life for another person it's almost an acknowledgment of oneness the temporal nurse of the individuate itself and we all work so hard to achieve individuation and so much of your work the clinical psychology of guiding people towards it but for me it's just a temporary resting place because having had the kind of experiences of personal humiliation annihilation success failure for the decimation you know all of these things that what I've been led to and what I continue to struggle with is how do how do I serve how am I have service how do I help people that is the solution to the problem it's like I don't think the solution to the problem of inequality is sociological I think it's psychological I mean partly what I try because it's closer to essence because it's more essential or because a society has to be a reflection of individual psyches or collective psyches why is a psychological the temptation the temptation towards resentment and destruction that's associated with sociological approaches to inequality is too great and that as a consequence those those movements tend inexorably to become corrupt and destructive because I think Orwell put his finger on it when he said that middle class socialists don't like the poor they just hate the rich and that hatred I think that hatred gets the upper hand in sociological movements I think that the best approach to ameliorating inequalities to strengthen the individual I mean that's and that's what I've concentrated on doing what we have this program the self authoring suite and there's a component of that that helps people write an autobiography and another component that helps them write an analysis of their personality and another component that helps them write out a plan for the future and we've used that we've studied the effect of having people write out a detailed plan for their future and it's a proper plan it's like okay look you you get to have what you want three to five years down the road you to have the friends you want you get to have the family you want you get to have the career you want the education you get you get to take care of yourself properly you get to withstand the temptations of drug and alcohol abuse and other sorts of impulsive pleasures you get to make productive and meaningful use of your time okay what does that look like for you write it out what does it look like just you need a vision and then you need another vision of how terrible things could be if you let all your bad habits get the upper hand and we've had people do that in an experimental situation and mostly they were college students and the consequences of that there were two consequences one was general which was that University students were about 30% more likely to stay in University and got grades there were about 25% better this is a walloping effect but even more interestingly and this is the coolest thing I think that we ever discovered us in our psychological research we did this research in Holland at the at the Erasmus University in Rotterdam at the Rotterdam School of Management and we ran business students through the future authoring program for multiple years so several thousands of them and we stratified them by gender and ethnicity pretty a pretty rough cut men women and then Dutch nationals and non-western ethnic minorities okay and so that the performance was like this the Dutch women were at the top then the Dutch man then then the non-western ethnic minority women then the non-western ethnic minority men and they were behind the Dutch women bye bye bye oh they they should about an 80 percent decrement in performance really quite catastrophic two years after they did the future authoring program they were ahead of the Dutch women it just blew us away because it was and it was a perfect indication of the fact that you can use a psychological intervention to ameliorate what looks like a sociological problem and so I think the right see I think the right solution and this is what I've been saying over and over in my my lectures and in this book 12 rules for life and this is why I think it's become so popular I said look you're right you were right you said earlier in the last question well you can't ignore the group classification problem you know there's a black experience there's a Latino experience there's a female experience it's like yeah that's true but you have to decide what level of analysis you're gonna make primary and I think the primary level of analysis is the individual and the psychological rather than the group and the sociological and I think if you put the individual level first and then you alluded to that because it was it was like an intuition that you were bringing forward which was your intuitionist being that the right level of progress is made at the level of the individual and I think that's true I hope that's the only level where I have personal authority as well right and also personal responsibility because the here's the thing like here's the rule how about this don't recommend any changes that you wouldn't suffer for if they failed how's that and that's the problem with large-scale political action it's like well here's how we should change things it's like well they changed them it's well if it fails doesn't bother me it doesn't hurt me I'm not involved in it it's like you should be careful when you try to change things to make sure you loose or for your own stupid of course of course Jordan but that also plays into the hands of conservatism because you know when you said like that left-wing change tends to be sort of potentially destructive these are of course these are not just left-wing [ __ ] yes right-wing radicals too and even not yeah there and also there is sort of conventional politics and the ecological impact that it has the inequality which are like a whilst you're saying you continue to say that the the problem of inequality is an anthropological biological cause I'm a logical musical problem it's a really deep problem it's a deep problem and for me whenever you get near a problem that has that level of profundity or ubiquity the solution can only be spiritually we have to access the transcendent in some way to look for solutions and although that sounds a little airy-fairy believe that why do you believe that I mean I'm not disputing that but you obviously believe ID playas what what drove you to that conclusion I've been driven to this conclusion by the experiences of personal failure and personal limitation by the failure of individuation by the failure of my own grandiosity the failure of my own ego the failure of Fame and power and money and sex and drugs the the inability of them to reach me in the belly of the beast deep deep deep down whether Leviathan is this these cures this alchemy was redundant and what I have realized I think this the spiritual journey for me the hero turn in like you know I'm using reference points in which you are an expert and a professor is that that the death of the smallest self and the realization of the capital s self means become a servant become a servant of good use your abilities to generate the maximum amount of love the maximum about amount of kindness and compassion and to be alert to where I can be of most use now for me that can be incredibly limited because I'm still a deep leave it isto called narcissistic flawed failing individual but what my focus is what my intention is what I'm trying to learn to become in this journey of self-realization is a compassionate and loving man and I was also said you added something well you hadn't useful to that yeah useful you're wrong usually the finished well that's it so the best definition of Christian compassion that I ever read was useful and generous hmm right useful and generous mmm right and so I would say the Conservatives in air the Conservatives promote the useful end of the distribution and liberals promote the generous end but no lions need to be brought together and I would say and given that they yourself have said the problem for example of hierarchies exists on a far broader spectrum than the political that these than the narrow like when you were saying like on the whole left-wing Democrat or Republican governments or left-wing right-wing governments have produced similar immense ad it's I'm not happy about this no sad thing doesn't it suggests also Jordan that the range of solution that we be offered is too limited yes I don't think it suggests that I think it in Democrats yes and this is why I think that the problem of inequality has to be taken with more seriousness than it's being taken and the role of the individual another obviously you would focus on this is a clinical psychologist is paramount because because I kind of believe when I think about sort of verse of a fluctuating vivid grotesque right-wing phenomena such as Donald Trump I don't blame people who vote for Donald Trump I understand why people feel furious I understand the emotion of anger and rage and I suspect that all all that plays out on the zoetrope of the material realm is a reflection of the activity in the psyche activity in the emotion how could it be otherwise except for here of course you say occurs in lobsters and nature so that suggests it's even more profound the psyche is deeper than just human right the psyche is all a universal conscious and unconscious mind so I suppose what I suppose what I'm thinking is how what my interest is is how come yes but let me ask you a question go on what do you think that you've done in the last year that's good they are mostly small things okay acts of kindness I have a daughter you have a good relationship with her so that seems to be a good thing that's been beautiful that's been sort of in fact that is hugely significant my newfound ability to live at what one might refer to as an ordinary domestic life my willingness to let go of other people's perception of me these things have all been hugely significant and my sort of I would say my dedication to sort of self-improvement in areas that could still be regarded as selfish is one thing still an improvement I sort of take exercised to look after myself from that drug and alcohol free for like 15 years and it's at this point that the epiphanies are beginning to sort of coalesce the things that I feel are perhaps most important is to let go self-centeredness when I when I conduct myself and when I'm not continually thinking what can I get when I don't look at the outside world as a resource when I don't think what can that person give me what can they give me when I think instead I have a chapter on that and it's called it says do what is meaningful not what is expedient and to to view the world as a place of resources that can be delivered to you it's in some sense to be expedient is to take the short term it's to take the approach of short-term gratification something like that yes self-centered is materialistic too well it is materialistic but it's also it's also it's not optimal and it's not wise and there is for that is is that it actually turns out like if we're gonna have it if we had to continuing the relationship I would want to try to do a little bit more for you than you do for me and I could do that even purely selfishly say because if I did a little bit more for you than you did for me you would want to keep interacting with me how does that all right so because me and you I think get on relatively easy we've found a frequency to communicate on but say someone like the woman with high in openness open openness is a good service now what about the woman on Channel 4 News who seemed more agitated and stuff like do like me so you're actually having a conversation we're trying to have a conversation that's oriented towards discovering some and you think she has a sort of a series of linear or not some FETs and she was just dropping and regarded oh okay definitely that's exactly what happened except once there was once oh and you and you'll be mean to me and she was a bit like found it yeah yeah well when I caught momenta there on her ability to plebeians on the spot when she said the shell is the wrong thing to do you know yes yes no you are not good they make you're a clinical psychologist but in this moment do you not feel or no luck it's a question that could be you could easily pose to me feel like right I just want this but that's the person that's been in front of you that's the world in that moment I don't think you were hostile to that person I may say but like do you not feel like in in that moment it would be of value and of service to nurture that person yeah yes well I had a conversation with a friend of mine very smart friend of mine his name is Wayne maretskiy he's quite the he's quite the character wing but he what he watched and I've had people watch what I've been doing for the last 18 months lots of people and they report on what they think about what I'm doing and so I asked Wayne about the interview and you know he was happy about the fact that I conducted myself with a certain amount of calm and detachment and but he did say something very interesting there was this there was the kind of a culmination of that interview was where Kathy was challenging me about my right to say things that might offend someone and I said well I said essentially look you've based your whole career and this interview on that right you know and congratulations to you that's what you should be doing then she was taken aback by that and I said gotcha and she she knows she was sort of flustered and she said well yeah you did and Wayne said you know you could have instead of saying gotcha at that point you could have taken the opportunity there to to expand on that opening and to try to have Jesse Unruh say [ __ ] down there is Lorna the lane for not doing that you know Christian thing yeah yeah in that moment so I thought and I thought about that a lot I thought well that I think there were limitations in the format like by that time I were about 25 minutes into the interview you know so it was coming it was coming close to an end and you know sometimes being funny cuz I think it was reasonably funny it was reasonably witty sometimes that's okay too well that's why comedians are useful yes yes say funny things but it's just in yeah hopefully they can get away with it right and I think that that's often an extremely effective conversational maneuver because he actually as a matter of fact you said something I come into this and nothing I'm just frying a few things at you now because you know the reason I do this because I start doing a good degree at a university equals so s called religion in global politics and one of the main things they taught taught me there are one of the things I've intrigued me is the first thing I show you is this bit of bourgeois there's barely literature by bourgeois where some story can remember it called the Chinese emperor system of taxonomy we're a show and the stories of the house I love that game and I'm liking itself and part of the courses they talk about who gets to determine what words like natural or power you know who gets to determine how those terms are allocated I think that who gets to determine what's deemed religious well daddy Michael ejected to Bill c16 because I wasn't going to let the radical leftist decide the linguistic playing ground and that's what they were trying to do you see there their rationale was we're on the side of transgender people I thought no you're not you're trying to control the linguistic territory in a sense look this is where this conversation is a cure the parallels the conversation I had with Sam Harris but if Sam Harris what I found myself saying is but why so worried about this one particular issue of jealousness or extremism when it seems that power is actually situated elsewhere it seems to me that here I'm last you know in that instance I suppose because that was the instance that came you away you you as you term it the radical left you know imposition of certain rules around language that you that was the reason for me but you have also continued to furrow or plow that furrow haven't you have consider you down a sort of a line that seems like teleologically sensible with what happened there like it continues to who's like you know I know exactly like I agreed with your analysis of the word proverb provocateur if you don't you know as a person is provoked if they're not provoked you're not a provocateur so it's a difficult label to apply to anybody but it seems to me that you know when something when people say you know young males are particularly sort of attracted to your work I do see that this is a time where males need guidance and like where there isn't the kind of elders our elders customs initiations routes to masculinity or in short supply I can see that there's a real value in that but I also feel that in this time of social contention I'd any politics being part of it and conflict that ideas that promote unity and the emulation of those kind of boundaries or something would be particularly and especially valuable you know again but I think the right way to do that is to concentrate on the individual and so well so let me answer that in two ways the first thing the first issue is that it isn't self-evident that the reason that my what I've been talking about has been attractive to young men that might be like a fluke and it might be a fluke because almost everybody who watches YouTube is male yeah so like if I look at my YouTube audience it's 80% male but that's true of YouTube audiences in general so it's just a typical you well right right and so what's how about you intuition well because I already did say me something I don't make complicated than that but I do know that since my book has come out I've been watching the demographics of my of my public audience that more and more and more women are coming out so it's now to about 65 35 from 80/20 and more and more older people are coming out to so I think a fair bit of it was a consequence of the fact that most of my exposure and was to the YouTube audience which happens to be mostly men now I do also think that there is a particular crisis with regards to what might be described as proper pathways to masculinity I also think that's at play so I think there's two factors but I also I don't think that Kathy Newman kind of went after me about this you know she said well you know if you're directing your message towards young men which I wasn't but assuming that's the case isn't that divisive and I would say well I don't think it is divisive because first of all the masculine in women also needs to be developed it's very very important and the people who are the enemies of the masculine in men are also the enemies of the masculine and women so if you over protect your sons let's say you don't want to you don't want to you want to you you over protect them in part and and weaken them because you're afraid of their masculine energy you're going to do exactly the same thing your daughter's so that that so that the even and that female a female child would similarly be disempowered so definitely because you know the thing is and this is another thing is that I am a psychometrician that's technically my my job and we study Mitch it's may our measurement well and like it's a truism of psychometrics that men and women are more the same than they are different you know it's funny because I've been sort of positioned as someone who is constantly on about the differences between men and women but men and women are more the same than they are different and what that means is that the development of masculinity and women perhaps it's not as important as the development of masculinity and men but it's damn important it's like it's a close second and so if people are pushing down masculinity as a virtuous mode of being then it has a detrimental effect on both but but you would say determinately there and biologically that there is a thing that is masculinity and that thing masculinity is present in both females and males definitely but I think again one of the one of the challenges that this argument or the appears to be built around is a sort of hierarchy around those trades masculinity being synonymous for example with power well here's the thing I wanted to bloody ask you check this Axios it but I said it on a YouTube video on my own the other day and a 4c wonder if this stands up to scrutiny let's give it a bit check this I said like in Sweden they're banning sexually provocative advertising you know it's the kind of thing you hear a lot about like the objectification of women I said of course I support that because there's a male being subjected to lots of sexualized images of women as to a degree affected you know particularly when I was younger my or the logical conclusion of that was pornography right yes that doesn't really seem to be a good thing it doesn't seem to be a good thing I don't look at pornography anymore like the pornography I think is yeah very corrupting corrosive influence or you know for me personally I want to be involved if I said this check this I go zone I feel the use of the female in advertising and commodification in general is there is the perverted desire to worship the feminine the negated and neglected feminine has found its expression through consumerism and commerce because it is not being properly honored socially what you made up I would have to think that I'd have to think about that a long time I would have to think about that a long time good idea that is an answer it it's it's an idea worth we're thinking about for a while like if there are sensual if we have essential yearnings if we have like you know like eg if we if the in a lie in if in indigenous cultures we would have deities to represent gender or certain energies that are subtler than gender if there is a sense that socially those energies are not being expressed on it as you have implied with your male or that ways definitely the case so one of the things that I've often thought about ideologies is that they're they're like parasites on religious structures and if you're thinking that the the movement of feminine imagery up into the consumerist world is an analog or is at least impartial harsh part a consequence of not having a symbolic place where that attraction can be expressed I think that's probably right it was like it's like in the United States is that the first family tends to be turned into king and queen yeah because there's no place for that symbolic projection yeah the template requires it yeah I heard once an analysis of the Soviet Union after the Revolution that it mimicked the monarchic tyranny that preceded it just in a different format right AC yeah that there's so certain images holy trinity even right yes Mao Marx Lenin amazing mark Stalin depending on the Trinity and some would argue that we know that Christianity couldn't take hold in Latin America until they embrace the pantheon ISM of the Saints and fountain the figure of the Virgin until they're like they know that in certain cultures the the Virgin had to be elevated because there isn't a place in the Father Son Holy Ghost for the Divine Feminine you know that's a union idea yeah yeah that's an original idea of yours is that the Trinity is missing a quartile and sometimes that's quartile is filled by the figure of the devil and sometimes it's filled by the figure of the woman so it's like it's like the houses in an Harry Potter right there's three good houses and Slytherin this in the bottom quadrant it's a it's a reflection of the same kind of Mandela structure that's pretty cool it's very cool very cool have a place at the table for the serpent you have another place hmm what about apples and Sleeping Beauty right in the Disney movies they don't let in that they don't groan that's right they don't invite her to the christening and so their daughter ends up unconscious they don't let the terrible mother come to the party so how it ends up unconscious in our domestic normal everyday cotillion lives what is the terrible mother how does that feel protection over protection don't over protect the baby lay and fall over a little bit that's right you do do the least amount possible for your children it's something like that that's not neglect it's nothing like that it's like the old age home adage you know look I've seen this lots of times with parents it's like maybe you have to get your kid dressed up to go out well it takes a long time if you let your kid do it you know and see a lot faster just to do it it's a lot faster not to have them set the table it's a lot faster to do things for them plus there's there's also and this is part of the devouring mother archetype it's like if you've devoted your life to a child perhaps more than you should have let's say then it's very difficult to let the child go yeah what what's there left for you and so there's this terrible temptation to play well I'll do everything for you but you never leave me and then for the child to say yeah that's right that's exactly the right face to make for that that's a very terrible thing and you see that again in Disney's Sleeping Beauty where Maleficent has the heroic prints in the dungeon it's laughing at him right she's not gonna let him go until he's ancient and that's and that's a consequence where else do we see the devouring mother what some good pop cultural examples of what doesn't he movies all the time I wake up in little in Little Mermaid Ursula mother the devouring mother shows up all the time she's the witch she's the swamp dweller she's the she's the Evil Queen in Snow White what's the counterpoint the fairy godmother yeah fairy godmothers one yeah that's the positive feminine and that happened that archetype manifests itself all over the place as well the the fairy godmother is a good one yeah and you see in in Sleeping Beauty there's three of them three little fairies that take care of the princess in the forest there they're the archetype of the positive feminine so so you always see one of the things that distinguishes a religious viewpoint from an ideological viewpoint is that there's always a representation of nature or the unknown always you need one and Holy Ghost in Christianity is not known well in Christianity I'd have to think about that for a minute party party it's the Virgin Mother it's mostly positive representation in Christianity so and that would be the representation of the benevolence of nature it's something like that so that's the unknown but in a religious representation you have the positive and the positive the negative aspect of the feminine that's also the unknown you have the positive and negative aspect of them of the of the state that's the wise King and the end that devouring King and you have the positive and negative representation of the individual and the reason it's religious in some sense it's hard to explain why in a very short period of time but a religious viewpoint always gives you a balanced viewpoint that's what makes it religious it's like there's a positive element that's intensely positive but there's the negative counterpart and there's a positive so let me give you an example here I can give you an example of how this plays out there can typically the frontier myth that settled the West was essentially heroic individual positive bringing the benefits of order and culture positive to the desolate barren wastelands of the West ok so it's positive individual positive culture negative nature ok so that's an ideology but it's a powerful story because it's true heroic individual bearer of culture barren desolate wasteland it's true but one of the things that eventually generated was a counter narrative and not because it was only half the story that counter narrative was the environmental narrative which was rapacious individual bringing pillaging society into benevolent nature and they had to recast the indigenous people that lived on those land masses as savages not entitled to the same rights yeah wasn't heroic individual and there were two there were actually two competing tendencies in in the Western mind one was the noble savage so that was the Roussel exactly and the other was Dennison you know barbaric denizen of the uninhabited land after only one hour in annotations the romantic idea of the noble savage became some sort of whimsical new ancient thing and the other one and the other one the Dennison barbarian became justification for genocide all right let me look wrap up because I can feel the technological angst in a variety of ways but dr. droolin Pearson or professor Jordan Pearson that they know how to big you up enough with their with your prologue and thank you your title thank you very much I've really found it fascinating have you enjoyed the conversation good appreciated the invitation you

Channel: Russell Brand

Views: 2,683,580

Rating: 4.8945203 out of 5

Keywords: Russell Brand, Brand Russell, BrandThe, Russell Brand Trews, Russell Brand video, Russell Brand news, news review, News, Russell Brand and Jordan Peterson, Russell Brand Podcast, Russell Brand Interview, Jordan Peterson Interview, Jordan Peterson on Gender, Under The Skin, Science vs religion, Feminism, Jordan Peterson Cathy Newman, Jung Psychology, Philosophy

Id: kL61yQgdWeM

Length: 90min 49sec (5449 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 15 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/OursIsTheRepost]

Submission statement: oldie but goodie, that I very much enjoy. Brand is a strange and interesting guy

[u/Aristox]

Such a god damn good conversation. Thanks for the post!

[u/[deleted]]

Brand lost me when he equated Che to Jesus Christ. He appears to have good intentions, but is very misinformed and misguided. And narcissistic as hell.... But I definitely will listen to this one.