Russell Brand VS Jordan Peterson: Part #3

this is a very special free one hour conversation between me and jordan peterson where we talk about the kind of things you'd imagine that me and jordan peterson would talk about we talk about equality we talk about socialism it's all about god religion the bible consciousness itself personal challenges and mythology this is taken from my luminary podcast under the skin this first hour we're giving you for free obviously because we would like you to subscribe to luminary which you can do for as little as 2.99 a month and also there's a free trial the conversation goes on for two hours the second hour it gets deep there are tears there's intensity discussion around culture wars and gender i really urge you if you're into it to go over and subscribe to luminary at lumarypodcasts.com there's a week's free trial it's good stuff i also do a meditation podcast on there for no extra cost and there's loads of content on there and loads of really really good stuff however this album please just enjoy it for free the link is obviously in the description and you'll you can have this podcast this i've got like 170 podcasts over there i've spoken to people like jonathan hi adam curtis candice owens vandana shiva edward snowden glenn greenwald loads of amazing intense intense intense conversations if you like my youtube content the stuff over on luminary i think it's worth the small fee because it gets deeper there it's contemplative it's i try to really understand some of these ideas that are discussed in the videos and i appreciate your subscription if you can't afford it you can't afford it if you don't want to do it don't do it but if you can't afford it and you're into it crack on and give it a try i consider it as like doing a course certainly having the conversations is like of course and there's new podcasts every saturday and as i say a new meditation every wednesday that's not to mention the other providers that are available on luminary i think you'll enjoy it also why don't you judge yourself by watching this free one hour conversation with jordan peterson and if you enjoy it go over and subscribe and try the free one week trial thanks all right apologies for the delay no trouble at all trying to make sure that i'm completely here for this as much completely here as i can be you look completely there you look very handsome you look different from when i saw you just a couple of weeks ago yeah well the day we talked wasn't a very good day for me really this is better and i've had a last two weeks have been markedly better and so i was diagnosed with sleep apnea and severe sleep apnea and so now i have a machine and now i'm actually getting some sleep for the first time in who knows how long 10 years maybe good you look good are you all right to start you're all right for that to be used would you like this to be a clearing we can we can go according to your your requirements i'm ready thanks jordan it's so lovely to see you thanks for doing this i'm looking forward to the conversation a lot well you look like you're um reawakening i'm really interested in the sort of i wonder if you have given your uh studies of uh archetypes and archetypal narratives how you feel about of course we've talked somewhat about your suffering and i get the sense from speaking to both to you and michaela it's not something you want to sort of rehash and rehearse especially and i certainly understand to as much as anyone can the kind of medical problems you went through um how do you relate to this re-emergence into the public sphere how do you feel about it after what was a very peculiar unique and yeah it's very specific emergence into public consciousness the first time and then what seems to have been a series of real trials how do you how do you feel now and how do you fit that into your understanding of uh psychology and in indeed to indeed to your into your writing well i feel uncertain grateful afraid and excited sometimes all simultaneously and i cycle through those um i mean i was dancing with my wife a couple of days ago and she said to me i didn't i can't believe i'm alive and i said i can't believe i'm alive either i can't believe we're both here and it was because we hadn't danced together i suppose probably for two years um so it was a big deal and we're both shell-shocked by what's happened and by the fact that maybe she's she's doing very well she looks healthy it's been two years now for her um and things seem to be turning around for me i mean i was i didn't think i'd get i didn't think i was going to live yeah really oh it was it was and i don't mean once or twice i meant for a whole year it seemed impossible to me that i could survive i i was too sick to go on as far as i could tell but i didn't die which was a shock on a daily basis and now well things are much better have been getting much better over the last four months you know and i and then associated with that i was very ill and immobilized because of that and then tremendous amount of pain and anxiety and then i also wasn't engaged in any activity i mean i did edit my book during all of this that's the one thing i more or less hung on to but i didn't have an occupation and it wasn't obvious to me that i would ever have one again i didn't know what would happen to my public reputation say if it was salvageable um i didn't know if i would ever be able to do any of the things that i had become accustomed to doing because they were all complicated things like my clinical practice was very complex being a professor is complex doing podcasts and interviews is very complex lectures it's all difficult and if you're not healthy and at the top of your form you can't you probably shouldn't be doing it at all in some sense and so it wasn't obvious to me how i could start that up again or if i could or how people would respond or if i had any right to do it or and so i've been you know tentatively putting a foot forward mostly with youtube interviews and podcasts um and so far that seems to be working and i started writing yesterday i wrote for the first time in a year i wrote some two pages of original material and that's a huge deal and so today when i was showering and trying to get myself upright instead of being racked with pain um i my mind would wander to what i was writing and that was a real relief to be engaged in that creative enterprise again and so it's all of that and i'm shocked and and i still really don't know what is going to happen next so we'll see when we spoke on um uh your daughter's podcast on michaela's uh podcast on which on youtube you talked about gratitude and now you're um you know what i was interested to hear you describe your state as somewhat uncertain and fearful in particular because i feel that many of the people that uh have criticized you and many of the people that adore you uh attracted or attracted to at least this perception of uh sort of strident certainty ethical and moral certainty uh intellectual rigor have you d is there anything that you would alter about the kind of uh the your position as a public figure prior to these series of crises do you see it as a sort of a necessary and um you know sort of an uh just the kind of evolutions that narrative produces all the time or would you say there's anything that you would uh now withdraw or or reframe well i i would say that whatever transformations might be occurring with me i i would say occur have occurred in the realm of ideas um that the new book that i've written beyond order is more communitarian it's more liberal than the first book technically speaking it's also because it concentrates on the dangers of order rather than the dangers of chaos and so that's a nice balance to the first book and that was part of the plan the vision from the beginning um you know people who are concerned with an excess of chaos tend to be more conservative and people who are concerned with an excess of order tend to be more liberal all things considered and i started with a book about chaos for and concluded at least this two book series with a book on on the dangers of order but it's also the second book is also more uh communica communitarian in in nature so i've stressed for example the importance of community and relationship in the maintenance of sanity like we outsource the problem of maintaining our own sanity to the people around us and then all we have to do is pay attention to their cues but that and some of that's derived from what's happened to me i mean what i've observed over the last two years has been an unbelievable outpouring of support for my wife and my family and me with punctuated exceptions obviously but broadly speaking my family has come through my my family and my wife's family have been so supportive of us it's it's it it exceeds any expectations i would have had to begin with they people went out of their way so much to come live with us for weeks at a time and and take care of either her or me or both of us and um and that was family and friends and and so i have a friend right now who walks with me every day a friend from college and uh you know i have a really close friendship with him that's really been cemented hard again over the last six months but he came to visit me in russia you know i had lots of people who went way out of their way and it was life-saving for both of us and uh then i got a tremendous amount of support from my viewers and listeners and readers and and you know they sent when tammy was in the hospital they sent hundreds of letters talking about praying for us and you know my sister printed a lot of those out and put them up on the hospital wall in bright colors and you know it was really helpful and so you know i realized you know you can think about this in some sense i think about it anyways as an elaboration of the hero mythology which i'm very interested in you know the archetypal hero goes into the unknown and gains something of value or sometimes fights a tyrant and and and reconstitutes the kingdom but i will leave that part of it out for now you go out into the unknown and find something of value and bring it back but then it's shared and distributed that's the second part of that story the communicative aspect of it and that's partly i mean i'm very interested in communicative technology but but it's also the case that an element of that is that that's something that it's like king arthur in the round table king arthur's the king and the knights are you know in some sense subordinate to him but not really it's a round table and every night enters the forest at the place that looks darkest to him but there's a group effort there and the redemptive process let's say that which is what hero mythology concentrates on in the final analysis is something that is everyone's responsibility but that we all need help with it's so interesting because it's your problem but you can have help it's okay that you have help that everyone is on board and so i think that i understand that more deeply what that means now and and hopefully i'm expressing that in my last book and well in you know all these youtube interviews that i'm doing not on other people's shows like i am with you right now but i'm trying to let other people speak i mean i interrupt a lot and i talk a lot but i you know i'm trying to highlight the accomplishments of other people as much as i possibly can and i'm really happy about that and it's really necessary there's there's no negative to it at all this um journeying into darkness and returning with the bounty or boon in order that it may be communally shared is yes like an important and a powerful narrative do you think that we are somewhat politically bereft when in the narrow spectrum of uh countries such as the united states there is a heavy focus on individualism wherever you might fall in that admittedly narrow spectrum i.e liberalism for want of a better word is it seems to me to be focused very much on the individual the rights of the individual the role of the individual and traditionally the pursuit of the american dream and individualism has been sort of perhaps is the backbone of con i mean political conservatism in america do you think this kind of dearth of real communal values is a strong and the or even governing factor in this kind of political nadir america in particular but the world seems to be experiencing it's a good question i mean i i do think in the west that if we go back to the fundamental hero mythology the hero story is that the romantic emphasis is often placed on the journey outward and the and the heroic encounter and not so much on the return home and the distribution and i each of those are equally important clearly i mean if you find something valuable and then you can share it with other people obviously that multiplies the value and i do think that you're right that that the the liberal message has emphasized the individual element of that and comparatively de-emphasized the other element but i don't see anything really nefarious in that fundamentally i think it's it isn't obvious that we know how to do that i can give you an example okay so well i've been talking to people like bjorn lomberg and matt ridley and and michael shermer and and uh um who else would fit in that category uh stephen pinker these irrational optimist types materialist atheists fundamentally and that's not a criticism enlightenment types and they keep hammering home the message that if you look at the data marian toopey has written a beautiful coffee table book showing this it's 10 trends that every educated person should be aware of and then a bunch of micro trends if you look at major economic trends globally so many things are getting better so quickly although still incrementally that it's really it's unparalleled in human history and it's accelerating but it isn't obvious how to make that romantic and and and so it's it's a problem with storytelling to some degree it's like well what do you say to young if black lives matter or antifa or or or right wing um groups that have a conspiratorial element called to a romantic element in young people they they offer them an adventure and that's really important but an adventure the adventure of incremental rational progress isn't an adventure right it's almost the opposite of that it's slow and incremental and and diffuse and it's hard to make that into an adventure and so the communitarian element is it's not easy to transform into a motivating message and i mean that's i was trying to do that to some degree in in in beyond order you know that trying to make that into a into a message that was of motivational significance and that's really it you have to do that if you you know because look there's there's nothing that's not within our grasp now russell as a as a species we can do whatever we want now we have to figure out what we should do and then we have to figure out how to communicate that in a way that's motivating to everyone so everyone's on board that's the problem that faces us i become concerned by this this idea of progressivism i feel that is sometimes used to underwrite a kind of uh intransigence around power and i think it's used as a panacea to dissolve the voices of discontented people the idea of looking at like look you can see that the average like 100 years ago there was people who've had rickets in victorian england i feel that the challenge is that for me what that does spiritually is it denies something that i can plainly see before my eyes the big corporations and state power are collaborating in order to conserve power and to i think people are becoming less and less able to exercise agency in ordinary life i'm talking about countries like like you know anglophonic countries in particular i think the pandemic is you know or whether you know most people would say necessarily has brought about a lot of legislation that's not been through due democratic process i feel that it's it allowed big tech to have more access to people's data and i personally query the objectives of uh like some of these uh almost insurmountably large corporations particularly when they have uh governments that are quick to placate them and operate primarily in this you put you you put your finger on a fundamental problem i mean imagine so for the incremental progressivists they look at the average right the average and if you look for example at the average number of calories that someone in sub-saharan africa has access to now it's like it's they have access to as many calories per day as the typical person in portugal did in 1960. so it's a walloping transformation and they've passed uh satiety so what will happen now is that the next problem on the consumption side that faces sub-saharan africans on average will be a rise in obesity but the problem with the with statistics or even ideas that concentrate on the average is you you don't take into account the distribution and so just because the average has improved massively doesn't mean that there's not problems of unequal distribution severe problems of unequal distribution so imagine we have two these are existential problems though in some sense they're not political problems they're deeper than political problems you have the problem of absolute privation and and that's that's the normal state of affairs you're born with nothing in some sense right it left your own devices you just starve and die so that's that's the susceptibility to absolute privation and then the second problem is the susceptibility to relative privation and those are both big problems you know and so the optimists say well look we're really really solving the problem of absolute privation and they say well every day 200 000 people in the world are lifted out of the un's definition of abject poverty so maybe they slide from a dollar ninety a day to two dollars and ten cents a day and that's to be celebrated but then at the same time you can say well yeah but they're still living on two dollars and ten cents a day and both of those are right simultaneously like it is something worth celebrating but it's also it doesn't there's still the lingering problem of relative deprivation and when you hear everybody rattling about inequality that's why and it's valid it's not like there's not a valid point there i would also query those metrics somewhat in the the the lens through which we're regarding the problem is discounting i think a large part of what it is to be human i just spent sort of an hour talking to vandana shiva the indian academic ecologist and uh like a very powerful woman incredibly anti-establishment challenging the sort of the influence of bill gates the the um uh the patenting of seeds over there in india the negative impact of big tech on their agricultural industry and what she clearly regards as yes malfeasance and a deliberate um disruption of the indian way of life and like to speak when i speak with uh somebody like that like these car i feel that that kind of data and i've you know i think i've spoken to some of the people too about you know harare people i sort of admire and respect who tell good stories i feel that those stories are promoted because they can be used to underwrite the myth of progressivism because materially scientifically medically there have doubtlessly been so many incredible advances and i think that what we neglect is something that seems to me you're very interested in our spiritual evolution our personal awakening and like as you said a moment ago jordan the fact is is we could imagine and dream and create all manner of systems into being and the what we are prohibited from imagining what we're prohibited from creating frustrates me but both from okay so we can think about that technically in some sense again so now we could say there's three problems there's an absolute privation problem there's a relative privation problem and now there's also the problem of rank ordering values and i would say that's the spiritual problem the spiritual problem is something like well what is most important and vital and how do we know that that's what we're pursuing and that's the fundamental religious question which is what is it that is of most value what what should orient in the final analysis what should orient us so you see that expressed in stories like the pinocchio story for example which i use consist consistently because well it's a work of genius and millions of people have watched it and found it compelling and so it's a cultural phenomenon so it's worthy of inquiry but so geppetto orients himself to a star and that's what and so he's properly oriented right he lifts his eyes above the horizon to something glittering and bright in the darkness he's properly oriented and that's why he can raise pinocchio to be something other than a puppet right he can raise him up to be a fully developed human being it's a religious issue and the question is well what is the star that should guide us and well that's something we have to talk about an awful lot i mean i'm interested in hero mythology primarily because the stories we tell one another and have told one another from time immemorial constitute our attempts to orient ourselves properly in life towards whatever the highest value might be and it's part of an ongoing discussion that the whole human race participates in that that that's part that's part of the process by which we we we identify and rank order and communally celebrate let's say and pursue our values and it's of crucial importance to do that ritually and dramatically and also explicitly and philosophically so and it's a it's also a problem it is a problem when i when i've talked to bjorn lomberg and matt ridley uh and and mary and toopey for that matter about their work i mean one of the things they're perfectly aware of this that there's something lacking in the story of progress against absolute deprivation it's not enough that's that's part of what makes it lack its compelling nature apart from the criticism that you raised which is well what about relative privation which is a perfectly relative relevant criticism but you have to have both of those like just because there's still relative poverty doesn't mean that victory over absolute poverty isn't worth celebrating it it certainly is no so okay so we have to orient ourselves spiritually absolutely i agree with that there's no doubt about that my sense is that this um you know um vanquishing of absolute property poverty is an inadvertent side effect of different objectives that are to do with the conservation and perpetuation of the abiding machinery of commerce capitalism and consumerism maybe an inadvertent consequence like for example when don't you sometimes when you think of like slavery and the abolition of slavery that that slavery was maintained for as long as possible then there comes a point where it's like god we can't get away with slavery anymore but we can we will we will rescind our right to have slaves but we will keep an economic class primarily made up of people you know in say the case of the united states of america made up from that same kind of background you know that these kind of and like that can then be rightly labeled progress but in terms of a kind of a an epiphany a cultural and socio social epiphany now i know this is difficult jordan because i i suppose i i'm suggesting there are universals that there is an absolute north star that we can all refer to but isn't any religious man making that claim that there is i think it's too i think it's two one-sided russell because i mean there's no doubt that corruption exists and that hierarchies can degenerate into power structures and become tyrannical and counterproductive but that's what happens when they degenerate it's it's that isn't how a properly functioned human hierarchy works and they're not very stable if they degenerate in that manner let me give you an example you can tell me what you think about this and and then i'll talk about slavery particularly because it wasn't just an economic calculation to get rid of slavery i mean there espec britain the movement to abolish slavery was was driven by truly believing christians they had a walloping effect over a number of decades in eradicating slavery it was a moral move and you know it was replaced in some sense by another kind of slavery but one thing that happened in some sense is that as modern the modern economic system displaced the slave system which had existed forever we all became our own slaves right because most people enslaved themselves for eight hours a day and then they can be free men the other 16 and so we've substituted our own slavery and the slavery of machines for the slavery of others that wasn't only technical it was also a moral decision and i i don't think you should discount the moral striving that went into that because it's an important part of the historical record and you don't want to you don't want to ignore the contribution of moral people in the past to our progress right because it gives you a very dim view of humanity lots of people knew slavery was undesirable and wrong and risked a tremendous amount to to to move beyond it actually so i wouldn't discount that moral contribution you know with regard to any of the great cultural conversations and conflict but what i feel is that the inverted commerce the system is most adept at absorbing what is required and repackaging for example when um like you know when british colonization of india ended it there we sort of soon see the establishment of economic entities that are in enable a a continuum of comparable relationships so ordinary life for many people in that region doesn't significantly improve i feel that most power that is conceded is conceded under the condition that it doesn't affect the interest of the powerful significantly that there are is a rarefied strata of society which is i would say somewhat immobile although i suppose we could argue that the emergence of these new the barons that have replaced oil and steel barons in the tech world you know that that is different there's some sort of fluidity there is you know i'm not arguing against that but what i'm saying is is that if we have a goal and i'm not i'm not talking about old you know like marxism socialism the left in those terms i'm actually talking about i want to about the realization of god's kingdom on earth like you know when you talk about in a personal way jordan the idea that there may be someone that would look benevolently upon you if they knew that you were living your life trying to be beautiful what type of world what type of communities what type of systems what type of democracies might we favor if um if this became our shared collective and and individual priorities and that's what we're trying to figure out russell that's why we're having this conversation yes that's what we're trying to figure out if fundamentally i believe that that's that's that's the purpose of real discussion and i think one of the reasons that youtube conversations like this have become so powerful is because you can actually have those discussions you know it's so what we're doing is so different than network tv it's it's so different it's so revolutionary like i was talking to a wall street journal uh uh reporter the other day and and i said well why do you like youtube and he said well the the conversations just follow this unpredictable thread forward and it's so interesting to watch them i said well that's the logos in action that's what you're seeing there's nothing more compelling than that so if we're doing this right look the last conversations we've had including the very last one have been received very positively and i believe the reason for that is i think that to the best of our mutual abilities we're trying to get smarter than we were before the conversation because of the conversation yes and people respond extremely positively to that and isn't that wonderful that that's the case and so we we we are trying to figure this out and i would also say don't assume malevolence where ignorance is sufficient you know when you look at how a large system operates you don't want to forget that part of the reason it's not doing so well is because people actually don't know how to do it better it's not the only reason malevolence exists for sure but you know and then what do you do while you try to dispel the ignorance your own ignorance what what you and i are trying to do right now hopefully is to dispel our own ignorance and to share that process with the people who are watching and listening i believe that the reason that you had such a profound impact in your sort of um roaring campaign through identity politics through maleness is because it's to me at least it seemed as an observer it's underwritten by years of clinical practice a deep understanding of young and we and you would genuinely uh oratin on conquering unconscious territories of awakening out of the unconsciousness and like when you say that now you know don't assume malevolence when ignorance will suffice you know they they know not what they do most people are unconscious our systems are unconscious but for me there is a reason that mainstream media prohibits and precludes certain types of discourse favors other types of discourse and this for me is because okay there is let's let's take it apart for a minute let's take it apart because we'll start with the ignorance before malevolence issue and so we'll look for non-moral reasons first and then go to moral reasons and i think that's a that's a safe approach because you don't cast stones any more than necessary that way well there are massive technological differences between youtube and network tv despite the fact that they're both video the first is there's no bandwidth restriction bandwidth is now free you and i can talk for as long as we want and essentially no one has to pay for it except with their attention and so and so and then it's permanent whereas with network tv it was evanescent it evaporated as soon as it was spoken well now this conversation will be around for probably longer than either of us would want it to be it's as permanent as a book and and that what that means too is that i don't have to assume that my audience has a limited attention span or no memory anymore because they can go i know that they can go out and find out things on their own and so when i go to do a network tv interview now it feels like i've transported myself back in time to 1950 and the person i'm talking to when i'm sitting in the green room before the interview they're a person and we have a conversation but as soon as the cameras go on they're no longer a person they're a puppet of a and i'm not saying that critically i'm saying because the bandwidth was so incredibly expensive the the there wasn't time for experimentation it was too expensive and so everything the interviewer did was scripted well then it was scripted according to essentially the dictates and interests of the corporation obviously and so then what you end up on with network tv is a discussion with a talking head representing that monolithic organization you're not talking to another person and if you were that person would get fired right because they would now be an individual instead of this immense machine that was necessary because the communication technology was so expensive so you start with that and then you might say well and furthermore it was warped by the fact that the corporations of a certain size are protecting their existence which of course they are and so are the people within the corporation of course they are just like we would fight for our hierarchical position of course so yes but all that's gone now and and and now we have this and now we're figuring out what to do with it now what you said there about the sort of the position of the journalists in the chair and how they become an automaton because their role is so prescriptive within that corporation that's no different to something that you know chomsky would have said 30 40 years ago you wouldn't be in that chair if you didn't share the beliefs of the corporation this is struck for me of course yes of course this chimed with something ian is the few former uh chancellor of greece under syriza in that brief moment after the economic crash when there was a surge of leftist populism in greece said he said that when he met with the eu he realized even when talking to the most powerful minister over economics with whom they were arguing about their sanctions he recognized that that uh chancellor uh he was someone like german chancellor or whatever said that he only had the power and in some ways plainly obvious he only had the power afforded to him by his role that suggested me a kind of intransigence and like when you talk about like sort of people in a mainstream media outlet that they're a representative of a certain set of ideals well the same becomes true in a political establishment now we know that there are relationships between obviously we've known for a long time their relationship between media and government that involves lobbying commerce shared interest now i know that when you talk about it from a sort of an anthropological perspective you say of course we would all protect our positions in a hierarchy and this returns me to the point jordan where it requires of us as individuals a kind of personal awakening um that perhaps that one has to undergo a kind of neck here am i saying that right that kind of journey into darkness that you know that you've recently experienced and i'm sure most of us have our own version of and and to come out the other side of that with the conclusion not being how do i achieve more as an individual but how do i convey love how do i convey christ consciousness how do i let's start well let's start with that then so so so first of all you know everyone is now a tv producer and a radio host if they want to be if you if you have a voice you can you can communicate with you have the technology to communicate with as many people as you want so then the next question is do you have the will the ability the desire and all of that but you certainly have the t the technological means so it isn't that people have been rendered voiceless they have in certain regards but in other ways they're so powerful that it's absolutely beyond comprehension and so and then and i would say well i am definitely of the mind that it's best for it would be best for everyone to orient themselves and i've tried to figure out what that orientation would mean and it's some of it is and and i've used history as my guide as much as i've been able to philosophy and religious ideas all of that trying to puzzle this out it's like well the love part is okay you have to decide you serve someone that's an old idea it's christ or satan fundamentally that's an archetypal reality and what that means in some sense is that you're either working for the betterment of things because you're in favor of being and it's flourishing and perhaps even it's playful and beautiful flourishing you've decided that despite the horrors of existence despite the horrors of existence that would drive you to resentment and bitterness and hatred and the desire to destroy you've decided no i'm going to aim up and that's love it's like i'm going to aim up and i'm going to bring everything i can with me okay then the next thing is truth in service of that and one thing i learned i think is that i tweeted something out the other day and like i see people all the time and they have something they want and then they use their language to get it okay that's not that's not how to use language that's wrong and the reason it's wrong is because why do you think that your theory about what you want is right if it's wrong then you're saying things that are wrong and so i would say instead try this say what you believe to be true and accept what happens and that's an adventure man you do that you do that for 10 years and your life will be so different that you won't be able to believe it it's unbelievably adventurous to only say what you think is true in right there and then to be in that moment and to have decided that there's no agenda i'm just going to say what i think regardless of the consequences and i don't mean carelessly i really do not mean that the absolute opposite of careless you pay attention to every word and the consequences are miraculous this is a kind of mysticism i think that you are describing uh firstly the ability to remain entirely present secondly the idea that you can respond authentically without an agenda for of personal advancement this requires i think a kind of transcendence certainly from my understanding would require a kind of ego death the sort of energies that compete in me seem to the tension seems to be between this sort of a very vivid sense of uh love and awakening and service and sort of values of which i'm quite proud and uh and and still you know i would say i don't know if i would want to call them activistic but quite quite primordial sometimes unformed certainly liberius concupiscence of rushes you know like that i'm i i love the idea of living authentically and truthfully in a moment and house of potent radical punk and effective divine that could be mischievous trickster-ish almost and then you know right yeah that's got the romantic element there because it's unpredictable it's absolutely unpredictable you just don't know what's going to happen you know but if you like let's say you have faith let's say you have faith so let's let's figure out here what we mean by faith so we're going to say um i have faith that if i act out the proposition that being should flourish and i should aid that i'm going to risk my life on that proposition that's that's going to orient me i could be wrong but that i'm gonna that's gonna be the direction of my life and then i'm going to tell the truth in service of that well the faith the faith then is the acting out of that is that is the actual uttering of the words and and and and and the willing to willingness to observe what emerges as a consequence and you think well do you believe that love and truth prevails do you believe that if you believe it acted out well then you act it out and it's very unpredictable and and you do have to watch for the emergence of these counter positions that you described you believe it so you act it out you observe what happens and you accept that as as you accept that as as regardless of the consequences in some sense by presuming from to begin with that if it's emerges as a consequence of the actions of love and truth then it is by definition good regardless of what you think at that moment because you have to put your faith somewhere right like because you don't know everything you're stuck with it so you've got a better do you have a better theory than that i don't i can't find a better theory than that no there like the requirement for faith is pretty clear the limitations uh our the the limits of our capacity for knowledge the limitations of the senses the uh abiding mystery these seem to be perennial they don't seem like they're going to be surmounted any time soon i i recognize that i am drawn to ask you like like when you went into this terrible crisis of health with yourself and tammy your wife and that it would all consumed by this great suffering you just like you disappear into this you know from the external perspective for for several years and during this time there's this incredible ongoing cultural war sort of peeking out uh that's again sort of dissolves into um you know the end of trump's presidency and the emergence of joe biden and this kind of global pandemic the world shifts seminally during this period how do you feel that how do you adjust to that being having been through what you've been through personally which we've touched upon and i've you know we've talked about uh previously how do you feel about what's changed culturally how and and how do you uh line these ideas up now well i would say i'm i'm still puzzling that out to some degree and like everyone partly because i'm faced with as we all are with this unbelievable technological revolution i mean i think what do i that's such a complicated question i i'm i'm doing more of what i was doing before i suppose i still believe that at least in so far as i'm concerned that there isn't anything better than i can be that i can be doing than continuing to encourage people and that's what how i see my role is that you know i'm i'm i'm trying to let me tell you a story okay just a quick story and this this happens to me on a regular basis um but this happened today i was walking down i was sitting on bloor street which is a main street in in in toronto and uh this kid came up he's about 20 and he said i don't want to disturb you but i i watched your biblical lectures a few years ago and they really helped me and he was going to walk on and i said stop i said what's your name and i always ask people because as soon as you get their name then you're in a conversation they know that you want to talk it's an open invitation and and i do want to talk because i want to find out okay i helped this kid apparently how exactly what worked because then maybe i can do it again right so he said well um you know it made me rethink my religious belief and now i'm going to church and i said okay like are you going every week he said i know you don't go to church you know or you're not a practicing christian and and i said you go to church he said yes but it's online right now i said well what do you do there and he goes to the services and then he has this group of 20 year olds and they talk to each other and try to orient themselves properly and i thought well that seems good that seems like a good thing so and he said that i said well what else did you learn that was helpful and he's going to law school and he said well i learned to stop comparing myself to other people and berating myself for what i didn't have and i learned how to reward myself for making incremental improvements and i thought so he's comparing himself to who he was yesterday which is dead on it's like there's no envy in that man and and that's a game you can win and it's a an improving game and anyone can play it and it's so i thought that's great because now you know how to reward yourself and so he's in law school in his second year he said he's going to be a corporate lawyer in new york so he has this massive opportunity because that's an immense opportunity and he thought he's trying to figure out how to integrate his legal education in the corporate world with his profound emergent morality and i think yes great man you hear a story like that it's like well that keeps you going no matter what like more of that right more of that you can't get too much of that and then i can tell people you know you want to look for something meaningful you're not going to find anything more meaningful more deeper than deeper than trying to orient yourself towards the highest good trying to tell the truth and trying to further other people's development it's so rewarding that it's it's almost too much that's the problem with it it's it's too much and part of i think why i've been sick is because of that too much you know um partly from observing how much lack of encouragement there has been for people and how many people are starving spiritually and psychologically because of that i saw that on such a massive scale but also to just see the consequences of having that address to the limited degree i've been able to address it like it happens all the time and it i had this guy it's so strange this guy walked by this guy the other day on bloor again and he was kind of a street looking guy kind of rough you know and bent over about 45 50 but looking older than that and and he had a mask on and he wasn't looking so good and he he took his mask off and he came over to me i had no idea what he said i love you i thought jesus my friend was walking with me the guy told me about i we walked away i said what do you make of that and he you know he just shook his head he said you sure have a lot of people men coming up on the streets saying that they love you it's like it's a hell of a thing russell do you and gohan how could you want something more how could you possibly ask for something more than that how could anything that was narrowly selfish let's say in the sort of grasping capitalist mode you know to use the cynical left wing uh caricature and and it's not like there's never truth in that but we're all grasping that's for sure how could anything that could possibly produce even in theory compete with that they're not even in the same universe i completely i understand what you're saying and i'm thinking about it it's because you have this very particular background in clinical psychology and academia as a teacher and the edification and raising up and teaching of people is plainly so important to you and it seems now more than ever and i feel how openhearted you are and perhaps have always been and i am i wonder if there's something this um the question continually asked of you of why do you feel like you resonate with males yeah it seems to me i i wonder is this a wound in your maleness or a wound in your adolescence is there something in you that is open do you feel that has made this connection possible because it can't simply be the translation of these theories i think some of it's actually the doing of my father i think i had a good father and he encouraged me like my dad instilled with in me his faith in me fundamentally like we had our set twos you know it's not like our relationship was without conflict but i knew i had something that none of my friends had or virtually none of them which is i knew that my dad fundamentally believed in me right fundamentally regardless of anything and what what he he thought that fundamentally i suppose that it was a good thing that i was around or that i was a good thing something like that but it was deep and that gave me a sort of it confidence i suppose or faith both of those both of those i suppose it's it's it he encouraged me i had that i had that encouragement and i think so you asked me a specific question i um i'm encouraging young men why because i i think i believe this it's like god only knows what you could do and we need it like you you're a good example i mean look at you christ you're unbelievably creative you're so smart you jump from idea to idea you're very charismatic you know and you have this immense talent and that led you into wastelands of all sorts you know because you didn't know how to control it or you know you weren't oriented properly god only knows why but you're trying to gather that all up and to figure out what to do with it it's like great who knows what who knows what piece of the puzzle you would contribute if you got your act together and contributed everything you can and i mean that it's clear that you're trying to figure that out otherwise people wouldn't be responding to you that so many so many of the comments were you know i my opinion of russell was you know neutral or negative or whatever but i watched this and like he's really doing his best obviously and that really impressed me so it's so nice to see that kind of judgment hey it's like well i can see that he's trying and so now i'm on his side and so you can it looks like you can kind of trust people to respond positively to that and that's so nice isn't it that that's actually the case that is you can let yourself out yes yes yes yes i i can begin to i get the idea that sort of again looking as best as i can interpret from a jungian perspective that some of these unformed primordial forces that found expression in some ways that were unhealthy for me and probably for others are now aligning they're becoming um sort of i don't want to use the word colonized because it has so many negative connotations but uh activated towards positivity integrated integrating yeah because you don't want to suppress them or repress them you want to bring them on board yes absolutely and and that's you know and that's the other thing i'm telling young men too and and because i certainly believe this to be true all that aggression that capacity for aggression and violence that physical strength that dangerousness those are unbelievably useful once integrated admirable you know i talked to jocko willing the other day and and the guy's a monster you know he's two feet thick and he's he's a warrior from the age of three that's the kind of person he is he goes to naval seal training and what do they teach him you have your friends back you subordinate all that anti-social aggressiveness that dominant striving that power that physical strength that desire to destroy even all of that you take that you control it you you you you serve other people with it you have their back and he says very straightforwardly you know that um he's an effective leader to the degree that he's been an effective leader it's because he takes care of the people around him and that's it so he integrates all that what could otherwise be you know catastrophic criminal or genocidal horror he's trying to integrate that into uh into into whoever it is that he can be if he's everything that he can be you know he told me about his he got a literature degree after he had had gone through the naval seals and i just kind of skipped over that um for i don't really know why and he called my attention to it and then we had a 20-minute conversation about the vital importance of literacy and it was so interesting that this character you know who's got all these other attributes would then say yeah but you know i got literate i became literate i learned to communicate and that made me that multiplied my ability manifold and so don't don't hesitate to develop your he didn't say it in these terms but your logos it's like absolutely absolutely and men are turning to him young man in particular because he's such a good role model he's written these books for little kids about how they can you know fortify themselves and it's not no competitive games let's raise little boys like little girls it's not that it's all at all it's like stand up man man up monster up get it together and then go past that right then subordinate that to truth and love and the ability to communicate then you're something but that way the vices can be virtues right you don't have to say well we'll just eradicate aggression well yeah sure it's like cutting off your arm you're going to get rid of that motive force that'd be like getting rid of sexuality you don't want to get rid of that you want to integrate it yeah it ain't easy i mean what i want to like and i i loathe being asked questions like this because it's sort of but like because it's you'll see why when i ask it like i create there's people that have a very negative response to me there sort of always has been ever since even when i was famous for frivolity there were people that and with you you found yourself so very quickly at the heart of a cultural war for some reasons that were i suppose obvious because of the nature of your emergence into sort of public life and the very you know the specifics of that but what i think when i see you talking when i listen to you talking and you are an open-hearted man you have these sort of plainly your relationships with females define you how do what do you think is the energy behind the specifically gendered aspect of like the public discourse prior to you know the couple of years you took off of health reasons what was you know if we can say like you know in your analysis which i i would still query about like you know the attraction of men is because you encourage and you give them confidence i i feel that somehow pain the wound has to be the point of connection but that's probably me bringing my own stuff and then for females no no i don't think it's just that i mean what's being activated there's something there's something about that that's right i mean i i well that's a good good question it's not like i i understand why the the the people that i'm talking to are disaffected the men i'm talking to are disaffected i understand that that's the shared pain i suppose i understand why they're doubtful and about putting forward their best i i i'm not i'm not contemptuous of that even i i see that it's a deep wound in in a sense and no wonder and and it is something that we all share but but you can just admit that and and then figure out what to do about it that's the next thing despite all that you say yes really really that's the case it's despite the patriarchal tyranny despite the malevolence of our ancestors despite the holocaust despite the catastrophe of human history and you know the inadequacy of your own ability and and the blackness of your heart it's like none of that's justification for not moving forward in properly so then what do you feel like um you know and it's a question i ask again of myself it must be interesting i imagine for someone to be literally an analyst and then be the subject of so much cultural attention that is um that you know polarizing uh so we've sort of discussed a little what what we you know you feel that is that you know that speaks so deeply to men and i'm getting a clearer idea of it but like the the inverse of that the sort of the famous youtube you know let's call them the youtube greatest hits that channel four news interview the gq one what what do you think was being driven out there i understand that you know like sort of because i've watched them and i know them that sort of it's on like no you're not i'm paying attention to gender inequality pay gaps etc and and i'm familiar with your arguments like which are obviously again underwritten by data but what do you think is the emotion the feeling why is it why is this academic at this point in history why well i would say well some of it's okay so some of it is that females are rising up to challenge the patriarchy they are doing that and and they're more powerful than they ever were like women have always pushed and tested men well why well well i hope you enjoyed that conversation with me and jordan peterson i enjoyed it i always enjoy talking to you i think he's fantastic if you want to listen to the second hour go over now and have your free trial on luminary there's loads of fantastic content on there it's 299 a month in most territories i hope you enjoy it please let me know in the comments and as i say i'll provide you with as much free content as i can but there is some things i have to money doing and luminary it's a good outfit with a lot of good content and what else you're going to do with 2.99 purchase half an ice cream i don't know it's up to you thanks

Channel: Russell Brand

Views: 897,830

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Keywords: Russell Brand, Brand Russell, BrandThe, Russell Brand video, Russell Brand news, Russell Brand politics, News, Brand, politics, Russell, russell brand jorden peterson, russell brand podcast, jordan peterson podcast, jordan peterson cathy newman, jordan peterson interview, jordan peterson video, russel brand, russel brand podcast, under the skin, under the skin podcast, under the skin russell brand

Id: apuygXKOnpI

Length: 59min 44sec (3584 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 17 2021

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What's your view on his spiritual journey? Something in him did change after his time in Russia, but was it enough for him to break through?