Slavoj Zizek debates Jordan Peterson [HD, Clean Audio, Full]

thank you a warm welcome to all of you here this evening both those here in the feeder in Toronto and those following online you know it's not very often that you see a country's largest theater packed for an intellectual debate but that's what we're all here for tonight please join me please join me in welcoming to the stage doctor slab GTECH and dr. Jordan Peterson just a few words of introduction there can be few things I think now more urgent and necessary in an age of reactionary partisan Allegiance and degraded civil discourse then real thinking about hard questions the very premise of tonight's event is that we all participate in the life of thought not merely opinion or prejudice but the realm of truth access through evidence and argument but these two towering figures of different disciplines and domains share more than a commitment to thinking itself they are both highly attuned to ideologies and the mechanisms of power and yet they are not principally political thinkers they are both concerned with more fundamental matters meaning truth freedom so it seems to me likely we will see tonight not only deep differences but also surprising agreement on deep questions dr. slobozia is a philosopher he has not one but two doctoral degrees one in philosophy [Applause] what in philosophy from the University of Ljubljana and a second in psychoanalysis from University let's hear it for psychoanalysis from the University of Paris eight he is now a professor at the Institute of sociology and philosophy at the University of Ljubljana and the director of the Berbick Institute for the Humanities at the University of London he has published more than three dozen books many on the most seminal philosophers of the 19th and 20th centuries he is a dazzling theorist with extraordinary range a global figure for decades he turns again and again with dialectical power to radical questions of emancipation subjectivity and art [Applause] dr. Jordan Peterson is an academic and critical an academic and clinical psychologist his doctorate was awarded by McGill University and he was subsequently [Applause] we got some new girl gap graduates out here he was subsequently professor of psychology at Harvard University and then the University of Toronto where he is today the author of two books and well over a hundred academic articles dr. Peterson's intellectual roots likewise lie in the 19th and early 20th centuries where his reading of Nietzsche Dostoyevsky and above all Karl Hume inform his interpretation of ancient myths of 20th century totalitarianism and especially his endeavor to counter contemporary nihilism his 12 rules for life is a global bestseller and his lectures and podcasts are followed by millions around the world both doctors Dziedzic and Peterson transcend their titles their disciplines and the Academy just as this debate we hope will transcend purely economic questions by situating those in the frame of happiness of human flourishing itself we're in for quite a night a quick word about format each of our debaters will have 30 minutes to make a substantial opening statement to lay out an argument dr. Peterson first followed by dr. G Jack each will then have in the same order ten minutes to reply I will then moderate 45 minutes or so of questions many of which will come from you the audience both here in Toronto and online with that let's get underway please join me in welcoming dr. Jordan Peterson for the first opening statement [Music] well thank you for that insanely enthusiastic welcome for the entire event and also for being here I have to tell you first that this event and I suppose my life in some sense hit a new milestone that I was just made aware of by a stagehand today backstage who informed me that last week the tickets for this event were being scalped online at a higher price than the tickets for the Leafs playoff games so I don't know what to make it out that's all right so how did I prepare for this I went i familiarized myself to the degree that it was possible with Slava ggx work and that wasn't that possible because he has a lot of work and he's a very original thinker and this debate was put together in relatively short order and what I did instead was returned to what I regarded as the original cause of all the trouble let's say which was the Communist Manifesto and what I attempted to do because that's Marx and we're here to talk about Marxism let's say and what I tried to do was read it and to read something you don't just follow the words and follow the meaning but you take apart the sentences and you ask yourself at this level of phrase and at the level of sentence and that the level of paragraph is this true are there counter arguments that can be put forward that are credible is this solid thinking and I have to tell you and I'm not trying to be flippant here that I have rarely read a track now I read it when I was 18 it was a long time ago right that's 40 years ago but I've rarely read a track that made as many errors per sentence conceptual errors per sentence as the Communist Manifesto it was quite a miraculous reread it and it was interesting to think about it psychologically as well because I've read student papers that were of the same ilk in some sense although I'm not suggesting that they were of the same level of glittering literary brilliance and polemic quality and I also understand that the Communist Manifesto was a call for revolution and not a standard logical argument but that notwithstanding I have some things to say about the author's psychologically the first thing is that it doesn't seem to me that either marks or Engels grappled with one fundamental with this particular fundamental truth which is that almost all ideas are wrong and so if you and it doesn't matter if they're your ideas or someone else's ideas they're probably wrong and even if they strike you with the force of brilliance your job is to assume first of all that they're probably wrong and then to assault them with everything you have in your arsenal and see if they can survive and what what struck me about the communist manifesto was it was akin to something young said about typical thinking and this was the thinking of people who weren't trained to think he said that the typical thinker has a thought it appears to them like an object might appear in a room the thought appears and then they just they just accept it as true they don't go the second step which is to think about the thinking and that's the real essence of critical thinking and so that's what you try to teach people in university is to read a text and to think about it critically not to destroy the utility of the text but to separate the wheat from the chaff and so what I tried to do when I was reading the communist manifesto was to separate the wheat from the chaff and I'm afraid I found some wheat yes but mostly chaff and I'm going to explain why hopefully in relatively short order so I'm going to outline ten of the fundamental axioms of the Communist Manifesto and so these are truths that are basically held as self-evident by the authors and they're truths that are presented in some sense as unquestioned and I'm going to question them and tell you why I think they're unreliable now we should remember that this tract was actually written 170 years ago that's a long time ago when we have learned a fair bit from since then about human nature about society about politics about economics there's lots of mysteries left to be unsolved but left to be solved but we are slightly wiser I presume then we were at one point and so you can forgive the authors to some degree for what they didn't know but that doesn't matter given that the essence of this doctrine is still held as sacrosanct by a large proportion of academics probably are among the most what would you call guilty of that particular sin so here is proposition number one history is to be viewed primarily as an economic class struggle all right so so let's think about that for a minute the first of all is there the proposition there is that history is primarily to be viewed through an economic lens and I think that's a debatable proposition because there are many other motivations that drive human beings than economics and those have to be taken into account especially the drive people other than economic competition like economic cooperation for example and so that's a problem the other problem is that it's actually not nearly a pessimistic enough description of the actual problem because history history this is to give the devilís do the idea that one of the driving forces between history is hierarchical struggle is absolutely true but the idea that that's actually history is not true because it's deeper than history its biology itself because organisms of all sorts organize themselves into hierarchies and one of the problems with hierarchies is that they tend to arrange themselves into a winner-take-all situation and so but not that is implicit in some sense in Marx Marxist thinking because of course Marx believed that in a capitalist society would accumulate in the hands of fewer and fewer people and that actually is in keeping with the nature of hierarchical organizations now the problem with that isn't so much the fact of so there's the there's accuracy in the accusation that that is a eternal form of motivation for struggle but it's an underestimation of the seriousness of the problem because it attributed to the structure of human societies rather than the deeper reality of the existence of hierarchical structures per se which as they also characterize the animal kingdom to a large degree are clearly not only human constructions and the idea that there's hierarchical competition among human beings there's evidence for that that goes back at least to the Paleolithic times and so that's the next problem it's that well the this ancient problem of hierarchical structure is clearly not attributable to capitalism because it existed long in human history before capitalism existed and then it predated human history itself so the question then arises why would you necessarily at least implicitly link the class struggle with capitalism given that it's a far deeper problem and now it's also you got to understand that this is a deeper problem for people on the left not just for people on the right it is the case that hierarchical structures dispossessed those people who are at the bottom those creatures who are at the bottom speaking say of animals but those people who are at the bottom and that that is a fundamental existential problem but the other thing that Marx didn't seem to take into account is that there there are far more reasons that human beings struggle then their economic class struggle even if you build the hierarchical idea into that which is a more comprehensive way of thinking about it human beings struggle with themselves with the malevolence that's inside themselves with the evil that they're capable of doing with the spiritual and psychological warfare that goes on within them and we're also actually always at odds with nature and this never seems to show up in Marx and it doesn't show up in Marx's Marxism in general it's as if nature doesn't exist the primary conflict as far as I'm concerned or a primary conflict that human beings engage in is this struggle for life in a cruel and harsh natural world and it's as if it's as if that doesn't exist did the Marxist domain if human beings have a problem it's because there's a class struggle that's essentially economic it's like no human beings have problems because we come into the life starving and lonesome and we have to solve that problem continually and we make our social arrangements at least in part to ameliorate that as well as to as to well upon occasion exacerbated and so there's also very little understanding in the Communist Manifesto that any of the likes a hierarchical organizations that human beings have put together might have a positive element and that's an absolute catastrophe because hierarchical structures are actually necessary to solve complicated social problems we have to organize ourselves in some manner and you have to give the devil is due and so it is the case that hierarchies dispossessed people and that's a big problem that's the fundamental problem of inequality but it's also the case that hierarchies happen to be a very efficient way of distributing resources and it's finally the case that human hierarchies are not fundamentally predicated on power and I would say that biological anthropological data on that or crystal clear you don't rise to a position of authority that's reliable in a human society primarily by exploiting other people it's a very unstable means of obtaining power so so that's a problem well the people that laughs might do it that way okay now the other another problem that comes up right away is that Marx also assumes that you can think about history as a binary class struggle with clear divisions between say the proletariat proletariat and the burrs huazi and that's actually a problem because it's not so easy to make a firm division between whose exploiter and whose exploit let's say because it's not obvious like in the case of small shareholders let's say whether or not they happen to be part of the oppressed or part of the oppressor this actually turned out to be a big problem in the Russian Revolution and by big problem I mean tremendously big problem because it turned out that you could fragment people into multiple identities and that that's a fairly easy thing to do and you could usually find some axis along which they were part of the oppressor class it might have been a consequence of their education or it might have been a consequence of their of their of their of the wealth that they strived to accumulate during their life or it might have been a consequence of the fact that they had parents or grandparents who were educated too rich or that they're a member of the priesthood or that they were socialists or any ways that the listing of how it was possible for you to bieber's wha instead of proletariat grew immensely and that was one of the reasons that the Red Terror claimed all the victims that had claimed and so that was a huge problem it was probably most exemplified by the demolition of the kulaks who were basically peasants peasant farmers although effective ones in the soviet union who had managed to raise themselves out of serfdom over a period of about forty years and to gather some some degree of material security about them and about 1.8 million of them were exiled about 400,000 were killed and the net consequence of that removal of their private property because of their burgeois status was arguably the death of 6 million Ukrainians in the famines of the 1930s and so the binary class struggle idea that was a bad idea that was a very very bad idea it's also bad in this way and that and this is a real sleight of hand that Marx office you have a binary class division proletariat brew Swasey and you have an implicit idea that all of the good is on the side of the proletariat and all of the evil is on the side of the bourgeoisie and that's classic group identity thinking you know it's one of the reasons I don't like identity politics is because once you divide people into groups and pit them against one another it's very easy to assume that all the evil in the world can be attributed to one group the hypothetical oppressors and all the good to the other and that well that's that's that's naive that's naive beyond comprehension because it's absolutely foolish to make the presumption that you can identify someone's moral worth with their economic standing so and that actually turned out to be a real problem as well because Marx also came up with this idea which is a crazy idea as far as I can tell of the that's a technical term crazy idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat and that's the next idea that I really stumbled across it was like okay so what's the problem well the problem is the capitalists own everything they own all the means of production and they're oppressing everyone and that would be all the workers and there's gonna be a race to the bottom of wages for the workers as the capitalists strive to extract more and more value from the labor of the proletariat by competing with other capitalists to drive wages down word which by the way didn't happen partly because wages wage earners can become scarce and that actually drives the market value upward but the fact that that you assume a priori that all the evil can be attributed to the capitalists and all the good that the Barozzi and all the good could be attributed to the proletariat meant that you could hypothesize that a dictatorship of the proletariat could come about and that was the the first stage in the communist revolution and remember this is a call for revolution and not just revolution but bloody violent revolution and the overthrow of all overthrowing of all existent social structure [Applause] um anyways the the the problem with that you see is that because all the evil isn't divided so easily up into oppressor and oppressed that when you do establish a dictator of the proletariat to the degree that you can do that which you actually can't because it's technically impossible and an absurd thing to consider to begin with not least because of the problem of centralization and you have to hypothesize that you can take away all the property of the capitalists you can replace the capitalist class with a minority of pro proletariat's how they're going to be chosen isn't exactly clear in the communist manifesto but none of the people who are from the proletariat class are going to be corrupted by that sudden access to power because they're well by definition good so so then you have the good people who are running the world and you also have them centralized so that they can make decision decisions that are insanely complicated to make in fact impossibly complicated to make and so that's a failure conceptually on both dimensions because first of all all the proletariat aren't going to be good and when you give put people in the same position as the evil capitalists especially if you believe that social pressure is one of the determining factors of human character which the Marxist certainly believed then why wouldn't you assume that the proletariat would immediately become as or more corrupt than the capitalist which is of course I would say exactly what happened every time this experiment was run and then that the next problem is well what makes you think that you can take some system as complicated as like capitalist free-market society and centralize that and put decision-making power in the hands of a few people the mechanisms by without specifying the mechanisms by which you're going to choose them like what makes you think they're gonna have the wisdom or the ability to do what the capitalists were doing unless you assume as Marx did that all of the evil was with the capitalists and all the good was with the proletariat's and that nothing that capitalists did constituted valid labor which is another thing that Marx assumed which is palpably absurd because people who are like maybe if you're a dissolute aristocrat from 1830 and or earlier when you run a feudal estate and all you do is spend your time gambling and and and and chasing prostitutes well then the your labor value is zero but if you're if you're running a business and and it's a successful business first of all you're a bloody fool to exploit and exploit your workers because even if you're greedy is sin because you're not going to extract the maximum amount of labour out of them by doing that and the notion that you're adding no productive value as a manager rather than a capitalist is it's absolutely absurd oh it does is indicate that you either know nothing whatsoever about how an actual business works or you refuse to know anything about how an actual business works so that's that's also a that's also a big problem so then the next problem is the criticism of profit it's like well what's wrong with profit exactly what what's the problem with profit well the idea from the Marxist perspective was that profit was theft no but profit well can be theft because crooked people can run companies and so sometimes profit is theft but that certainly doesn't mean that it's always threat theft what it means in part at least if the capitalist is adding value to the corporation then there's some utility and some fairness in him or her extracting the value of their abstract labor their thought there are abstract abilities their ability to manage the company and to engage in proper competition and product development and efficiency and the proper treatment of their workers and all of that and then if they can create a profit well then they have a little bit of security for times that aren't so good and that seems absolutely bloody necessary as far as I'm concerned and then the next thing is well how can you grow if you don't have a profit and if you have an enterprise that's valuable and worthwhile and some enterprises are valuable and worthwhile then it seems to me that a little bit of profit to help you grow seems to be the right approach and so and then the other issue with profit and you know this if you've ever run a business is it it's really useful constraint you know like it's not enough to have a good idea it's not a good enough to have a good idea and the sales and marketing plant and then to implement that and all of that that's bloody difficult like it's not easy to have a good idea and it's not easy to come up with a good sales and marketing plan and it's not easy to find customers and satisfy them and so if you allow profit to to constitute a limitation on what it is that you might reasonably attempt it provides a good constraint on on wasted labour and so most of the things that I've done in my life even psychologically that we're designed to help people psychological health I tried to run on a for-profit basis and the reason for what that was apart from the fact that I've noted first making a profit partly so my enterprises can grow but was also so that there were forms of stupidity that I couldn't engage in because I would be punished by the market enough to eradicate the enterprise and so okay and then so the next the next issue this is a weird one so marks and angles also assume that this dictatorship of the proletariat which involves absurd centralization the overwhelming probability of corruption and impossible computation as the proletariat now try to rationally compute the manner in which an entire market economy could run which cannot be done because it's far too complicated for anybody to think through the next theory is that somehow the proletariat dictatorship would become magically hyper productive and there's actually no theory at all about how that's going to happen and so I had to infer the theory and the theory seems to be that once you eradicate the burgeois z because they're evil and you get rid of their private property and you you you you eradicate the profit motive then all of a sudden magically the small percentage of the proletariat who now run the society determine how they can make their productive enterprises productive enough so they become hyper productive now and they need to become hyper productive for the last error to be logically coherent in relationship to the Marxist theory which is that at some point the proletariat the dictatorship of the proletariat will become so hyper productive that there'll be enough material goods for everyone across all dimensions and when that happens then what people will do is spontaneously engage in meaningful creative labor which is what they had been alienated from in the capitalist horrorshow and the Utopia will be magically assured in but there's no indication about how that hyper productivity is going to come about and there's no all there's also no understanding that well that isn't the Utopia that is going to suit everyone because there are great differences between people when some people are going to find what they want in love and some are going to find it in social being and some are going to find it in conflict and competition and some are going to find it in creativity as Marx pointed out but the notion that that that will necessarily be the end goal for the utopian state is preposterous and then there's the dusty Espeon observe a Shinto which is one not to be taken lightly which is what sort of shallow conception of people do you have that makes you think that if you gave people enough bread and cake and the Dostoyevsky in terms and nothing to do with busy them to be except busy themselves with the continued continuity of the species that they would also all of a sudden become peaceful in heavenly Dostoyevsky's idea was that you know we were built for trouble and if we were ever handed everything we were we needed on a silver platter the first thing we would do is engage in some form of creative destruction just so something unexpected could happen just so we could have the adventure of our lives and I think there's something well there's something to be said for that so and then the last error let's say although by no means the last was this and this is one of the strangest parts of the Communist Manifesto was marks it agree admits and angles admit repeatedly in the Communist Manifesto that there has never been a system of production in the history of the world that was as effective at producing material commodities in excess than capitalism like that's that's extensively documented in the Communist Manifesto and so if your proposition is look we got to get as much material security for everyone as we as possible as fast as we can and capitalism already seems to be doing that at a rate that's unparalleled in human history wouldn't the logical thing be just to let the damn system play itself out I mean unless you're assuming that the evil capitalists are just gonna take all of the flat-screen televisions and put them in one big room and not let anyone else have one the the logical assumption is that while you're already on a road that's supposed to produce the proper material productivity and so well that's ten reasons as far as I can tell that and so what I saw in that that the Communist Manifesto is is like seriously flawed in in virtually every way it could possibly be flawed and also all in and in an evidence that Marx was the kind of narcissistic thinker who could think he was he was very intelligent person and so his angles but what he thought what he thought when he thought was that what he thought was correct and he never went the second stage which is wait a second how could all of this go terribly wrong and if you're a thinker especially a sociological thinker especially a thinker on the broad scale a social scientist for example one of your moral obligations is to think you know you might be wrong about one of your fundamental axioms or two or three or ten and as a consequence you have the moral obligation to walk through the damn system and think well what if I'm completely wrong here and things invert and go exactly the wrong way like I can't I just can't understand how anybody could come up with an idea like the dictatorship of the proletariat especially after advocating its implementation for with violent means which is a direct part of the Communist Manifesto and actually think if they were thinking if they knew anything about human beings and the proclivity for malevolence that's part and parcel of the individual human being that that could do anything but lead to a special form of Hell which is precisely what did happen and so I'm going to close because I have three minutes with with a bit of evidence as well that Marx also thought that what would happen inevitably as a consequence of capitalism is that rich would get richer and the poor would get poorer so there would be an equality the first thing I'd like to say is we do not know how to set up a human system of economics without inequality no one has ever managed it including the Communists and the form of inequality changed and it's not obvious by any stretch of the imagination that the free market economies of the West have more inequality than the less free economies in the rest of the world and the one thing you can say about capitalism is that although it produces inequality which it absolutely does it also produces wealth and all the other systems don't they just produce inequality so here's here's a few stats here's a few free market stats okay from 1800 to 2017 income growth adjusted for inflation grew by 40 times but for production workers in 16 times for unskilled labor well GDP fact GDP rose by a factor of about 0.5 from 180 to 1800 so from 180 to 1880 it was like nothing flat and then all of a sudden in the last two hundred and seventeen years there's been this unbelievably upward movement of wealth and it doesn't only characterize the tiny percentage of people at the top who admittedly do have most of the wealth the question is not only though what's the inequality the question is well what's happening to the absolutely poor at the bottom and the answer to that is they're getting richer faster now than they ever have in the history of the world and we're eradicating poverty in countries that have adopted moderate free-market policies at a rate that's unparalleled so here's an example the UN Millennium of the UN Millennium Goals to was to reduce the the rate of absolute poverty in the world by 50 percent between 2000 and 2015 and they defined that as a dollar ninety a day pretty low you know but you have to start somewhere um we hit that at 2012 three years ahead of schedule and you might be cynical about that and say well it's kind of an arbitrary number but the curves are exactly the same at three dollars and eighty three dollars and eighty cents a day and seven dollars and sixty cents a day not as many people have hit that but the rate of increase towards that is the same the bloody UN thinks that we'll be out of poverty defined by a dollar ninety a day by the year 2030 it's unparalleled and so so the so the rich may be getting richer but the poor are getting richer too and that's that's not the look I'll leave it at that because I'm out of time but one of the I'll leave it with this the poor are not getting poor under capitalism the poor are getting richer under capitalism by a large margin and I'll leave you with one statistic which is that now in in Africa the child mortality rate in Africa now is the same as the child mortality rate was in Europe in 1952 and so that's happened within the span of one lifetime and so if you're for the poor if you're for the poor if you're actually concerned that the poorest people in the world rise above their starvation levels then the all the evidence suggests that the best way to do that is to implement something approximating a free-market economy and so thank you very much I feel it that I can see death alone okay thank you dr. Peterson dr. G Zack thank you okay first a brief introductory remark I cannot but notice the irony of how Peterson and I the participants in this duel of the century are both marginalized by the official academic community I'm supposed to defend here the left liberal line against neoconservatives really most of the attacks on me are now precisely from left liberals just remember the outcry against my critique of lgbtq+ ideology and I'm sure that if the leading figures in this field were to be asked if I am fit to stand for them they would turn in their grave even if they are still alive so let me begin by bringing together the three notions from the title happiness communism capitalism in one exemplary case China today China in the last decade is arguably the greatest economic success story in human history hundreds of millions raised from poverty into middle-class existence how did China achieve it the 20th century left was defined by its opposition to the two fundamental tendencies of modernity the reign of capital with its aggressive market competition the authoritarian bureaucratic state power today's China combines these two features in its extreme forum strong authoritarian state state wild capitalist dynamics and it's important to note they do it on behalf of happiness of the majority of people they don't mention communism to legitimize the rule they prefer the old confusion notion of a harmonious society but are the Chinese any happier for all that although even the Dalai Lama justifies Tibetan Buddhism in western terms of the pursuit of happiness and the avoidance of pain happiness as a goal of our life is a very problematic notion if we learned anything from psychoanalysis it is that we humans are very creative in sabotaging our pursuit of happiness happiness is a confused notion basically it relies on the subjects inability or unread enos to fully confront the consequences of his/her their desire in our daily lives we pretend to desire things which we do not really desire so that ultimately the worst thing that can happen is for us to get what we officially desire so I agree that human life of freedom and dignity does not consist just in searching for happiness no matter how much we spiritualize it or in the effort to actualize our inner potentials we have to find some meaningful cause beyond the mere struggle for pleasurable survival however I would like to add here a couple of qualifications first since we live in a modern era we cannot simply refer to an unquestionable authority to confer a mission or task on us modernity means that yes we should carry the burden but the main burden is freedom itself we are responsible for our burdens not only are we not allowed cheap excuses for not doing our duty duty itself should not serve as an excuse we are never trust instrument of some higher cause once traditional Authority loses its substantial power it is not possible to return to it all such returns are today a postmodern fake does Donald Trump stand for traditional values no his conservativism is the postmodern performance a gigantic ego trip in this sense of play with traditional values of mixing references to them with open obscenities Trump is the ultimate postmodern president in if we compare Trump with Bernie Sanders Trump is a postmodern politician at its purest while Sanders is rather an old-fashioned moralist conservative thinkers claim that the origin of our crisis is the loss of our reliance on some transcended divinity or higher value if we are left to ourselves if everything is historically conditioned and relative then there is nothing preventing us to indulge in our lowest tendencies but is this really the lesson to be learned from mob killing looting and burning on behalf of religion it is often claimed that true or not religion makes some otherwise bad people do good things from today's experience I think we should rather stick to Steve Weinberg's claim that while without religion good people would have been doing good things and bad people bad things only something like religion can make good people do bad things more than a century ago in his brothers karamazov Dostoyevsky warned against the dangers of godless godless moral nihilism if God doesn't exist then everything is permitted the French philosopher Andre Glickman applied the stairs his critique of godless nihilism to September 11th and the title of his book Dostoyevsky in Manhattan suggests as this title suggests he couldn't have been more wrong the lesson of today's terrorism is that if there is a God then everything even blowing up hundreds of innocent bystanders is permitted to those who claim to act directly on behalf of God the same goals also for godless Stalinist communists they are the ultimate true of it everything was permitted to them since they perceived themselves as direct instrument of their divinity of the historical necessity of progress towards communism that's the big problem of ideologies how to make good decent people do horrible things second yes we should carry our burden accept the suffering that goes with it but a danger lurks here that of a subtle reversal don't fall in love that my position with your suffering never presumed that your suffering is in itself proof of your authenticity renunciation of pleasure can easily turn into pleasure of renunciation itself for example an example not from neoconservatives white left liberals laughs to denigrate their own culture and blame Eurocentrism for our evils but it is instantly clear how this self denigration brings a profit of its own through this renouncing of their particular roots multicultural liberals reserved for themselves the universal position graciously soliciting others to assert their particular identity white multiculturalist liberals embodied the lie of identity politics next point Jacques Lacan wrote something paradoxical but deeply true that even is what a jealous husband claims about his about his wife that she sleeps with other men is all true his relative is nonetheless pathological the pallid pathological element is the husband need for jealousy is the only way for him to sustain his identity along the same lines one could say that even if most of the Nazi claims about gross they exploit Germans they seduce German girls and so on were true weeks they were not of course their anti-semitism would still be a pathological phenomenon because it ignored the true reason why the Nazis needed anti-semitism in the Nazi vision their society is an organic whole of harmonious collaboration so an external intruder is needed to account for divisions and antagonisms the same hold for how today in Europe at least the anti immigrant papa lists deal with the refugees the cause of problems which are I claim imminent to today's global capitalism is projected onto an external intruder again even if the reported incident with the refugees there are great problems I admit it even all these reports are true the published story about them is a lie with anti-semitism we are approaching the topic of telling stories Hitler was one of the greatest storytellers of the 20th century in the 1920s many Germans experienced their situation as a confused mess they didn't understand what is happening to them with military defeat economic crisis what they perceived as moral decay and so on Hitler provided a story a plot which was precisely that of a Jewish plot we are in this mess because of the group's that's what I would like to insist on we are telling ourselves stories about ourselves in order to acquire a meaningful experience of our lives however this is not enough one of the most stupid wisdoms and they're mostly stupid is an enemy is someone whose story you have not heard really they is is are you also ready to affirm that Hitler was our enemy because his story was not heard the experience that we have of our lives from within the story we tell ourselves about our cell in order to account for what we are doing is and this is what I call ideology fundamentally a lie the truth lives outside in what we do in a similar way the alt-right obsession with cultural Marxism expresses the rejection to confront the fact that the phenomena they criticize is the effect of the cultural Marxist plot moral degradation sexual promiscuity consumerist hedonism and so on are the outcome of the imminent dynamic of capitalist societies I would like to refer to a classic Daniel well cultural contradictions of capitalism written back in 1976 where the author argues that the unbounded drive of modern capitalism undermines the moral foundations of the original Protestant ethic and in the new afterword well offers a bracing perspective on contemporary Western societies revealing the crucial cultural fault lines we face as the 21st century is here the current works culture is a key component of capitalist reproduction and concomitant to it the commodification of cultural life itself I think crucial moments of capitalist expanded reproduction so the term cultural Marxism I think plays the same role as that of the Jewish plot in anti-semitism it projects or transposed some eminent antagonism however you call it ambiguity tension of our social economic life on to an external cause in exactly the same way now let me tell you a different give you a different more problematic example in exactly the same way liberal critics of Trump and outright never seriously asked how our liberal society he could give birth to Trump in this sense the image of Donald Trump is also a fetish the last thing liberal sees before confronting actual social tensions Hegel's motto evil resides in the gaze which is evil everywhere fully applies here the very liberal gaze which dominates Trump is also evil because it ignores how its own failures open up the space for Trump's type of patriotic populism next point one should stop blaming hedonist egotism for our walls the true opposite of egotist self love is not altruism a concern for the common good but Envy resentment which makes me act against my own interest this is why as many perspicuous philosophers clearly saw evil is profoundly spiritual in some sense more spiritual than goodness this is why egalitarianism itself should never be accepted at its face value it can well secretly invert the standard renunciation accomplished to benefit others egalitarianism often de facto means I am ready to renounce something so that others will also not have it this is I think now comes the problematic part for some of you maybe the problem with political correctness what appears as its excesses its regulatory zeal is I think an important reaction to that masks the reality of a defeat my hero is here a black lady tirana Burke who created the mid-to campaign more than a decade ago he observed in a recent critical note death in the years since the movement began it deployed an unwavering obsession with the perpetrators me too is also often a genuine protest filtered through resentment should we then drop egalitarianism no equality can also mean and that the quality I advocate creating the space for as many as possible individuals to develop their different potentials it is that my paradoxical claim it is today's capitalism that equalizes us to mark and causes the loss of many talents so what about the balance between equality and hierarchy did we really move too much in the direction of equality is there in today's United States really too much equality I think a simple overview of the situation point in the opposite direction far from pushing us too far the left is gradually losing its ground already for decades its trademarks universal health care free education and so on are continuously diminished look at Bernie Sanders and I don't idealize dream program it is just a version of what half a century ago in Europe was simply the predominant social democracy and it's today decried as a threat to our freedoms to the American Way of life and shown and so on I see no threat in to free creativity in this program on the contrary I see health care and education and so on as enabling me to focus my life on more important creative issues I see equality this basic equality of trench's as a space for creating differences and yes why not even different more appropriate here 'his furthermore I find it very hard to ground today's inequalities as they are documented for example by Piketty in his book on to ground today's inequalities in different competencies competencies for what in totalitarian states competencies are determined politically but market success is also not innocent in neutral as a regulator of the social recognition of competences let me now briefly deal with a in a friendly way I claim with what became known sorry for the irony as the lobster topic I'm far from a simple social constructionism here I deeply appreciate evolutionary thought of course we are also natural beings and our DNA as we all know overlaps I may be wrong around 99 percent with that of some monkeys this means something but nature I think we should never forget this is not a stable hierarchical system but full of improvisations it develops like French cuisine a French guy gave me this idea that French the origin of many famous French dishes or drinks is that when they wanted to produce a standard piece of food or drink something went wrong but then they realized that this failure can be resolved as success they were making cheese in the usual way but the trees got rotten and infected smelling bad and they said oh my god look we have our own original french fries or they were making wine in the usual way then something went wrong with fermentation and so they began to produce champagne and so on and so on I'm not making just a joke here because I think that it is exactly like this that and that's the lessons of psychoanalysis that our sexuality works sexual instincts are of course biologically determined but look what we humans made out of them they are not limited to the mating season they can develop in a permanent up into a permanent obsession sustained by obstacles that demand to be overcome in short into a properly metaphysical passion that perturbs the biological ritum with twists like endlessly prolonging satisfaction in courtly love engaging in different perversions and so on and so on so it still yes biologically conditioned sexuality but it is if I may use this term trans functionalized it becomes a moment of a different cultural however you call it logic and they claim the same goes for tradition TS Eliot the great conservative wrote quote what happens when a new work of art is created is something that happens simultaneously to all the work of art which preceded it the past should be altered by the present as much as the present is directed by the past end of quote what does this mean let me mention the change enacted by Christianity it's not just that in spite of all our natural and cultural differences the same divine spark dwells in everyone but this divine spark enables us to create what Christians call holy ghost or holy spirit a community which hierarchic family values are at some level at least abolished remember Paul's works from Galatians there is no longer true or Greek there is no longer male and female in Christ a democracy extend this logic to the political space in spite of all differences in competence the ultimate decision should stay with all of us the wager of democracy is that we should not give all power to competent experts it was precisely communist in power who legitimize the rule by posing as fake experts and incidentally I am far from believing in ordinary people's wisdom we often need a master figure to push us out of an inertia and I'm not afraid to say that forces us to be free freedom and responsibility helped they require an effort and the highest function of an authentic master is to literally to awaken us to our freedom we are not spontaneously really free furthermore think - I think that social power and authority cannot be directly grounded in competence in our human universe power in the sense of exerting Authority is something much more mysterious even irrational Kierkegaard my and everybody's favorite geologist wrote if a child says he will obey his father because his father is a competent and good guy this is an affront to father's authority and he applied the same logic to Christ himself Christ was justified by the fact of being God son not by his competency or capacities as Kierkegaard put it every good student of theology can put things better than Christ this there is no such authority in nature lobsters may have error he undoubtedly but the main guy among them I don't think he has authority in this sense again the wager of democracy is dead and that's the subtle thing not against competence and so on but that political power and competence or expertise should be kept apart in Stalinism precisely they were not kept apart while already in ancient Greece they knew that they have to be kept apart which is why the popular weight was even combined with lottery often so where does communism just to conclude where does communism enter here why do I still cling to this cursed name when I know and fully admit the 20th century communist project in all its failure how it failed giving birth to new forms of murderous terror capitalism won but today and that's my claim we can debate about it the question is does today's global capitalism contain strong enough antagonisms which prevent its indefinite reproduction I think there are such antagonisms the threat of the collage achill catastrophe the consequence of new technical difficult specialty environ ethics and new forms of apartheid all these antagonisms concern what Marx called Commons the sharp substance of our social being first of course the Commons of external nature threatened by pollution global warming and so on now let me be precise here I am well aware how uncertain analysis and projections are in this domain it will be certain only when it will be too late and I am well aware of the temptation to engage in precipitous extrapolations when I was younger to give you a critical example there was in Germany an obsession with valve turbine the dyeing of forests with predictions that in a couple of decades Europe will be without forests but according to recent estimates there are now more forest areas in Europe than 100 years or 50 years ago but there is nonetheless I claim the prospect of a catastrophe here scientific data seemed to me at least abundant enough and we should act in a large-scale collective way and I also think this may be critical to some of you there is a problem with capitalism here for the simple reason that its managers not because of their evil nature but that's the logic of capitalism care to explain self reproduction and environmental consequences are simply not part of the game this is again not a moral reproach and incidentally so that you will not think that I don't know what I'm talking about in communist countries those in power were obsessed with expanded reproduction and were not under public control so the situation was even worse so how to act first by admitting we are in a deep mess there is no simple democratic solution here the idea that people themselves should decide what to do about the ecology sounds deep but it makes an important question even with their comprehension is not distorted by corporate interests what qualifies them to pass a judgement in such a delicate matter plus the radical measures advocated by some ecologists can themselves trigger new catastrophes let me mention Russ the idea which is floating around of solar radiation management the continuous massive dispersal of aerosols into our atmosphere to reflect and absorb sunlight and thus cool the planet can be even imagine how the fragile balance of our earth function and in what unpredictable ways geoengineering can disturb it in such times of arrogantly when we know we have to act but don't know how to act thinking is needed maybe we should turn around a little bit Marx is famous thesis 11 in that in our new century we should say that maybe in the last century we tried all too fast to change the world the time has come to step back and interpret it the second trait the Commons of internal nature with new biogenetic technologists the creation of a new man in the literal sense of changing human nature becomes a realist prospect I mean primarily so-called popularly neural link the direct link between our brain and digital machines and then brains among themselves this I think is the true game changer the digitalization of our brain opens up unheard of new possibilities of control directly sharing your experience with your beloved may appear attractive but what about sharing them with an agency without you either knowing kit finally the common space of humanity itself we live in one in the same world which is more and more interconnected but nonetheless deeply divided so how to react to this the first and third leaf predominant reaction is the one of protective self enclosure the world out there is in a mess let's protect ourselves by all kinds of walls it seems that our countries are run relatively well but is the mess the so-called roads countries find themselves in not connected to how we interact with them take what is perhaps the ultimate rogue state Congo warlord who rule provinces there are always dealing with Western companies selling them minerals where would our computers be without Colton from Congo and what about foreign interventions in Iraq and Syria or by our proxies like Saudi Arabia in Yemen here refugees are created a new world order is emerging a world of can I just finish the page two minutes literally a world of peaceful coexistence of civilizations but in what way does attraction forced marriages and homophobic homophobia are okay just that they are limited limited to another country which is otherwise fully included into the world market this is how refugees again are created the second reaction is global capitalism with a human face think about socially responsible corporate figures like Bill Gates or George Soros they passionately support LGBT they advocate charities and so on but even in its extreme forum opening up our borders to the refugees treating them like one of us they only provide what is medicine what in medicine is called a symptomatic treatment the solution is not for the rich Western countries to receive immigrants but somehow to try to change the situation which creates massive waves of immigration and we are complicit in this is such a change a utopia no the true utopia is that we can survive without such a change so here I think I know it's provocative to call this a plea for communism I do it a little bit to provoke things but what is needed is none delayed in all these spheres I claim ecology digital control unity of the world capitalist market which does great things I admit it has to be somehow limited regulated and so on before you say it's a utopia I will tell you but just think about in what way global market already functions today I always thought that neoliberalism is a vague term if you look closely you will see that state plays today more important role than ever precisely in the richest capitalist economies so you know the market is already limited but not in the right way to put it naively so a pessimist conclusion what will happen in spite of protests here and there we will probably continue to slide toward some kind of apocalypse awaiting large catastrophes to awaken us so I don't accept any trip optimism when somebody tries to convince me that in spite of all the problems there is a light at the end of the tunnel my instant reply is yes and it's probably another train coming to work so thank you very much please don't do this because I really think that that's why I I hope you Jordan aggravated that why we are here engaged in this debate don't take it as a cheap competition it may be death but we are as you said in your introduction desperately trying to confront serious problems I mean for example when I mentioned China China I didn't mean to celebrate it that worries me terribly my god is this our future no sorry sorry for this sorry please the discount take away this from my ten minutes that repeaters in ten minutes to you to reply so I like to speak extemporaneously but dr. Z Jaques discussion was so complex that there's no way that I can juggle my responses spontaneously so okay yeah achievement managed I would say so so I heard much of I heard much of what I heard I agreed with but we can get to that I'm gonna respond that with a knife all right well I died I heard a criticism of capitalism but no real support of Marxism and and that's an interesting thing because for me the the terms of the argument were well there were three terms of the argument let's say there was capitalism there was Marxism and there was happiness and I would say dr. Dziedzic focused probably more on the problems of capitalism and the problems of happiness than on the utility of Marxism and that actually comes as a surprise to me because I presumed that much of what I would hear would be a support of something approximating traditional or even a traditional Marxism which is why I organized the first part of my talk as an attack against Marxism per se ok so now she jet points out that there are problems of capitalism and I would like to say that I'm perfectly aware that there are problems with capitalism I wasn't defending capitalism actually in some sense I was defending it in comparison to communism which is not the same thing because as Winston Churchill said about democracy you know it's the worst form of government there is except for all the other forms and so you might say the same thing about capitalism is that it's the worst form of economic arrangement you could possibly manage except for every other one that we've ever tried and and then and I'm dead serious about that I'm not trying to be flippant I mean that it isn't obvious to me and when dr. jiseok is speaking in more apocalyptic terms it isn't obvious to me that we can solve the problems that confront us you know and it it's not also not a message that I have been purveying that unbridled capitalism per se as an isolated what would you say social economic structure actually constitutes the proper answer to the problems that confront us so I haven't made that case in any of the lectures that I've anything I've written or any of the lectures that I've done because I don't believe it to be true he said well what's the problems with capitalism well the commodification of cultural life all life fair enough there's something that isn't exactly right about reducing everything to economic competition and capitalism certainly pushes in that direction advertising culture pushes in that direction sales and marketing culture pushes in that direction and there's reasons for that and I have a certain amount of admiration for the necessity of advertisers and salesmen and marketers but that doesn't mean that the transformation of all elements of life into element into commodities in a capitalist sense is the best way forward I don't think it is the best way forward I think the evidence for that's actually quite clear there is by the way a relationship this is something I didn't point out before there is a relationship between wealth and happiness it's quite well defined in the psychological literature now it's not exactly obvious whether the happiness measures are measures of happiness or whether they're measures of the absence of misery and my sense is as a psychometrician who's looked at these scales that people are more concerned with not being miserable than they are with being happy those are all actually separate emotional states mediated by different psycho biological systems it's a technical point but it's important one the there is a relationship between absolute level of income and self-reported lack of misery or happiness and it's pretty linear until you hit I would say something approximating decent working-class income and so what seems to happen is that wealth makes you happy as long as it keeps the bill collectors at bay like once you've got to the point where the misery is staved off as much as it can be by the fact that you're not absolutely in you're not in absolutely economically dire straits then adding more money to your life has no relationship what's ever to your well-being and so it's clear that past a certain minimal point additional material provision is not sufficient to let's say redeem us individually or socially and it's certainly the case that the radical wealth production that characterizes capitalism might produce a fatal threat to the structure of our social systems and our broader ecosystems who knows I'm not absolutely convinced of that for a variety of reasons I mean jejak pointed out for example that there are more forests and Europe in now than there were a hundred years ago there's actually more forests in the entire northern hemisphere than there were a hundred years ago and the news on the ecological front is not as dismal as the people who put out the most dismal news would have you think and there is some possibility that doesn't mean that there aren't elements of it that are dismal you know what we've done to the oceans is definitely something catastrophic and we definitely have our problems but it is possible that human ingenuity might solve that what else there are inequalities generated by capitalism a proclivity towards a shallow materialism the probability of corruption the thing about that for me is those are catastrophes that are part of the struggle for human existence itself and not something to be laid at the feet of any given socio political system especially one that seems to be producing a fair Markum of wealth for the poorest section of the population and raising people up to the point where you know their lives aren't unending an unending day-to-day struggle for mere survival there's some evidence for example that if you can get GDP up to about $5,000 per person per year oh that's GDP that people start to become concerned about environmental degradation and start to take actions to prevent it and so there is some possibility that if we're lucky we can get the bottom billion or two billion people in the world or 3 billion as the population grows up to the point where they're wealthy enough so they actually start to care enough about the environment so that we could act collectively to solve environmental problems now you might say well by that time we'll be out of earth you know we'll have we'll have exhausted the resources that are in front of us so desperately that there's no hope of that but I would like to remind you of a famous bet between Julian Simon and the biologist ed at Stanford who wrote Paul Ehrlich who wrote the Population Bomb they bet air like who thought we were gonna be overpopulated by the year 2000 bet Simon that by the year 2000 commodity prices would have increased dramatically as a consequence of evidence that we were running out of material resources they made a famous bet over a 25 year period and err like paid off Simon in the year 2000 because commodity prices went down and not up and so there is no solid evidence that the fact that our population is growing and will peak out by the way at about 9 billion there's no solid indication that the consequence of that is that we are in fact running out of necessary material resources and so it's a danger but it just it's not a danger that's proven and there is some utility and considering that the addition of several billion more brains to the planet especially if they were well nourished brains as the increasing they are might help us generate enough problem-solvers so that we can stay ahead of the looming ecological catastrophe as our population balloons outwards now we're going to peak at 9 billion it's not much higher than we are now and it looks like we might be able to manage it the other thing is that I didn't hear an alternative really from dr. Jack you know he admitted that the rise to success of the Chinese was in part a consequence of the allowance of market forces and decried the authoritarian tendencies and fair enough that's exactly it it also seemed to me that the social justice group identity processes that dr. Dusek was decrying are to me a logical derivation from the oppression narrative that's a fundamental presupposition of Marxism so there I never heard a defense of Marxism in that part of his argument as well and so for me again it's to ask what's the alternative I also heard an argument for egalitarianism and but I heard it defined as equality of opportunity not as equality of outcome which I see as a clearly defined Marxist aim I heard an argument for a modified social distribution of wealth but that's already part and parcel of most modern free-market states with a wide variation and an appropriate variation of government intervention all of which constitute their own experiment we don't know how much social intervention is necessary to flatten the tendency of hierarchies to become tilted so terribly that only the people at the top have everything and all of the people at the bottom have nothing it's a very difficult battle to fight against that profound tendency much deeper than the tendency of capitalism itself and we don't exactly know what to do about it so we run experiments and that seems to be working perfectly reasonably as far as I can tell let's see well I'll close with this capitalism in the free market well that's the worst form of social organization possible as I said except for all the others there is a positive relationship between economics measured by income and happiness or psychological well-being which might be the absence of misery I certainly do not believe and the evidence does not suggest that material security is sufficient I do believe however that insofar as there is a relationship between happiness and material security that the free market system has demonstrated itself as the most efficient manner to achieve that and that was actually the terms of the argument so that's if it's capitalism versus Marxism with regards to human happiness it's still the case that the free market constitutes the clear winner and maybe capitalism will not solve our problems I actually don't believe that it will I have in fact argued that the proper pathway forward is one of individual moral responsibility aimed at the highest good and something for me that's rooted in our underlying judeo-christian tradition that insists that each person is a what is is sovereign in their own right and a locus of ultimate value which is something that you can accept regardless of your religious presuppositions and something that you do accept if you participate in a society such as ours even the fact that you vote that you're charged without responsibility is an indication that our society has structured such that we presume that each person is a locus of responsibility and decision making of such import that the very stability of the state depends upon the integrity of their psyche the intent the integrity of their character and so what I've been suggesting to people is that they adopt as much responsibility as they possibly can in keeping with that in keeping with their aim at the highest possible good which to me is something approximating a balance between what's good for you as an individual and what's good for your family in keeping with what's good for you as an individual and then what's good for society in the larger frame such that it's also good for you and your family and that's a form of an well an elaborated iterated game a form of elaborated cooperation it's a sophisticated way of looking at the ways society could possibly be organized and I happen to believe that that has to happen at the individual level first and that's the pathway forward that I see and so that's my 10 minute [Applause] I go up Thank You dr. Peterson doctors usually spend a little bit of my time I will try to be as short as possible so a couple of remarks and then my final point why I think this self limitation of capitalism is needed first about happiness just a couple of remarks Jordan I want to ask you but isn't it I am I dreaming I think I'm not I remember a couple of years ago it was reported all around the world some kind of investigation percentage of people interviewed in different countries do they feel happy with their life and the shock was that some Scandinavian countries which will which we considered social democratic paradise were very low while Bangladesh I think was close to the top now I know this logic has a limit I don't buy the of poor people are happy in their world there and so on but you know my argument here is not against you my argument here is problematizing happiness even more look this may interest you I was years ago in in I think Lithuania and we debated a report on this in one of my books when were people in some perverted sense and this is the critique of the category of happiness for me happy and we came to the crazy result after the Soviet intervention Czechoslovakia in 1970s and 80s why for happiness first you don't have you should not have too much democracy because this brings the burden of responsibility happiness means there is another guy out there you can put all the blame on him and as the globe went in Czechoslovakia if there is bad weather a storm or this communist screwed it up again that's one condition of happiness the other condition much more subtle ones is and this was done in Czechoslovakia those dark times after the life was evilly moderately good but not perfect like there was meat all the time maybe once a month there was not meat in the sauce it was very good to remind you how happy you are the other time another thing they had a paradise which should be the proper distance West Germany affluence it was not true far but not directly accessible you know so I it was so maybe in your critique of communist regimes I agree with you you should more focus on something that I experience of you know don't look only at the tear or ultimately totalitarian regime there was a kind of a silent perverted pact between at least in this late a little bit more tolerant but I still approach them communist regimes between power and population the message was leave us the power don't receive us and we guarantee you a relatively safe life employment private pleasures private niche and so on and so on so I am NOT surprised but again this is not for me the argument for the Congress but against happiness let's you know people said when coming when the walls fell down what a wonder in Poland my god in in in like Salah darkness which was prohibited hiragana triumph at the electrics who could imagine this yes but the true miracle in a bad sense for me was four years later democratically ex-communist came back to power so you know from again this is for me not the argument for them but simply for the let's call it corruptive nature of happiness so my formula may buted riveted is my basic Dogma is happiness should be treated as a necessary by-product if you focus on it you are lost it comes as a byproduct of you working for a cause and so on that's the basic thing for second point maybe we disagree here China of course the miracle economic miracle was due to unleashing market reefer and so on but and here comes my pessimism some of my liberal friends are telling me yes imagine what would they have achieved with also political democratization I'm a pessimist here no they found a perfect formula of how and that's the paradox of China today the Communist Party is the best manager of capitalism and protector against workers the truly dangerous thing in China today is not to flirt with Western ideas is to organize trade unions to you know like this is what worries me this perfect combination between unleashing capitalism and still the authoritarian rule or to put it in another way my worry is dead today all around the world this eternal marriage between capitalism and democracy is slowly disappearing till now I admit it capitalism needed from time to time some 10 20 years of dictatorship when things started to improve democracy returned Hill South Korea and so on I wonder if we are still at debt now it's just very quickly your basic point in the introduction in your introduction you know I almost am tempted to say the way you present that communist manifesto the simplified image and currently one it's crazy to say but on many points right I agree with you and it's a very complex argument Marx didn't have for example a good theory of how social power exists his idea was simply with disappearance of class structure it secretly although he wouldn't have accepted it a technocratic dream like by expert social life will be around as a perfect machine although he was at least aware of the problem which is why he was so enthusiastic marks about Paris Commune you know which was precisely not centralized power so I'm not just defending marks I'm saying it was not clear to him and so let's drop that maybe I have more interesting things to say ah another point nonetheless where well at one point I'm ready to play where did you find this these ghosts maybe for today's politically correct drugs and so on that this egalitarianism there is one passage in his late critic of Goethe program where Marx directly accesses the problem of equality and he dismisses it as a strict bourgeois category explicitly explicitly for him communism is not a Galit arianism it's yes here are his but not based on capitalism ok I'm not deaf ed totally defending here Marx I'm just saying don't Republic to mark ok but to conclude because yes I want to keep my promise to be a little bit shorter you know I agree with you on many points but you know what my problem with my problem that I was aiming at with all the openings I know we don't know really what is happening with ecology and so on this is an okay let's take options you mentioned them but isn't it for me correct me if I'm wrong and I don't mean this rhetorically maybe I'm really wrong but the problem of oceans can the only way for me is some kind of cooperated international action and so on you cannot simply leave it to the market that's what I'm saying this is the fateful limit that I see about this diminishing poverty and so on I am aware of it I tend to agree with I also but I the same time so many explosive tangents for example do you know about South Africa it's a terrifying situation on the edge of the civil war to be very brutal the only thing that in simplified it that really happened with end of apartheid is that the old ruling class a simplified ingrate a smart system was joined by a new black ruling class which is not doing a good job so they are trying to play the race card it's still the consequence of white colonialism and so on and so on but but tendrils are terrifying and here I was pleading for not abolishing borders and so on but this type of I don't know how to put it global trend cooperation like again the example of Congo that I mentioned or like forget that killing of that guy Khashoggi it's horrible but the true nightmare is Yemen today but I mean you said somewhere that we should well think without engaging in large-scale reform what the consequences will be if you okay very briefly I agree with you that the gap of standard mark season was that the proletarian revolution will be a place where you do something and you know exactly what you do if there is a lesson of the 20th century is that this tragic logic you want something may be good the result is catastrophic holds absolutely also for revolutions and so on and so on but but like in spite of all this and I don't know what forum will escape I'm not pleading for a new land in this party or whatever and just pleading for new forums of international cooperation and so on I agree with you when you said the majority of us is not even really aware of the seriousness of especially the poor of ecological problems and so on and I think would you agree that the situation is here much more subtle and obscene we it's that logic that in tracker analysis is called the survival Furlow ignant in French mr. bian recipe mmm we know ecological problems but we don't really take them seriously and here I see problems and I don't see an easy way out i I am a pessimist if you ask me when people say no but they're growing protests are growing and so on and so on yes I'm listening to this story from when I was young you know we are growing and then look what happened the mega tragedy is for me for example what happened to syriza they were elected for claims whatever and they become and I'm not blaming them they become the perfect executives of of austerity program so I just see problems I'm a pessimist and I'm not a radical pessimist but you have to maybe here we are different I noticed with your final speech that final moment of your investment that it's very strained because usually Marxists have this stupid optimist anthropology just get rid of capitalist terror and we will all be happy may God a much more a pessimist I don't believe in human goodness I will never underestimate evil never asked underestimate Envy I mean it's part of my nature in Slovenia we have a wonderful story godlike figure comes to a farmer and I will stop immediately and ask and ask him I will do to you to you whatever you want just I warn you I will do twice the same to your neighbor you know what's living farmer answers time take one of my eyes you know we are in this don't underestimate this I don't see any simple clear way out thank you thank you both very much it's pretty clear I think to all of us that you both have quite a bit to say to each other and so and so I think before we we jump to some audience questions I thought it would be nice to give each of you a chance to ask a response or ask a question or two from each other so starting with you dr. Peterson maybe you want simply to counter-attack it wasn't fair to well I've only to do you're like I had like three questions and queue of them are now completely irrelevant and so I have one left I guess and I'm not sure that it's a fair question but maybe it's it seems to me to be a fair question your your estranged Marxist to have a discussion with and well but here's why this is not an insult by any stretch of the imagination I mean one of the things that struck me when I was looking at your work was that your well first of all you're a character you know and that's a that's that's an interesting thing like you're auditioning not a name it's a sign of it's a sign of originality and and it's a sign of a certain amount of moral courage and and and it's a sign of a certain temperament and it makes you humorous and charismatic and attractive and and and and I think you appeal to young people the way that outside intellectual rebels appeal to young people and so those are all positive things that can be used positively or negatively and my question is like it seems to me that your your your reputation unless I'm very misinformed about this is as a strong supporter of Marxist doctrines on the left or was that and so then my question is given the originality of your thought why'd why is it that you came to presume at some point in your life perhaps not now still that the promotion of Marxism rather say rather than as eASIC ISM was appropriate because it seems to me that there's enough originality in your body of thought and lateral thinking in the manner in which you approach intellectual ideas that there's just no reason for you to be allied with a doctrine that's a hundred and seventy years old and that is if capitalism is rife with problems is twice as ripe as with problems as that and so you're kind of a mystery to me in that way and so that's my question okay very briefly I I developed systematically in my book critical insights into many traditional Marxist resist so no doubt here you know what I still admire nonetheless in Marx not those simplicity's of Communist Manifesto but I still think that his so-called critique of political economy capital and so on is a tremendous achievement as a description of the dynamics of capitalist society and if you read it closely Marx is much more ambiguous and open there for example he mentions for example app report what you refer to he mentions that law of diminishing return like well why crisis will arrive necessarily poor are getting poorer but in his honest enough to enumerate seven or eight counter tendencies and if you read him closely you will see that precisely those tendencies prevailed later or forget Communist Manifesto go to read his political analysis of it unsurpassable 18 Brumaire and so on of the 1848 revolution which are incredibly complex no traces of traces of that class binary there Marx deals with middle classes with crucial loom Perle Atari at with the ambiguous role of intellectuals and so on and so on but basically what I was pleading for and I like to put it in paradoxical turn was for a return of from Marx back to Hegel I define myself more as a girl yet why Hegel is consider kegel is considered a madman you know the guy absolute knowing and so on and so on no catalyst much more modest and open the danger in Marxism is for me this teleological structure we are at the zero point but there is a unique chance of a reversal into a new emancipated society and so on and the danger here is that of self instrumentalization Praetorian communist party is a an agent of history which knows the laws of history to put it follows them and so on that the catastrophe in Hegel such a position is strictly prohibited in Hegel whenever you act you earth so you know you have to there is no position of this pure acting where you know what you are doing and the result with it will be so I this this would be this would be my may point so yes my my my formula is kind of ironically I know Hegel is the greatest idealist materialist reversal of Marx by turning back to haggle for Hegel Hegel says in a part that people don't read introduction to forward story to philosophy of right he says explicitly that the owner of Minerva takes off in the evening when there is dusk so philosophy can grass grasp a social order when it's already in its decay philosophy cannot see into the future its radical openness we need this openness today the tragedy today may be we agree here is that we really don't have to a basic how do they call it cognitive mapping I don't think we have here a clear insight into where we stand where we are moving and so on and so on so I'm much more again sincerely of a pessimist can I ask you now a question so John well I don't have any thing to quibble about with what you just said but well no there's not even a but really it's that the even if the if what you said about Marx's more sophisticated thought is true I think the unfortunate reality is that any support for Marxism especially directed towards those are who are young is likely to be read as support for the most radical and revolutionary proclivities and I would say that as they're outlined in in the document that I described in the communist manifesto that they're of extraordinary danger and so it seems to me that by attempting to you know rescue the sheep yuvan you've sort of invited the dragon into the house and that seems to me to be dangerous and unfortunate asking you mine question because you know very naively you mention first do you really where did you find the data that I complete don't see it okay let me begin by this you designate you're under quotation mark I'm not characterizing here enemy or what you are fighting against F sometimes you call it postmodern neo Marxism I know what you mean all this from political correctness this excesses of whatever spirit of envy and so on and the one do you think they are really where did you find is that I don't know them I would ask you here give me some names or whatever one of the Marxist here I don't know any I don't who who is the Marxist here show me any big names of political correctness I think they they steer like a good vampire fear garlic and this is why they are already the one who is not a Marxist but it leaves a Proteus economic topic Bernie Sanders he's already under attack as white male and all that stuff and so on I simply I simply my problem would be with this one what you described as postmodern neo Marxism where is really the Marxist element in it therefore equality sorry we're there for equality at this cultural struggles proper names how do we call it rather do you see in them in political correctness and so on any genuine wheel of to change society I don't see I think it's a hyper moralization hyper moralization which is a silent admission of a defeat that's my problem why do you call give me not again it's not a rhetorical question for politely saying you are an idiot you don't know what you're talking about it's simply I would like to know because you and I like this often when you attack somebody you said aggressively and what truth read more tell me whom so I'm asking you now not read more I don't advise you but who are give me some names and so on and who are this post-modern egalitarian neo-marxist and where do you see any kind even of a Marxism I see in it mostly and and impotent and utterly impotent moralization please I'm so sorry well I mean organizations like Jonathan Heights what's it called heterodox Academy and other organizations like that have documented an absolute dearth of conservative voices in the social sciences and the humanities and about 25% according to the what I think are reliable surveys approximately 25% of social scientists in the u.s. identified themselves as Marxists and so there's that well okay but but let alone anybody I know a couple of Marxist for example that's very solid economic work I don't totally David Harvey one but he writes very serious book of economic analysis and so on and so on then there is the old guy who is far from simplification Frederick Reines on and so on but they are totally marginalized today in this politically correct mainstream you know I I don't keep well yeah your question seemed to me to focus more on the pair the peculiar relationship that I've noticed and that people have disputed between post-modernism and and neo Marxism and I see the connection between the postmodernist types and the Marxists as a sleight of hand that replaced the notion of the oppression of the proletariat by the bourgeoisie as the oppression by one identity group by another totally angry okay so but that but so now look we could precisely and non non Marxist Lester but well that that's they'd see that I guess that's where we might have a dispute because I think what happened especially in France in the 1960s as the as the radical marxist postmodern types like Derrida and Foucault realized that they were losing the moral battle especially after the information came out of the Soviet Union in the manner that it came out that didn't oh yeah that the whole bloody is telling us yeah the whole stell in this catastrophe along with the entire Maoist catastrophe but they didn't really have a leg to stand on and instead of revising their notion that human history and this is a Marxist notion be regarded as the eternal class struggle between the economically deprived and the oppressors they just recast it and said well it's not based on economics it's based on identity but it's still fundamentally oppressor against oppressed and to me that meant that they smuggled the the the fundamental narrative of Marxism and many of its goals back into the argument without ever admitting that they did so now I've been criticized you know for this opposition because people who are post modernists a look one of the hallmarks of post-modernism is skepticism of meta-narratives it's like I know that perfectly well and I also know that Marxism is a meta-narrative and so you shouldn't be able to be a post modernist and a Marxist but I still see the union of those two things in the insistence that the best the appropriate way to look at the view world is to view it as the battleground between groups defined by a particular group identity nin dividuals defined by a particular group identity so that the group identity becomes paramount and then the proper reading is always oppressor versus oppressed with the secondary insistence that's very similar to Marx's insistence upon the moral superiority of the proletariat that the oppressors are by definition because they're oppressed morally superior and and there's the call for perhaps not revolutionary change although that comes up above but change in the structure so that that oppression disappears so that a certain form of equality comes about now you argued that Marx wasn't a believer in equality of outcome and I'm not so sure about that because his notion of the eventual utopia that would constitute genuine communism was a place where all class divisions were eradicated but so does identification well well there's at least an implication of the most important of the hierarchies had disappeared and so maybe he had enough sophistication to talk about other forms of hierarchies but if if that's the case then I can't imagine why he thought that the utopia that would emerge as a consequence of the elimination of economic hierarchies would be a utopia because if there are other forms of hierarchies that still existed people would be just as contentious about them as they are now like we have hierarchies of attractiveness for example that have nothing to do with economics or very little to do with economics and there's no shortage of contention around that or any other form of ability and so that's why I associate the social justice types who are basically postmodernist with mark post more their post modernists with Marxism it's the insistence that you view the world through the narrative of oppressed versus oppressor and I think it's a catastrophe I think it's a catastrophe and you appeared as no career well just one sentence and then he you can reply in so strange that you mentioned for example somebody like Foucault who for me that his main target was Marxism okay for him represented in energy and his his game was never a radical change but and this is what I don't like in this what you call postmodern let's not call the Marxist but revolutionary it's this enjoying your own self marginalization the good thing is to be on the margin you know like not in the centre and so on and so on it almost made me nostalgic for old communiques to at least get the honesty to say no we don't enjoy our margin position we want to do something central power I find so disgusting no it's no wonder you don't get invited to lots of places yes no you you know you know Foucault for me and bodies this logic of revolution and by revolution he meant any social train serious bet small resistances and so on small marginal places of resistance and so on and so on so okay but let's maybe drop it here if you want but since you are replying to my question you should have the last web here dad I'll stop with that let's move to the neck we'll get back to these topics no doubt as we move forward with the question so I'm happy let that that particular issue stop stop did you already do your Stalinist manipulation and censor the questions because this program that she described to us through some screens questions and so on I think it puts him to the one who decides which questions are established what you put in are the real voice of the people so hopefully we can trust him let's move on from that and hurt this evening we're talking about happiness at least that's the frame of the debate that we have tonight and you've both been in your work and also tonight very critical of happiness as mere hedonism pleasure-seeking or even simply as a feeling what does true or deeper human happiness consist of and how is it attained well I don't I don't first of all there's something you said five minutes ago or so I think you were still at the podium that I agree with profoundly which is that happiness is a side effect it's not it's not a thing in itself it's something that comes upon you it's like an act of grace in some sense and myself even the theological undertone of what you said no no the category of grace can be used in a perfect eight a strange it is deepest yeah why I'm sorry okay good well I would think I would think that we could find agreement about that because partly because of your psychoanalytic background you know perfectly well that we're subject to forces within us that aren't of our voluntary control and certainly happiness is one of those because you cannot will yourself to be happy you might be able to will yourself to be unhappy but you can't will yourself to be happy there are certain preconditions that have to be met that are quite mysterious in order for you to be happy and then it has and then maybe if you're wise you you regard that as a like an in a minor incomprehensible miracle that somehow you happen to be in the right place at the right time now I've made the case that the most effective means of pursuing the good life which is not the same as pursuing happiness is to adopt something like a stance of maximal responsibility towards the suffering and malevolence in the world and I think that that should be pursued primarily as an individual responsibility it's not like I don't think that political and familial larger organizations are necessary but in the final analysis we each suffer alone in some fundamental sense and we have our own malevolence to contend with in some fundamental sense and the proper beginning of moral behavior which is the proper beginning of the right way to act in the world is to take responsibility for that I think you do what you can to conceptualize the highest good that you can conceptualize that's the first thing to develop a vision of what might be and it has to be a personalised vision as well as a universalized vision and then you work diligently to ensure that your actions are in keeping with that and you allow yourself on that pursuit to be informed by the knowledge of your ignorance and the necessity for acting and speaking in truth and a fair bit of that I believe is derived I think it's fair to say that that's derived from an underlying judeo-christian ethic and I make no bones about the fact that I think of those stories metaphysically or philosophically or psychologically as fundamental to the proper functioning of our society in so far as it can function properly and so it's not happiness it's meaning and meaning is to be found in the adoption of responsibility and then I'll close with this the responsibility is not only to do what you believe to be right that's not because that's duty that that's not enough that's sort of what the Conservatives put forward as the ultimate virtue which is duty it's not that it's it's that your you're acting in a manner that is in accordance with what you believe to be right but you're doing it in a manner that simultaneously expands your ability to do it which means that you cannot stay safely ensconced within the confines of your current ethical beliefs you have to stand on the edge of what you know and encounter continually the consequences of your ignorance to expand your domain of knowledge and ability so that you're not only acting in an efficient manner but you're increasing the efficiency and productivity and meaningfulness of what it is that you're engaged in and I think that and I believe that the psychological evidence supports this even the neuropsychological evidence is that that's when true happiness descends upon you because it's an indication from the deepest recesses of your psyche biologically instantiated that you're in the right place at the right time you're doing what you should be doing but you're doing it in a manner that expands your capacity to do even better things in the future and and that's that I think that's the deepest human instinct there is it's not rational it's far deeper than that and it's something that it's something that's genuine and that exists within us and that constitutes a proper guide if you don't pervert it with this self-deception and deceit so that's my perspective yeah okay I'll try if you are stupid enough to believe me to be brief yeah first I like very much what you began with this grace or whatever we call it moment of happiness and I would like to would you agree that the same goes for love I think we have annuities and they have it in French I don't know if in other language they have it they use the verb to fall in love which means it's in this sense in some sense a fall you are surprised you are shocked authentic love I think is something very traumatic even in this sense I always like to use this example let's say you live a stupidly happy life maybe one night stand here and there you drink with French then you fall in love passionately this is in some sense a catastrophe for your life all the balance is lost yes the world yes you know so that's why Cupid has arrows sorry yeah yeah right yeah yeah absolutely so but where I first second surprisingly maybe for youth I agree with your point about judeo-christian legacy for which I am very much attacked euro centrist and so on and so on but you know I wonder if you would agree with it I will try to condense it very much you know what for me the deepest I simplify to the atmos something unheard of and I as an atheist accept spiritual value of it happens in Christianity it other religions you have got up there we fall from God and then we try to climb back through spiritual discipline whatever training good deeds and so on and so on the form of Christianity is a totally different one as we philosophers would have put it you don't climb to God God you are free in a Christian sense when you discuss that the distance that separates you from God is inscribed into God himself that's why I agree with those intelligent theologies like my favorite Gilbert Keith Chesterton who said that this the cross the crucifixion is something absolutely unique because in that moment of alien Lamas about God Father why have you abandoned me for a brief moment symbolically God Himself becomes an 80s in the sense of you know you get a gap there and that is something shows absolutely unique it means that you are not simply separated from God your separation from God is part of divinity itself and we can then put it also in other terms maybe closer to you like that that's why for me happiness is not some blissful unity with highest value it's the very struggle the fall and so on and that's why I hope we both worry about what will this possibility of so-called I'm horrified with it what Ray Kurzweil calls singularity and this blissful state I preferred not to know but but the final point very brief what I only don't quite get why do you put so much access to this we have to begin with the person with personal trains I mean this is also the second orbit run I don't remember forgive me of your slogans in your book you know first set your house in order then but I have an extremely common sense naive question here but what is in trying to set your house in order you discover that your housing is in this order precisely because the way the society is messed up which doesn't mean okay let's forget about my Krauss but you can do both at the same time and I would even say I will give you now the ultimate example your self indeed that you are so socially active because you realize that it's not enough to tell to your to your to your patient set your house in order much of the reason of why they are in disorder their house is that there is some crisis in our society and so on and so on so my reproach to you benevolent would have been another joke to your coffee yes please like individual or social yes please because this is obvious in extreme situation like I hope we agree to say to somebody in in North Korea set your house in order no ha ha if it but I think in some deeper sense it goes all sorts for our societies I'm just repeating what you are telling you see some kind of a social crisis and I don't see clearly why insist so much on this choice because I will give you an example that I think perfectly does it how do we usually deal with ecology by this false personalization you know they tell you ah what did you do did you put all the coke cans on the side did you recycle old paper and so yes we should do this but you know like I in a way this is also a very easy way to describe yourself or like you say ok I do the recycling show up you know I did my duty let's go on so I would not say why the choice there ok so well so first of all I have to point out that it's you have unfairly tasked me with three very difficult questions and so I'm hoping that I can this life that's like if you said life is the challenge in Soho so so I'm going to I'm hoping that I have the mental wherewithal to keep them in track and answer them in order but you can help me if I stray I was very interested in your comments about the above Christ's atheism on on the cross that final moment of atheism that that's something I'd I'd never thought about in that way that certain orthodoxy bucshon no no it's a it's a very it's a very interesting thought because what it what it it's a really it's an unbelievably merciful idea in some sense that the burden of life is so unbearable it and you see in the Christian passion of course torture unfair judgment by society betrayal by friends and then and then a low death and so that's that's kind of that's about as bad as it gets right which is why it's an archetypal story right it's about as bad as it gets and the story that you describe points out that it's so bad that even God himself might despair about the essential quality of being yeah right right so and so that is merciful in some sense because it does say that there is something that's built into the fabric of existence the tests are so severely in our faith about being itself that even God Himself falls prey to the temptation to doubt and so that's okay now this is where things get very complicated because I want to use that in part to answer the other questions that you answered look there's there's a very large clinical literature that suggests that if you want to develop optimal resilience what you do is you lay out a pathway towards somewhere better someone comes in they have a problem you try to figure out what the problem is and then you try to figure out what might constitute a solution and so you have something approximating a map right and it's a it's a tentative map of how to get from where things aren't so good to where they're better and then you you have the person go out in the world and confront those things that they're avoiding that are stopping them from moving towards that higher place and there's an archetypal reality to that you're in a fallen state you're attempting to redeem yourself and there's a process by which that has to occur and that process involves voluntary confrontation with what you're afraid of disgusted by an incline to avoid and that works every psychological school agrees upon that is that exposure therapy the psychoanalysts expose you to the tragedies of your past you know and and redeem you in that manner and the behaviorists expose you to the terrors of the present and redeem you in that manner but there's a great broad agreement across psychological schools that that's that works and my sense is that were called upon as individuals precisely to do that in our life is that we are faced by this unbearable reality that you made reference to when you talked about the situation on the cross is that life itself is fundamentally and this is a pessimism that we might share is fundamentally suffering and malevolence but and this is I think where we differ I believe that the evidence suggests that the the the light that you discover in your life is proportionate to the amount of the darkness that you're willing to forthrightly confront and that there's no necessary upper limit to that so I think that the good that people are capable of is actually it's a higher good than the evil that people are capable of and believe me I do not say that lightly given what I know about the evil that people are capable of and I think that I believe that the central psychological message of the biblical corpus fundamentally is that that's why it culminates in some sense with the idea that it's necessary to adopt it's it's necessary to confront the devil and to accept your what would you say your the unjustness of your tortured mortality if you can do that and that and that's it's a challenge as you just pointed out that that's sufficient to challenge even God himself that you have the you have the best chance of transcending it and living the kind of life that will set your house in order and everyone's house in order the same time and so I think that's even true in states like North Korea and like I'm not asking people to foolishly immolate themselves for pointless reasons you know if I'm when I'm working with people who are clinic clinically and they have a terrible oppressor who's their boss at work I don't suggest that they march in and tell them exactly what they think of them and end up on the street it's not helpful you know and so the pathway towards adopting individual responsibilities happens to be a very individual one but I do believe that the best bet for most people is to solve the problems that beset them in their own lives the ethical problems that beset them that they know are problems and that they can set themselves together well enough so that they can then become capable of addressing larger scale problems without falling prey to some of the errors that characterize let's say over optimistic and intellectually arrogant ideologue very brief let me close with one thing one of my favorite quotes from Carl Jung it's actually a quote that I used at the beginning of my first book which was called maps of meaning was that if you take a personal problem seriously enough you will simultaneously solve a social problem and this bears on on your point because it's not like you're a small family even the relationship between you and your wife is immune in some sense to the broader social problems around you and so let's say right now there's tremendous tension between men and women in the West and that's certainly the case given the divorce rate let's say that would be some evidence and the later and later stages that people are waiting to become in - you know enter into permanent relationships there's a there's a real tension there and then if you do establish a relationship with a woman or a partner but we'll say a woman in this particular case you are instantly faced with all of the sociological problems in a microcosm in that relationship and then if you work those damn problems out if you can work them out within your relationship then you can get some insight it's not complete insight but you get some partial insight into what the problem actually is and get the diagnosis right and you've moved some small measure forward in addressing what might constitute the broader social concern and what's even better you're punished for your own goddamn mistakes and that's another thing I like about the idea of working locally is that you know if I do broad scale social experiments and they fail it's like well tough luck for the people for whom they failed but if I'm experimenting on myself within the confines of my own relationship and I make a mistake I'm going to feel the pain and then I and that's good that's just but it also gives me the possibility of learning and so I believe that you do solve what you can about yourself first before you can set your family straight and before you should dare to try to set the world straight otherwise you degenerate into this kind of you already talked about it this shallow moralizing did this well I've divided my goddamn coke cans up and now I can spend more money on new packaging at the supermarket which is exactly what the psychological research indicates that people do if they perform a casual moral action they immediately justify committing a less moral action because they've put themselves in a higher moral place and you might if you were real pessimist you'd say well that's why they performed the action to begin with I think that's often true that's associated with that shallow moralizing are we are we too much in this direction or or again I will put in my style in his terms would you go as far as to say who needs the people we talk for the people and who is not better than the people no because I don't want to take too much of the time for the public but you know what interests me would you then agree because this is how Hegel reads the story of the fall that fall really is Felix culpa in the sense that for Hegel before the fall we are simply animals it's true the fall that you perceive goodness as what will drag you out of the fall so in this sense fall is constitutive of the very you know it's not you fall from goodness you fall and there's the dialectical paradox your fall Rico actively creates what you fell from as it were and that's the tough lesson for trip moralist to to to accept but you know where I see very briefly maybe a counter question what fascinates me we didn't cover this I didn't cover this but speaking about ideology would you agree what fascinates me more and more is not big ideology in the sense of projects and so on in our cynical era people claim all we no longer take them seriously and so on but and here for me social dimensions enter enters even our intimate space implicit beliefs ideological presuppositions why not which we embody in our most common daily practices for example probably some of you already know it I will nonetheless repeat a very shortened version I was occupied at some point by the structure of toilet in Western Europe I noticed this special yeah yeah specificity of German toilets where you know the feet doesn't dis it doesn't disappear in water it is that exposure that you smell it and control it for whatever and immediately associated it with German spirit of poetry and reflection and so on it's a bad joke but what I'm saying is that in a sense and I've spoken with some specialists I was so intrigued by of how do you construct eyelets and they admitted it there is no direct direct utilitarian reason it is as if even in something as vulgar as going to the toilet ideology in this deeper sense is there another thing that at the same level I repeat one of my old roads that fascinates me intensely is how it's not just as superficial psychoanalysts claim we pretend to be moral to believe but deeply we are cynical egotist quite often in today's times we think that we are free permissive and so on but secretly we are dominated by an entire pathological or not even often pathological structure of prohibitions and so on so we may and this is what interests me so much precisely in today's time where and this is how would you agree we would explain the simple fact which may appear we're that how apparently they so they tell us we live in permissive times take your pleasure may enjoy it but at the same time there is probably so some clinicians are telling me more frigidity and importance than ever is that the lesson of psychoanalysis I hope we agree is not this vulgar one you are cannot perform sexually you go to psychology psychiatrist he teaches you how to get rid of Authority and so on it's a much more complex situation it's and this is what interests me immensely all this set of implicit beliefs cow you don't even know but you you know I will repeat the story that half of you know and you my favorite that Niels bore anecdote you know he had the house outside Copenhagen the quantum physics guy and he had a horse through a superstitious above his door yes and then a friend asked him but do you believe in it why do heavy dare and he said of course not I'm a scientist why then do you have it there because I was told it works the idea is it prevents evil spirits I - enter the house it works even if you don't believe in it now that's ideology today that ideology today fundamental I want to solicit from you patellar Joe I don't you see I think I think that people are are possessed by ideas that aren't theirs there yeah and their personalities that aren't theirs and that's the great psychoanalytic insight it's not ideas it's personalities it's way worse than than ideas and some of those personalities might be the ones that are associated with the idea that freedom is found in maximizing hedonistic moment-to-moment pleasure or something like that nice man it sounds like freedom like for me one of the things that I suggest to people is that they watch themselves as if they do not understand who they are or what they're ruled by and then notice those times when they're there they're where they should be that and that's back to our discussion about meaning rather than happiness it's like you'll see there are times that in your life where you're somewhere or you've done something and all of a sudden you're you're together you're you're where you should be your conscience is not disturbing you you're you're you're not proud of what you did because pride is the wrong term but you understand deeply that you've done something that you should have done you might not understand why you might not even understand what it is but the study of that can help elucidate the difference between what actually constitutes you is a very difficult thing to discover and what constitutes the accretion that characterizes you because of the well let's say your intense your intense proclivity for socialized mimicry and so you know your I don't mean you personally but people are amalgams of everything they've seen and everything they've ever seen they've watched it yet yes yes and everything they've read and and to integrate that and define the the truth that constitutes that integration is incredibly difficult endeavor and one of the reasons why in twelve rules for life for exam polite suggested that I'll try to tell the truth or at least don't lie is because one of the ways apart from pursuing what you what appears to you to be meaningful one of the ways of escaping from that possession by the kind of ideology that you're describing which is liken it's like a it's like an unconscious of unidentified axioms it's something like that even though they take personified form they're like personalities is to stop saying things you know not to be true it's a nice pathway forward it's the original rule was tell the truth and I thought no that's not any good because you're so biased and limited and ignorant and possessed that you don't know what the truth is and so you can't be asked to tell it but everyone does have the experience of being about to say or do something that they know by their own they know as deeply as they can know anything about themselves that that utterance or action is wrong and they still do it now my suggestion is try to stop doing that and one of the consequences well you can try in small ways like you might not be able to manage it in big ways but now and then you know you're tempted to do something that you know to be wrong and you could not do it and if you practice that you get better and better at not doing it and that means you lie less and you and you take the easy route out less and you pursue hedonic pleasures that cost you in the future less you start to straighten yourself out you take the beam out of your eye that's essentially what you're doing and over time you have some modicum of hope that your vision will clear up and you'll be able to see the proper pathway forward and that's part of the process of redemption and it seems to me to be in your grasp you're capable of doing that you have a conscience it does inform you from time to time correctly about the difference between good and evil that the consequence the knowledge the consequence of the fall that you described which I think you described it very eloquent terms and that you can slowly make your way back to the straight and narrow path that's characterized by maximum meaning but also see that this instinct of meaning is a sophisticated one it's not that I'm making a case for the individual like Iran makes a case for the individual that's not it I'm making a case for individual responsibility that's not the same thing it's like there is something that's good for you but it has to also be good for your family if it's just good for you that's not good enough and if it's good for you and your family and it's not good for society then that's not good enough either and so the responsibility is to find a pathway that balances these things in a harmonious manner it's like a I got a lot of this thinking from Jean Piaget and his idea of elaborated States right is you're attempting to find something like a game that everyone is willing to play that can be played in an iterative manner and not degenerate well hopefully actually ascend if that's possible hopefully become a better and better game across time and I do believe that I do believe that you can do that I do believe that you can do that if you're guided by truth and I do believe that the pathway to that is the phenomenology of meaning and then the secondary consequence of that is if you do that now and then you might be happy and then you should be profoundly grateful because happiness as we already agreed upon is something like a grace what basically it again my pessimism comes here I agree with you but the danger here here idealogy can massively enter you describe a nice situation you are tempted or ordered or whatever to do something that you know it's wrong but so-called totalitarian ideologies step in at this point and try to present to you that the true greatness is to do what you individually think it's wrong for the higher course you know who says this wonderfully horrible guy Heinrich Himmler of SS no no sorry seriously he knew the problem German officers must do horrible things yes children and his solution was double first to let them know as he put it somewhere every idiot idiot okay ordinary man can do something great maybe not all sacrifice himself for his country but his reply was his point was but it takes a truly great man to be ready to lose his soul and to do horrible things for his country and I read some good memories of relatively honest communists who broke down when they were sent to the countryside from in in early thirties and this is what this is what they were told by apparatchik you will see horrible things children starving and so on remember there is the higher course and your highest ethical duty is to is to overcome this small bourgeois sentimentality and so here I see the danger of again my pessimism false meaning which can massively cover this false narrative second thing also the solution by I wonder if you share this pessimism of mind another one by Himmler you know what was his sacred book I read he all the time had a special leather-bound copy in his pocket Bava got Geeta he massively he said his problem was this one he puts it perfectly Nazi officers have to do SS horrible things how to enable them to do it without themselves becoming horrible beings his solution was oriental wisdom to learn to act from distance I am not really there and this was the shock of my life based on this do not the book I found a book the guide and wrote many books Bryan Victoria Zen at war it's a shocking book especially horrible for many so called anti Eurocentric who claim our monotheism is guilty of everything we need oriental ever dead book is about the apart from a couple of exceptions the behavior of Zen Buddhist community in Japan in the thirties early forties not only they totally supported Japanese expansion into into China they even provided properly Zen Buddhist justification for it for example the one you know who did this no you are not as old as me I remember him DT Suzuki the great pre yeah but okay he was doing this in the sixties but as a younger guy he was fully supporting Japanese militarism and one of his justifications was this one the advice of Japanese military to them to support Zen Buddhist training because he says it's one of the most horrifying thing that I've ever read he said sorry don't take it personally but let's say an officer orders me if I were to tell this to you it would be too obvious so I pick you I have to kill you stab you with mine and he says if I remain in this illusionary self then I feel responsible I kill you but he says if you are enlightened by Zen Buddhism then you know there is no substantial reality you become a neutral observer of your life just of phenomena and you tell yourself it's not that I am killing you but in the cosmic dance of phenomena my knife is floating and some crowd your knife Falls you know what I'm saying this I'm not disputing some spiritual greatness of Zen Buddhism I'm saying how even the most enlightened this spiritual experience can serve a terrible course now because we're running very quickly out of time and it's clear that this conversation could go for a very long time I'm going to ask one representative question here and give you each one minute each and that is and that is simply this coming from online what is one thing you hope people will leave this debate with and why Jordan I I hope they leave this debate with a belief in the power of communication between people with different views you know that's I mean there there there is this there is a growing idea on college campuses tell me if I go over my minute that there really is no such thing as free speech because people are only the avatars of their group identity and they have nothing unique to say and besides that there's no communication across boundaries of identity or belief and and I think that that's an unbelievably dangerous and and pernicious doctrine and I think that people of goodwill despite their differences can communicate and they can both come out of that communication improved even though there might be some dissent and some some dissent and some dissent on the way and so that's what I would hope people would come out I will be more concrete even politically there is today so it appears this big conflict between all that postmodern stuff that you oppose and this alt right and so on I hope sincerely that we made at least some people to think and to reject this simple opposition there are quite reasonable but the only alternative to all try it is not political correctness and so on and I now I'm speaking not for you but for me please if you are a leftist don't feel obliged to be politically correct think please don't be afraid don't be afraid to think and especially would you agree one great version of not thinking it's cow immediately if they don't agree with you you are labeled a fascist but that's the laziness people find something they don't agree with instead of thinking they think about something we all agree was a bad thing up you're a fascist and so on you know it's not a simple as death even Trump of whom I'm deeply critical no I'm sorry to tell you yes is the catastrophe in the long term and so on but he is not a fascist you make it all too easy to play these games I just want not a positive result but to fetter you a little bit to to make you think I have always felt that the greatest conversations are unfinished ones please join me in thanking Slavoj Zizek and Jordan Peterson for a great unfinished conversation right the to survive because thank you Father and we waved everyone all right good night everyone [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Manufacturing Intellect

Views: 1,054,464

Rating: 4.8668814 out of 5

Keywords: peterson, debate, zizek, marxism, full, HD, audio, sound

Id: qsHJ3LvUWTs

Length: 158min 15sec (9495 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 26 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/CassiopeiaDwarf]

Submission Statement : Slavoj Zizek and Jordan Peterson debate on the concept of Happiness: Capitalism vs Marxism. The event was billed as “the debate of the century” . This debate I think is meant to be about, Happiness, Marxism & ?? . Does someone want to fill in the rest? I forget.

[u/ActualDeest]

I still have no idea what Zizek was even talking about through this entire conversation.

[u/Frostbrine]

I like how Peterson failed when Zizek asked him to name some actual postmodern neomarxists.

[u/incendiaryblizzard]

Peterson demonstrated in this debate exactly how not to debate Marxists. The way to lose a debate to a Marxist is to spend all your time prior to the debate attacking Marxism in your self-contained bubble rather than engaging with them, imagining what it is that they believe, focusing solely on the dumbest advocates of Marxism like college students and twitter morons rather than serious academics, doing no pre-reading other than reading the communist manifesto, etc.

[u/benjamindees]

It was exactly 2 minutes and 26 seconds from your timestamp until Zizek started talking about trash and recycling.