Social Justice: A Religious Movement | Andrew Doyle | EP 373

I mean you mentioned interestingly people like Joe Rogan and Russell Brown have been being considered a gateway to the alt-right they're still traditionally politically uh more more akin to the left but because they've deviated slightly you have this kind of puritanical Sledgehammer coming down and saying no you're you're you're straying from what what our ideology says you should believe and that to me also feels like a fundamentalist religion [Music] thank you hello to everyone watching and listening today I'm speaking once again because we've done it before with playwright journalist and political satirist Andrew Doyle also known as titanium McGrath we discuss the intentional irrationality of the far left doctrines that use religious rhetoric and practices despite the absence of God or perhaps the presence of a different God their Paramount desire to dismantle societal structures regardless of need or Merit the argument for Transcendence inherent in the pursuit of Art and how woke culture stifles genuine expression forcing Dogma to take the place of fundamental truths and say purposefully doing so looking forward to it well Mr darling it's good to see you again I think we're we're damn near friends or at least I like you I don't know what you think about me but feelings very much Mutual Jordan thank you so much well that's good well us reprehensible types you know we need to stick together we do yeah yeah that's for sure so the first I thought I'd hassle you for a bit first um I got two things to hassle you about I think the first is it says on your Wikipedia page for whatever that's worth that you regard yourself as as left wing and so I think you deserve some harassment for that but also I I'd like I don't know what the hell that means anymore and then after I've done bugging you about that I thought I'd bother you about having a PhD in early Renaissance poetry and okay humiliation complete okay let's start with the left wing thing okay yes well firstly I'd say that Wikipedia is full of Errors I wouldn't trust absolutely everything you see on Wikipedia however on that score I think it's broadly accurate um I know that I mean I've I've never voted for a right-wing party uh I did vote for Jeremy corbyn which to be honest I now regret um as you should I think if you put were to I'm with you I don't really know what left wing and right wing means anymore I think the culture War has in fact obliterated those two designations I really do believe that because you know if you were to write down my views on most subjects and sort of give them to an impartial Observer and say is this person on the left or on the right I think broadly speaking most of my values would fall into what traditionally would be considered left-wing uh I think I have some sort of more conservative values when it comes to culture and education and the Arts perhaps but that's the same as someone like George Orwell who was very much a cultural conservative as well as being a socialist um I think economically speaking I do believe in uh Fair dis Fair proportionate taxation of the wealthy I do believe in the welfare state um all of those sort of I believe in redressing economic inequality uh looking out for Working Class People social Mobility so all of these kind of things I think would traditionally be deemed to be left-wing but I think what the culture War has effectively done is uh it's it's it's uh substituted identity group identity for the notion of class and money and what that now means is that people who describe themselves as Levering are nothing of the kind I mean most of the activists that you see the the sort of most vociferous cheerleaders of the critical social justice movement tend to be uh well let's put it nicely quite Posh they tend to have quite plummy voices double barrel names they're called things like Hugo ponsford and Sage Willoughby and and things like this particularly the case with environmental activists you know those people who glue themselves to Van Gogh paintings in them and uh the statue of David or whatever it might be when they talk they are almost like a caricature like the kind of thing that I would have invented um as a joke of a kind of and have invented in fact exactly well titanium McGrath has that name because she's very very well off part of the joke with that and and part of what I find so funny about so many of these activists is that they are bleating about uh oppression and persecution and privilege and they're independently wealthy they've got they've had everything handed to them on a plate they're not in a position Andrew you know you you look I noticed this when I was teaching it and with at Harvard at an Ivy League school obviously and so all of my students were the top one percent obviously and if they weren't at that moment they were going to be by the time they were 40. so at worst they were top one percent in in uh what would you call infancy there we go and so you might think that'd be good enough on the privileged side but it seems to me that there's a small codery of very noisy people for whom being rich and privileged is not enough they also want all the victimization privileges of being oppressed because then you can have Bloody well everything can't you and if you're a narcissistic psychopath then everything is what you want and you want it now and I I want to just follow up on that a bit with regards to this left-wing issue eh so you know there's there's about a dozen studies now I want to write an article about this or maybe even a book there's about a dozen studies now looking at the personality predictors of left-wing authoritarianism and so from 19 from the end of World War II till 2016 social psychologists in particular and that's a rather dismal discipline denied the existence of left-wing authoritarianism outright it was only a right-wing phenomenon apparently you know I mean Stalin and Mao notwithstanding but it started to switch a bit in 2016. we did a study in my lab first of all showing that left-wing authoritarianism was a coherent you could identify a coherent set of beliefs statistically that were associated with so-called Progressive causes allied with the willingness to impose them using Force fear force and compulsion so that's not a bad definition of left-wing authoritarianism but then a number of other Studies have come out and the most interesting ones concentrate on what's known as the dark tetrad and the dark tetrad is a group of personality traits that were too evil to make it into the standard personality models they were excluded by Fiat to begin with manipulativeness that's machiavellianism psychopathy which is predatory parasitism narcissism that was the original dark tet Triad but that wasn't bad enough so the psychologists had to add sadism to it to fill in the last quadrant and the correlation between dark tetrad personality traits and left-wing authoritarianism is so high that it isn't obvious that they're distinguishable go ahead is it not similarly High amongst right-wing authoritarians no it's not so it's a different kind of authoritarianism yes it look I mean this isn't clearly laid out yet you know but the focus at the moment now I think first of all anybody who's willing to use fear and compulsion and force is likely to to also be characterized by those dark tetrad traits but I think the additional pathology that emerges on the left and this is something we can discuss obviously is that you have to be a a particular kind of evil snake to mask your uh Psychopathic power mongering in the guise of compassion and I don't think the right-wing authoritarians do that they more or less come right out and say like [ __ ] you I'm going to take everything you have especially if you're a group I don't like but the left-wing types they say well you know really I'm your best friend historically speaking is that necessarily the case I mean you know if you if you take the example of the Third Reich uh and the and and Nazism that was underpinned by a belief a sincere belief a sort of quasi-religious belief that what they were doing was for the good of society however abhorrent we might find it look fair enough man I know perfectly well that in the 1930s for example as the Nazis marched towards the death camps their primary rationale for the uh original implementation of Youth of euthanasia so to speak of mass killing was compassionate euthanasia but then I would also say and this is something we actually don't know you know that the Nazis were National socialists and their political stance was a weird mixture of what we would think of as left and right wing now right I mean there was the there was the fascist component that that involved the aggregation of power at the Pinnacle corporate and governmental and media all of that right so that seems kind of right-wing in monolithic but it wasn't like they were it wasn't there were socialist elements in the platform as well and so we don't know enough to sort that out I would say maybe on the statistical side but doesn't all of this sort of point to the fact or not even the fact but my contention that actually thinking in terms of left and right when it comes to this is kind of redundant I think in a way you've sort of hit it yeah exactly the the debate has always been the struggle between Liberty and authority and so you know to go back to whether I'm left wing or right wing I think I think I'm probably just liberal I think there are liberal-minded people on the left there are liberal-minded people on the right among Libertarians it's not something that is tied to a left right world view but when I hear people talking about how uh trying to frame the culture war in terms of left and right or to say that the culture War doesn't matter and there are more important things actually this struggle between Liberty and Authority which which John Stuart Mill talks about in his book on Liberty uh George Orwell has written about this that that's the thing that matters and the recognition that that there is an authoritarian input levels in humanity that there is an enduring appeal to authoritarianism whether you come from the left or from the right this is something that George Orwell to go back to he tackled this as well uh it's precisely the reason why when he wrote Animal Farm he couldn't get it published for so long because people were horrified by the possibility that left-wing people could be authoritarian and what he was saying is that this is something that that doesn't it it it's irrespective of of a left-wing view or a right-wing view uh and I think although you might be able to pinpoint psychological differences and tendencies among those on the left who have an authoritarian bent and those on the right who have a similar authoritarian Bend perhaps it's more useful just to think particularly when it comes to the culture war in terms of who believes in traditional liberal values I know that means something very different in America but liberal values in so far as individual autonomy shared Humanity freedom freedom of expression freedom of of the press etc those kind of liberal values you can do whatever you want with your life so long as it does not impinge upon the rights of others that's something that left and right can agree on and the the social justice Warriors whilst they might call themselves left-wing really their movement is characterized by authoritarianism they oppose them and quite well not just what it looks like quite explicitly I mean the early critical race Theory texts explicitly say I mean if you read um Derek Bell or he wrote an essay called who's afraid of critical race theory he talks about how critical race theorists have always mistrusted liberalism they see them the liberal project as having failed because you we still live in a society where where racism exists and they take that as evidence that liberalism doesn't work rather than right because the the previous societies were so non-racist right exactly they don't understand that point the the the the the social liberalism is about an ongoing process it's about recognizing that we live in an imperfectable world and trying to do our best with a bad lot uh and the problem is that that authoritarians tend to be as well kind of utopians even though in the case of the social justice activists I don't think they've got a clear sense of what their final ideal society would look like um at the moment they just seem to me to be on a sort of Rampage of Destruction uh they probably well that is what it would look that is what it would look like just the way I've always thought that Hitler got exactly what he was aiming at he shot himself well Europe was burning and it's like yeah I mean a big [ __ ] you to God fundamentally well that but that was because he was the personality type that would rather everyone was torn down rather than he fails I mean one of the things precisely yeah well that is the dark Tetra type man that's right I mean he's deeply he was deeply narcissistic uh you know he would bore people with those lectures late at night when no one was interested uh it was all he he it was all about him uh one thing that comes out very clearly there's a great biography of Hitler by Ian Kershaw one thing that very much comes out about that is this guy was a narcissist and when he knew that the game was up he wanted everyone to pay yeah that's narcissism right there man right that's absolutely right well and he said that you know I mean we're near the end of the second world war he he when the Russians were advancing on Berlin he continually expressed his dismay at the uselessness of the German people who had failed him yes he could exactly and those who had failed on the on the Eastern front or from his perception had failed even though he put the military in an impossible situation couldn't take any responsibility for for his own mistakes uh but that kind of nasty and I don't like comparing social justice activists to Hitler I think that's that's their trick that's what they do they call everyone Hitler but I think you can definitely see that combination of narcissism uh and also a kind of religiosity uh intolerance and and yes exactly what you say a desire to destroy you know that if we can't get our way we'll just destroy everything okay so let's talk about that I want to use that as a segue and and I haven't tortured you about having a PhD in Renaissance portrait we'll get back to that I want to use that as a segue into the religious issue because you wrote a book here recently um just make sure I get title exactly right the new Puritans how the religion of social justice captured the Western World and so we could talk about religious issues I've been thinking recently along the religious lines let's say that what we're seeing is just the modern manifestation of an eternal battle and that battle is laid out first very early in the biblical Corpus in the story of Cain and Abel because what you have in that story is two modes of adaptation which I think roughly parallel a kind of demented narcissistic authoritarianism and a kind of responsibility Laden individualism we can we can discuss that but what happens is Cain and Abel make sacrifices right and that's what people do when they work because work is the sacrifice of the present to the Future and human beings uniquely work I mean maybe beavers work and bees but look it essentially human beings uniquely work we're willing to sacrifice the present for the future now what happens in the story of Cain and Abel is that Cain appears to make bloodless and relatively low quality sacrifices whereas Abel's All In and the consequence of that is Abel gets rewarded by God and everyone loves them and things go well for him and Cain nothing goes his way and then instead of noticing that maybe he has something to do with that he calls God out for creating an improper Cosmos and really puts them on the stand and God says uh look buddy if you got your act together things would go well for you and the fact that they're not might have more to do with you than me and Cain thinks to hell with you God I think I'll go kill your favorite and so that's the story and that's one hell of a brutal story and then you know Cain's descendants including tubal Kane which is about four generations down the line they're the Builders of the Tower of Babel and also the first people who make Implements of War so there's an idea there that that there's a resentful and bitter revengeful spirit that preoccupies mankind and that it can spread out from the individual and take out the entire polity and I can't help but see a reflection of that on the intellectual landscape now in the political domain I mean I think now I'm curious about what you think about such things because you have described this new movement let's say as religious so you know what do you mean by that what do you think about these more metaphysical speculations I I suppose I should be very clear about that and in the book I do make it clear I've called the book the new Puritans um and I refer to the religion of social justice because one of the things I'm very keen to do and one of the reasons why I feel that the uh the critical social justice activists are winning is because a lot of people do not understand their aims they don't understand what they're about and that they are effectively fall for the linguistic tricks I mean you all know that the the culture war is largely about who gets to define the meaning of words uh activists often use words uh but they mean the Opposites they call themselves Progressive for instance but I believe I believe that they are regressive uh they call themselves liberal but they are deeply illiberal you know they're in favor of censorship and authoritarianism uh they they they scream about fascism while they themselves are using fascistic tactics such as violence to silence political opponents so the the language unless you understand where their coming from and and unless you understand that there their theirs is a belief system uh which is largely tied to unfalsifiable claims uh which depends upon a kind of cotary of high priests uh edicts from above you know telling the masses what they should believe and punishing those who dissent it has all the Hallmarks of fundamentalist religion at least the idea of excommunicating Heretics uh sort of sniffing out Heretics searching for them and and doing the metaphorical equivalent of burning them at the stake which is what we call Council culture destroying their livelihoods destroying their reputations a kind of merciless brutal cruel and vicious quality which nonetheless dons the guise of compassion and righteousness uh you know I'm I'm sure that bullies and and and innately cruel as sociopaths throughout history have probably been attracted to the priesthood because it gives them the opportunity to have a be in a figure of authority to enact cruelty and at the same time to be validated as a a principled an important member of society so I think it doesn't mean like Pharisees and scribes those sorts of people exactly and I'm not I'm not suggesting for a second you know if you take something as brutal as the Inquisition I mean I'm sure a lot of those people involved felt that they were doing God's work and genuinely thought they were on the side of the Angels but you can be damn sure that there were some Psychopaths who who were attracted to those positions of power so when I'm saying that the I talk about the religion of critical social justice I'm doing so to try and make it accessible I found that if you just because it is so baffling to everyone most people are completely baffled because for a start they have their own kind of esoteric language this terminology like heteronormativity and toxic masculinity and uh cisgender Etc words that most people just don't even know what they mean but if you see them as if you see them as kind of a Biblical script or a religious text and they do have their foundational holy texts such as Foucault and Judith Butler and things like that if you make this analogy to religion I think it makes the movement comprehensible and I think in order to defeat it it has to be comprehended and I think most people comprehend it so let's let's let's try to get out something that might approximate a definition of religious so this is how I've been thinking about it technically so imagine that you see the world through a hierarchy of presuppositions which you have to because you're fundamentally ignorant you have to presuppose things in order to move forward because you don't have infinite knowledge so you have to look at the world through a hierarchy of presuppositions then you can imagine that some presuppositions are deeper than others and what that would mean is some presuppositions very little very few other presuppositions depend on and some presuppositions many other presuppositions depend on right sort of like it's like citation depth in the scientific literature and so freedom of speech for example would be a presupposition in a liberal polity upon which almost all other presuppositions rest so if you move it you're moving the depths so a religion specifies the deepest presuppositions and they have to be axiomatic because that's sort of where your ignorance bottoms out you have to say I hold these things to be self-evident before you can proceed and that is something like the existence of a deity as a priest right okay so that's the next issue so Kur I read a lot of Carl Jung years ago and and very deeply and one of the things Jung said about protestantism which I found remarkable he he criticized both Catholicism and protestantism you know as a friendly critic I would say pointing out that the the Temptation that Catholicism might fall prey to is one of centralizing authoritarianism and the the Temptation that protestantism falls prey to is uh fractionating individualism he said The Logical conclusion of the Protestant Revolution is that every single person becomes their own church and so it looks to me like that's happened and what's happened and psychologists have abetted this and even the great clinicians I believe have abetted this just regardless of my admiration for them by substituting the self for God and I think what you have especially on the psychopathic narcissistic fringes of what used to be the left and you see this on the right as well is the the momentary self-elevated to the status of God well you see that an awful lot which I think is why I mean you've identified the narcissism within these kind of movements but also the the rapidity with which they uh resort to religious terminology or religious ideas or religious modes of expression for instance uh you remember when um was it outside of Netflix when were the protests against Dave Chappelle's Show and there was that comedian protesting with a sign that said we like Dave or we like jokes I think they had signs like that and a one woman cornered him and it was all caught on film and she screamed repeatedly in his face repent [ __ ] she said it again and again and again and I I mentioned that in the book because I love that that sort of combined the the that combination of rage and religiosity I think really encapsulates what the movement is is all about I think in terms of the presuppositions of that movement which it takes as axiomatic it's not Supernatural okay it doesn't talk about a deity uh even though it has its profits I think uh from the the French post-structuralists of the 1960s but I think it does have certain axiomatic presuppositions such as there are power structures that dominate society that underpin all human interaction and these are based on the notion of group identity and that that is how uh Society needs to be understood as for Co talked about grids of power through Society power not being a top-down phenomenon something that sort of uh is is latent within all of our interactions and and behavior and they see that they believe that these activists believe that they can pick this apart and understand it and remedy the wrongs in society so long as that they can identify where the power structures lie and who is exercising privilege at the expense of the oppressed that's why um uh critical race theorists I mean it was put like this in James Lindsay and Helen pluck Rose's book that the key question that you ask if you are a critical race theory is not a theorist is not uh did racism take place in this situation but how did racism manifest in this situation yes right right so it's almost like a a ghostly spiritual thing that is always there I think that's one of the that's one of their major presuppositions oh well then well so so here's another way of thinking about that from the religious perspective I mean Milton Satan is a an authoritarian narcissist and he rules over hell and so he's a figure that's very much analogous to Mao or to sell it right to he's someone who climbs the most pathological possible power hierarchy and then regards himself as a Victor even though he's actually the biggest loser and so so Satan is the spirit you might say in the judeo-christian tradition who rules the world by force now the postmodern neomarxas types believe that there's nothing but power so I can't see that that's any different than a certain Christian heresy that rose up in the Middle Ages making the claim that Satan himself was the ruler of the Earth right because the notion there is that power itself is the only or at least the ultimate motivator and well motivator is the right way of thinking about it and so and then it follows a lot of things follow from that right one thing that follows from that is that there's no such thing as free speech because there's just conflicts between different claims to power and that if you promote free speech that's just an indication of how conniving you are to use that entire philosophical language to do nothing but buttress your own colonialist Power claims yes because their theories always put you in that position where you can't win you know it's similar with with critical race Theory they have their notion of Interest convergence you know when people say well there are extremely successful black individuals in them in in our history Barack Obama say someone like that they will say the only reason that those people have succeeded is because it was in the interests of white people uh to for them to succeed in other words yeah if black people don't succeed right so black people don't succeed in society that's evidence of critical race theorists claims but if they do succeed it's also evidence of their claims because that's interest convergence so they keep putting you in this kind of situation that to me has to be religious in without as in religious belief 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also push forward the notion that everything possible is to be permitted every individual at every moment but but you put your finger on it when you said that the the paradoxes don't uh trouble the post-modernists you know it's sort of built into their whole idea when derida was writing he was trying to write incoherently uh you know he did manage it's absolutely unreadable um so let me let me try and understand what you're saying here you were talking about we see this worship of the self when you're talking about so there's contenders for God right we have power and we have the self and then there there's a there's an element of that that spreads out into identity now that the radical types definitely put forward group identity as Paramount and what do you mean by worship the self what do you mean by licentiousness what do you mean by do they believe that absolutely everything is permissible that any kind of individual uh desire is able to be fulfilled because in their world I think they're they're quite prescriptive aren't they about which modes of behavior are acceptable and which aren't well that gets extraordinarily complex because it looks to me one of the things I see on campuses for example is the insistence on the left Progressive front let's say that any form of sexual identity or behavior whatsoever is permissible and not only permissible but to be celebrated but now it's complicated because at the same time right ever every single interaction between a young man and a young woman is so absolutely dangerous that it has to be subjected to contraction contractual validation well yeah well it's it's a weird psychoanalytic truism you know that if you go too far in One Direction You simultaneously go too far in the other and that really muddies up the water right so the really narcissistic types for example have an extremely uncertain core right but that doesn't make them any less what what would you say fourth writing their claims that they should rule but I can't stretch your go ahead but I don't I'm not so sure that it's about uh fulfilling any Indulgence no matter how depraved uh I think it's more about what they call queering Society I think it's more about if it is in the service of uh demolishing uh the CIS white heteropatriarchal structures that are in place then that is seen as a benefit as something positive right so you think you think that licentiousness serves the purposes of demolition what what about the reverse hypothesis is that because I would say this might be more true of Foucault all the demolition was put forward to license the licentiousness yeah I'm not sure about that I mean a lot of people will say that because for Co has as you know a very shady past uh yeah you might say that yeah absolutely and people have pointed out that there seems to be a strong correlation between some of the founding post-modernists and shall we say uh well yeah depraved sexual activity off sometimes pedophilia these kinds of things the question I suppose are you suggesting that they created this kind of theoretical framework in order to justify uh that sort of behavior is that what you mean well I do you see I'm not I I waver and maybe maybe the causality is interactive because you could see I see a lot of stunningly immature behavior on the radical front from a developmental psychological perspective so for example a lot of the behavior I see looks to me like unsocialized two-year-old Behavior because two-year-olds are highly prone to motivational and emotional whims in the short term and they're incapable of developing a shared frame of reference that doesn't happen until kids are three and aggressive two-year-olds who don't develop that by four never develop it in their entire life because they become alienated and they don't make friends and they can't further their development and so you could say if this is sort of a Freudian ID like view that part of what we're seeing is the expression of extremely unsocialized immature motivational and emotional demands fragmented with uh with uh what would you say temper tantrum like insistence constant insistence that those whims be granted immediately and then you could say well the entire power critique has been erected by on the intellectual front just to justify that although you could also reverse it and say no the licentiousness which was the case you were making the licentiousness is promoted because it's revolutionary in a sense and it can be used to demolish these so-called traditional power structures well it has to be because it's just they just have so many impositions on other people's freedoms they have so many ideas of what is acceptable and what is not acceptable particularly in the Arts uh in in film in plays in books that you know they're they're for censorship they believe that things they are the work that horrible word they use problematic and they like to problematize things so it can't be the case that they just believe in a kind of global free-for-all it can't be that because I think they they come across more like Pharisees to me than anything else but maybe what you're describing in terms of the temper tantrums and the things that we see uh from from these people is that that is just simply the natural consequence of when you have Decades of academics and figures of authority saying that we ought to prioritize our emotional responses and our own subjective view of the of the world over objective uh epistemological Frameworks you know or actual practical responsibility I mean I saw it right at the University of Toronto was one of the things that constantly made me morally ill was that my idiot compatriots thought that the best thing to do with young people was to teach them to protest rather than to help them figure out how to make them their way responsibly and productively which is they've created a generation that are infantile I mean it is an infantilized world and we see it in absolutely every strand of our culture and politics as well and it's because as you say academics by and large are activists first and academic second uh you know Helen pluckrose traces out to the what she calls the applied turn of postmodernism late 80s you know post-modernist for many years were were quite enjoyed sort of theorizing and frolicking about coming up with these Airy fairy ideas not applying them to society not seriously saying we should you know reconstruct society and apply these methods and then they applied the applied post model they said oh actually we can we can we can actually change society revolutionize Society through the application of our untested theories and highly contested theories and they did it and and what's so tragic is not I mean is that it eventually works you know we're now in a situation where our government over here the government certainly in Canada and in the US they are implementing these ideas these these highly contested theories in in public policy in edu in the educational yes they're making the mandatory yeah well that was right you know that was what propelled me into the public domain to begin with was the first movie of that sort on the true to Liberal government front but that's amazing speech but that's why surely it does Merit the analogy with religion because you are imposing on society ideas uh that are not that are are based on belief simply based on belief you know there is no evidence uh or that that reorganizing Society in the way that the critical race theories would like to do to so that we have a hyper racialized society that focuses first and foremost on your group of identity and secondarily on who you are as an individual there's no evidence that this is making Society less racist or that so we seem to we seem to have agreed that the desire for demolition and destruction rules Paramount even over the desire for untrammeled personal say self-expression I think it that that is inevitable when you when you come from the supposition that Society is inherently broken that it is undergirded by power structures that only support the the already privileged that's that's okay so let's let's dive into that because this is this is a good place to further interrogate the left issue so you know a lot of the people that I talk with Russell Brand and Joe Rogan Brett Weinstein those are good Eric Weinstein those are good initial um exemplars are more classical leftist types and yet they're identified by the screaming radicals as gateways to the alt-right so which is extraordinarily interesting because it means as soon as you're no longer a useful idiot from the radical perspective you're instantly a Nazi which is very convenient for them but here's the here's the thing the postmodern critique that Society is to be understood is nothing but the manifestation of power is attractive partly because when social arrangements or even psychological Arrangements pathologize they do pathologize in the direction of power right so if you're you can tyrannize yourself like an Overlord you can tyrannize your partner you can tyrannize your family in your community you can act like a tyrant on the on the local political stage and then nationally right you can do that in business as well and so and that happens relatively often so the there's a core of sense in the claim that power is a powerful motivating force now I think the radicals go too far when they say everything is about power because well everything is a lot of things and you don't want to throw the baby out with the bath water but the problem the problem the left therefore has if the left is willing to be reasonable and say well some social structures are corrupted by power then the left has to figure out and can't because I've asked like 50 senators and Republican and and uh congressmen on the Democrat side to do this if you're left a stance is that power corrupts Society then how in the world can you tell when those who make that claim take that claim too far and I've asked like the reason I brought up the Democrat the Senators and the congressmen is because I asked every Lefty I could get my hands on and that's been quite a few over the last five years when the left goes too far and I even asked Robert Kennedy that recently and he said well I'm trying to run a campaign based on unity and so I don't want to go down that rabbit hole it's like well the barbarian's at you are at your gate buddy they've been canceling you for 18 years so so how do we separate out this well there are so many things that you've raised there I mean firstly you're right to identify that there is a kernel in truth of Truth in the postmodernist claims the power is important it is significant in human behavior and society and history all of that that is absolutely accurate and you're also right that where they go wrong is to assume that everything is about power like you say power is really important but it's not everything uh and I wonder whether reducing reducing everything to just power structures uh make things uh understandable easier in a way yeah because well we found the best predictor in our first study the best predictor of left-wing authoritarianism yeah it was low verbal intelligence right because people wondering absolutely you and power power is a good easy answer right to territory any ideology is because it means that you you you're Outsourcing your thinking to a set of rules and I and that is what is happening but that's why no all those people that you you've tried to ask this question what happens when the left goes too far in terms of their own uh megalomania they won't answer the question because to do so would be to acknowledge that there is a flaw in their ideology there's a potential flaw in their system that they're dealing ultimately with human beings that's you know it's a thing to go back to all well it's the same reason why the stalinists have never forgiven Orwell all these people on the left have always hated him for pointing out that the left is just as susceptible to corruption as the writers and they've never forgiven him for that and it comes down to that idea of moral Purity I mean one of the reasons I call them the new Puritans again it's an analogy it's trying to make them accessible it's because in their world to deviate even slightly from this very simplistic formula that they've applied to society to make to give them power ironically enough to get to put them to put them in a position where they can control other people but also can control their own understandings and comprehensions of the world because they've got this framework through which they can look at it and to to say well actually your framework is flawed in all sorts of ways that's harder because then you have to start thinking and they don't want they don't want to start thinking thinking is the death of ideology uh I I I think that's why you're getting that moral Purity but it's also why I mean you mentioned interestingly people like Joe Rogan and Russell Brown been being considered a gateway to the alt-right they're still traditionally politically uh more more akin to the left I would say than the right but because they've deviated slightly you have this kind of puritanical Sledgehammer coming down and saying no you're you're straying from what what our ideology says you should believe and that to me also feels like a fundamentalist religion it feels like uh you know within a and I'm making the distinction clearly between a religion and a fundamentalist religion because I think even within Catholicism the Vatican has always encouraged debate theological debate and discussion it's not as though they just give you the catechism and say that's it um there's there's all these kinds of discussions and debates and nuances being teased out in theological thoughts theologians for centuries have have done that but with fundamentalist religion that doesn't happen does it happen with Isis for instance you don't get the sort of the leaders of Isis sitting around cross-legged in their caves saying uh you know let's let's decide whether we're right about this fine theological point that doesn't happen so what scares me I think about the critical social justice movement is that they are like a fundamentalist religion for some reason I mean this is why and you know this whenever you meet one of these people whenever you encounter them online get into some kind of discussion you know what their opinions are and absolutely everything yes yes and and like turning in a crank on someone's head I've never been surprised by them I'd like to be surprised once in a while I've had a few occasions recently where I've gotten to conversation you know I fall for it you should just block them really because they're not people who can be reasoned with but every now and then I Take debate and I say okay what is it you think I've said what has upset you what is the perspective that I have that you disagree with and why and they can't do it they just come back screaming Nazi or whatever and then you think okay well I shouldn't have bothered trying but they but they they never surprised me I just wish they would because if you're not if you're not thinking for yourself and challenging your own ideas if you're not coming from the basis from from humility if you're not coming to the World on the understanding that you're probably wrong about an awful lot of things I don't think you're fully human in a way I think you're you're like an automaton you know you're just you're just you're just following a code possessed by a principality right I I find that myself I find that Disturbed okay so so let me let me hassle you about something else I I tweeted out at uh about um about Richard Dawkins here recently and I talked to Richard Dawkins and I actually I actually admire Rich Dawkins I liked his book uh his books they taught me a lot in some of his essays too and I think Dawkins is a real scientist in in that he believes there is truth and that the pursuit of the truth will set you free which by the way is a religious claim but he still believes that in any case I also think that darkens and Harris and the rest of the new atheists help pave the land Escape for this new woke catastrophe because it's a humanistic movement fundamentally and it's radically anti-science and I think that Dawkins well I know Dawkins sees that because I've been watching his tweets and I did talk to him and it's certainly the case that the woke mob I think can take out science even more easily than they can take out the vestiges of judeo-christian thought and they're definitely going to do that so now now Dawkins Dawkins and his codery looked at the history of the West and they said well we should dispense with that medieval Superstition and we should progress down the enlightenment Trail and I've talked to Douglas Murray about this now the problem with that it seems to me so Jung said something very interesting as well that I'll bring up he implied that Catholicism with all its strange mysticism and dreamlike propositional structure was as sane as people got like that that in order for people to function psychologically and to exist together socially the belief system that United them had to have a dreamlike quality okay so and that now the the new atheist types would say well no no we can replace all that mumbo jumbo and and darkness and occult mysticism with a clear-headed rationality but what I see happening instead and this is on the religious front is that in the aftermath of the death of God what we've seen re-emerge is either a form of worship of power or degeneration into a kind of polytheistic paganism not a move forward to Enlightenment type Dawkins rationality quite the contrary and so one of the things I I'm curious I know Murray is is uncomfortable about this Douglas Murray is uncomfortable about this if the woke movement is a religion and if it's a dangerous religion is the alternative to that no religion or is the alternative to that whatever might constitute genuine religion what and what do you think about that well I think there is clearly something within Humanity that we require a certain satisfaction from some kind of belief system uh which is out outside of ourselves or a sense that there is something Beyond ourselves I suppose you might call it Transcendence I think there is a need for that uh I think that I get that through the Arts I think that's why we create things that's why we are creative beings uh which is also why I think the woke movement is threatened by the Arts and seeks to curtail it and actually to transform it into just another propagandizing tool um because it fundamentally doesn't understand what what art is so it is interesting to me though to have noted that the new atheist movement the one that you describe they seem now to have evolved into the most woke of all that the the human rights right yeah there's there's something about them uh that they bought into gender identity ideology very quickly probably before other bodies did and the humanist Society in the UK now is fully paid up uh in that really quasi-religious belief system the idea of a A sexed or gendered soul that doesn't match your biological form how is that anything other than than religious then actually how is it anything other than Supernatural really you know so I think of course so but it has been interesting to me that those were the very people the people who were talking about rationality and to to sort of claw back the the the Primacy of Enlightenment values that they are the ones who have been most susceptible of all of course this is what has got Dawkins in trouble right that's well that's a that's a stunningly devastating observation right because if it turns out that those who wanted to walk down the mass Enlightenment pathway yes produce children who were most susceptible to woke ideology that's a pretty damning bit of evidence for the validity of that approach as far as I mean yeah I'm trying to look at it well well because it's also it's always it's always concerned me that some of my most intelligent friends and acquaintances have fallen for the woke movement in in other words you talk about the fact that they have a lot of the activists are very infantile in their behavior and yet some of the smartest people in society seem to buy into it it has the capacity to infect everyone it it it perhaps because it isn't responsive to intellectual rigor it it exists regardless of of that um and right and that begs the question of why it attracts the intelligent types that you're describing I mean look it originated in the bloody Academy it didn't originate I hypothetically it originated not only in the academy but in the core of the academy that was occupied with the humanities right so it obviously appeals to the intellect let's say or is it just that we're all we all have the capacity uh to become uh to to fall for hysteria is it possible that we're just all I mean look look my book opens with a discussion of Salem the witch hunts in Salem and one of the key things about that the more I read about it um and the more I was fascinated by the fact that it was these figures in Authority it was the ministers the judges it was the highly intelligent in the community who were the ones who were pushing this I mean the girls were screaming and crying witch and pointing and saying that the devil was everywhere and they'd seen people sign the devil's book and all of that kind of thing I see those girls as analogous with the screaming anime activists online who just shout Nazi everywhere they see Nazis everywhere the girl saw witches everywhere uh I see that as very very similar but it would have gone away if the ministers and the judges said no this isn't rational you're wrong you know there's no evidence for your claims we have to move on but they didn't they went along with it that's why people ended up being executed it's when figures in Authority capitulate to the screaming of the children you've described the children the activist has children the activists themselves I I would posit are not the problem if they were all out there with their buildings it's the enablers it's the politicians okay all right people in charge so one of the things you see as the biblical Corpus unfolds itself symbolically is an emerging relationship between the figure of Cain and so that's that bitter figure who's who's out for revenge and the figure of the what would you call it untrammeled intellect so for example very rapidly after the Cain and Abel story you have the story of the Tower of Babel and what you see there are Emperors who are competing to replace God right they're building Towers that are ever and ever higher predicated on the proposition that they could build the Tower all the way to heaven so that's like Jacob's Ladder and thereby replace God then you have you know the mil Milton's meditations on Lucifer Lucifer is the what the highest angel of God's Heavenly Kingdom who's gone most wrong and he's a stellar example of the of the untrammeled intellect you know and I kind of see this in the new atheist movement too it's like we're so smart that our theories can replace the Transcendent now your way out of that I think you just told me your way out of that is your involvement on the aesthetic front with the Arts right well it's I I think so well there were two there were two ways yeah there's also humility I think I'll come back to that point you what you're describing is hubris and and then yeah that's something which is which is common particularly common among intelligent people I think right right absolutely it's this yes cardinal sin of the intellect is humorous exactly uh but yes the Arts I think are uh uh I suppose our way out if they are sustained because they they satisfy uh that human need to to understand ourselves and to explore ourselves and to interrogate our existence uh it's it's so important therefore that the Arts aren't curtailed in the way that they currently are being okay so let me ask you a question about that I agree with that I mean I see that the signal power of beauty especially manifested in music for me speaks of something that's truly Transcendent so here's a question for you so is there a superordinate Unity at which the Arts aim and is that Unity not equivalent to the monotheistic spirit I know this is a major question right I'm not I'm thrown out of major questions something makes the Arts the Arts right it's their movement towards Beauty what beauty and unity Transcendence but are the Arts unified are they you are they the manifestation of a unitary spirit and now you see that unitary spirit is what I think is the antithesis of power I couldn't profess to know and I think a lot of people have attempted to Define even what art is and I think yeah right failed I've always liked Zola's definition of artists life seen through a temperament the idea that what the artist does is attempts to uh present to you uh his view of the way that he sees the world on the understanding that that we all see the world differently and there is something quite beautiful about that about expressions but it's not just variety you know you know it's not just variety because there are qualitative distinctions between presentations of world view so I mean Dostoevsky trumps 50 Shades of Gray right because yeah so there's a hierarchy of grank right and the greatest artists occupy the highest rank and that is what tilts the more towards that Transcendent Unity I think it's something like that well well yeah that's absolutely right it's genius isn't it genius that's right that's how the Canon is formed I mean the cannon is you know I think academics like to think that they're the ones who select what is in the Canon the Canon is formed through influence through to what extent other great artists uh borrow and imitate right and Innovation that's the same depth of presupposition that I was describing earlier right yes the more the fundamental the text is the more other texts depend on it but the reason they do the reason that artists do that is because obviously people like Michelangelo Brahms Dickens Shakespeare Dostoyevsky all of these are clearly The Pinnacles of human achievement they're achieving something that that most of us simply cannot do all we can do is look in awe at what they have achieved and other artists looking all at that and try to come close to it or at least or in some cases of extreme genius build upon it um and that is right so maybe so this is buying something fundamental well there's a cardinal well there's a cardinal observation because the hypothesis that you just put forward is something like the purpose of art is to what would you say to provoke the emulation of greatness and that that's based on the hypothesis that there is something Transcendent that's great you know and that's that Unity that I think that the Arts are striving toward and yeah well I don't know I don't think it's conscious like that I don't think that we I don't I don't think so either and I I all I can say is that artists I think great art provokes something of the numinous uh in US right and whether that's religious or spiritual or Godly or whatever I don't know but it's something I think it is sort of by definition right I mean you know what I mean it's like yeah well if that's not religious then what is Dogma it's certainly sure they're just on the experiential front yes I suppose what I mean is it doesn't it doesn't point to the existence of God necessarily it just it just points to the existence of something Beyond ourselves that we require uh in order to have a satisfactory life I I it sounds a lot like God okay well that would be well I'm not trying to pick you you know well that's the thing man because it is a matter of definition you know like I I don't think God this Transcendent Unity that I've been tapping towards here is something like the central animating Spirit of mankind at its best it's something like that now you might say well is that real and that's not a good question because you have you can't ask that question without bringing an a priority set of presuppositions about what constitutes real to bear on the question like is it the same reality as the materialist atheists claim most real probably not no but that doesn't mean it's not real it just means we can't agree on what constitutes real well we can't agree on what constitutes a woman so that's not surprising well then let's suggest then that oh let's agree that the the the the critical social justice movement is essentially Godless I think it is it is Godless it doesn't have it has no yearning after that sense of the numinous and it has no capacity to produce it that's why no great art has ever been produced from can you can you name a single woke activist who has produced a great work of art in any medium or any genre because I can't I don't think okay so that's that's an interesting that's a very interesting observation you know what is it the gospel statement by the fruits you will know them so if they bear nothing but bitter fruit then you might think they're worshiping the wrong God or in in your in your case they're no God but right that was your criticism of the world types I think they worship power as a God but whatever we're close enough on that so we don't have to discuss it so let's talk about the artistic front here because like I see the scientists being mowed down like grass under a lawnmower by the woke activists and that's going to continue because the real scientists don't have a political bone in their body and they have no idea what's coming for them but I'm particularly sickened by the bloody artists because the only thing they have to offer is this connection to the truly numinous that's true across art forms right they point to the numinous and they're willing increasingly to subordinate that ideology or to remain silent in the face of this Onslaught to to bolster their moral self-righteousness yeah cutting their own throats uh it's horrible to watch it's horrible to witness because genius autistic genius can only come about by those who can think outside the box who can uh who are not conformists ultimately this is a movement that demands Conformity and artists of all people are the ones who are going along with it now to an extent I suppose that's always happened though I mean it must have always happened because people artists have to get on with the business of living back in my ear and the Renaissance period the area that I studied for my doctorate you had patrons you had patrons of the Arts in society you would effectively say to William Shakespeare for instance when when when King James patronized William Shakespeare's company the king's man it went from being the Lord Chamberlain's been to the King's Men And he said yeah they they were patronized but they could write Shakespeare could write whatever he wanted right the the great patrons are the ones who don't try to steer the artist in a certain way I mean sure you would get for instance at the start of uh Shakespeare's narrative poem Venus and Adonis you have this uh you know this this sort of a sycophantic passage about the about the person to whom it is dedicated Henry rudely the uh the Earl and and that's because Shakespeare also needed to live at that point he wasn't yet a rich man at that point he became very very rich ultimately but at that point he wasn't so artists do require uh an income and in order in our day and age in order to for an artist to be employed they have to satisfy a set of demands by The Gatekeepers of various Industries that's theater uh the publishing industry uh comedy industry television Executives Commissioners all of those kind of things the problem is that at the moment all of those people are entirely captured by the woke ideology they are all it's foot soldiers or at least even in some cases I suppose you could call them it's clergy and so they make these demands to artists and I suppose unless you are independently wealthy what choice have you in other words what this thing does is it's you know we can't all be a van Gogh living in complete poverty doing whatever the hell he wanted well that's a very that's a very uh sympathetic account and I have some sympathy for that account because I've I've seen people many many people who've been who faced the threat of cancellation yes and are terrified by it not least often because they have a family to support let's say but yes but so let but let me push back on that a little bit and you tell me if you think there's any flaws in this okay so look as far as I can tell your best bet in life is to play the most Transcendent iterable strategy and because you're going to pay a price for what you do no matter what you do you're going to pay in fact you're going to pay the ultimate price no matter what you do so you're already screwed in the fundamental analysis now and that means that you're the fact that you're going to pay means that you're always confronted with a choice and the choice is to say what you believe to be true and take the consequences or to fail to say what you believe to be true and take the consequences now people will say well I don't want to speak right now because look at the consequences and I would say well that's always why people have lied throughout history is to avoid the consequences or to get something they don't deserve and so I could say from the Judgment perspective rather than the mercy perspective especially to artists it's like I don't give a damn about your financial need the only thing you have to offer the world is the purity of your vision and if you sacrifice that while you're killing the goose that lays the golden eggs and you might be protected in the short term but they're going to come for you in the future there may be a lot of these creative people are thinking to themselves I will play the game as far as I need to so that I can establish myself and then I can make my own artistic choices that's yeah right it doesn't work that's what the faculty did they said over and over as they rose up the ladder from graduate student to Professor well once I have tenure I'll be brave it's like that isn't how it works you don't get a favor because you're more pretty yeah okay so you didn't do that so so why didn't you do it so look I I completely share your sense of dismay and particularly from artists you know I think yes the world the world of Academia is rather more careerist I think and so although I I think it's just as unforgivable it's more understandable I think to be an artist you have to be the kind of person whose soul fealty is to your Muse it has to be that otherwise you're not really an artist in any serious sense at all you have to be creating what it what it is you are personally impelled to create whatever drives you uh and and you know there are some people who have done that in history William Blake is because William Blake was poor throughout his life died in poverty and he could see all these mediocre people playing the game and becoming rich but he couldn't do it he was too much of an authentic artist he he wasn't he wasn't able to do that um and I wish all artists could have that but the other thing about that is actually very few people are great artists most people are sort of Peddlers of popular culture or you know kind of functional hacks that people who can produce the entertainment that actually we do really need and require that like I'm not trying to denigrate popular culture I think it's really really important but it's not the same as great art right so that it the pop music I I really enjoy pop music but I don't pretend to myself that it's Brahms you know that we have those hierarchies hierarchies by the way which the work would like to tear down and say that's all about the implementation of power again and the Implement implementation of privilege they will say there's no difference between a there's no such thing as quality no no no exactly exactly because it's all about subjective feeling and they would say that there's no difference between an Elton John song and a Beethoven symphony they'll say there's no difference there it's just about you know and to pretend that there is is a problem in and of itself and that's why I think there are two things the way the artists could really be supported in this partly comes from academic to Academia partly comes from literary theorists and people who by the way I think have completely lost the plot but they need to retain the Primacy of the Canon of the western Canon they need to say actually there are certain works of art that are greater than others they need to be able to be bold enough to say that rather than uh stripping away Chaucer or Shakespeare or Marlow or whatever from the Canon to make way for mediocre writers who happen to represent a a marginalized group identity well I I see in that again this re-emergence of the spirit of Cain because Cain imagine you're a mediocre artist wannabe and part of the reason for that maybe isn't so much that you're talentless although that might have something to do with it but that you're unwilling to say a true word or to paint a true brush stroke you're too cowardly so you're not going anywhere okay so you're getting irritated and resentful because your sacrifices aren't being appreciated by God and so what do you do well if you're Cain you destroy your own ideal right because that's what Casey gain says to God my punishment is more than I can bear now that's a very ambiguous phrase because you can't tell exactly what it refers to but as far as I can tell what he means is well I've really spent my whole life miserable and jealous because I'm not able and I want to be more than anything else and now I've gone and killed my own ideal and so how can I live I've I've killed my own ideal well that's what these bloody woke woke artists wannabe types are doing it's not just even the woke this predates the woke uh Harold Bloom used to hit the great literary theorist used to write about the critical theorists the identitarian theorists of the 90s as being the theorist of resentment that's what he he called them I I think that's exactly right it started way back in the 60s with feminist writers trying to problematize writers such as D.H Lawrence or Norman mail or whoever it might be Ernest Hemingway whatever uh saying that these writers are sexist I mean when I was studying as an undergraduate for English literature you basically got the highest marks if you problematize texts if you went through a play and teased out the homophobic elements or the racist elements you'd get rewarded almost like you were kind of a kind of moral detective and I think it all started there it goes way back so then I would I would say that's part of the prideful hubris of the intellect so you have these second-rate creative wannabes in English departments let's say and instead of worshiping the spirit of Shakespeare which is what they should properly be doing and transmitting that to students they elevate their critical capacity over and above the creative capacity of the artist lay moral claim to the Integrity of their arguments and then propagandize to the students and who pay fifty thousand dollars a year for the privilege which is why I go back to humility because I think the only the only sensible or intelligent approach to Shakespeare is humility similarly you know when we saw recently the publishing hat which publishing house was it that decided to rewrite PG woodhouse's novels PG Woodhouse is the greatest comic Pro stylist in the English language the idea that a a group of 20-something uh activists in a Publishing House think that they can write better than Woodhouse think that they can improve his work by this sort of horrendous boulderized version especially morally more of course morally it's all based on morals so it's so infuriating I mean it makes me very very angry because it's the arrogance of that uh that I I find I find absolutely stunning but similarly with Productions of Shakespeare so there's um uh that I just saw a review the other day for a production of Julius Caesar by the Royal Shakespeare Company by all accounts it's just an identitarian mess it's just it's taking the play and just reshaping it to promote voguish ideas uh that are in fashion at the moment about group identity and the Primacy of group identity and power structures Etc and therefore they're missing the entire play and as an audience member this is why I think it's better to read Shakespeare at this point because as an audience member you you you are subject to whatever interpretation the director wants to impose on it and if that director is really a preacher in Disguise then you're just going to get a sermon not a play that that seems to me what's happening over and over again I saw today actually um there was an article about MacBeth um yeah which university trigger warning it's a trigger warning on Macbeth at the University in Belfort Queens University in Belfast right now those people are studying a module on Shakespeare and it's actually even a secondary module they already have a a decent knowledge of the subject this is like an advanced module where they are to really get it get into the the weeds with this this great writer and to put a trigger warning in that is to say uh that the way that we need to perceive these great texts is through our particularly uh obsessive moralistic identitarian lens and that we have to see them as morally dangerous texts potentially maybe maybe they're exactly right on that front because if you are a walk propagandist there is nothing more dangerous to you than the spirit of Shakespeare sure and there is something dangerous actually particularly about MacBeth I think because I mean I think Macbeth is one of Shakespeare's greatest plays and I think one of the reasons why I always found it disturbing even as a child even though I didn't really know why I found it disturbing as a child because it's one of those that gets on school text because it's such a short one but actually when you watch it it isn't like your you know Shakespeare created so many sort of great uh embodiments of evil people like Iago in Othello or Edmund and King Lear or Aaron in Titus andronicus these figures but but Beth is different because with Macbeth you go along you you go along with Macbeth knowing that it could be you I think it's the closest to what when you when you write about Soldier knits and talking about the line of Good and Evil cutting through the heart of every man that to me is Macbeth because Macbeth is like this this incredible study into a representation of what if we lived in a world where we didn't have free will Macbeth knows everything he is doing is wrong and cannot stop it from happening and and that's a it's like you're when you're watching it if you're watching a good production of Macbeth you are Macbeth right and you're falling into this Vortex your your that's why I think well that's actually that's actually like a definition of great literature you know I think yeah literature almost always portrays well something like a romantic adventure and then something like the Battle of good against evil depending on how that's laid out right it's a romantic Battle of good against evil okay but the great literary authors placed that battle in the soul of a single individual right so that the each character contains the entire landscape of the cosmic battle instead of there being some characters parsed out as good and other characters parsed out as villainous and so then when you sit in the audience and you experience that you're experiencing the Divine drama in your own soul yeah and that is that means let me throw you some something at you so I went to uh Jerusalem with Jonathan pajo and pajo is about the deepest religious thinker I ever encountered and he was a post-modernist for a good while and so is expert in that domain as well which makes him a particularly vicious critic now of the postmodernist uh types anyways we walked the Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem and what that is as far so if if you you imagine a tragic story then you embody that and the ultimate tragic story is the worst possible thing happening to the best possible person right that's like that's the Pinnacle towards which all tragedy strives you might say and walking the Via Dolorosa is a exercise in literary experience because the point of that pilgrimage so to speak is to place yourself not only in the role of the of the recipient of all that brutality but also in the role of the deliverer of the brutality right to imagine yourself as the mob as yourself as the best friend who betrays as the like intellectually hubristic Pharisee and Scribe as the hapless ruler of Rome that's all you and that's what literature does like it walks you through that and I think Macbeth and Macbeth and and plays of that magnitude are threatening to the to the woke types most particularly because they do re require that pilgrimage of moral inquiry and that does upset the ideological apple cart so they hate art they hate art because it pushes past propaganda always exactly and that's why The Passion of the Christ is the most powerful story and the most enduring story not story but account of the brutality that that we I mean when you read about the experience of Jesus on the way to Calvary could can any of us be sure that we wouldn't be among the jeering mobs throwing the stone no we can be sure we would be we can be certain we would be yeah the woke don't agree with that do they because the woke like to judge the past and they will say that if I had lived in the Antebellum South if I'd have lived in the Civil War I would have been the ones trying to free the slaves I wouldn't have been a slave owner I wouldn't have been one of those people who supported uh racial segregation but of course they would and in fact they would have been the first ones sure because they can't all right so so I've been thinking about this mythological motif of the harrowing of hell so what happens in this ultimate tragedy is that well first of all the best possible person is put to death by the worst possible people in the worst possible way and you might think well that's as bad as it gets right because of course sort of by definition that's as bad as it gets but you know that isn't as bad as it gets and that's pretty awful because you know you just pointed to something is that if you're looking at history and you have any bloody sense you think I wouldn't have been a victim or a hero I would have been a perpetrator because most people were perpetrators although you know there were plenty of victims I would have been a perpetrator and so then when you realize that you likely would have been a perpetrator and that you probably are at the moment unbeknownst to yourself well then you're facing something I think that is in some ways worse than death I think it's hell I actually think that is that you have to understand that there is a part of you that would willingly dwell in Hell before you can rescue yourself from it at all you know and I think that's what we're called to do in the aftermath of the 20th century and the horrors of Auschwitz to to wake up and think oh my God there's something inside us that's so malevolent that to gaze upon it for a second is to suffer for Nightmares From nightmares for the rest of your life but that that's also your moral obligation and that seems to me what the harrowing of hell is right it's The Descent through death into the realm of malevolence itself and to and to take that onto yourself so so when the woke tried to police art apply trigger warnings to Art uh censor it remove scenes Etc are they in your view attempting to prevent that experience that that necessary Human Experience of confronting the worst possible version of yourself is that what they're doing that's what that's what it looks like to me I mean I think they're protecting themselves from chaotic complexity but that also denies them possibility so that's terrible and hope but more importantly they're trying to shuffle off the responsibility of confronting Satan in the desert so that there's something well I mean there's something quite understandable about all of that isn't it because yeah it is uncomfortable I mean people have done this with the Arts forever when when I mean one of the most interesting things I think about King Lear for instance the Shakespeare's King Lear is that that was not the after 1680 roughly 1680 his version wasn't on the stage anymore it was it was Rewritten by a guy called name Tate and that was the version of King Lear that was on the stage for 150 years and in that version you have a happy ending you don't have Leah come in cradling his daughter who's been hanged because they couldn't cope with that they couldn't Co it and it's not just it's not just because I think King Lear of all his plays really represents his complete Baron I mean it is Baron it's it's pre-christian it is Godless it's it's this Society where exactly what you describe the best type of person has the worst possible experience in spite of what critics have said Leah is meant to to be much loved a great ruler who is subjected to this endless cruelty that ultimately ends in an unbearable moment the um the unbearable moment is Cordelia coming in dead his fall has been hanged it is completely nihilism this is a this is this is a play that that that makes you think what if there was nothing else what if there was no God what if being good didn't matter what what if what if the very worst things happen to the best and they couldn't handle it so the name tape version was what people went to see and in the end Cordelia gets married to Edgar and it's a happy ending and and although that seems like a travesty to us it actually makes sense to me as well it makes sense why audience goers didn't want to confront that why would they well so so but well because I think I don't think they would but I think the horrible truth might be that the only way to Paradise is through death and hell right and that's like I'm not saying that with with any degree of satisfaction but I don't see you know like because look one of the things I tried to do I took my studies of Auschwitz in particular but also the gulag really seriously you know I was trying to figure out well I tried to put myself in the position of an Auschwitz Camp guard who kind of enjoyed his job right and the horrible thing is you can put yourself in that position and the horrible thing about that is you discover all sorts of things about yourself by thereby doing so that you pretty much wish you never discovered but the upside and I suppose this is the Redemptive upside is that if you recognize within yourself the source of all malevolence and evil if you can actually do that if you'll look at that then you can transcend it but there's no other way there's no pretense and so and I've I've been terrified of this for decades is what I taught my students at Harvard and at the University of Toronto I said you you have to take upon yourself the sins of the perpetrator in order to rectify the catastrophe of the Holocaust you know and weirdly and perversely you know the leftist radicals in some demented way are insisting upon that right they say well the problem is is they they put the onus on The Souls of other people they say well look you powerful people you white people you you privileged group people you're the purple perpetrators it's like no God damn it you're the perpetrator but it's really hard though for them to put themselves in that position and for them to confront uh that aspect of their own soul if we want to call it that because yeah it's the hardest thing it's the hardest thing but also they can't do it because they don't recognize their own behavior for what it is they don't see that they are the cruelest of the cruel they don't see that they are themselves capable of all sorts of monstrosities because I've seen the way they behave it also made I think Andrew that they don't see anything like something has to okay I always believe that if you understood something you could find your way forward like I would say that's and I think my father helped me with that in some deep way right he he instilled that in me in some way I don't really understand and I I was I've always been convinced of that and so so one of the consequences of that is the idea that well if you can if you can take it upon yourself to gaze into the abyss let's say as deep as you possibly can that what you will see eventually if you look hard enough is the light but you know you have to believe that the light is a possibility right and maybe that's that maybe that's the fundamental Axiom of an appropriate faith is the light is a possibility and if all you believe is that power rules well how can you look upon evil without Despair and what are the consequences for Humanity if you have a ruling ideology that doesn't enable any of us to have that experience anymore because that seems well we know what the consequences we saw in the 20th century right right well many many times well I suppose then it's not too alarmist to say that that's where the woke are leading us what it looks like to me well no no comedy no art no literature right no science no free speech No Redemption from guilt yes no genuine individual identity no up no down right just just a desert of of barren Endeavor right yes with maybe some impulsive Hedonism thrown in now and then and yet they would like they would deny they would deny everything you've just said they would deny every claim that you're making there they would say they're not trying to do any of that at all that they want to preserve art they want free speech to flourish they just want to protect marginalized communities within that that's that would be their argument the marginalized Community argument is a very interesting one too I've been trying to work that through especially with pajo you know and and he helped me walk through the idea of the center and The Fringe in the biblical Corpus and so there's an idea there's an idea for example in the ancient geography of the of the of the ancient Israelite times the poor were allowed to glean on the edges of the fields right so there was a a border of uncertainty around what would you say around a demarcated territory and that border of uncertainty was where the marginalized were allowed to thrive and so there does have to be a center and there has to be a margin but if you bring the margin to the center you destroy the center and you destroy the margin and that's partly why I don't buy the post-modern claim that it's compassion that's driving the centering of the marginalized because the that's a serpent that eats its own tail and I think what we're seeing happen right now on the LGBT front is that The Fringe Of The Fringe is devouring The Fringe faster than the center even right because you know that most of the kids who are surgically transitioned are would would have been gay it's eighty percent yeah right so that's pretty damn interesting and so well that might be the thing that breaks it apart I wonder if that's the thing that breaks it apart because there is now a Schism within this lgbtqia to S plus whatever you want to call it Community which doesn't exist anyway and the Schism is precisely what you described which is that gender identity ideology is not just uh a an a a a fanciful Theory uh a a quasi-religious way of viewing the world it's also actively anti-gay insofar as it does suggest well firstly it denies homosexuality because homosexuality and gay rights have always been predicated on the recognition that a minority of people are attracted to members of their own sex it eliminates that by saying there's no such thing as same-sex attraction and that actually you should be attracted to gender or gender identity this is why Stonewall which is the UK's foremost LGBT charity redefined the word homosexual on their website to say it's same gender attracted I wrote an article recently about this yeah yeah and I mentioned Nancy Kelly non-women being attracted to other non-women right no not men non-man being attracted to other non-men exactly definition of lesbian now is unbelievable and Nancy Kelly who who the CEO of Stonewall has said that women who don't who want to exclude biological men from their dating pool are sexual racists or akin to secretaries well that's the logical that's the logic right I I sped this five years ago in a discussion I had at Queen's University it's like right well you don't think discrimination is right no we don't well how about sexual discrimination should you just lay down on the ground and spread your legs for every Comer so to speak because you're certainly being discriminatory if you don't like really like fundamentally that is the most egregious form of discrimination they're right about that absolute a sexual orientation is a form of discrimination like she she says you're you're like a sexual racist if you don't want to sleep with someone with a penis and you're a woman no you're just homosexual right she's describing homosexuality there but she's saying that homosexuality is itself bigoted that that and that's coming from the head of the gay rights the foremost gay rights charity in this country that's insane the inversions are incredible you know when I was at school the kids the kids who were effeminate the boys who were effeminate that who didn't want to play football and all the rest of it the bullies called them girls they said you're just girls you're not even a proper boy you're not a real boy that's what mermaids and Stonewall says now they say that's what the Tavistock was doing they're saying you're basically probably trapped in the wrong body let's fix you like you say between 80 and 90 of adolescents referred to the Tavistock Clinic our same-sex attractive that's what they do in Iran that's the hand of gender transformation sex transformation surgery in the world the mother which is really doing something the mother's in Tehran and the heads of Stonewall are are peas in a pod they're totally they're they they feel the same way about homosexuality Iran and Pakistan for a while although not anymore were funding saying sex change operations because they hang gay people from cranes that's why if they they get that you get the death penalty for being gay so of course they want to heterosexualize and fix gay people but I would never have seen this coming none of us did you know I've spoken to all these gay activists Who come out of retirement basically and they're like we never saw it coming where you know it's more dangerous now to be a gay kid than it was when I was growing up far more dangerous when I was growing up oh yes yeah so you guys were actually doing pretty good under the uh what would you say some of the judeo-christian fascists I mean we had The Tender Mercies of the tea activist types you know we had the government putting implementing a thing called section 28 where they they said that teachers couldn't mention homosexuality in schools unless they linked it to AIDS that's not great that's a terrible situation to be in um so there was that so we had we had anti-gay ideas from from members of Staff fine uh if you were out as a gay kid which no one was by the way you would be beaten up you would be bullied yeah you would be abused right but what you wouldn't have is that figures in Authority wanting to chop your dick off right and that's that so it's much more dangerous now like you wouldn't have politicians and the media and the commentaria and gay Charities saying maybe we need to fix you maybe we need to sterilize you let me ask you let me ask you a question about that and this is one that's really well I don't know what to make of it you know I just like the stereotypical guy who says he's not bigoted I have a lot of gay friends and there are people I really admire so Bjorn lomberg Douglas Murray you like Andy no you know that's four those are pretty stellar examples by the way I have a sneaking suspicion by the way that the genetic configuration that leads to male homosexuality is integrally tied up with creativity itself and that's why it sustains itself in the gene pool that is fascinating if true put it aside but because I've always wondered why you have this this disproportional relationship it's another possibility too which is that if you happen to get the balance between masculine and feminine qualities exactly right as a man you are hyper attractive to women right so that's another possibility right so you could think of homosexuality as an overshoot of that Target now I'm speculating although I think the creativity hypothesis is a better one imagine that homosexuality is polygenetic but it's also associated with a much higher probability of creativity well then obviously it's going to be conserved even though it has you know lack of reproductive ability as it has to be associated with something Stellar because obviously it would just disappear so and gay men are radically overrepresented in Creative disciplines like radically if you can if you can get to the heart of why that is I'd be absolutely fascinated by that but um but that was a side point wasn't it that was a side point from what you had to say about Yeah well yeah yeah well here is what I wanted to ask you about and I don't know what to do about this it's like I think that part of the problem that we're trying to figure out is back 20 years ago we we did what we could to bring especially male homosexuality into the center right by by legalizing gay marriage and and by attempting to normalize it in some ways now I think that left a lot of questions unanswered so here's one question it's like well okay now if it's normalized all of a sudden uh same-sex relationships same-sex sexual relationships where do you draw the line and what the hell do you teach children and one answer would be you don't talk about sex at all and another answer would be while you talk about gay sex 50 of the time you know like I don't know what the answer is but but it really is a problem and I think we're dashing ourselves to pieces in some ways trying to solve that problem and I don't know what the hell the salute the solution in the U.S is Take Your Kids out of the school system that's what the solution seems to be so but I don't know what you think about all that it's so difficult because I think educationists at the moment are getting it very very wrong in terms of what they're teaching children about sex and gender and sexuality and all the rest of it and I think gay people are bearing the brunt of a lot of the blame here you know so oh yeah what's happening is you know when you have drag queens twerking in front of children or stripping in front of people that doesn't seem good it doesn't look good and because they have bracketed us all as lgbtqia plus yeah this is one big thing then you know and there's evidence isn't there that um homophobia or at least I don't really like the word but anti-gay sentiment is on the rise because I think they think this is they think this is gay people doing all of this stuff it's not it's gender ideologues it's gender ideologues who have taken over the LGBT community whatever that might be uh and as I've said gender ideology is actively hostile to homosexuality so gay people aren't the the uh the the Agents of these societal changes they're the victims of it because now I'm getting it from both sides I published that article in the in the mail on um about the pride flag and I was getting gender idologues piling in on me uh calling me evil and telling me I should kill myself and you know the lovely things that the compassionate people often say and then I was also getting right-wing people mostly from America calling me a sodomite and saying that I was evil and that I was going to burn in hell for my sexual orientation so now we've got it for both sides so great thanks for that that I mean that's that's what the work have done you know it's it's not and that's why yeah yeah and that isn't over yet you know no there's no over yet that's going to get a lot worse before it gets better and God only knows how it's going to shake out I mean this this year's Pride Celebration was a whole new foreign corporations put their flags up every they don't put it up in the Middle East or in Saudi Arabia or places like that where where it might actually make a difference by the way flying that flag where where gay people are killed for being gay um no they don't do that but they put it up here they never did this by the way before uh gay marriage before the age of consent was equalized they didn't do any of that they did they did they're doing it now because corporations are so in in lockstep with the work ideology which is another reason by the way if you want to go back to this Left Right distinction why I think this is so unhelpful because it's a move right right I agree I agree yeah and I don't think there's any worse walk than walk capitalism no that's a bastard child of greed and ideology man I mean some sort of monster well that is right wing wokeness it can't be anything but because capitalism is a you know these are essentially money-making bodies these are not these are not socialists organizations it's it's so there is a confusion there and also by the way whenever they the woke always side against the workers you know whenever I know that's so in and the poor and so like so I know that's so interesting too because I've watched the the radicals especially in Europe over the last five years because I was curious is like well when push comes to shove let's say on the climate front are they going to sacrifice the poor on the altar of woke and the answer is in a bloody heartbeat in a second but that's why that's why and whereas I'm probably wrong to say the wokeness is closer to the right or whatever that is it's definitely not a left-wing movement in any traditional understanding of what left wing means it can't be no I think we have to stop thinking about it politically all together exactly I think fundamentally the religious analysis is the right one but that's a weird one Andrew that's going to take us some strange places because if this is actually first of all we're actually making the claim that this is a spiritual little battle right a religious battle and that's a hell of a claim to make you know especially for somebody who's more tilted towards atheism and I don't even know what the hell it means to make that claim but I don't think it is a political struggle fundamentally that's right and then and and to bring that into the the lgbtq stuff the way that sex education appears to be run at the moment and I don't know how it is necessarily where you are but in Wales definitely in Scotland definitely and in England we are having similar problems uh you have gender ideologues writing the curriculum effectively yeah so children are being told even though it is Canada after all oh yeah of course think of this country I mean we've got narcissistic we've got no what would we see we've got the Cardinal narcissist running our country he's everything woke you could possibly imagine and he's got that Psychopathic charm that lends itself to fooling gullible women it's a perfect Bloody storm I don't see any difference between you know effectively encouraging teachers to promote gender identity ideology to young children as having a some kind of hook-handed Islamic cleric come in and say gay people should be burned to death I don't really see the difference there in so far as you're promoting a really reactionary uh a belief system onto children when it comes to the realm of sex and sexuality and I think that's really really dangerous so unless we grapple with this point or unless we as a general population grapple with the fact that sex education Now is really a religious uh preaching that's all it is that that you know there you were talking about where do you stop how much do you teach them about what actually kids generally learn and figure things out for themselves don't they so I've always been of the view that sex education doesn't need to be as I think people need to know the basics but I think there's there's far too much of it of it going on but we've reached the point where I mean you must have heard this audio recording that was leaked this week from a school in England a place called rye College the teacher was was recorded berating two 13 year old girls because they would not accept that one of their peers identified as a as a cat yeah yeah and look out here it looks it's pretty rude you know it's it is you cannot let the poor girl wear a tail and all that well you know they're they this is the thing there'd be there was a report in the telegraph this week as well saying that there's there's a school where one child identifies as a horse there's one who identifies as a dinosaur there's one who quite creatively identifies as a moon and wears a cape now I think what's happening there is those kids are being satirical they're they're what they're seeing God I hope so no I think they are let's go you know the the kids that are saying I'm a cat and I need to lie down and I need to be stroked and I need to meow look they have seen that the figures of authority the teachers are totally capitulating to this bizarre belief system this esoteric cult and and this I would have done that in a heartbeat when I was as I would have as a kid 100 I would have said I'm a velociraptor and yeah you have to you know and you do what I say or I'll eat you or whatever I don't care what it is but but they these kids are pushy they always test the limits anyway but what's brilliant about this is the teachers can't do anything about it if I if I if a young child decides he's a moon and wears a cape and a teacher says no you're not she's denying the sacred Creed of gender identity ideology which is in the National curriculum now so so she'll get so she'll get fired so that this puts the kids in an incredible position of power they're having fun with it and this is also why I'm slightly uh heartened by this because I kind of think the kids are going to be our way out of this I think I think I hope that this mad religious fervor will burn out because the kids see it for what it is you know the fact that that woman in that recording was saying that these girls I think she said they were despicable I think that was the word she used despicable for not uh validating or accepting their friends identity as a cat um I mean that's such an extreme position for a teacher to take I also don't by the way don't think it's fair to Dogpile her and bombard and I saw some someone doxing her putting her face I look she's just following she's probably not a very intelligent person she's probably not very thinking but she's just following what she's told to say she's been told by all of the teacher training colleges all of the academics in education that this is the case and you've got to go with it and she's just doing her job so I think that's unfair as well um I would like teachers to be more intelligent and creative and to to challenge this stuff but you know that's not happening um so yeah maybe I guess we're I guess we're learning why the Eternal serpent always devours its own tale right right it's so I'm hoping that see these things push too far start to eat themselves you know it's it's we're like the strangest times man that might be it that might be the Hope though right that so yeah it's an Optimum it's an optimistic point to make but uh ultimately because I think this ideology is not sustainable because it is full of we we did walk ourselves back from the brink of tyranny on the covid lockdown front right I mean we were we went full totalitarian for two years but then everybody seemed to decide maybe that wasn't such a good idea but that's not productive isn't it the way that it is now talk about it everyone sort of no one mentions it now do they it was it was you know you walk around and very few people wearing masks um people have just sort of they're kind of weird turning point where everyone just decided actually it's it's a it's a virus with a very low mortality rate let's just not worry about it and that just sort of happened people have forgotten the Mania the extreme meaning people screaming at each other on the streets if they weren't wearing masks and the the extreme policies um the Canadian government's reaction to the the truckers who were worried about their livelihood due to a lot you mean stealing their Bank bank accounts feeding their bank accounts and and threatening to what give the money to other to Charities or something didn't they even didn't I mean you all know yeah yeah gold said so 10 10 million dollars was raised on GoFundMe that's it yeah and then then the GoFundMe decided they weren't going to distribute it to the truckers then they decided instead of refunding it they were going to distribute it to a charity of their choice then Ron DeSantis said I think you better not do that or else and then they decided they would refund it and now the money that hasn't been refunded is in escrow and there's a huge fight in Canada about who owns it we haven't settled the trucker mess here at all you know but the trucker Convoy it had something to do with everybody taking those goddamn masks off I'm sure I I wonder though how those politicians who were involved in this will feel about this in 20 years time I wonder about that I know one of your politicians claimed that the truckers were beeping their horns because they were dog whistling to fascists because the honk honk is HH and that means Heil Hitler I mean that was something that was seriously that's common knowledge here in Andrew everybody who hunts their horn is actually secretly admiring Hitler especially if they do it twice that is so insane that and and I so I wonder whether if the Salem witch trial level is inside exactly and Salem is a good example right because you know there's a reason I've used it in the book is that I think it gives us our Clues to our way out because Salem happened so quickly it happened within just over a year right late 17th century this hysteria emerged from nowhere and fizzled out immediately and everyone afterwards repented all of the people who were most involved in it said we got that wrong what happened there we went mad for a while there because they weren't they weren't well this is the first this is maybe the first widespread mental illness afflicting our new electronic nervous system that's it I think this is a hysteria on a global scale Akin akin to what happened in in Salem I think I I think it it's it's it's perpetuated Itself by a similar means which is firstly just the mechanism of Hysteria which I'm not qualified to talk about but also uh the fact that people in Authority go along with it because they're terrified not to you know because in Salem anyone said hang on I don't think this is right they were the next to be executed so you don't have politicians saying hang on a minute uh is it possible for for human beings to change sex uh do I know what a woman is uh they all know the answer just as the magistrates in Salem knew that the girls weren't seeing the devil but it all fizzled out very very quickly and one of the points I make in the book is about that all of the prosecutions were secured on this thing called spectral evidence in other words the girls experience what we call lived experience the girls believed that they were seeing devils and therefore that was taken as as evidence and that that's why the case is collapsed because at the end the Deputy Governor of Massachusetts wrote to the leading clergyman in the country and said can we use can spectral evidence be admissible in court and they all said no of course not the whole thing disappeared overnight everyone denied they had any part in it you know these weren't witch Hunters they didn't go around hunting witches that happened a lot in Europe it didn't happen in New England and so maybe that's the least stupid pathway forward for us now and maybe God willing that's the one we'll take we should stop I guess I don't want to because you're very entertaining to talk to um for everybody watching and listening I'm going to talk to Andrew for another half an hour on The Daily wire plus platform side a little bit more personally I want to see a bit more about what makes them tick and so if you're interested in that head over to the Daily wire plus platform you can throw those characters those reprehensible right-wing bastards a penny or two if you're inclined to because uh you know they are heading the fight to support free speech in the U.S you know YouTube has been after us because I'm allied with the daily wire types being after us pretty badly in the last month they took down three of my talks including one with Helen Joyce because you know how reprehensible good old Helen The Economist journalist is and they also took down a talk I had with Robert F Kennedy despite the fact that he's running for president and so that's YouTube and they're definitely going after all the daily wire folks so thank you all for your time and attention and Andrew for talking to me and helping me delve into these things get a little bit more clearly along with everyone else and uh for everyone watching and listening we'll see you soon and to the Daily wire folks thanks for your support Andrew off to the Daily wire thank you very much [Music] foreign

Channel: Jordan B Peterson

Views: 370,338

Keywords: Jordan Peterson, Jordan B Peterson, psychology, psychoanalysis, existentialism, maps of meaning, free speech, freedom of speech, personality lectures, personality and transformations, Jordan perterson, Dr Peterson

Id: QpjdSbjVZbA

Length: 106min 52sec (6412 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 06 2023