The Absurdity of Socialism | Jordan Peterson and Dave Rubin #CLIP

you made the point that for a very long time we understood how dangerous that sort of drift towards totalitarianism is it seems to have washed out of the system now it seems as though we don't teach history we don't respect it we don't understand that it can teach us valuable lessons and what worries me about that is the old saying if you don't understand history you may very well repeat it why do we walk away from people we can trust warning us of the consequences well i think there's an interesting reason for that that sort of brings this alternating story into 2019 which is that he was truly oppressed this was a life of actual oppression right now we have people that are walking around everyone in this room has this in their pocket and if you have this in your pocket turned off i hope yeah hopefully turned off but if you have this thing in your pocket and you think you're repressed you're very confused we we live in a time with such absurd freedoms in the west that are so uh beyond imagination of what people could only dream of two generations ago even one generation ago especially with this that people now are have a perceived depression instead of a real oppression so one of the things that i find when i go to uh when i go to college campuses is that you know these kids will protest and they'll scream and that you know that everyone's alright and everyone's a neo-nazi and the rest of this and i i always find all right well how do you how do you break through to somebody like that how do you actually when they have you know you've talked about this when they have that look in their eye truly a possessed look and and they're you know it's this this post-modern monster has become sort of a secular religion uh and i think that's also one of the reasons why what jordan's doing is resonating because they've they've removed religion from the equation and now they have no meaning and they put it all into this really competing set of ideas uh what we call the the oppression olympics where they're constantly competing for oppression because they believe that victimhood is virtue and victimhood of course is not virtue what's virtuous is getting your life in order and going out and doing something so i'm always looking for a little trick to get through to these kids and it's really hard because when they have that sort of glossed over zombie look it's it's tough and i found one trick that actually kind of works if you can get it to them in in the most simple personal way and this particularly works in the united states and i have no doubt that it would work here in australia as well i'll say to them anyone in this room does anyone in this room have it worse than their grandparents now i've done this i don't know 100 times probably nobody has ever raised their hand nobody ever if you live in the united states you basically short i mean the only outsider case would be if your grandparents were oil barons or something like that and then they lost all the money in which case in which case the leftists would actually love that too because it would show that well it would show that that accumulated wealth doesn't stay beyond generation so they're all about that right so but if you can do something like that i mean if you say i mean everyone in this room can do it like can everyone picture their grandparents do you have it better or worse i mean does anyone in here have it worse than their grandparents and that shows you that it's a perceived depression not a real oppression that that the thing that they're fighting this patriarchal postmodern capitalistic thing that they're fighting i mean they can't define it so it's hard to define it for them that it actually has bent toward justice always always and one when you get if you can plant that seed in them i think it's a little bit of something but it's very hard to break them out of that but i think the key here is understanding that it's a perceived depression if you live in a free society in the west in 2019 you're not oppressed you you may be you maybe don't happen as well as your neighbor does and maybe you came from more and they came from less or maybe you're sick and they're not or a series of other things but you've got a chance and that's all you're supposed to have in life and i think getting that through to them as opposed to oh the system is horrible and i have to now destroy the system as if they could magically reconstitute a system that really would just be in effect throwing away thousands of years of human history that they're so wise they're so wise at 24 years old as they're shouting down speakers that they could they could build up what nobody before them could and that's the danger there so i think getting them to to think about their own lives where they come from i think is a pretty effective way of getting through to people well we could also say like look there's a claim that the west is an oppressive patriarchy and so that's actually true the the problem with the claim is that it's not just an oppressive patriarchy and there's a big difference between something being completely something and something being partly something because one of the things you might point out is that you can look at human history anywhere and what you see is a complete bloody nightmare right it's it's it's death and struggle and privation and war and horror everywhere with some progress you know some ability of us to pull ourselves out of the mire you know and the west is the same is there's plenty of catastrophe in our past and of all sorts and and i think it's it's necessary to know that but then it's necessary to separate the wheat from the chaff you know one of the things i see with readers who are unsophisticated and intellectually arrogant is they'll read someone great maybe they'll read nietzsche for example and they'll find the odd thing that nietzsche said that greats against their current moral sensibilities whether they do that in context or out and then they'll throw away the whole book it's like you don't throw away the whole book it was nietzsche you don't throw away the book he's like one in a billion you read it carefully and you think well okay no to that but yes to this and you do the same thing with dostoyevsky and you do the same thing with tolstoy you do the same thing with the great writers of the past that have been passed down to us you you read intelligently you separate the wheat from the chaff right and you gain wisdom that way well you do the same when you look at your own history it's like well of course it's a bloody nightmare what what do you expect it's like what's your point we're going to we're going to burn it down and then we're going to have something better as a consequence well not so easily not so quickly maybe we read our history carefully and we think okay well what did we get right well what did we get right well the sovereignty of the individual that's pretty good the fact that you have right to property that's pretty good you can argue about the limits on that but you know you don't want someone just taking your purse you know it's it's it's helpful that there are things that you can earn and own you know the dignity of the individual that's another one um the innocence before the law god that's that's a miracle that we ever came up with that idea i can't believe that that idea exists because in most cultures it's like well you might be guilty okay you're dead because well that's easier you might be guilty you know why go through all the trouble there's plenty of people where you came from it's like the trouble of presuming your innocence it's innocent it's even hard for you to do that for yourself and and and the idea that that each person has an intrinsic worth regardless of their well externalities let's say that's another idea that's a complete miracle it's like what are you what are we gonna do we're gonna throw all that away with the statement that we live in an oppressive patriarchy and then we're going to be left with nothing and and and what what good is that well how about we look at our history and we take responsibility for it we think okay well here's some things that need to be fixed there's plenty of them right there's plenty of them for each of us to fix and we'll go fix them and maybe then we can atone for the bloodiness of our history and for our so-called unearned privilege you know some of which all of us have and and that would be good that would be part of the adventure of your life too and that's that's a far more sensible and wise approach to the diagnosis of what's wrong with the west than well it's an oppressive patriarchy and it should be overthrown or whatever that you know current uh low resolution and resentful ideology happens to be and and there's something to be said for a bit of humility as well it's like really you really think that you're capable of making large-scale social transformations and getting it right do you you really think that you're 25 you're 30 you're 40. i don't care you know what makes you think you're smart enough to pull off something like that it's very very difficult very very very difficult to take a system that works not too badly and to do anything to it that doesn't make it worse much less to radically reconstitute it and make it better that's really hard so you know if you're upset about your culture well maybe you could think of some small ways that are local that you could go out and improve it well i think you should start with yourself because well then you're only harming yourself and you're not a bad person to practice on and then you could extend that to your fat well at least you suffer for the consequences of your own experiments that way rather than having someone else do it and then maybe you can work on bringing a little more harmony into your family and maybe you can get a job and see if you're any good at that and then if you manage those three things halfways respectably well then you could dare to put a toehold out into the broader community and think maybe i have an idea here that we could tentatively attempt that might make some small things slightly better that we could measure carefully and assess and that would be your contribution and maybe you get real good at that you know so by the time you're 50 or 60 and you have a solid life behind you you're actually capable of generating large-scale improvements carefully you

Channel: John Anderson

Views: 874,219

Keywords: John Anderson, John Anderson Conversation, Interview, John Anderson Interview, Policy debate, public policy, public debate, John Anderson Direct, Direct, Conversations, socialism, young people, priviledge, patriachy, neo-marxist, socialist

Id: QpjCca9Beww

Length: 10min 37sec (637 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 07 2022