Joe Rogan Experience #1070 - Jordan Peterson

four three two one boom and we live 12 rules for life so without reading this what you're saying is there's only 12 things you need to know in life right that's it yeah yeah this this interview what did you just do. this woman, uh, Kathy Newman, was that in the United Kingdom it was Channel 4 in the United Kingdom. I just went, I felt bad but I also laughed. I went to his Twitter page to like and follow his every tweet no matter what he says. write below, so what you're saying is and then some ridicule, but by the way, your fans were making fun of her, but politely and not aggressively, I didn't read any rude things like there wasn't, there was no insults or there was well maybe some insults but no swearing it was just a playful mockery of the interview he did with you because the interview was ridiculous it was a ridiculous interview and I heard or watched it several times I thought like that it's that strange how his determination to turn it into a conflict is one of the problems I have with TV shows, yeah, because they have a very limited amount of time and they're trying to make things as lewd as possible, they want it to sound. bite into these click bait sound bites and she just came into this incredibly confrontational, not trying to find your real perspective, but trying to force you to defend a non unrealistic perspective, yeah well I was the hypothetical villain of your imagination, essentially, well, what?

It happened which was also interesting the way it played out because I met her in the green room beforehand, you know, they were doing her makeup and then they put some powder on me and we had kind of a friendly exchange and then I went and sat in front to the cameras and for a couple of minutes, you know, before the show started, we had a pretty nice exchange and then as soon as the cameras came on, she was a completely different person and I thought, oh. I see what's going on, yes, yes, well that alerted me to the fact that there was something rotten in the state of Denmark, let's say yes, but you know this is also the reason why YouTube is going to kill television , because television by its nature. all these limited streaming technologies that they rely on to force the story right because it has to happen now, it has to happen frequently in five minutes because they only aired five minutes of that interview, they put the whole thing on youtube to their credit is that they haven't let To surprise me still, I think they thought the interview went well, that's the rumor I have behind the scenes because, you know, I know some people who know what's going on. on channel four and they're shocked by the response, you know, and then of course there's the counter response: the next day the Guardian published an article or published an article saying you know the head of channel 4 had to call security police because of threats, you know well, first of all, you can call the police about anything and they never detailed exactly what the threats were, but then about 20 newspapers picked that up and looked for what Kathy Newman is now. getting harassed by an army of online trolls for doing nothing but doing their job, which was good, and then there was a backlash against that in the press, so it's been good, someone did an audit of the actual exchanges that yes, between the fans and her and there were many more negative ones coming, yes, that were very negative, yes, that's right, very negative, violent harassment, just rude, there were many more, yes, and no one noticed that not at all the whole narrative was that she's a victim even though she was very aggressive in this but she's a funny victim it's not that she hasn't been successful yeah you know it's like at some point you thought you should turn in your victim card.

I think when you go to an Ivy League university it's like right then and there you do it, yeah, because you can't be oppressor and oppressed at the same time, that's too good. One of the things you pointed out was when you were talking about competition for very lucrative jobs and you were saying Look what you've done like you, you must have had to work here and she was proudly saying how hard she had to work, yeah, to get there. I say, well, yes, of course, no one is going to give you this. No, this is it. why and that is why you said you are opposed to equality of results.

I can't imagine anything we can strive for in our society that will lead us to hell faster than equality of outcomes as the historical evidence for that root pathology is so strong it's like you have to be historically ignorant beyond belief. believable or malevolent or resentful beyond comprehension to be able to think it's a good idea, I support that, I agree with you, but I think that even if you came to this without knowledge of history but a complete understanding of human beings, you would say well that doesn't make any sense and one of the best quotes I've read about it is that if you have true freedom you will never have equality of outcomes because with true freedom you have the freedom to not get involved well look if you look at a guy like Jeff Bezos, for example, that Amazon guy is worth more money than anyone else, right?

That guy works all day, yeah, I mean he's a maniac. Oh, he's acquiring all these different companies and everything he's doing is designed to be successful. I mean, he's fine, that's what Gates just said in a recent interview too and I know some guys who know they're in roughly the same universe as them. two and they just work all the time, that's all the time and not only do they work, they work so efficiently and effectively and they make the most of every second in ways that you can't even imagine unless you're in that kind of position. and you know that doing that doesn't mean you'll succeed, but not doing it certainly means you'll fail.

Well, not doing so certainly means you'll never reach that level of success and that's what we're talking about. We are talking about a quality of the result. I do not want that. I don't want to be that guy. I don't want to work like that. I don't want to do what he's doing and he should have the freedom not to do it. Mind you, he should be free to do so if we are going to play this game called capitalism, which we all agree on, probably at least to the extent that the models we have now are the best we have. if we're all going to play this game if someone decides to be the michael

jordan

of capitalism you can't stop it you can't say no no you're not playing this game too well you're playing this team too hard you're too obsessed with this game you're going to have that, yes, you can stop them, you can try to stop people from winning crookedly, which is what you should do, and yes, you know there are a couple of things that are really worth digging into. regarding that also because there is this kind of Marxist notion that all this inequality is generated as a consequence of capitalism and that is actually technically false because if you look at it, there seems to be something like a law of nature that is described in this statistics. model called the Pareto distribution and it basically suggests that in any creative domain there will be a small number of people who will do almost all the output, but it doesn't just apply to humans, it implies it applies to the heights of trees. in the Amazon rainforest it applies to the size of cities and it applies to the mass of stars, which is kind of like the more you have, the more you get.

It's something you can imagine how that would work with a star as it gets bigger and bigger. its gravitational mass increases it will attract more and more matter and then as the city grows well more and more people are excited to move there because of all the opportunities so some cities start to grow tremendously and some and some don't , but this This phenomenon in which a small number of people end up controlling a tremendous proportion of the resource is not only limited to money and it does not only occur in capitalist societies, it occurs everywhere, it is like a natural law, so it looks The same with number of points scored by a spectacular sports figure, there is always a small proportion of people who are far ahead of the curve or people who make records or people who sell paintings or people who compose music or people who sell music Online , it doesn't matter, the one percent gets 80 percent and well, first we can't blame that on capitalism and second, we have to point out that it's actually a problem which is what leftists are always jumping up and down. .

It's true that too much inequality begins to destabilize society and it's not obvious how to spread money from the top end, perhaps the tenth of one percent who have almost all the money, to the people who have almost nothing, in a way which is effective so that they are not left out of the game completely and so that the entire society is not destabilized, we do not know exactly how to do it, it is a problem because inequality exists and tends to magnify over time. And then there's another problem we haven't discovered: Imagine that for everyone to be rich you have to tolerate a certain amount of inequality that seems obvious, we don't know how many units of inequality you need to tolerate per unit. of wealth generated, but the answer is definitely not zero, definitely not zero, so yes, it goes back to this equality of outcomes, yes, yes, and this has perplexed me since I met you and since you were involved in this original debate. about gender pronouns and there was an article that was written recently, I forget the exact title.

I think it was something like why can't people listen to what Jordan Peterson says. Yes, you are misrepresented more than anyone I know in a weird way, they make you a villain in a weird way where I can't believe these people are honestly looking at your opinions and coming to these conclusions. I can't help but feel that what is happening is that people are consciously choosing to ignore reality. and paint yourself as this archetypal figure of oppressive white male patriarchy. Ignorance fills in the blank with the rest of the descriptions you'd like to use, but they've decided to paint you this way as a target because I need a target to reinforce this idea that transgender people are being victimized and women are being victimized. and, well, even more deeply, that the correct narrative is the way we should see the world: victim versus oppressor, because that is the basic neo-modern view.

Marxist model is the correct way to see the world is that it is a power it is a terrain of power it is a battlefield of constantly competing power interests those who win are oppressors those who lose are oppressed that is the way you look at it the world and I think that's wrong, it's a bad way of looking at the world, psychologically, sociologically, politically, economically, ideologically, whatever, it ends in nothing more than a catastrophe, I mean, first of all, because it puts the identity of their group as something primordial and I mean. That's just not right, because that's not what we do in the West, let's say we put your individual identity at the forefront and then well, that's just to start fundamentally and then I guess the other reason why people are in my case to some extent.

It's because I've made a strong case, which I think is fully documented by the scientific literature, that there are intrinsic differences, say, between men and women and I think the evidence that this is what amazed me is that no serious scientist has debated that. For about four decades, that argument was already made, by the time I went to graduate school, everyone knew that human beings were not a blank slate, that biological forces did not parameterize the way we thought, felt, acted, and valued, everyone knew that the The fact that this has become somewhat moot again is especially because it is being done by legislative mandate, they are forcing it on me as a scientist, it is just fine and in the states it is also strict with title ix , for example, because title ix is ​​kind of based on that point of view, what is the title now oh, title ix was originally just a piece of legislation that mandated that women's sports teams be funded to the same extent that men's sports teams were funded at American universities, but it's been expanded so that if there is any difference in any area between the genders, then the universities are being taken to court and like 200, I mean, last time I looked , about 200 of them were active and they can have their funding revoked if they violate the provisions of title ix, so it has become something of a vicious weapon for the social justice warrior equal outcomes types, so It's not just about sports, no, it goes much deeper than that, yes, it has become a question of equality of outcomes fundamentally, there was an article that I sent you, one of them was from I think I thought I got it from digg .com but it was that Jordan Peterson is having his moment and we should ignore it and I send you this and there was a, probably the last part of that could be true, but one. of the things in the article wasciting this study that showed very little difference oh god it's a pathetic study yes well I told you because I was like that this is not right well the thing is like most things it's complicated yes ya You know.

Are men and women more similar or more different, it depends on how you define the terms first, but are they more similar, well, why are they the same species, so we could start with that, but the question is what are the differences and how They manifest and are. Those manifestations are important, so here's an example: If you take a random woman in the population and a random man and you have to bet on who is more temperamentally aggressive, if you bet on the man, you would be right 60 percent of the time. times, but I'd be wrong 40 of the time and that's not a big difference, right, 60 40.

It's not 90 10 so there's a lot of overlap between men and women in terms of their levels of aggression and you think they're okay. more the same, yeah, except then let's say no, no, let's play a slightly different game, let's choose the most aggressive person out of a hundred of the random population, well, they're all men and that's why all the people in prison are men, although in The average men and women are better off, yeah, they're 90 90 90 to 95, that's right, and often if women are in prison it's because they got involved with a really bad guy, you know, one of the problems is that the differences at the extreme are where the differences really start to manifest and so you can have a small difference at the level of the average but at the extremes it starts to make a big difference, so let's say being a Google engineer, which It is very true because not only do you have to be an engineer, but you have to be a very good engineer.

Well, you have to be interested in things instead of people. That's a big difference in interest, with men being more interested in things in general and women being more interested in people in general. speaking now, there is still a lot of overlap between them, but that is one of the biggest differences between men and women, it has been shown cross-culturally, it is also a very big difference in Scandinavian countries, well, on average, the difference is not that big , although it is a relatively big difference, but at the extremes it is the same, almost all the people are very focused on things, almost all of them are men and all the people who are very focused on people are almost all women and so, what? as?

Does that work well in the world? In Scandinavian countries it is developed this way about 85 percent of nurses in Scandinavia are women and about 85 to 90 percent of engineers are men, that doesn't mean that women can't be engineers, that doesn't mean that Women cannot be engineers. This doesn't mean men can't be nurses, it doesn't have anything to do with intelligence either, but it does mean interest, and the differences in interest are big now, particularly at the extremes, so when you read a review like that , that was pointed out, the first question is: what do you mean by big and small?

There are more overlaps between men and women than there are differences in virtually every parameter. Okay, the remaining differences are significant in how they play out in the world. The answer to this is overwhelmingly significant because you pick out the extremes, so here's another example: Ashkenazi Jews have an average IQ of 115, so in the typical general population you have an average IQ of 100. 15 points is roughly the difference between the typical college student and the typical high school student okay, so it's not a huge difference, but if you go to the extreme, let's say, well, let's look at people who only have an IQ of 145, which is where the initial level of genius is reached, it's as if Jews are overwhelmingly overrepresented, so relatively small differences in the average can produce huge differences at the extremes, people don't understand which is not surprising because it actually requires an understanding Pretty sophisticated statistics, but when we talk about things like differential outcomes in the workplace then you have to take a sophisticated statistical approach or you don't know what the hell you're talking about and unfortunately a lot of the people who talk about things like gender differences don't.

They have an idea what they are talking about. They don't know literature They don't know there is literature They don't understand biology like social constructionist types Women's studies types Neo-Marxists don't give a damn about biology It's like they inhabit some disembodied universe, so the review was poorly written at best and showed a very poor understanding of the relationship between group differences and economic and practical outcomes. It's not just that it's misleading and there's a need somehow on that side of this side of debating the anti-

jordan

peterson

side to label men and women as virtually identical when there's so much evidence that that's not the case and what you are saying what you have never said one is superior one is inferior what you are is a guy who points out the reality of the difference between different types of human beings and you have been very open about the extremes of your appearance.

I am very aware of the extremes with which I deal with MMA fighters. I know a lot of female mma fighters who are as aggressive and tough as any man you will ever meet in your life and I know a lot of comedy men who are meek little guys who aren't as aggressive as some of these. Fighters like they are, I think one of the beautiful things about freedom is that people have the opportunity to express themselves in a way that is genuinely themselves, yeah, and if that's like our friend Alex Honold, who's a climber free, which is like climbing these fantastic ones. mountains without ropes or if she is an mma fighter like Raquel Pennington who is just a tank and hits people and that's what she loves to do.

All these extremes are available to people because of freedom. This is not something repressive of anyone. Someone is preventing people from choosing these paths. I don't know if you saw the YouTube CEO's most recent slip. I retweeted it today. They were talking about why there aren't that many women in tech and she basically said that both she and the CEO of Google said exactly what James Damore was saying in her memo. They were completely discouraged. They tried to look. Did you find this? Look at this. This is fucking funny. James Damore had this on his page.

They respond. Women. Lack of boarding. Could you do it now? go to joe go to james damore's tweet just go to what i retweeted and what he said so there was a study published a while ago about j no jamie scroll back right there it's right there just make his tweet bigger there go see him he said he's saying yes I read this right I don't know how to say her name is susan what I'm sorry I don't know how to say her name w-o-j-i-c-i-c-k-i I said women find geeky male industries instead of Social industries aren't very interesting and Sundar quotes an investigation on gender.

Well, that's exactly the difference in interests I just pointed out. Yes it's correct. This is what James Damore wrote in his memo that got him fired. And this in my mind if it was. james damore's lawyer i would say oh well look who we have here this is checkmate yeah fools you just said the divorce story is really interesting you know because i think it's a classic engineer story tangled up. I got into politics, so Damore went to this diversity seminar and he wasn't very happy about it because he knew the literature, so at the end of the seminar they asked for feedback.

Well, James Damore is an engineer, so when you tell an engineer that you want feedback, the engineer thinks, oh, you want feedback and you and you want facts and stuff, because that's what feedback would be like, so damore went and wrote this like a complete memo and gave it to him. He said, well, you know, this is what I think. here are some comments and then they circulated, you didn't get a real response from the diversity people and then you posted them on one of these internal Google forums where people can discuss things that Google people do all the time, so it was perfectly reasonable for him. post it because he didn't get a response from the diversity people, he thought well let's see what other people think and then it was there for a long time until it leaked to the outside world, it wasn't like Damore was trying to expose Google for what it is, he was just doing what an engineer would do when someone asked him to provide feedback because he's not thinking politically, he's not thinking, oh they just want to hear what they already said, he thought they actually wanted some data.

Anyway I think they messed with the wrong guy because he turns out to be quite difficult, well he's very smart and a very nice guy when you sit down and talk to him he's not sexist he's a factual guy actually . He wrote more than a page and a half, I think, on strategies to get more women interested in technology. He is not sexist. He's just a guy who talked about the differences and the decisions that people make that are just based on the variations that you have. We were just discussing, well, there's a good study done a while ago and unfortunately I don't remember the author, but they were looking at high school math prodigies and they were pretty evenly distributed between boys and girls, but when college came around . along with the math prodigy kids they tend to go to the stalk fields but the girls didn't and it's not because they lacked ability because they had stellar ability it's because they weren't interested and it turns out that the interest thing turns out to be great, so With personality alone, if you measured the personalities of men and women and then added up all the differences in personalities, you could say with about 75 to 80 certainty by looking at a full personality reading if a person is a man or a woman, then you would be wrong. 25 percent of the time, something like that, but if you add interest, you can get up to about 90 percent, so you know you say, "Well, are these differences big?

Well, individually, they're not that big, they make further". difference in the extremes, but if you add them up, you can almost completely differentiate men from women, so they are very large and the interesting thing is actually very important, since it is probably the most important single difference that has been discovered between men and women on a psychological level, it has really decent explanatory power because you could say that men have a slight advantage in spatial intelligence and that is why they are overrepresented in the root fields and women have a slight advantage in verbal intelligence. This is debatable, but the literature indicates it and that's why they are overwhelmingly the majority of fiction readers, for example, is that the reason there is differential representation in the root fields is like no, it doesn't seem to be, not seem. as if it were an intellectual question, which is also what De Moore pointed out by the way he never said it was a cognitive question, but it is a question of choice, a question of interest and women tend to be more oriented to people now, the question is this.

It's also being discovered in chimpanzees and other primates, like if you offer baby chimpanzees or children, juvenile chimpanzees the choice of toys between things like toys like cars or people like toys like dolls, the males will opt for things like toys and the Females will choose toys they like people, so you see that in primates and you think, well, that's surprising, it's like, well, no, it's not that surprising, actually, I mean women have to take care of to babies, little babies, and you have to be really people-oriented to do that. that because a small baby is an incredibly demanding social relationship and is a primary relationship for about two years, you know, women lean toward the kind of temperament that makes it possible, it's like such a shock really is a big surprise . no, it's not a surprise and what confuses me is the narrative that anyone who points out these differences is somehow sexist or discriminatory or yes, worse, yes, yes, well, whatever epithet they can, I think the other reason why which the left is radical Leftists have been constantly persecuting me.

Well, there's a reason: if you stand against the radical radical left, you're in a group that also has Nazis because Nazis also stand against the radical left, so it's perfectly reasonable. a strategic perspective for radical leftists to say well, you're against us, how do we know you're not a Nazi? open but but but then the next part is that this is a motivated epithet because if I am reasonable and I oppose the radical left and they admit that I am reasonable, then there has to be an admission that reasonable people could oppose the radical left, which implies that the radical left is not that reasonable and, although they are not going to go there, forOf course, they are not that reasonable, they are irrational beyond belief, as we saw in This situation with Lindsay Shepard in Canada, so at Wilford Laurier University let's talk about that real quick because that was also something fascinating and it also had to do with you , so she was talking about you in class and you could fill everyone in, yeah, she's in communications in the communications department at Wilford Laurier and they were talking about the role of language in communication, what kind of what would you do in a communication class.and she decided to show a five minute clip of a show that I had done for tv ontario, which is a public television station, a news program from a left leaning liberal television station and a news program Well, well, and I had been there with several other people, including Professor Nicholas Matt of the University of Toronto, who essentially stated that there were no biological differences between men and women and that that had been the scientific consensus for the last four decades so anyway she showed a clip of this and well she got dragged in front of two teachers and an administrator adria joel who was hired basically for that purpose and they criticized her for daring to show this video and she had the means to record it and then he made the tape public and on that tape they compared.

For me it was really funny, you know, they compared me to Hitler, yes, but then they said, well, it's Hitler or Milo Yiannopoulos. I thought you guys are so damn clueless that you can't even get your insults straight, it's like you can. I'm not saying it's like playing a video of Hitler or Milo Yiannopoulos. It's like Hitler and Milo Yiannopoulos aren't in the same category in the first place, except they're both human. That's about the narrowness of the category and then Milo, uh. as a comic provocateur and you can hate him or love him or be indifferent, but putting him in the same category as Hitler just shows how confusing you are and then assimilating me into that category so carelessly like you don't mess with epithets like that, you know, Hitler was one of the great supervillains of the 20th century, of course, I mean he was, he is there with Stalin and Mao in the panoply of satanically possessed leaders, don't throw that out there.

Especially not when you're torturing your teaching assistant for daring to show a video about language in a communications class and that was a massive scandal in Canada, it was the biggest scandal, I think it was the biggest scandal that's ever hit Canada. a university in Canada. and she got a lot of international attention and rightly so and she also happens to be a tough girl. I mean, last I heard she had started a club at Wilford Laurier and I think it was last night or maybe the night before. It's coming up, they're going to show the full Ontario TV video at a club meeting and invite people to come and discuss it.

It's like they messed with the wrong girl there too, so they certainly did. She was obviously very intelligent, she could be heard. that in her discussion with them and how amazed she was by their way of seeing things, but this was essentially proof to a lot of people on the outside of how absurd some of the dialogue within these universities was, yeah, well, they couldn't have made. It would do me a bigger favor than to have that scandal because when I made the videos about Bill C-16 15 months ago I said, look, this is what's going to happen because this legislation is written in an atrocious way and the policies that surrounding it are pathological, so this is what is going to happen. it happened and then I exposed it and then people came out and said no you're being paranoid it's possible no the bill the legislation is not going to have that effect no you're not a legal expert what the hell are you doing ? you know, etcetera, etcetera, you're crazy, you're a fanatic, you're a complete trans, you know, they threw everything at me except the kitchen sink and, fair enough, you know that, because there's always a chance that I was wrong, but the problem.

The thing was, I read the policies, I understood them, and I knew where they led, but I never imagined that one of the consequences of Bill C-16 in its sister legislation would be that an assistant professor at a Canadian university would be ridiculed and accused of violating the law and then accused of all kinds of reprehensible political beliefs by two teachers and an administrator hired for that purpose simply because she showed a video of two people talking about the law, no matter how paranoid I am, let's say that it exceeded the scope of my imagination and then of course it became public and people just couldn't believe it and then you think, well, what's the defense?

Well, they misinterpreted Bill C-16, it's like no, I don't think so. They are not representative of the administration of professors at the university, well, all of Pimlot and Rambukana's colleagues came to their defense, the entire university department when they apologized they did so in a very rude way, as if there was no evidence that It was an anomalous event, so what had happened? What happened is they overextended the scope of Bill C-16 exactly the way I said it would happen, it was inevitable and it wasn't an anomaly, that's actually how universities are and that's how they are.

It wasn't something isolated, it was exactly a diagnosis and it's scary, it's scary, universities have so much to be ashamed of, they're fine, there was an article in the Boston Globe this week that said the same thing as all of this. The crazy postmodern identity politics, equality of outcomes, nonsense, has not only disrupted the university in a way that, for all I know, could be irreparable, but it is rapidly spreading into the normal world of business, which is exactly what you see, for example, on Google. Well, the tech industry in particular seems to be more left-wing than almost any industry out there and I guess it's because there are so many smart people there, so many people who have spent an enormous amount of time in universities and are indoctrinated in this mentality and you're seeing that in this the youtube ceo's response to james damore's memo completely misrepresented it, they're talking about harmful gender stereotypes, that's not what he talked about at all, um, what is it that fascinates me about it all?

The thing is, it reeks of tribalism that these left-wing people have decided, I mean, and I'm primarily left-wing, which is really crazy, I mean, when it comes to most policies and most thoughts of equality and the idea of ​​justice. letting people be who they are, I mean, that's what the left used to stand for, it used to stand for open-mindedness, it used to stand for being a reasonable person, now it seems like it's this very toxic tribal ideology and this is one of the The reasons why I find so many of these attacks and you so disconcerting is because there is a willful ignorance or a misleading narrative, there is a misleading description of who you are, what you are saying and what you represent, and it is this conveniently. categorized not even convenient intentionally intentionally deceptively categorized into these categories categories of homophobia, transphobia, sexism, these are reprehensible categories that if they can push something that you're saying, they find a way to push you into this tight little confinement, then everyone has to be disagree with everyone they have to insult you and everyone has to like take that girl to their office and punish you for using not even speak for you, right, only she said no, yeah, that's the most fascinating thing than anything else, yeah, so they give him hell for that.

You can't present something like that in a neutral way. It's like presenting something Hitler said in a neutral way. and that most people, but maybe it's a 60 40 like we were talking about before when it comes to aggressive men, women versus aggressive men, I don't know what the number is, I think it's about 50 to one, actually, like if I had been watching the comments on YouTube and so on trying to track this is like I think what the radical leftists are doing is overwhelmingly unrepresentative of the general population, but they are very well organized, verbal and prepared. minority and have held powerful positions in many institutions.

One of the things I really can't understand right now and anyone running a company listening should think about this carefully, is how letting these postmodern neo-Marxists into your company through the guise of HR is an absolute catastrophe because of the that you're going to pay, that's the ideology that drives postmodern neo-Marxism, this identity politics, uh, what the identity politics movement and its insistence on equality of outcomes is powerfully anti-capitalist is powerfully anti-Western why would you let That in your company is to be able to look good socially. Let's say it's beyond me. It's a big mistake.

I agree with you but I don't think people are aware of it. I think part of the problem is that this battlefield is ignored. largely by the general population. I don't think most people are aware of what's going on because you're obviously deeply embedded in Canada's university system and it's you. Obviously, we're now branching out into YouTube and podcasts and all these different ways of disseminating this information, but the average person who is the CEO of a company or is worried about their own company, is worried about theirs. individual needs, they're concerned about organizing things and maintaining their results and yeah, well, they're also concerned about looking fair and making sure they're not biased and all that, which is laudable, but I just don't think they see the wave coming no, no , they don't see it coming, they don't understand it and they are cautious but they are going to pay for it, well, Google is a good example because now Google is in court on the feminist side for having prejudices against women and also on the conservative side for having prejudice against conservatives, it's good, both sides are behind them and I think well, why is that like that?

Well, that's what happens when you play identity politics like this. Tribalism, this is really what I can't stand about identity politics and I've been warning about the consequences of this on the right as well because what I see happening is that like the left, let's say the left defines the linguistic territory. which is what I opposed in bill c-16 when it came out I said look I'm not going to use these neologisms z and zur etc because as far as I'm concerned people who don't know what you're talking about, yes, a Bunch of different gender pronouns made up, yeah, to describe non-male or female people, that's right, there are like 70 different categories of non-binary gender, something like that generated now and there are lists of pronouns that hypothetically people who are in those categories they can choose to be addressed by and now that has the force of law and I don't care if they choose to be addressed by those pronouns, whatever it is, that's that, that's up to them and whoever it is.

I can convince or ask or plead or negotiate well as soon as it's law, that's a completely different story, okay, now I have to use certain terminology, so I look at the derivation of the terminology and say, oh, that's the terminology generated by the neo postmodern. -Marxists, well, I think those people are reprehensibly murderous, so guess what, I'm not going to say their words, period, because I know what they are like, I know where that leads, okay, but most people think it's a gigantic step to take. from saying you don't want to say z or zero or any of these made up gender pronouns to these are murderous people, the ideology is murderous, the ideology is Marxism, yes, absolutely fine, Jesus, how much proof of that do you need?

Most people don't. understand Marxism like when you say this like when you were so adamant about it I had to start reading about it myself and I had to start doing a lot of research into it and I think most people hear Marxism and think socialism, yeah, they think that, uh, pool all your money, you know, make things more equitable for people, yeah, like if they were in Venezuela, everyone has the same chance of dying of hunger, so you know how, you know how the Venezuelan government began to solve the problem. the problem of children dying of hunger in hospitals how they made it illegal for doctors to report that hunger was the cause of death, right, that's Venezuela in a nutshell, yes, everyone is equal there, everyone has the same amount of bones to gnaw, yes, that is a horrible thing, but yes, it is a horrible thing, without a doubt, but there is no connection between gender pronouns and murder.

This is a big leap, yes, that's for sure, that's for sure, well, that's why you have to look at the underlying ideology that you know and think. Well, what is the level at which these things need to be addressed? Well, is it economic? Is it political? Are the personal meanings of these? this ideology and you understand where the roadmap leads, you understand the x at the end of the road, yes. Very good, and I think that's why I continually recommend people read articles about soldiers in school likeArchipelago, so there are actually a series of books that allow you to explain this perfectly.

You read that Dostoevsky wrote a book called The Possessed or the Demons and it's a description of the initial collapse of Orthodox Christian society in Russia in the late 19th century and the rise of radical socialist ideas, so it's kind of a drama. pro of the Russian revolution. It's a brilliant, brilliant book, a brilliant book and it focuses on the personalities that are involved and then if you later read Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago, where he details what he does in that book, it's quite remarkable, so he says: Look, there was tens of millions of people murdered between 1919 and 1959 in the Soviet Union and as a result of internal repression, and it is so terrible that words cannot do justice.

I mean, it's absolutely terrible what happened in the Soviet Union. union, I mean, just to start, 6 million Ukrainians died in the 1930s due to forced famine, in fact, in the 1930s that's how terrible it was, so all the food that the newly collectivized collective farmers had produced was not very By the way, much of the road was taken away from them and taken to the cities, so all the farmers died of hunger. Now, this is how draconian it got, so let's say you were a mother of some children and all your grain had been sent to the cities and you.

I thought well, I'm not going to let my children die of hunger, I'm going to go out into the field and I'm going to do it on my knees and I'm going to collect the grains that are left over from what the harvesters didn't count, and I'm going to give them to my children, that was punishable by death. You were supposed to hand over those extra chunks of grain so they could be sent to the city as well, so that was just the beginning of the fun in the soviet union and what solzhenitsyn did was say look this wasn't a consequence of the system failing Marxist this was a consequence of the Marxist system it was an inevitable consequence of the axioms of the Marxist system and then he establishes that it was and okay I think he did well and what is it that won the Nobel Prize but what is the connection how much tyranny is there impose to produce something like equality of outcomes he and thomas sowells talked about this a little bit he also said that what the people who are agitating for equality of outcomes don't understand is that so much power has to be ceded from the authorities to the government to ensure equality of outcomes that a tyranny is inevitable and that's right and the other pro, another problem with equality of outcomes, this is also a big technical problem, it's like what outcome measure do you know, there are many outcomes, like how happy you are, how much pain you are in, how healthy you are, how much money you have.

How many opportunities to advance do you have? What is the width of your social connections? What is the quality of your friendships? Do you have exposure to art and literature? Do you know that you can multiply the number of evaluation dimensions among people innumerably? With all kinds of ways to classify people, you're going to get equal results on each of those measures, it's like everyone has to be equally happy in their relationship, and if not, why not? Why stop with the economic? Why stop with salary? there is no place to stop, and that is a big technical problem because there is no place to stop, there will be no stop, it is like no one can have anything else, no one can have anything that the others do not have at the same time, that is the result final. of equal outcomes, well, you think about what that would mean, it's terrible, well, you instantly think, oh, well, there's nothing but a tyrannical system that could impose.

Have you ever debated a Marxist supporter? Have you ever debated someone who is in favor of equal outcomes? No, they didn't debate me well, the only thing that I think was the closest thing to that was the debate I did at the university of Toronto on the issues of bill c-16, but they didn't actually have a debate, they had a forum that is the publication. -the modern equivalent of a debate is supposed to be more friendly, I guess, um, but no, I haven't done it because people don't do it, they don't ask me to do it, but what does that idea or that ideology have about the Marxism that is so so attractive to young students and to university people well, that's a good question, I think it goes back to the issue of inequality and this is something that needs to be addressed very seriously, as you could say, well, what?

Why is the left necessary? Let's say it. that way, so a subset of that would be good, why is the left attractive? Well, the left is necessary because inequality is getting out of control and therefore there has to be a political voice for the dispossessed and you don't want people to pile up at zero, you know where they can't play the game at all, it's a bad idea, not only not, if people accumulate at zero, they are too poor to get ahead, let's say they are too poor. to open a bank account they are too poor to buy enough food, as if they are stuck at zero and can't get out of there.

It's a really bad scene because, first of all, it's a lot of suffering, and second of all, that's not so good. of all good, at least in principle, many of those people could have something to offer the world or their children could have something to offer the world and you want to open avenues of opportunity for them so that they can be successful but so that everyone else can benefit of it. their success is like that and then the next thing is good, if inequality gets out of control then the whole society starts to destabilize because if you get enough people stacked at zero, especially young men, you get enough young men stacked at zero, they think Oh, al heck with this, we'll just flip the whole board over and it will install itself in a new configuration and maybe we won't be stuck at zero in the new configuration, which encourages revolutionary thinking, so there's plenty of reason to worry. about inequality, so we need a voice from the left to say: look, we have to parameterize the trend towards inequality so that it doesn't destabilize the entire society, so that everyone has the opportunity to move forward, as if, of course, You need it, okay, that's it. the technical reason for the need of the left and then I think it is attractive because well, because young people can be resentful in part because they are at the bottom of the pile, so to speak, they are not so because they are young, as you can see if you want.

To be, you want to be poor at 18, you want to be rich at 80. You're going to choose that most people are going to be poor at 18. Well, yeah, especially if you've been rich at 80 and you understand that you can go back there. Yeah, well, that's what you know, is that most people who have a million dollars or more in the United States are older. Good because? Well, we really need an explanation for that. It's like you've had a lot more time. to make money, what would that be like? That's the explanation, then, one of the big drivers of inequality is simply age, but it's not obvious that the old rich have an advantage over the young people starting out, anyway, but anyway, maybe you.

You're resentful and irritated because you're young and still at the bottom of the pile and you know you have other problems too. It's harder for people of your race, ethnicity, or gender, at least you think so. You say, well, I want to make things fair and that's also driven by real compassion because nobody really likes the consequences of radical inequality, just like nobody likes the fact that there are homeless people and they have to go to the hospital. emergency room, you know, to get treatment. and they don't have medical coverage and they have to live in tents on the streets, so if you have a little bit of compassion then you think we have to do more for the poor and the dispossessed, okay, it's an understandable feeling, but the problem is that people, but the problem is that this desire to help is contaminated by resentment and ideological certainty and then also by something that George Orwell pointed out so well in his book Road to Wigan Pier is like the typical middle class socialist this was his diagnosis and he was a socialist the way his diagnosis was the typical middle class intellectual socialist he doesn't like the poor in fact they have nothing to do with the poor they despise the poor but they hate the rich and I think It's even more torturous than that because I think the ones they hate are the successful ones some of the successful ones are rich but actually the ones they hate are the successful ones it's like cain and abel it's the retelling of cain and abel So there are some positive motivations to participate in the left and there are also many negative motivations, and the people who are really driven by the ideology of the radical left, the real radicals, almost all of them are driven by resentment and hatred to the extent that Now I'm concerned that we look at both extremes, so let's go back to the idea of ​​ideological and verbal territory.

I said with Bill C-16 that I wouldn't speak the language of the radical leftists because I don't think that language should define the game, but let's say it is, here's the game, the world is a battlefield of groups and They are fighting for power, that's all, that's the game and some of them win and oppress those who don't win. this is how we are going to see the world well now the left says well here are the oppressed the oppressors the patriarchy guy patriarchal guys should be ashamed of themselves and give up some power the rightists the radical rightists look at that and say oh I see, so the game is ethnic identity, it's identity politics, okay, we're white men, we're not going to lose, that's the right-wing version of identity politics, it's like screw you if we're going to divide into groups if we're going to divide into tribes and I'm in my tribe I'm not going to be all guilty and I'm going to lose I'm going to be all cruel and I'm going to win and that's how then you think, well, there are people in the middle they're looking back and forth on which side of the spectrum of identity politics I'm going to fall I want to go with uh I want to go I want to be driven primarily by compassion and I'm going to accept the blame for my historical privilege, so that's a possibility and then I'm the oppressor, I'm the group member. oppressor or I'm going to say no to hell with it, I'm just going to play to win then I'm going to go right, well my feeling is what if we don't play any of those games and the reason why we shouldn't playing them is that the Soviets played the left's game and killed who knows how many? tens of millions of people can't even be counted accurately the estimates range from 20 to 100 million those are pretty big error bars and the Maoists may be 100 million certainly 60 million so okay that didn't work out so well so it's The Nazis like to play ethnic identity politics and racial superiority.

What do we want to play that game? Look what I've been trying to do. Really what I've been trying to do for the last 30 years is to say, look, there are great temptations to play those kinds of games, but that's not the only game in town, it's much better to play individually, it's like acting together. , stand up for yourself in the world, make something of yourself, stay away from ideological oversimplifications, get your house in order, that's rule six. in this book, i have a rule that says: put your house in perfect order before you criticize the world and it is a very dark chapter about the motivations of the columbine high school killers and this other guy named carl panzram who was a rapist serial, arsonist and murderer, and wrote an autobiography and the Columbine children also wrote about why they did what they did, they are resentful to the core, bitter, bitter, resentful, terrible and well, I suggest people stay away from that. resentment resentment and bitterness even though life is hard and there is malevolence in the world it's like yeah, you can, you can tell a story where everyone is a victim because we all die, we all get sick, you know, and things happen to us that are bitter. . and terrible betrayal deceit lies like people hurt us on purpose you know so it's not just the tragedy of life it's also malevolence everyone is a victim you can tell that story the problem is if you tell that story and start to represent it.

To make all of that worse, that's the problem and that's partly why I was drawn to Christian imagery, at least partly because there's an idea in Christianity that you should pick up your damn cross and walk up the hill and that's dramatically so. Right, that's the right answer, it's like you have a huge burden of suffering to bear and a good part of it is going to be unfair, so what are you going to do about it? Accept it willingly and try to transform yourself accordingly, that is the correct answer. answer is the correct answer because the rest is tribalism and we are too technologically powerful to go back to being completely tribal.

What excites me is that I think this is the first time in my life I've seen something like this. a lot of communication about these issues and I think a lot of recognition about the consequences of toxic tribal tribalism, this tribal thinking that everyone seems to be involved in, both on the right and on the right.left, that is, in the United States it is not necessary to go beyond coming and going. from CNN to Fox News to say something is wrong here, they are supposed to be media outlets, they have two completely different narratives and that has nothing to do with what we are talking about with gender politics and leftist socialism and Marxism radical, what what. what you're seeing at colleges, although it's a radical departure from what I've always thought of as colleges being cool, because what I've always thought of as colleges being cool is separating yourself from your parents, challenging belief systems, and engaging in jobs. of brilliant people with whom you can compare everyone. of their findings and their discoveries and sit down and debate them in class and as a kid, when I was in high school, I went to a very good high school at Newton South High School in Newton Massachusetts and one of the things they did was organize a debate between a Moral Majority guy that was a right-wing Christian group that I don't even know if it exists anymore, but this one was 19, I was 14, so 81 and, uh, Barney Frank, who was that congressman, is now one of the first openly gay guys in Congress and you have to see these two people in this auditorium debate their points and this kind of moral majority had this, you know, Ronald Reagan's right-wing point of view, kind of vomit and Barney Franco is a little crazy. was caught in a male prostitution scandal and, but the gay community that's not a big deal and uh, just Barney Frank picked it apart, it was brilliant to see, but it was a real debate, it was fascinating and you got to see a mediocre mind versus a mediocre mind. . great mind and he could see this little thing and I was like, "wow, this is one of the things that has always attracted me about the idea that two people with different points of view can come together in front of a neutral audience and these people can classify." to decipher how these people think and why they think yes, good and bad as it is and riddled with conflict, since that is the alternative is to separate, as you pointed out, into two camps that do not speak, yes and the thing The consequence not talking is that you fight, that's the end of the game because the only way to stop fighting with other people is to negotiate with them and you know one of the things that's also interesting and this is part of the reason why Silicon Valley leaning left is that a good part of your political preference is determined by your biological temperament, it is heavily influenced, so if you are a creative and somewhat messy type then you are likely to be on the liberal left end of the distribution and If you're a non-creative guy who's tidy and especially if you're tidy then you tend to be on the far right of things and so why do those variations exist?

Well, they exist because sometimes your best strategy is to do what other people have done and shut up and just make the algorithm run correctly, the path is already laid out, sure, it works, stay in the damn routine and move on, okay, like this that is the conservative approach and when things are going well it is the right approach, the problem is that sometimes it is not the right approach because something has changed and something new has to emerge and then there is a group of people who adapt to the new and those are the entrepreneurial and creative types. and of course they dominate Silicon Valley because it's very entrepreneurial, it's very entrepreneurial, what would you call it, um geography, and that's why they will lean left, but they have to understand that people have to understand that the left and the right need each other. others liberals and conservatives need each other liberals start companies conservatives run them and the problem with conservatives is that they can only run a company in one direction because they are conservatives they don't think outside the box, but if the company is working and the product line is good and everything is stable, like hiring some curators because they will maximize efficiency and move down that path, but if the path is no longer going in a good direction because something has changed, environments change well. so you have to bring in creative people and then we need each other and the only way we can survive the fact that we are different and the fact that we need each other is to talk continuously, we have talked constantly, it's like well, how much of what we are doing we should preserve versus how much of what we are doing we should transform and the answer is we don't know because the environment keeps changing, so what do we do about it?

We talked oh, I was. In an interview with the CBC Canadian Broadcasting Corporation a couple of days ago and I got chewed out, I tweeted this, this invitation to the keck boys to complete this program that I developed called Future Authoring and it helps people take a stand, yeah, well. , they. they are they are an online group they are they I know what it is it's this fictional politics it's a it's a satire of identity politics essentially we're we're going to be our ethnicity satire highly demonized demonized correctly and with good reason with some individual examples of racism and Nazism and you know, yeah, there's a lot of bad behavior, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's like graffiti, it's like online graffiti, something like that, so um and the keck boys are the ones who often use the peppy memes. , for example, and you know that the left considers pepe as a symbol of hate pepe the frog pepe the frog feels good frog, that's right, that's right, a reprehensible kind of frog, so I sent them a tweet, I told them, keck guys find your 4chan rescue yourselves from The Underworld use the code Pepe for future posts so it's free for a week so you had to figure out what it meant and then I showed you this picture of Michigan J Frog which is the frog from the old Warner Brothers cartoon dancing frog who didn't act. when someone was watching it, the CBC brought that up and said, well, look, isn't it?

Aren't you like you're appealing to the radical right? And I said, well, no, what am I doing, I said, look, these people are attracted to the radical. right, even though they're satirists and juvenile satirists and graffiti guys and you know they're playing in a weird sense, that's exactly what they're doing, they're provoking and my feeling was good, why not? Develop yourself as an individual and get out of the ideological trap, so here is my program that helps you write about your future and it will help you decide who you are as an individual because that is the way to get out of the ideological trap and That is the way, obviously, what is the way out of tribalism first.

The way out of tribalism is not to never join a tribe, but you actually have to join a tribe as you mature, because what happens is first you're a baby and then you have Your parents have to get into a relationship, but then , when you move away from your parents, you have your tribe, you have your group, maybe it's the music you listen to, it's the gang you hang out with, whatever it is that you have to be socialized into the tribe that you have to because of Otherwise you are still a dependent baby, okay, but now you are socialized in the tribe, well, where it ends is like no, the next thing you have to do is differentiate yourself from the tribe and at the same time know how to behave within the tribe, that is the decision. to individualism and that's what I think the West got right is that we discovered that it's like you're more than what you are, you have to be a member of a group because otherwise you're not socialized, you're not good for anyone.

You don't have to be able to play on a team, you have to have loyalty to the team, that's fine, but that's not where you should stop, you need to take the next step and become a fully developed individual and see the problem with being just a group. member is that the group is the problem with conservatism the group is a fixed entity it has its rules and its regulations and if you are a member that is all you are but the group can go very wrong so the group needs individuals to keep it alive and revived, so you have to become an individual in order to revive the group, which is the cult, which is the call in the West to heroism, essentially to a noble way of life, is to develop beyond your group identity so that you can reconfigure the game when that becomes necessary and I think there is a very influential line of developmental psychology, pioneered by Jean Piaget, who established that as a developmental progression: first you are a child, then you are a member of a group, then you are a individual. it's like getting to the individual level, that's the solution, it's a solution to tribalism, but you have to accept the responsibility to do it and this is basically what your future authorship program is about, I mean, it's a wonderful program and along with the rules of this book. and guidelines for life, I think one of the things that a lot of young people are missing is a structure on how to establish who they are in the world, yeah, well that's what's really cool and it's been really remarkable.

What I'm saying is that what I've noticed when I've been speaking publicly for the last year and a half, because there is a hole in our culture where there should be a discussion about maturity and truth and responsibility, no one talks about that, okay. , so now I'll show up and start talking about it, I'll say, look, what should you do with your life? Well, take care of yourself, but take care of yourself in a way that also means you are taking care of yourself at the same time. your family and that, and it also means that you're simultaneously taking care of the community at large, so that's your goal, so orient yourself toward that personal success, but in a way that your success breeds success because if you're going to establish a name for what not to set a really good goal that is good is good for you is good for everyone else yes okay that will give some meaning to your life now adopt make a plan generate a vision that is what the future creation program helps to people to make a Develop a vision of what your life could be like, if it were worth living despite all the suffering.

What would you need to be happy to be alive? You would find that your life has meaning so as not to become bitter. and resentful and cruel and hostile and ideologically adult and murderous and genocidal it's like none of that you think much about how you would have to configure your life so that, despite its suffering and the malevolence that is part of it, you consider it valuable So It's up to you to develop a vision and then put a plan into action. When I talk to people about this and most of my audiences are young men, they're probably around 65 35, more and more women are showing up, but that's what it is.

Right now the halls are completely silent, you can hear a pin drop because no one has said so clearly for 50 years that almost all the meaning you will need to get through the difficult times in your life will be a consequence of embracing responsibility. not of rights and impulsive action impulsive freedom like good rights yes, I have it freedom no problem even freedom to do impulsive things well but that is not where you are going to find the meaning that will keep you sustained through the storms of life that goes To pass, take care of yourself, take care of your intimate partner, take care of your damn family, don't run away, take care of your community, rescue the wisdom of the past, stand firm and be brave despite the facts. that life is tragic and tainted by malevolence it's like that's ancient wisdom, that's what it is and understanding that there is structure and discipline and you know I am in many ways, both of those things that you described before, I'm in Many ways my mind is, I'm creative and I'm always paying attention to things, but I'm also disciplined, yeah right, and it's one of the reasons I think I relate so much to both sides of this issue. .

Yes, because I could, it is also one of the reasons why you are successful. Yes, he could easily have been a staunch right-winger. I am a competition-oriented person. I have been since I was a child. Yes, I grew up competing in martial arts. tournaments, I mean, you have to be a difficult person to do it, you have to understand what discipline is, but before that I was an artist I wanted to be a cartoonist I wanted to make comics that's what I wanted to do I wanted to be an illustrator if it weren't for a bad teacher in high school who completely took me away from art, I probably would have done that for a living when I look at both sides, I see myself on both sides, yeah, yeah, well, the other thing.

What I've been telling young people is that and this is something that I think they could relate to tremendously. I read this line from the New Testament decades ago and could never understand it. It is the line that the meek will inherit the earth and me. I thought there was something wrong with that, that line just doesn't make sense to me, meat just doesn't seem like a moral virtue to me, so I gave a series of Bible lectures this year like 15 of them and that was a strange little

experience

too that we can talk about, but I was looking at these sayings, these maxims and that was one of them, the meek will inherit the earth, but I've been using this site called Bible Hub and it's very interesting, it's very organized.

Very interesting, so you have a Bible line and then you have like three pages of comments on each line and because people have commented on each Bible verse to a degree thatIt's almost unimaginable, so you can watch and see all the interpretations. and all the translations and get an idea of ​​what the genuine meaning might be and the line the meek will inherit the earth meek is not a good translation or the word has moved on in the 300 years or so since it was translated which means that those who have swords and know how to use them but keep them sheathed will inherit the world and that's another thing I've been telling you, yes, I'm not kidding, that's very different, that's a big difference, it's so big and so similar.

Of the things I tell young people well, young women do too, but young men really need to hear this more. I think you should be a monster. You know, because everyone says you should be harmless and virtuous. You shouldn't hurt anyone. You must sheath your competitive instinct. Don't try to win, you know, you don't want to be too aggressive, you don't want to be too assertive, you want to stay in the background and all that's not bad, you should be a monster, an absolute monster, and then. You should learn to control it. Do you know the expression, it's better to be a warrior in a garden than a gardener in a war?

Right, exactly, that's exactly, yes, yes, and that's exactly right? So when I tell young people who think well many of them are competitive they have little kindness, you know, because that's part of being competitive temperamentally it's like there's something wrong with being competitive there's nothing wrong with it there's something wrong with cheating there is something wrong with being a tyrant there is something wrong with winning unfairly all those things are bad but you don't want people to win what is the difference between trying to win and trying hard you want to eradicate trying hard what is the uncomfortable feeling people associate with losing when they have personally

experience

d it, they look at losing because they have been oppressed or hurt, but what they don't understand is that that is the motivation to grow and one of the most beautiful things that I think a young person can get involved in is martial arts because the martial arts The arts teach you that in a way that very few things teach you, especially in jiu jitsu because jiu jitsu is so complex and has so many possibilities that it attracts a lot of really smart people.

If you think about jujitsu, you would think. of brutal individuals who practice this tough martial art, you go to a really good jujitsu school, you see nerds, you see a group of really smart kids who really become obsessed with the possibilities of this physical language, this physical language also teaches you the consequences of not working hard, not being prepared, not understanding the positions, not doing due diligence and doing the work, and it's incredible scaffolding for building your life, but it also teaches you how to lose, yeah, you know, and that's one very important definition of a winner is someone who never lets defeat stop them, yeah, you know, and the idea that a single loss in competition is somehow a defeat is completely crazy, first of all, let's say that you're a hockey player and you're a good player and If you lose the tournament, it's good, so depending on what you've played, you're increasing your skills, it's like there's always a next time and one of the things that I've also been telling people is the idea that life is not like that.

A game is a series of games and the correct ethic is to be the winner of the series of games and part of that means that you all have to learn to be a good loser because you are not going to win every game, but you also have to accept those losses as learning experiences and people who have never lost or are afraid of losing are afraid to learn you are afraid of that feeling that terrible feeling you have when losing is so beneficial that it has helped me a lot In many ways, it is one of the reasons and also one of the reasons why I talk so openly about bombing on stage and do so with other comedians.

I always want to tell people that yes, I'm an established comedian. I have been a comedian for many years. A long time ago, let me tell you about when I was two or five or four years ago. Can we tell you about some horrible moments on stage where everything went wrong so you understand that those things led me to another one? place because I realized I never wanted to feel that feeling again, so I ramped everything up and then I went back to work and went through my notebooks and my recordings and figured out what I was doing wrong. and I tried to make it better, but if it weren't for that horrible sick feeling, it's the same feeling you get when you get tapped in a jiu jitsu class, the same feeling you get when you lose a martial arts tournament or anything else, losing is important, well you could also say let's say you could choose your level, you can choose your level of competition in life to a certain extent, okay, so let's say you choose a level of competition where you're always winning, it's like, Well, all it means is You've chosen the wrong level of competition, yes, because you know that, let's say, you're a chess grandmaster and all you do is play as an amateur and every night you go home and congratulate yourself on the genius you are because you just stomp these people left and right and center it's like you're not a genius you're an asshole right? it's 60 percent of the time, but that way because to be a winner you want to be disciplined, you want to know what you're doing and then you want to be at the edge where your skills are developed and if you're going to be at the edge where will develop your skills, you are in a place where losing, we are losing, is always a possibility because otherwise you will not push yourself beyond your current ability and therefore one of the things that I have outlined in 12 rules for life is a theory of meaning because, as far as I'm concerned, meaning is the antidote to malevolence and suffering, essentially because you want to have a life that is so attractive that I think that even though I am limited and that We are mortal and that life is a tragedy and that there is evil in the world despite everything, this is worth doing and I think there is a technical meaning that it really exists. and that's the meaning you get when you're in a domain where you have some discipline and some skills, so you're exposing your competence and your ability, but at the same time you're striving to develop beyond where you are, that's really it. fascinating and what is that, what is that, what is that doing is expanding your competence and so life is suffering and betrayal in many senses of the world, but you can adopt a way of going through life that is more powerful than tragedy in malevolence.

I agree and I tell a lot of people that what is happening in your life is that you have a series of human reward systems that are in your body encoded in your body in your genetics and that is the reason that human beings survive. until 2018. To be happy you have to feed those things you have to feed them all you have to feed the one who wants to overcome difficult tasks you have to feed the one who wants to solve problems you have to feed the one who wants to be with a loving tribe of people you care about you have to feed the one who wants to procreate you have to feed all these things you have to feed love you have to feed competition you have to feed discipline and that for me is the only way to stay balanced or with myself, with my body and my mind, that It's the only way I've been able to stay balanced and when any of those things get out of control, I get out of control, yeah, well so part of it is so imagine this, imagine that you're this loose collection of all of them. these things that need to be gratified, that need to be fed, is a perfectly reasonable way of looking at it biologically well, so now you have to conjure up a mode of being that satisfies all of those needs simultaneously but then and this is this is a technical explanation of why that the postmodernist insistence that there are an infinite number of explanations is wrong an infinite number of interpretations there are a very finite number of viable interpretations, so the first constraint is exactly what you just said: you have these inner demons, let's say they all need be satisfied, but they need to be satisfied in a very particular way, not only do they need to be satisfied today but they need to be satisfied today in a way that does not interfere with satisfying them next week next month next year and in a decade so why not?

It makes sense that you betray your future self to gratify your present self right, it's a stupid game, okay? You are limited by the need to satisfy yourself but to maintain that satisfaction over time, but then it gets even worse, it is difficult enough, but it is as if there are an infinite number of points of view that extend indefinitely towards the future and they all have to be satisfied simultaneously, but then it's worse because it's not just you who has to figure out how to gratify all those inner demons in a sustainable way in a way that other people not only won't object but will probably help you and That benefits them at the same time. good time, then you think you think well, there are just not that many ways to solve that problem and we know some of them, one of them is reciprocity, you know, if you go out of your way for me, it's up to me to realize that. and try to somehow repay you and like if we're good friends that's what we'll do if we're good brothers that's what we'll do that's what you do with your wife it's a reciprocal agreement and that keeps things flowing properly over time so there is a there is an ethics this and this is the answer to the postmodern enigma it is as if life has no meaning it is all just nihilistic is nihilism the correct answer or maybe you know what you would do Call identification with an ideology as a position contrary to nihilism, so nihilism is wrong, life has meaning, that's what 12 rules for life are about, the first meaning of life is suffering and malevolence, there are indisputable realities, well, well What's after that?

Well, there is a nobleman. way of being that allows you to exist adequately in spite of that and also not make things worse so that your life can be meaningful enough that you can face chaos voluntarily establish and revive order restrict malevolence that is a good doctrine of three parts for life. things to do and that's what I've been talking to the audiences I've been seeing for the last year is how to act together stand up straight that's rule one stand up straight with your shoulders back there's a vulnerable position true because you are open but it is a powerful position because it means you are brave enough to take what is coming and it is not that what is coming is not dangerous, it is dangerous, but the best thing you can do is be dancing on your feet and ready.

To do this, pay attention and stay awake and treat yourself properly, that's the second rule is to figure out how to treat yourself as if you were someone worth coming to help to separate yourself in a moment and say "it's okay, I'm going to prepare it." my life to be good for me and good for other people too, that is a corollary of that, so the book is about the meanings of life, the negative meanings that suffer malevolence, those are indisputable realities and then a being motif that integrates the kind of thing that you were talking about these underlying needs with everyone else and you like to do it voluntarily, it's a call to responsibility and meaning and, in fact, I think that's not what has been so exciting for me over the last three decades in researching these things.

I believe that there is a genuine human ethic, it is not arbitrary, it has to do with reciprocity, for example, it has to do with honesty, that is another thing, it is that you tell the truth because your life turns out better if you tell the truth and so does everyone. What's more, in this series From Bible lectures that I did, I looked at the first chapter of Genesis and there's a theory in there, it's a really interesting theory and the theory is that there are three parts to being, there is chaos and potential, and that would be like the potential that you should have. living up to it because everyone says well you should live up to your potential it's like what the hell is it you can't measure it or touch it or taste it feel it it's this hypothetical thing that everyone thinks is real it's like it's the future what is it ? the future well, it's not here yet, you can't measure it, which makes you think it's real, well, we act as if it were real and that seems to work, there is potential, that is chaos, chaotic potential, then there is order and that It is the structure you need to face chaos and you would be born with it biologically and then there is your ability to invoke the potential new order, that is what you do with your speech and that is what happens in the first chapter. of genesis is that god uses the order of god, let's say he uses the power of truthful speech, which is the logos, to transform potential into order and in the image of that people are made, so there is this theory, it is a theory lovely thing that comes right at the beginning of the bible that says that if you tell the truth you transform the potential of being into a habitable reality that's how it works, sosay well, how do you want?

How can you make the world better? Tell the truth because you create the world as a The consequence of telling the truth will be a good world and I believe that is true. I think it's true metaphorically. I think it's true theologically. And I think it's true on a practical and scientific level. I think it's true on all of those levels simultaneously. stateIt's ridiculously exciting to look at this notion and one of the things you said that I think really resonates is that there isn't one voice advocating for accountability and talking about how important it is and I think it's an inherent principle that most people are conscious and it makes them feel good to hear it like it resonates, you feel it when you say this, clean your room, you know, put your house in order, people like, yeah, yeah, how is that possible?

I'm not hearing this right, right, I'm not hearing this right, it's so funny because one of the things that psychologists have done over the last 20 years, especially social psychologists, is push this idea of ​​self-esteem, you should feel good about yourself. and I think why you would tell someone 20 that it's like you should feel good about who you are it's like no, you shouldn't why you should feel good about who you are it's like you should feel good about who you could be that's much better because you have 60 years to become who you want, wait a minute, what are your achievements or are you this individual who is going through this journey?

I mean, I don't think there's anything wrong with feeling good about who you are for so long since it's tempered by an understanding of potential and what you've accomplished versus what you can accomplish well, I think, but having confidence is a Much of it is, and I'm not saying people shouldn't be confident, but we often take young people who say they're 16 to 22 and they don't really feel that good about who they are, because their life is chaotic. and in disarray and they don't know where they're going and they don't know what's the way up? There could also be bad bullying from parents, which could lead to a lot of abuse and I think that's one of the reasons why this idea of ​​being happy for yourself because of who you're right, feeling good about who you are resonates with people. .

You're right, but the thing is, it has to be said precisely, it's like, it's like you should treat yourself as if you're valuable, especially in potential, but you should focus on who you should become, especially if you're young. and then let's say you're miserable and nihilistic and chaotic and depressed and all that stuff now and you have your reasons, you know, terrible parental abuse, all that stuff it's like, well, you should feel good about yourself, it's like no, no. , no, no, it's not. The right message is that you have to understand how much potential there is within you to clarify that and then you have to do everything you can to manifest it in the world and that will clarify it and that is better than self-esteem.

Like you're in a horrible, twisted position, okay, there's a lot of suffering and pain associated with that, yeah, you can't just feel good about it because it's not good, but you can do something about it, you really can do something. about that and I think all the evidence suggests that that's the case, yeah, so I tell young people, look, no matter how bad your situation is, I'm not going to pretend that it's okay, it's not okay, it's tragic and It's tinged with malevolence and some of the people really get hurt by malevolent people like you know, terribly hurt sometimes they never recover it's really horrible but there's more to you than you think and if you get up and face it with a positive attitude, With a noble vision, with discipline and intention, you can go much further than you imagine to overcome it and that is the principle on which you should base your behavior and I think that one of the really good things about being a clinical psychologist is that you don't It's just about conjecture as one of the things we know two things in clinical psychology one is that truthful conversations redeem people because if you go to a clinical psychologist whose value is resolved you have a truthful conversation the conversation is fine this is what is wrong in my life and this is what caused it, maybe you know It takes a year to have that conversation and both participants are doing their best to put it out properly.

Here's how it could be fixed. This is how a beneficial future could be. So it's a completely honest conversation if it works well and all that. What happens in the conversation is that the two people involved are trying to make things better, that's the goal, let's see if we can have a conversation that makes things better, then we know it works, it makes things better and then another thing we know is Well, let's say there are a lot of things that scare you that are getting in your way, so you have a vision of who you want to be, maybe you have to know that you want to be successful in your career, so you have to learn. speaking in front of a group is fine, well you're afraid of that, no wonder you don't want to be humiliated, so that's fine, so what do we do about it?

Well, maybe first we'll have you speak in front of a group. person and then three people you know for five minutes and then for 10 minutes, like a gradual exposure to what you fear. Voluntary gradual exposure to what you fear is healing and that's true, it works, the documentation is in that's how people learn. So to tell people that if you face the world honestly, if you tell the truth and bravely expose yourself to those things that you fear, your life will improve and so will the lives of the people around you. As far as I'm concerned, that's the closest thing to an undeniable fact that we have and it also fits very well with the underlying archetypal stories, the heroic stories, it's like going out, finding the dragon, facing it, it's a dragon, it could eat you, it is dangerous. but it's worse to cower at home and wait for it to come and eat you, go out, confront it, get the gold, share it with the community, it's like, yeah, it's the oldest story of humanity, I think one of the factors and resistance to these ideas. of discipline and taking responsibility for yourself and a lot of the things that you've been saying regarding you know, all the things that we discussed earlier is that people recognize that they're not doing that in their own lives and they get they're upset. and instead of looking internally they try to attack what's bothering them, they attack their message, they attack the philosophy behind it instead of looking internally and objectively and having some kind of introspective point of view to go to, okay, I'm reacting to this because this resonates like I'm missing out on this aspect of my life is this guy is this diminishing me or is this guy pointing out something that I can benefit from very few people are willing to do that very few people are willing to take that criticism? time to observe your own behavior and observe your own thought process and ask yourself if the real adverse reaction you have to this person's message is because you know you are wrong, yes, well, no, well, there are a couple of reasons for it.

It's good, which makes you think that you're someone we should listen to, it's pretty fair, you know, so you have to push yourself a lot to see if that's true and then the next thing is, well, it's painful to understand how. Much of what you're doing is not productive, so I'll give you an example. I've done this a couple of times with classrooms full of students, usually when I give a professional development lecture I say: how much time do you have? waste, so I have the class vote on how many of you waste uh 10 hours a day, it's like 10 percent of the kids raise their hands and it's interesting because I don't define what constitutes waste, I just ask the question so that they are Diagnosing right, I'm not saying you're wasting 10 hours a day, I'm just asking, it's like, given your own attitude, how much time are you wasting 10 hours a day?

It's like 10 of the people raise their hands. When you get to six hours a day, eighty percent of the people raise their hands and then we do arithmetic, it's because I like doing arithmetic with people, people hate arithmetic, but I like doing it, okay, six hours a day, that's 42. hours a week, so let's call that a work week 40 hours a week, so that's a work week, let's say how much your time is worth to your college student, it's certainly worth minimum wage because obviously, but it's worth a lot more than that because if you spend one productive hour when you're 20 you get the benefits of that hour for the rest of your life, so there's the compounding effect of time spent when you're young, so I say well , let's say your time is worth $50 an hour, which I believe.

It's an understatement, but whatever, let's call it 50. We call it 25, but we'll call it 50. That's two thousand dollars a week that you're wasting, that's a hundred thousand dollars a year, it's like, how much better would your life be if you didn't? we waste a hundred thousand dollars a year it's like what's that for forty years four million dollars it's like you're rich you don't even know it stop wasting time by your own definition it's like people shake their heads like they never Thinking about it like that way it's like, think about it that way, don't waste your damn life and then you think why would people resist that message.

It's like, well, you really want to wake up and realize that you're wasting half of it. your life and you know when people commit that kind of waste, they actually hate it, you know, and I've had a lot of people come into my clinical practice who were chronic procrastinators, you know, and that's why they're watching YouTube videos. , they say, but not those. that's good for them, although sometimes they do it, but they just surf in that very thoughtless way that you do when you're not paying attention and you're trying to kill time and people who do that feel bad, they get depressed, they feel anxious, can't escape it, feel a little addicted, what are they doing with social media now?

It's a big problem among young children, but there is a feeling of internal rot and corruption that accompanies it. Yes well you're wasting your life it's like that it's painful it's painful to recognize that so it's painful to think oh my God look how undisciplined I am I don't know anything I can't use a schedule I can't I can't I don't stick to a calendar. I don't have goals. I don't know anything about the world. And maybe there's a part of me that's bitter because I don't have it all yet and I'd like to just tell him.

Screw this, that's the shadow recognition of the union, it's like that's what makes you cruel and untrustworthy. All that, nobody wants to see that and it's not surprising, but well, the alternative is worse, so the problem is that you say just say stop wasting your life I think that's not enough I think this is one of the reasons why a book like this is as important as the idea of ​​discipline in most people's eyes it's like you're not a disciplined person it's uncomfortable it's going to be painful it's frustrating you have to force yourself to do these things it's a muscle it's a and it's a muscle that has to be developed these patterns have to be developed in your own mind incrementally yeah yeah well with uh then You're right, just telling people not to waste their lives is not enough and this is another reason why which I have enjoyed so much being a clinical psychologist because clinical psychologists don't stick to high-level abstractions, especially the behaviors they actually have. practical, it's like okay, you want to get your act together, it's like, well, what if we say you're not studying well and then we do a real analysis of how much you're studying?

You say, well, I go to the library four hours a day. day it's like yeah, yeah, okay, how long do you really study in the library? Well, you know, I waste my time, I have to travel there. I look at my phone, okay, well, what 15 minutes, half an hour? How much is real studying? Well maybe. We figure it's 15 minutes, so okay, so what you're going to do for a week is study for half an hour, that's it, you can't go to the library for four hours, you have to sit down. We'll figure out a time at 10 in the morning, whatever we put in your schedule, try to study for half an hour no more and then come back and we'll talk about how well it worked and people come.

They come back and say well, you know, I made it four days and one day I went and one day I couldn't make it at all, okay, that's better instead of 75 minutes of studying, you know, 15 minutes a day for seven days, right? that? is that 15 70 105 minutes you have achieved about 210 minutes so you have already produced a 50 percent improvement in your clumsy and horrible way you got a 50 percent improvement in a week it's like that's deadly it's like that in the future program of creation What we ask people to do is think about your life in six dimensions.

What do you want for yourself? So the goal is this: you are going to take care of yourself, you are going to have a life in three years that justifies your suffering. that's the goal so you can invent the damn life but you have to think about what you would be satisfied with so you're not all bitter and resentful it's like okay what do you want from your family what do you want from your friends how are they going to educate yourself what do you want for your career how are you going todo it?Use your time outside of work, how are you going to handle drugs, alcohol and other temptations like that?

How are you going to stay mentally and physically healthy? These are open questions and you can answer them. The idea is that you can have whatever you want. but you have to figure out what it is, it has to be realistic and you have to figure out what it is, okay, so now develop a vision of what your life will be like in three to five years, so write it down and then we'll do it. something else that's okay um your bad habits and your resentment and your bitterness and all that your procrastination gets completely out of control and you get off and you're in your own personal version of hell in three to five years, what does that look like?

Well, everyone knows it's like everyone can look to the future and think well, if I continue down this dark path, this is where I'll end up. So you have a little hell to run from and you have a little outline of heaven to run towards and then you're motivated because sometimes you know you're just hoping. I would like something good to happen. It's like yeah, but you know I'd like to drink half a bottle. of whiskey tonight is also like that, what's going to be good? Just being hopeful about the future may not be enough, but then you think, oh, I see there's that hellish little thing that I described that's waiting for me and maybe I'm afraid to take the next step forward because it's demanding and challenging, it's like , I'm afraid of that, but I'm much more afraid of where I could end up if I don't get my act together and people should, that's why there are conceptions of hell in so many religions it's like hell is a real place if it's eternal that It's a completely different question if it's waiting for you in the afterlife that's a completely different question but if you've never met anyone in hell you haven't lived in a long time since you've had your eyes open yes, it's undeniable that feeling of total misery is undeniable yes, especially when it's compounded by the fact that you know you did it to yourself that's the real fun that's the really fun part is like I'm having a good time and I richly deserve it, Jesus, that It's tough, man, this is another concept that has no voice right now, this is another, I mean, this is a giant part of being a human being and instead of identity politics. and right versus left, I think these right versus left battles often what they are is simply the battlefield for conflicts in your own mind, it's better to have the conflict in yourself, that's another thing I really learned well, not just from the new testament but From that, you know the idea is that there is evil in the world of all kinds and part of it is the evil in other people and part of it is the evil in your brother's heart, but the part that you can really do. something about it is the malevolence in your own heart, you can actually do something about it and that is much more useful than you think, because if you can face it in yourself, then you start to understand it and that also makes you strong enough to identify it . and fight against it when you see it in the outside world and also you don't do any harm, it's like there are a lot of people all over the world going out and doing reprehensible things, you could say, well, you should go out and protest against them like then sometimes you should but most of the time you should think where am I below the ideal?

My own ideal does not have to be one that someone puts for you. Where am I less than what I should be? where am I bitter? where I am? make the world the worst place it has to be like if you ask yourself those questions you will be in for a big shock say well what would happen if you stopped doing that? That's what 12 rules for life are about. It's like stopping saying things that. make yourself weak stop telling lies that you know are lies stop doing things that you know are useless and counterproductive aim high take some responsibility and then see what the hell happens it's like it works and that's what i hope people do Yeah, I hope that people also do the same and I think that if more people live their lives this way, I think we will have less differences in terms of our ideologies and more we will understand that people have different ways.

To see things and the different ways of living and this struggle between people, this internal struggle that manifests itself in this struggle between ideologies, I think you are much more inclined to let other people live their lives if you live your life in a way of satisfactory way, that's exactly it, is that I have a chapter in there about raising children that says "I don't like your children, don't let your children do anything that makes you dislike them," well, that's based on the observation that you are a total monster and it would be better for your children if they didn't get on your bad side and liked you again because I am a clinical psychologist.

I keep saying monster, why do you use that term? Because I have observed families like me. I've seen families where it's like each family member has their hands around the neck of the family member who is close to them and they squeeze them, but only enough to strangle them in 20 years, but you're not always wearing. it's a pejorative you you've used it too you should become a monster you should be a monster yes but that's that you shouldn't be it shouldn't be accidental that's the question what do you mean by monster so in a positive sense like you should be a monster oh that's easy a positive monster is someone who says no and means it because when you say no what you mean is that there is nothing you can do to me that will make me agree to do this why is that a monster because you have to be one because no one will take you seriously, otherwise no one will take you seriously, it doesn't mean that if you keep pushing this something will happen to you that you don't like, that's what it doesn't mean that you don't have any strength of character unless you can fight, ya You know, and being able to say no to something is being able to fight, and you can't do that if they can push you around.

They'll just argue you into submission or feel guilty because you're causing conflict or something, but isn't there confusion in using those terms as positive and negative? Maybe there is another word instead of monsters, well there is. the potential that exists is the potential for confusion, what you say right is that something that can be because I think that monster is something horrible, I don't consider it as a wall, as someone who is just rock solid in their belief system and He stands out in his understanding when you fight someone who is formidable, say what you think of the person you are fighting, how you would characterize them, they mean they have a monstrous side because they can, they can, they can. they can exert substantial physical force to influence the situation and be willing to do so so that they are not naive and harmless in any sense, they have a well-developed capacity for chaos, they believe it is that monstrous.

Well, I would say yes, I would say fierce, fierce, well let's go with it, yeah, because someone who is fierce and formidable is not necessarily a monster, you know, I just think of a monster as a horrible person who has done horrible things. , and you know. Okay, but fair, so let's get back to the situation with your kids. Well, you definitely don't want your children to act in a way that awakens your inner monster. Well, let's put it that way. Then you need it. You need to organize your family with some discipline and some structure so that you can do what you want, which is back to back to the point you mentioned earlier, so that you are happy to have your children around. that you won't get back at them and that's why you want to design your life in a way that gives you what you need to not be bitter and work for your best interests and the interests of everyone else. lovely and I think it's achievable, you know, because the book is very dark and I'm a very dark guy in some ways because I've watched the terrible things that people do to each other, that's the fascinating way to look at it, do you think ? you're dark because I'm not, oh, that's great of you, that's dark, oh, that's good, I mean, you seem like a very friendly guy, I think you're very serious and especially about these complicated issues and I think that's one of the reasons you've generated this tidal wave in online discourse and people discussing these very tumultuous times we live in, is because you're a guy who extrapolated your type, looked at that Bill C-16 and looked. to Marxism and see, do you know where this is going? and you were the guy who had the courage to say murderer and people like what he's talking about, that doesn't make any sense and you had to explain it and explain it and when you do, you realize why this is so important to you .

Yeah, well, the tribalism issue you were discussing earlier doesn't seem to be that debatable. Would you say that if we degenerate into tribalism the likelihood of bloodshed increases enormously? Well, that always happens when people fall into tribalism, so when I point out a particular type of tribalism, I guess the darkness is that you know I'm very aware of the terrible things that people can not only do to each other. but they do each other all the time, I mean what's about forty percent for the divorce rate, right, they have to go, they have to go through some ugliness to get to the divorce.

Canadians are nicer than Americans, maybe you have forty percent. maybe maybe I think we're gonna say yeah, I mean, I think I actually think it's 50 here somewhere around the line, but yeah, yeah, you have to go through a lot of things, yeah, that's also very ugly, you know, and Chris Rock joked about that. he's like 50 people uh they get divorced he comes and goes but those are just the people who had the courage to leave he leaves how many cowards just stay and suffer and meanwhile he ended up getting divorced a few years later and a horrible divorce, so yeah. true story yes, yes, yes, but it's a good point, yes, I think we need more people who are actualized human beings, more people who understand themselves, more people who have gone through adversity both in real life and in the personal in terms of their understanding of their own growth of their own potential and their own understanding of how they have managed their life, their mind, their actions and the more we have people who have personal sovereignty, the better we can have these conversations.

That's the hope, you know, one of the things I've been suggesting to people is to choose something difficult to do. I read this funny little paragraph by Kierkegaard that was written around 1840 and he was thinking about his role as a student and writer and he was a student and writer forever, you know, he never really had a career outside of that and he said he wasn't one of those people who was capable of inventing something wonderful to make life easier for everyone, as so many people were. Do you know that during the industrial revolution he said he?

Well, maybe I'm one of those people whose benefit to society will be that I will make things harder for everyone because there will come a time when what people don't want, they don't want ease. they want difficulty instead and I think well, that's what people want, that's what they want. You think well, I want an easy and happy life. It's like no, that's not actually what you want. I think what people want are things that are difficult. you can overcome yes, of course, that's right, they want an optimal challenge, well, there's a completely different thing when you overcome something, when you do something difficult, whether, I mean, I've never written a book, but I guess when you write a book, when you finish.

In writing that book there is a great sense of accomplishment because it is very difficult to achieve that feeling of accomplishment for me. It's like when I put together a comedy special or when I know anything that's difficult. There is a feeling that I did it. Yes, yes, good. One of the mysteries is why that feeling exists. You know it's genuine, it's not something trivial, it's saying that I did something difficult and it was worth it. Basically, what you're telling yourself is that there was a lot of suffering associated with that. with the general suffering of life, but it turned out to be worth it, that's what you want, it's like you want that feeling that you're involved in something worthwhile and I say well, I try, I'm not a casual optimist about this kind of thing, I mean, one of the things I do in 12 Rules for Life is lay out the rationale behind people like the Columbine High School killers because I understand that rationale, I've studied it for a long time, I know. why they did what they did and they have a powerful argument but it's wrong but you don't do it there's no point in showing how it's wrong before showing it's a powerful argument as if life is suffering there's a lot of malevolence no wonder people want to to stop the being itself they want to get revenge on it it's not surprising it's the wrong way to do it the right way it's similar to the kind of thing you were observing right? you take on a difficult task that pushes you beyond where you already are and you achieve it and You have the feeling that yes, it was worth it, that's what you want, you want to live in that place where things are worth it, that's paradise on earth. that's what it is and it's not a happy little place where you know someone is giving you peeled grapes that's notMay the world be better or worse and if you want the best is heaven and the worst is hell.

We know how to turn the world into hell. We have done it several times during much of the 20th century. I looked at all of that and thought, "Okay, I'd rather the world didn't degenerate into hell and I understand why people want it to degenerate into hell they're angry they're angry because they suffer they suffer unjustly and they suffer because people hurt them and that's why." They think this is a bad game. I'm not going to help make things better. I'm going to make them worse. Even that's what the Columbine kids knew. That's what all the mass shooters say. .I hate it.

They're going to do it, do it behind the game, they just want to turn the table, yes, worse than that, they want to destroy the game, yes, and they want to do it with as much malice as possible just to get revenge and I understand it, but I decided a long time ago that I would rather not play that game. I think it's possible that we can make the world better. I really believe that too. So I'm trying to tell people. For you there is more potential than you think there is more than enough potential for everyone there is definitely suffering and malevolence in the world we could fix it you have nothing better to do that is a very important point that there is more potential for everyone more than the People understand, yes, we are not going to run out of potential, no, no, and this idea of ​​famine thinking is one of the reasons why people get upset about other people's success, they think that somehow the Someone else's success takes something away from them. of them, yes, yes, well, there is and it is, the other thing too is that I have realized that people actually act as if what they face in the world is potential.

It's so funny because any potential you have can't be measured materially, but if you tell someone that, "You're not living up to your potential, they say, yeah, well, I know what that potential is that you're not living up to." and then when you say, well, there's potential in front of you, you know you can get out of the way." On the street you go right or left or forward as if you are facing something that is not fully formed and you can decide how it is going to be formed and you can improve it, so my question is as if the world is a place difficult.

There's no doubt it's a tough place, but my question is what would happen if we stopped making it worse. How good could it be if we stopped making it worse? I don't know if there's an upper limit for that, maybe there could be. we could do it really very very good why not and we have nothing better to do than that's like aiming for the sky start at home aim for the sky tell the truth let's see what the hell happens you know how it is clearly the case in the facts of the matter, in In 20 years there should not be a single person in the world who would go hungry, in 20 years we could get rid of the five biggest diseases that currently plague the planet, we could fix things and God.

It only knows what things could be like this or we could let everything degenerate into hell, so when each of us makes that decision with each decision, that's the other thing I've understood, so choose: do you want hell or do you want hell? darling. If you choose hell, remember that you knew what you were doing when you chose it, but no one chose it, so yes, I let it go, yes, but they do it because they are blind. You know, you know, when you do it, you go, ah, well. I know I let it go so you and then you don't think about it it's like you can think about it you could think about it you could know but you don't let yourself know it's none of this all the pressure and the scandal every three weeks is this, this weighs on you , it's hard, how do you feel when when I feel stressed it's like, it's like it's simultaneously the worst and the best thing that could happen?

Well, financially it has been a boom, right, yes, they are scenarios too. Oh well, I think so, I mean what I have. I shouldn't say this, but I'm going to because it's so fucking funny I can't help it. Say it, I figured out how to monetize social justice warriors, that's what it is, I know it's so funny I can't believe it any other way, every time I think that, well, it's just one of the surreal circumstances that characterize my life. it's like I'm driving social justice activists in Canada crazy because if they let me speak then I can speak and then more people will support me on patreon.

It's like that's annoying. It's as if the damn capitalists make more money with this ideological war. Alright. well, we're going to protest, so they protest for me and then that goes up on youtube and then my user account goes up a lot, so it's like they don't know what to do and one of the things they keep accusing me of, yeah, they keep accusing me I like to haul the loot and I think well look here's the thing guys, I give away everything I do online for free, it's free and people are giving me money, they just send it to me, I'm not twisting that.

I didn't even ask him, well I guess that's not exactly correct because I set up the Patreon account, but that's more complicated than it seems, a lot of it was curiosity and I thought I could increase the production quality of my videos on line. also the potential of being removed from the universe, well, yes, well, that and that was really potential, oh, yes, oh, and yes, people wanted that, yes, they haven't stopped wanting that yes in October, when The Lindsay Shepherd scandal broke out and it looked so bad for left-wing ideologues like 200 at the University of Toronto, a community member signed a petition to get me fired again and I was a little upset about it and that's how it has been my life, so my son came that day and I said Jesus Julian, you know what, like 200 people from the faculty at the University of Toronto petitioned the faculty association and then sent a petition to the administration to fire me. .

It was the teachers association, that's my union. I didn't even contact him and Julian said, "Don't worry dad, it was only 200 people and I thought this is my life. It's like a day when 200 people sign a petition to get me fired as a teacher. My son can come." . to come in and say well that's not so bad, it's like it's only two hundred people, that's how the scale is, yeah that's right, it's so surreal because you could say that online and look at what's happening and then the support It would be overwhelming on whose part. you know how many people well the administration times of that yes absolutely fine in the administration of the university of toronto like that they didn't they didn't take it seriously at all the call to have me removed didn't cause any It doesn't even cause a ripple now who are these 200 people what was their motivation oh well they're hard to say what their motivation is they're very glad they read the transcript or listened to those recordings yeah how could they be against you based on that? oh, because they think the people who ran the inquisition were right, well that's crazy, oh yeah, but look, look, I mean, previously like 20 members of the pimlots and rambuchana faculty who was communications at wilford laurier they wrote a letter supporting them so that's why it's not an isolated incident it's like no no they thought what they were doing was right it's mass hysteria yeah well there's an element of that that's for sure and certainly there is it again.

I hate to mention this term again, but this toxic tribalism thing. It's like they are supporting their own and understand that their own ideologies have been completely connected to the same type of group. They think that goes against Lindsay Shepard at that meeting, oh yeah, when they tried to paint her as far-right. and she certainly isn't, of course, no, and neither are you, I mean, this whole thing is ridiculous, you're not alt-right, you're not neo-Nazi, you're not. I've read a lot of crazy stuff about you and knowing you personally seeing these things I'm like that this is a fascinating time that's for sure that's for sure yeah and it's been good it's been incredibly good I'm what would I say incredibly stressful is the best way to describe it is surreal yeah , it's like I've come out of myself.

I can't, I can't put this in a box. I don't know what to do with it. I don't know what to make of the Channel 4 interview. You know? it's like what the hell is it really it's crazy well it's it's this these conversations are so limited by what you were saying before that they're trying to fit in this five minute sound bite and that's what television has become, yeah it's a dying medium. yeah, it doesn't make any sense, it doesn't make any sense to intersperse these commercials every 15 minutes or whatever they do, none of that makes any sense, it's an archaic way of communicating ideas, yeah, well, so I guess that's part of this.

It's also that I happened to catch a technological wave, well, like you did, you know? Yeah, I mean, they're, TV doesn't offer anything on YouTube, nothing, yeah, well, exactly, yeah, and there's no space requirements on YouTube, so you don't have to. Do this, turn the complex event into a short sound bite and entertain everyone properly, and it turns out that there is also a huge audience online for real content like a genuine conversation because it's one of the things that happened between you and me when I came . down here is we've actually had a conversation, we're trying to figure things out, you know, we have our points of view and everything, but basically we're and I describe this and there's a chapter in 12 rules for life called uh assuming that the person The person you're talking to may know something that you don't know, which is like the formula for good conversations, like there's a lot of things I don't understand about the world, I mean, it's a big book, things I don't understand. .

The world, right, is a very thick book and I can come in here and talk to you about what's going on and hopefully we'll both emerge with a better understanding. We're not the same people we were when we came in and that's a good thing. then we have those conversations online and people can participate in that and I'm trying to do that in my conferences as well like when I did this Bible series because that was another thing that was very strange. Joe was like, imagine I got into like a venture capital organization uh um I said, look, I want you guys to fund me.

I'm going to give 15 lectures on the old testament and I'm going to try to attract young men. I'm going to rent a theater like them. He laughed at me, look, can you imagine anything less salable than that? But I did it, I went ahead, I rented the theater and then I went through these stories and I learned a lot because I knew these early stories in Genesis. Until the flood, I knew them pretty well, I knew I understood what they meant, but then all the stories from Abraham onwards I had read but I hadn't done a detailed, in-depth analysis, so I was learning a lot. walk through those stories and they had a big impact man so I'm going to do Exodus soon because I want to do that but it's just another example of how surreal things have become but also the use of Utility of a good conversation because, like when I'm on the podium, let's say giving a lecture, I'm not exactly giving a lecture, I'm trying to discover something and share that process with the audience, which is very different from what's happening in universities that's scaring everyone is what's going on is this indoctrination in this group yeah it's like this is the right thing to do memorize it well it's like my lectures are more like I don't know what's right here are some things that I know and they seem to be working and this is how I use those tools to dig deeper into this story and this is what it could mean and this is what I got from it and here are some universal truths about what human beings seem to be like and then I try to explore what it's like Well, should we believe this?

Should we like it when Abraham in the Abrahamic story, for example, I mean, Abraham is an older man and he's basically lived in his mother's basement? That's really the beginning of the story. He receives a call to adventure. You know, God says to get it. Get away from your family and your relatives, go out into the world, it's the call to adventure, you think it's okay, that's a heroic motive, but then Abraham goes out and the first thing he finds is tyranny and hunger and then a group of guys who They want to steal your wife, so it's been fun to take apart those stories and see why they are fundamental and They are not mere ignorance, whatever ignorant superstitions are not the right category, how has this changed your classrooms?

Well, I haven't taught again since all this happened because when did you stop teaching? Well, oh no, I guess that's not true. That's not true, I taught from January to May 2016. Well the first way it changed was I was so shocked when I went to teach last January and I was really sick like I was really sick this year I had like last January Jesus was just depressing I wouldn't worship him I wish my worst enemy had had three weeks where I couldn't sleep a wink try to make that really entertaining a long day of misery that lasts three weeks What kind of illness?

It seems like an autoimmune disorder. Do you think this is due to stress? No, no, you don't think it's connected at all. Yes, I think it probablymeaning I thought, well, what's the situation? This is the cold war, we have divided ourselves into two armed tribal camps and we have decided that resolving the difference between us is worth the risk. in itself we could we could drive everything to extinction we're willing to take that risk it's like what the hell is going on so I wanted to know two things that were really driving cold war tribalism, including the generation of that vast nuclear arsenal because that made me It seemed like madness taken to the ultimate pinnacle, so I wanted to know that and I wanted to know if, having figured out why that is happening, what could be done about it to make it stop and at the same time I was also studying what had happened at Auschwitz and with the Nazis and all that, so it was a very serious problem and I really wanted to have the answer.

I actually wanted the answer. I didn't want to write an interesting book about it. It wasn't even that I wanted to write a book exactly, it was just that writing a book was the best way to solve the problem because writing a book is so rigorous, you know, because you think, but you can only remember so much. You have to write it down because then you can remember a lot more things, you can write and then the next day you can go back and think. Okay, I'm going to dismantle that damn argument. I'm going to see if there's anything about him that's weak. and then, and I think I figured it out, I think I figured it out, and then when it was okay, I started lecturing about it and the lectures were always incredibly well regarded as the people that the kids in the classes would always write about. for the assessments at the end of the year, eighty percent of them would say and this happened for 20 years to say this class changed everything in the way I see the world it's like yeah, that's what happened to me too and I wrote that book. like i didn't think the same way at all when i finished i started to understand what these old stories meant it was shocking i never recovered from it wow listen your time is up thank you always 12 rules for life an antidote to chaos jordan

peterson

i did a discount for your viewers again for the future authorship program okay so what do they have to do

rogan

just use

rogan

and how do they get to the selfauthoring.com website yeah yeah and I'll send it to you. a link for that thank you very much and also thank you for everything uh you really were the portal to this strange world that I'm in and people say that all the time they come and say look I heard about you on joe rogan it's like and like I've been told thousands of people it has been so good it is your fault it has been an honor I appreciate it sir thank you you bet