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Joe Rogan Experience #1139 - Jordan Peterson

May 31, 2021
five four three two one hello Jordan Peterson hello mr. Rogan Hello, very stylish today, thank you sir, if this is a new look for you, you have been rocking a lot of these gigantic, what are those things called? Those concerts that you are doing, what are they with speeches? Well, lectures, discussions like me. think of them as yes, yes, I'm arguing. I mean, you might think it's a little perverse to argue with an audience of three thousand people, but it's not because if you pay attention to the audience, they are constantly there and the individuals in the audience.
joe rogan experience 1139   jordan peterson
We are constantly giving feedback, so as far as I'm concerned, it's a discussion, feedback in the form of applause, laughter, sometimes they also shout things or shuffle, yeah, well, really what you want if you're on the right track, If you are where you should be. then there's total silence and everyone is focused and listening, so if that doesn't happen, I mean you know there might be laughter or that kind of thing, but in general, you don't want to hear audience noise, so if you do . re onner if you're following a complicated topic and you're paying attention and I'm always looking at individual people in the audience, you know when the first few rows because that's all I can see because of the lights I'm trying to make sure everyone is at the same time. day with the talk and you know there are people who make gestures with their faces and make gestures with their eyes and shake their heads and nod their heads and there are a lot of things to learn and if you are not talking with notes, you can really pay attention to the audience and then you know if you're in the dialogue and that's where everyone wants to be.
joe rogan experience 1139   jordan peterson

More Interesting Facts About,

joe rogan experience 1139 jordan peterson...

Yeah, it's kind of interesting what you're doing because you have

experience

doing it at conferences and colleges and universities, but now it's the general public and people just pay to see it and you fill these huge giant theaters. I mean, I've seen some of the places where you guys are doing it. You and Sam just finished doing one in Vancouver and huge places. Antutu, that's right. Yes, consecutively and yes, it was about five hours of intense discussion over two days and you know, we were supposed to talk for an hour each night and then go to Q&A, but we asked the audience, Brett Weinstein, who was moderating, to ask the audience if they wanted to go to QA or continue the discussion and you know the response from the crowd definitely continued the discussion, so we ended up talking for about two and a half hours each night and again the audience was present. the trip mm-hmm you know and as far as I'm concerned they were good discussions, you know it was marketed as a kind of takedown in a sense between Harris and Peterson, right, but the discussion itself was an attempt on the part of Sam and for my part. to expand our thinking on the topic and to bring everyone along on the journey that you know, so to speak, yeah, well, you guys had two podcasts that you did over the phone, so these were the first meetings that you had in person, yeah .
joe rogan experience 1139   jordan peterson
It was the first time I met Sam, he said the first time you two had was marred by this argument about what the truth is, yeah, and it was a Lex, a strange guy, you guys got stuck, you guys got caught in that first. conversation, but I felt like the second one was a lot better, yeah, you mean, they both acknowledged that some mistakes were made in the first podcast, yeah, we sorted out a definition and yeah, we let it slide, so that wasn't as good, yeah. and I wasn't in optimal condition for that first discussion, it's over for the second one, hmmm, but they've been understanding that every conversation I've had with Sam has been getting better as far as I'm concerned. and I think he feels the same way and I mean we're on the chart, we're trying to figure out something that's really very difficult and that's the relationship between facts and values ​​that parallels the relationship between, let's say, objective truth and a narrative. or parallel.
joe rogan experience 1139   jordan peterson
As for the distinction between scientific fact and religious truth, all of those things layer on top of each other and it's an extraordinarily difficult topic, so it's not surprising that it takes all this discussion to clarify, even vaguely, that it's been a central theme. The bone of contention among philosophers probably forever, but certainly since the time of David Hume several hundred years ago. The most fascinating thing that's coming out of the podcasting space is these kinds of discussions, these long-lasting live discussions in front of huge groups of people where very complex topics are discussed, it's something new, I mean, and it's something that's very well received. by the public, which is really interesting.
Yes, you are selling out everywhere, yes, well, one, one, one. I've really been trying to make sense of this because I'm thinking, well, what the hell is going on? Why am I selling auditoriums for 3,000 people and then, and then, but not just me, obviously, Sam is doing it and you are doing something? on a larger scale, but very similar with your long form podcasts and then there's this whole rise of what Barry Weiss described as the intellectual dark web that Eric Weinstein actually is, it's coinage, so there's a group of us that would be a little grouped. together for reasons that are not obvious, but I have been trying to figure it out as I give these lectures.
Another thing I'm doing with lectures or discussions is trying to continually promote the development of my ideas. I use the stage. Let's say as a real time opportunity to think and I've been thinking well, if you're surfing don't get confused with the wave, right, that's a real mistake, you can be on top of the wave, but we're not the wave and I think This long-running discussion and the public hunger for it are best conceptualized like this: there is a technological revolution, it is profound, the technological revolution is online video and audio, immediately accessible to everyone around the world, and so what ?
What is done is turning the spoken word into a tool that has the same reach as the printed word, so it is a Gutenberg revolution in the domain of video and audio and it could be even more profound than the original Gutenberg Revolution because it does not it is. It's obvious how many people can read, but a lot of people can listen, and now it turns out you understood a little bit of that with television and you wrote a little bit with radio, but there were bandwidth limitations that were really strict. especially on TV, where you can get 30 seconds if you're lucky and six minutes if you're stellar to elucidate a complicated plot, so you can't do it, it's all compressed into a kind of oversimplified entertainment, but now, suddenly.
We have this forum for long discussions, really long discussions, and it turns out everyone is a lot smarter than we thought. We can have these discussions publicly and there is a great hunger for it and I see this parallel, so this would be what would you call evidence supporting this hypothesis? The same things happened in the entertainment world because you know television made us think we can handle a 20 minute sitcom or maybe we can handle an hour and a half made for TV movie, but then Netflix came along and HBO came along too, without bandwidth restrictions and suddenly it turned out that no, no, we can handle complex 40-hour multi-layered narratives where the character changes and the complexity starts to reach the same complexity as great literature. and there is a huge market for it and it turns out that we are smarter than our technology revealed to us and I think those of us who have been placed in this dark web mastermind group know that there are some things that we have in common.
We have more or less independent voices because we are not beholden to any corporate overlord except peripherally and we have been operating in this space for a long time and technology has made it easier and all of a sudden it turns out there are more people than we thought and thanks to God that's what I'm struggling with I want I don't want to use the word hate there seems to be a non-acceptance or a resistance to the idea that something of quality can come from This group of people is really interesting to me and I wonder why when I listen to you talk or Sam or Eric or any of these people Ben or Dave and I hear very interesting points and I wonder why people resist these are interesting points why they resist this and I think there are a lot of people who are in debt to major organizations, whether newspapers, magazines or television shows, who feel trapped.
I think they feel trapped by this format that they're trapped in, it's very limiting. format and it's a format that in my opinion is like, I mean, it might as well be smoke signals or ham radio or something, it's silly, you know this idea that you're going to go to commercial every 15 minutes and you know, and in the middle you have 15 people arguing I mean, I watched a panel on CNN once and I think we counted 10 people we're trying to talk to during this five-minute segment. I wonder who, what genius thought it would be a good idea to have ten. people are fighting for air time, barking at each other, no one says anything that makes sense because everyone is talking and trying to stand out and trying to say the most outrageous things and I see some of the resistance to this when we pass I mean, pretty far, you know, from Sam and I lean more left and Ben leans more right and you're what you would call a classic liberal and Eric is very hard to define and Brett is fiercely progressive.
I mean, these are Brett in particular is very left-wing. kind of wing but this desire to label and have this decreasing label is okay or you know, right wing or fascist, it's very strange to me, well there are a couple of things happening, I think one of them is the technological transformation. which I laid out and then the other is that I think especially for radical left types the whole notion of free speech between individuals is not only anathema but also something that is not possible within their frame of reference that I've been trying to think this through. because you know free speech in a sense has been identified as a right-wing issue and I thought well how the hell did that happen and then I thought oh yeah, well if you're radically left-wing and you're playing the identity politics game, There's no real freedom of speech because you're just the spokesperson for your group whether you know it or not, so you can't talk like Jill Rogen, you can talk like Joe Rogan, patriarchal white. guy and that's it and your hearings are not a reflection of your own opinions as an individual, but rather they are an attempt on your part, whether you know it or not, to justify your position in the hierarchy of power and everything at this moment and this is where technology and the death of the mainstream media and this and this political polarization bring it all together it becomes a political conversation in the mainstream media and media and it has to be presented as left versus right and if you're criticizing the left then all of a sudden you're right-wing and right-wing and it has to be about politics, it's like well, it doesn't have to be pulp politics, it could be about philosophy, it doesn't have to include political terms and then it's also subject to a form well, it gets stupider than necessary because of these terrible bandwidth limitations, like I mean, I've been on mainstream TV talk shows and it's a very strange

experience

because you're definitely happy.
You know, Marshall McLuhan said that the medium is the message, right, the medium shapes the dialogue and it doesn't do it in a tremendous and powerful way in the way that you go on a television talk show and maybe it lasts an hour or so. something like that and there are five guests and you have eight minutes or something and you have to be bright, cheerful, entertaining, intelligent and somewhat ostentatious and that puts on that façade of momentary charisma and if you don't do it, it actually fails well because you can't start a long discussion when you have six minutes and if you're trying to talk about something that's deep and difficult, then you want to talk about it because you have access. and the opportunity, but you have six minutes and you can't help but become some kind of dazzling entertainer, which cheapens everything and then the other thing that I think is happening is that as the mainstream media, television in particular, They die, Quality people are starting to desert like rats abandoning a sinking ship.
I suppose they are good rats if they are quality people, but then there is more and more temptation to use clickbait journalism to attract a smaller and smaller portion of the remaining audience. It's one of the things that's happened, so if you look at the top five violent crime rates in the United States, they've gone down by 50 percent in 25 years, it's absolutely beyond comprehension, it's so good that By the way, this includes violent gun crime and yet, the reports of violence and the media have increased and increased and I think well, what's happening is good, it's your click bait, it's the equivalent of clickbait and then turning everything into a polarized political discussion doesn't require real intellectual energy, but I think it alsoit's driven by the death spiral of classical media, and I think that's why the polarization seems to be so acute now.
Some of it is genuine, but some of it is a consequence of this underlying technology. The transformation and agony of the smoke fundamentally indicates what you are talking about when you say that people, especially radical leftists, have to concede certain points every time they discuss things, that this is so true and so important because you see that play out over and over again. Again, there's very little variation from the official narrative when they talk about important issues or controversial issues and whatever they are, whether you know about transgender rights or anything that's in the news that's important and you know that It's very popular right now. there are certain things that you can't deviate from and that's an incredibly restrictive perspective and it sets these rules like who's a step question man, yeah, who's okay.
I blame, I blame the universities largely for this, the activists. disappear, but that's only a partial response because universities are also responding to laws like title 9 so and so they have been forced to explain title 9 to people title 9 title 9 was originally just a piece of legislation which ensured that women would have equal access to sporting events and so on in universities, that is what it was designed to do, but it has become general legislation that promotes equality of results in essentially all possible dimensions in universities and has been used as a weapon by radicals. left, but you know, some of that is driven by legislative necessity with what's going on.
The reason I think this comes from universities is because I don't think this can exist. There are all these activist disciplines that are essentially subsidized by overly high tuition. fees and also with state funding and they have produced a whole substructure of activists and those activists are doing everything they can to design the theoretical structure for the radical left and that is a structure that involves buzzwords, diversity is one, but that means diversity by race, ethnicity and sexual preference, for example, as if they have anything to do with a genuine diversity of ideologies and they do not, and there is no evidence that they do, inclusion.
I'm not even sure what that means, equity, which is a marker for our, what would you call it, it's a code word in some sense for equality of results, which is an absolutely deadly doctrine. I think about all the mistakes that the radical left and the moderate left are making for not denouncing them as equity. Doctrine is at the top of the list and then there are other things associated with it like white privilege which is a good thing and systemic bias which is an absolute disgrace from the perspective of a reasonable academic psychologist because psychological testing has been used to show that there is this implicit bias lurking everywhere and the tests are not reliable and valid enough to make that claim, that has been admitted even by the people who did the test, the implicit association test, except Mahzarin Banaji who is the chairman of the psychology department at Harvard. have admitted that the tests are not reliable and valid enough to be used for the purposes for which they have been used and there is also no evidence that these retraining seminars on unconscious purchasing bias have any positive effect, it is all a nuisance.
Because of this ideological fulmination towards the radical left, is there any benefit to having these conversations talking about implicit biases and recognizing that there is an extreme rejection against racism or sexism and all these different things and that even though these things are these ideas The idea of ​​publishing in the mainstream that there is a shift in consciousness in terms of how people will or will not accept racism, sexism, homophobia or whatever else is being discussed may not have been proven or proven. and that maybe it's far left, but maybe it's moving the needle where it's needed.
I think well, I think that happens. I mean, I certainly think there's room and need for constant dialogue between the left and the right. This is also something that has been developed more particularly during these lectures, so I'm going to put forward a couple of propositions, so imagine that you have to move forward in the world, you have to do things and the reason why you have to do things It's because, well, if you just sit there and do nothing, then you suffer and die, so that's not an option, you have to move on, you have to move towards valuable things, so you have to have a hierarchy of values, you have to be a hierarchy because one thing has to be more important than another or you can't do anything here, you have to divide your choices, then you have to do things that you have to value, you have to value some things more than others, then you have to act accordingly. what do you want. value in the social environment because you are a social creature and you are not going to do things alone, so as soon as you start acting things of value in the social environment it inevitably produces a hierarchy and the reason you do it is because no matter what Whether you're acting, some people are much better at it than others and it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter if it's basketball, hockey, plumbing or law, it doesn't matter as long as there's something valuable and you're doing it collectively, there's a hierarchy, so what?
What happens well, the hierarchy can become corrupt and rigid and then it stops rewarding trust and starts rewarding criminality and power, so there is always the danger of the hierarchy becoming corrupt, right? The extremes say that we really need hierarchies and that we should respect them, that's kind of the reason for patriotism and and and and and and a positive group identity and the leftists say yes, but wait a second, there's a problem here and your hierarchy can become corrupt. and it could be that because some people are much better at it than others, you will produce a bunch of desert dispossessed at the base and that is not only good, not only is it not good for the dispossessed, but it actually threatens the entire hierarchy , so you have to be careful, you have to take care of the widows and the children, let's say the widows and the orphans, okay, and then from time to time, now you can think of it as an eternal problem, you can't do without hierarchies, but and that's the right I argue that in a sense hierarchies cannot be dispensed with and that they are valuable, but they are also prone to corruption and dispossess people.
Well, now that it is an internal problem, the question is what to do about it and the answer is There is no final answer to the problem, so what you have to do is have a left wing and a right wing and they have to talk everything time on whether the hierarchy is healthy and whether it is dispossessing or not. a lot of people and then the problem with that is that that discussion can go too far because right-wingers can say that the hierarchy in general is correct, that we have the state is correct and that everything is fine and those are the right-wing totalitarian types and the The left can say that we will flatten everything so that there is no inequality and so both the left and the right can go too far now the problem is that we do not know how to define.
I think one of the problems is that we know how to define when. the right goes too far. I think we learned that after World War II. I think if you make claims of ethnic or racial superiority you get locked up and taken off the shelf, you're no longer in the dialogue. It is obvious that the left can go too far even though they are necessary participants in the discussion, but we don't know when, we don't know how to define when they have gone too far. No and and you might think that's the case. The problem for moderate leftists is their moral responsibility to disassociate from radicals, just as it is the moral responsibility of reasonable conservatives to disassociate from Birch John Burton and Ku Klux Klan types, that's a very important point, but the problem, but it is not. it's only a moderate left problem because even people on the right don't know what to point out when they say no you've gone too far as a leftist now i've tried it's complicated because i think it could be more than a policy i think the left is really deadly This presumption is equality of results.
I think as soon as you start talking about equality of outcomes you should be put in a box and taken off the shelf, that's the but, but it's not obvious why that way. You don't seem to know white people in general. It doesn't have the same guttural punch that the excess on the right has. It's true, you are in favor of equality of results. Why is it so bad? Well, it's bad because when you play it in society. and there is endless evidence of this, it is an instantly murderous doctrine and I think it is because it changes so quickly to a victim-victimizer narrative.
I've had a great opportunity in the last month and a half. I was asked to write the preface to the 50th anniversary. edition of Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago mm-hmm, so I've been writing that and one of the things that Solzhenitsyn did, which was one of the things that made that book possibly the greatest work of nonfiction of the 20th century, I mean. is in the top ten anyway it was to point out very clearly that the excesses of the Russian Revolution started immediately not that Lenin was a good guy and then Stalin came in corrupt everything was like Lenin was not a good guy The revolution became bloody very quickly and what seemed to happen, so imagine that you started to divide the world between right-wing oppressors and oppressed and you are going to do something with the oppressors.
The problem is that you can define people in multiple ways. This is the problem of intersectionality. and almost everyone can be defined in terms of their group identity in some way that makes them oppressors, for example if you are a black man you could argue that you are oppressed because you are black, but what about the fact that You are a man and that makes you an oppressor or someone oppressed and the answer is that as the revolution progresses, if there is any dimension in which you can be categorized as an oppressor, you end up dead and that is part of the pathology of Equality . oh yo, look, you end up dead, you end up cornered, you end up being put in the camp of oppressors, right, it's little by little, there's only so much you can go with that right, I mean, you can't put all men in the camp of oppressors there. there will be no men left it is played what is how it is played I would not seek equality of outcomes well that is how it developed in the soviet union in china i mean in the soviet union we don't know how many people died reasonable estimates seem around 25 million of dead that is not just they are not imprisoned they are not destroyed families it is just dead and in my mouth it was Chinese I could have approximated a hundred million that is just internal repression and then what does it look like?
If this happens as soon as you decide that the hierarchy is unfair because there are oppressors and oppressed, then you can persecute the oppressed with moral virtue, but the problem is that there is almost no limit to the number of ways you can categorize someone as an oppressor that the category just starts to expand like the communists killed all the socialists, they killed all the religious people, they killed most of the students, they killed all the productive farmers and they killed the productive farmers because they owned land, you know , and maybe a small house. and a few cows, you know, I mean being a successful farmer in Russia, that in the early 20th century didn't mean you were rich, it just meant you weren't starving, it's like they killed all those people because they were oppressors. because they had more than someone that's how they defined it so that people would unite against that yes yes he said yes and that and the definition kept slipping because well look look even now it's like well let's say we unite against the 1%, you know , and those would be the owners of the money, let's say okay, who is in that group?
Well, everyone in North America is in that group around the world, yeah, well, who sets the parameters, it's thirty-four, it's thirty-four thousand dollars a year. one percent in the entire world, right, that also makes all of us oppressors, basically everyone who lives above poverty in America is in the one percent of the world, right, right, and also by standards historical, yes, and the problem is that the problem with the oppressed oppressor narrative is that you can multiply the oppressors infinitely and that chasing the right has no end and as soon as you make a definition you can move the boundaries and then the next person is the oppressor hmm and then you move on and you also see the The interesting thing is that too, and this is complicated, so I've been thinking about this propensity of the left to destroy members of the moderate left, it's like that's where the game is, Part of the game is that, as far as I can tell, it is played ideologically.
The pathological game is: I am more virtuous than you see now, if you are on the radical left and you say, well, you are more virtuous than a rightist, it isLike, well, who cares, that's obvious, because right-wingers are pathological. so being more virtuous than them is not a great achievement, but if I have my moderate left compatriot standing right next to me and he is quite virtuous but I am even more virtuous than him, then that is real, that is an achievement. real on my part is a moral achievement without any effort on my part, if I can find some way to classify that previously virtuous person as an oppressor in some dimension, then suddenly I get an increase in my moral virtue and that's it. the time when these leftist revolutions were running amok was just a constant feature, so it's not good, it's not good, why is this something that has always baffled me?
Why is the left defined by certain values ​​and one of them? It's when you look to the right, you automatically think of racism, potential racism, at least dislike of homosexuals, homophobia, there are certain qualities that are always attributed to conservatives and then there are certain qualities or it's in that and these are social things and that . I'm not quite sure I understand why the left is always associated in support of gay rights, the left is always associated in support of, you know, all races and all genders, and I think that's again the issue of the dispossessed, so imagine, okay, imagine that. we create these hierarchies and they are hierarchies that are dedicated to a goal and the sum total of all of those hierarchies is something like patriarchy, although I hate that word and therefore if I should use it, I don't like that word at all but but we are talking within the limits of that theory, it is about defining how it is used, what do you mean by patriarchy, well, patriarchy is the sum total of all Western hierarchies, let's say it classifies the left. the radical leftist view of the sum total of the entire Western hierarchy is always male, well, that's the theory that is dominated by men and you know what a patriarchy has, yeah, yeah, well, and it's kind of funny because, Of course, there are many elements, there are many. of sub-elements of patriarchy that are not dominated by men, healthcare for example, universities, the educational system in general, there are many places where these sub-elements are dominated by women, but I don't know if they are defined as patriarchy.
I don't define healthcare, oh that's a good question Jo, I don't know what happens if you have a sub-element of the patriarchy that is dominated by women, but still the patriarchy is like the structures are still intact and still performing the same function . well now women are handling it well is that patriarchy and the answer to that is well we are all vague about what the definition is so we don't need to address that topic. Well, here are the answers, here are some clear ones, like the main ones. corporations, the vast majority of CEOs are men, yes, we think of that as part of the patriarchy, yes, the government, you know, has never been a man, has never been a woman, president, the vast majority of senators , congressmen, etc., men, yes, so I guess we could say that patriarchy is everything. those elements of the hierarchical structure that are still dominated by men, law enforcement, military, men, mostly men, right, but it's a peculiar definition, right, because it means that you have to, you have to break the patriarchy into pieces, You can't, you can't speak anymore. about this as a uniform structure, if you're going to put out all those pieces that are dominated by women, say well, that's not patriarchy, but the thing is that the whole concept is like that, we all define it, that's what our description, but so.
You're right? I mean, okay, that's the other thing, that's the claim, the other claim is that all hierarchies are based on power, which is a claim that is absolutely appalling, they're like plumbers, they're part of the hierarchy. , hierarchy, you have roaming gangs. of tyrannical, aggressive, armed plumbers coming to your door saying: use our service or that's not how it works, go look when you're looking for a plumber, you're looking for a masseuse, you're looking, or a surgeon, for that matter, or a lawyer. you're going to look for the most competent person and one of the things that the left cannot tolerate is the idea that hierarchies are based in part even on competence, which clearly are the best predictors of success in Western hierarchies: intelligence and conscientiousness.
The best psychological predictors of success only account for about a third of the variance in success, maybe a third is probably correct, so there is still a lot of room for randomness and even systemic discrimination, but the notion that our systems are not predicated in part on competition is clearly wrong. Now that you asked a question about the left it's like, well, why is the left always on the side of people who don't fit in, let's say, or don't fit in as easily? And I think that's an issue. One of the consequences of hierarchical structures is that we imagine that in each hierarchy there are some people who do not do very well in a given hierarchy, then we imagine that in all hierarchies there is a subset of people who are very likely to do very well. don't do well. in any of them then one could say well, they are systematically discriminated against, the left would be on their side because they are on the even temperamental II side of the people who are dispossessed and what happens with that is that it is a valid view that we need a spokesperson political for the dispossessed that's what the Democratic Party used to do when they worked for the working class it's the working class needed a political voice okay that's the Democrats well why did they need a political voice?
Preventing the hierarchy from degenerating into a rigid tyranny is part of the political discussion but now the problem is in the purpose. The problem with the left is that well, what is the hierarchy? It is a tyrannical patriarchy, it is like no, it is not, it is partially corrupt like every system but it is less corrupt than most systems and there are many elements dedicated to personal improvement, self-control, you have to be a little nuanced and subtle on this kind of thing and you can't throw the baby out with the The bath water and leftist rhetoric has become so intense that the idea is and people believe this while the world is going to hell in a basket, everything is getting worse in every way possible and there is systemic racism everywhere and it is completely unfair and should be torn down. and rebuilt it's like no, it's actually working incredibly well even though it still has its problems, you know, and there's a big difference between saying there's systemic racism everywhere and why there aren't perfectly equal outcomes. it's about bias and saying no, no, look the system is working now, let's say 75 percent it's working well, it has some problems, including systemic bias that will hopefully be fixed over time and that all the evidence shows that it's working, so we don't need a radical solution, you know? and one of the things I started doing with my Twitter account is tweeting good non-naive news because one of the things that is happening in the world and there have been half a dozen books written about this or more in the last five. years by credible people is that the distribution of the idea of ​​individual sovereignty and property rights and free market economies, etc. in the rest of the world is making the non-Western world get rich very, very, very quickly, so between 2000 and 2012 the absolute poverty rate in the world fell by half was the period of most rapid economic development in the history of humanity we beat the UN we exceeded the UN's optimistic target by three years it's amazing, you know, infant mortality rates in Africa are now below what they were in Europe in 1950.
The fastest growing economies in the world they are found in sub-Saharan Africa. Many, you know, millions of people, millions of people a month have access to this incredible technology built into mobile phones. They have access to fresh water like they've never had before, that children or children are being vaccinated at a rate that is unfair, unprecedented, and yet we have this idea that has become rampant in the West that ultimately Ultimately, there is something corrupt. about patriarchal tyranny and that it has to be dismantled to its core and much of that is being taught by activist disciplines and universities and I simply do not understand it, it is not acceptable, that is how they see these hierarchies and their proposal to level everything and remove power crazy at the top is equality of results is not proven in terms of it has never been done successfully, it is a utopian right, well I and I don't think you can do it in principle either. because if you accept the proposition that propositions are established, that is, you have to look for things of value and if you look for things with a value in a social space so that you do it cooperatively and competitively, you do it with other people, then We are going to produce differential results because people will be quite good at it.
Yes that's fine. You don't think it's okay. Do you listen to random selections of music online or do what everyone else does? 1/10 of 1% of the composers and you only listen to them you only listen to the one you only read the productions of 1/10 of 1% of the writers you only listen to the podcasts of 1/10 of 1% of the podcasters Just when you see sports on TV, you only see the athletic contributions of 1/10 of 1% of athletes, so where is the Equality exactly? Where is that in your life? You, the people who are pushing for equal outcomes, manifest it in everything you do.
Aren't you incredibly selective like everyone else and the reason you're selective is because there are things happening that need to be entertaining and interesting and you want the best in all of those areas? how it works and there's something better, that's the other thing that's very painful and that's actually painful, you know, there's a dispossession problem here, a real problem, one way to not perform very well in any hierarchy is to have a low IQ, etc. IQ is normally distributed and if you have an IQ of less than 85, you will have a hard time reading well enough to follow directions; about 10% of the population might even be higher than that.
So, given that lack, how are you going to compete? the answer is that you are not because low IQ is a good predictor of poverty now they skyrocket because you know if you are if you are cognitively if you are in the if you are if you are less cognitively Then you are gifted and you have children, they will be in an environment less enriched. These things spiral, but you still have the essential problem. That is the essential problem of the dispossessed. It's like hierarchies or complex tools to achieve the necessary goals, but they dispossessed people.
What do we do? to do with the people who were dispossessed the answer is that we don't know, so we have to talk about it constantly to find out how to solve it because it is an ongoing problem that transforms and that is the reason why political dialogue is necessary and then the risk. The point is that the political dialogue will be polarized towards the radical left, without hierarchies of any kind, or towards the radical right, our hierarchy is 100 percent right at all costs, so those are the ones who have the eternal problem and Those are the two poles between which we have to negotiate.
It's interesting because the accusation has always been that what the left is trying to do with this equality of outcomes is some kind of infantilization of the right of the population and the best example of that is sports. When you watch sports, clearly the best win. true, the fastest runners win the race, the people who have the best strategy win the game, in fun, in fact, that's a weird word in fun, mosaic is a shinai, you never get it right, but that's what What do we do with the children, where you get participation trophies and no one wins, you know when my daughter was three years old she was in soccer and they didn't keep score but everyone knew everyone knew that these kids scored and they didn't at the end of the game they didn't announce it. a winner there was no catalyst you can't have a football match without keeping score yes it's not a football game anymore it's something else but the score stood of course he just wasn't discussed of course it was the strangest thing but this is to Treat these little children because they couldn't stand it.
You know, you know, she cried when the other team scored. I say it's you. It feels bad when they score, so it feels good when you score. It's very difficult to say that to a three. -years, right, so let's run hills? Are you going to practice exercises to make yourself feel better? And then there's a point where that goes too far, there's a point where you become an obsessive winner, right? and these are the people who want to crush their enemies so you become Conan the Barbarian. This is our end. It's what terrifies the left. Yes, the idea of ​​the left is thedemure, the soft, the people who are kinder and. gentler, the idea that the right is the conqueror, the people you meet, work hard, play hard, go kick ass, see America that way, and these are the kind of people who are going to be crueler , they will do whatever is necessary. win and the people who you would consider wanting equality of outcomes are the people who are trying to stop that, does this make sense?
Yes, absolutely and I think that's how it comes across temperamentally, it's psychological, yes this is the motivation for all of this yes yes yes and that's fine and the radical left is compassion going crazy although it's also envy let's not forget about that in New Zealand , well, absolutely one reason to defend the dispossessed is because you're empathetic, you know, and empathy is not an automatic good, this is something where we make a big mistake, we think, well, I feel sorry for you, for so. I'm fine, it's like no, maybe I felt too sorry for you, maybe I'm not demanding enough from you, so that's the terrible devouring mother you know from a psychoanalytic projection, well, everything you do, honey, is well, it's like no, it's not right, oh.
So one of the things that Jean Piaget, the developmental psychologists, was very interested in finding a way out of this and it's very relevant to your concept, your talk about athletics, okay, so imagine this because I this It's also something that points the way to proper morality, which was actually something that Jean Piaget was very concerned about, he wanted to reconcile the distinction between religion and science, that's actually what drove him, although people don't know what you could say. that he was the best developmental psychologist in the world, so here's the idea: you know how you tell your child to be a good sport, you tell him, no, it doesn't matter if you want to lose, it matters how you play, okay, so I've been unpacking that in my lectures because it's really very complicated it's like if you say that to your child and they look at you and think well what do you mean by that?
Aren't I supposed to try to win? It's a soccer game. I'm trying. I'm supposed to win and you say well, yes, you're supposed to win, but it doesn't matter if you win or lose, it matters how you play, you know that's right, but you don't know how to explain it to your child, you say well, you want to be a good sport okay so imagine this is how it works and this is vitally important so first of all life is not a game not even a game is a game because a game is most of the time a game is the beginning of a series of games, so let's say you're on a soccer team.
Well you win the game but the game is not the problem the game is the whole series of games so maybe the game is winning the championship and winning the championship and winning a game are not the same and the reason is that maybe if you want to win a game the best thing you can do is let your star player make all the moves, but if you want to win a championship maybe the best thing you can do is let your star player do everything possible to develop all the other members of the team. That's a different strategy and the reason it's different is because it's repeated over time.
Well, then I'll tell you a quick story. When my son played hockey when he was about 12, he was at the championship game at a local arena, you know, and it was a lot of fun to see the teams be pretty evenly matched, which is something you want so everyone can expand their skills while they were playing and there was like five seconds left in the game and the other team took a break and went down and the guy came down the ice, the score was a beautiful goal and it was 4-3. and that was the end, and on my children's entire team there is the boy who is the star and was a very good hockey player.
He came off the ice and was very upset about what had happened. He smashed his stick against the cement. and he was complaining about refereeing and acting like he was robbed and his dad came over and instead of saying "act nice kid, that's no way to show off after a loss" he said "oh yeah man, you got robbed that the referees don't It's not right and you played better and you should have won and I thought you're an absolute son of a bitch you're ruining your son and then the question is why because his son was the star and he was trying to win why what? ruining your son well, you're trying to train your son not to win the game, you're trying to train your son to win the championship and that's a series of games, but life is not the championship, the Life is a lot of Championships are a whole sequence of them, so what you are really trying to do is train your child to be a contender in the entire series and the way you do that is by helping him develop your character and the character is actually the strategy. that would allow you to win the most games in the longest period of time possible and one way to do that if you're a kid is: well, what do you want to do with your kid?
You don't want to teach him. To win, you have to teach him to play well with others and that is being reciprocal, which means trying to win, but also paying attention to the development of the people around him and not putting winning the game before everything at all times. so it's fun to play with and this is absolutely crucial. You understand. You can help your child have fun to play between the ages of 2 and 4 years old. If it's fun to play with your child, what happens? He plays with it and adults line up to teach him and if children line up to play with him, they will have friends all their lives and they will socialize him and invite him to many games, some of which he will win all of.
You will be able to participate and if it is fun to play with him as an adult, we will teach him things and then he wins in life, so when you tell your child that it doesn't matter if you win or lose, it matters how you do it. play, what you're saying is don't forget, kid, that what you're trying to do here is perform well in life and you need to practice the strategies that will allow you to perform well in life, well, you're in any specific game and you never want to compromise your ability to do well in life for the sake of winning a single game and there's a deep ethic to that and it's the ethic of reciprocity in games that's part of the reason we're so obsessed with sports. .
It's because we like to see it dramatized, you know, the person we really admire as an athlete is not just the person who wins, we don't like narcissistic winners, they are winners and that's a plus, but if they are narcissistic, "They are not good team players, they only work for themselves, then we think that you are a winner in the strict sense, but your character is suspected of not being a role model even though you are a winner and it is because we are Looking for something deeper, we look for the manifestation of the character that allows you to win in the set of possible games and that is a real thing, it is a real ethic, it is a fundamental ethic.
I think what you are pointing out is very important. We are, we are looking for the person who has it everything, someone who tries their hardest but is also honest enough about the circumstances to not cry when the other person goes wrong, yeah, well that's part of resilience, that's how you're not going to win it. , you're not going to do it, you're not going to score on every shot, right? It doesn't mean you shouldn't take the shots, it doesn't mean you shouldn't try to hit the bow, but it's part of being able to keep shooting is having the strength of character to tolerate the fact that in that case you weren't on top, It is more trivial in games than in fights and also the response is much more negative.
For fans, if you lose a fight and you complain about it, it's ruthless because they understand that you've made a big character mistake, yeah, so why do you think it's more important in fights than in games? Think that it is because the consequences are very serious because you recognize that the highs are much higher and the lows are much lower. Losing a basketball game sucks, but it's nothing like losing a fight, there's no comparison, it's not even, what do you think it is? the damage to the fighter if he complains about losing why is it a mistake why do fans respond so negatively to that because they know you lost they know you complain for no reason and you are not the hero they want For you to be better than them, they want you to be the person who has the courage to get in a cage or a ring or wherever the format is that you are competing in and do something that is extremely difficult and when you do it, they keep you in a higher state, right to lose gracefully, yeah, and when you go down, especially if you were a champion, that's one of the most disappointing things when the champion complains, right, and okay, so the audience response is horrible, okay, that's right. a great example so let's imagine what the person who loses something important with grace does and the answer is quite simple accept the defeat and think carefully about what I have left to improve that will reduce the possibility of a similar defeat in the future yes, of course , bland, so what he's doing is because the great athlete and the great person is not only someone who is exceptionally skilled at what he does, but he is trying to expand his abilities at all times, yes, and the attempt to expand his skills at all times.
The timing is even more important than the fact that they are great to begin with because the trajectory is very important, more important particularly for the audience, the audience is extremely important because you are the person competing, you expect them to live this life. in a perfect way or in a much more powerful way than you are capable of, yes, and part of that is the skill because they put it into practice, but part of that is also the willingness to take the skill further into new domains of development with every action and that's really what people like to see, they don't like to see a perfect athletic performance, they like to see a perfect athletic performance that is pushed into the domain of new risks, they want to see both at the same time. really good at what you do and you're improving, then you lose a match, which is no indication that you're not good at what you do, you may not be as good as the person who beat you, but if you lose the match and then complain, what you have done is sacrifice the higher order principle of constant improvement of your own skills, yes, because you should analyze the loss and say that the reason why I lost, to the extent that it is relevant to this moment and place in particular, are the inadequacies that you stated that defeated me and I need to track those inadequacies so that I can rectify them in the future and if I blame you or the referees or the situation, I am not taking responsibility and I am not moving forward.
And then you take away the meaning too, like it's one of the things I've been doing on tour. People criticize me to some extent for telling people things that are obvious. Well, first of all, it's not that I haven't done it. Damn, I know they were obvious when I wrote those rules. You were the rules in my book, for example, stand up straight with your shoulders back. You know, treat yourself like you're someone responsible for helping. It's as if he knew perfectly well that they can be read. like clichés, the question is cliché, let's say it's something that is so true that it has become something widely accepted by everyone, but we no longer know why it is true, so it is this topic that we are talking about. about this or the question of being a good sport, we need to find out why that is true and the reason why it is true is that you are trying to push your development beyond what you have already developed at each moment and now that is the proper, that's the proper moral attitude, so when you see an athletic performance where someone goes above and beyond, you see someone dramatizing the process of proper adaptation, it's not the skill itself, it's the extension of skill, when you see someone acting like a bad sport, then they are sacrificing that and then they are sacrificing the superior for the inferior and nobody likes that in fights, you have to see it.
The question is, that's what I can't understand, why? be even over the top in a fight situation and you said it's because the stakes are high, yes the consequences of victory or defeat are much greater, your health is at stake, it's one of the rare things you do when your health is at stake, your physical health, so there are more extreme victories and more defeats in the game, so the morality associated with defeat is more extreme exactly because the stakes are higher and the way people treat others. champions is very different. What is important is the respect and adulation that a champion receives, it is the pinnacle of sports in terms of audience love, when someone wins a big fight there is nothing like it and this is one of the reasons why these people They are willing to put their health on the line because that is the height of victory and it is not just a victory, it is a you know what it is, who was the one who said that victory is really the victory over the lesser you, it is a victory, It is always victory.
Also, you have to realize that a guy like Steep, Miocic, who defends his heavyweight title this weekend in the UFC, is the heavyweight champion of the world, but he's not undefeated, he lost in his career, he lost a couple of times and you know. since I'm sure he's lost wrestling matchesfree and sparring sessions in the gym and everything is a product of improvement, right, it is a product of discipline, hard work, thinking, strategy and constantly improving your skills, and that is why he is the Baddest Man of the planet, so my rule in my book is 12.
Excuse me, this is 12 rules for life. Rule 4 is: come and behave. who you were yesterday, not who someone else is today, yes, because you need to be, you need to have a hierarchy of improvement, you need to aim for something for something and that means you are going to be inferior to the people who have always done it. you have already achieved it in that dimension, yes, and that can give rise to envy, so the question is who should you defeat in the final analysis and the answer is that you should defeat your old self, you should try to do it constantly and you are proper control. do it yourself because you are the one who has had all your advantages and disadvantages and therefore if you want to compete fairly with someone then they should compete with you and that is the case and this is what we were talking about: with Regarding the self-improvement of the fighter it is okay, if you are improving yourself then what you are doing is competing with your lower self and then you could also ask what is that lower self and that lower self would be resentful and bitter and aggressive and the seeking revenge and all those things that come with having a negative moral character and those are things that interfere with your ability to progress as you go through life, so it's very necessary to understand that that's why you know I've been emphasizing this idea of ​​personal responsibilities like well personal responsibility is competing with yourself it's being a little bit better than yourself the next day and it's better in some way that you can actually handle and that's humility that's right well I'm an imperfect person and I have all my problems.
Could I be as good as person X? It's like it's not the right question. The right question is: Could you be a little better tomorrow than you are today? And the answer is if you have enough humility to establish. If the bar is set appropriately low, then you might be better tomorrow than you are today because what you also have to do is say, "Well, here are all my flaws and my inadequacies and the best that someone so imperfect and inadequate could do for me." improve and actually do it. It's this and that, it's not worth it to go out and celebrate with plaque arts, you know, it's like, well, that's why I tell people to clean the room.
You're not going to brag to someone that you did that, but someone is insufficient, as you could be. able to manage it and that means that you are really on the path to self-improvement and you are transcending your old self and you could well say what is the right way to be in the world if there is such a thing and it is not to act according to a set of rules, it's continually trying to transcend how flawed you currently are and what's so interesting about that is that the middle meaning of the meaning of life is found in that search, so I've been exposing that in these discussions as well because I said well, the fundamental theme is that life is tragic and difficult, very tragic and difficult for everyone and it is also tainted by malevolence because no matter how tragic and difficult things are, there is always something stupid that you or someone can do. something else could make that could make things worse than they have to be and that's life and you need an antidote for that because that can embed you or constant contact without just tragedy, but tragedy combined with betrayal and malevolence which makes it even worse, esp.
If it's self-induced, okay, then you need something to oppose that so you don't get bitter and resentful, well, what are you opposed to that? Do something worthwhile by your own definition. Say you need some reason to get out of bed. terrible day because you have something good to do well, what is the best thing you can do, transcend your current miserable and miserable self, there is a meaning in that and a real answer, that is a meaning associated with responsibility, one of the things that I have been trying to make it clear that life is hard, it is contaminated by malevolence and betrayal that can make you bitter.
You need meaning to make up for that. Where is the meaning found? Not in rights, nor in an impulsive pleasure, but in the responsibility you assume. responsibility for yourself so take care of yourself if you are good at that you can have something left over to take care of your damn family if you are good at both then you have something left over to take care of your community those are heavy burdens you take on the burdens that you find meaningful the best way to take on the burden is to continually improve yourself and that is where the meaning is found and that meaning is in the continuous self-transcendence that allows you your old self dies and the new self is reborn did you see that when we were kings Elliott raesha, yes, God, that it's an amazing, amazing, amazing movie right at the end, so Ellie defeats Frasier by basically letting him defeat himself because Frasier is angry and has a grudge and doesn't carry out the fight properly, so he exhausts himself chasing Ellie and he's basically just trained to take the damn hits correctly and wear down Frasier, that's his plan right at the end of the movie. takes Frasier down and it's pretty much the end of the fight, but Frasier struggles to get to his feet, you know he's just getting up off the mat and Ally has her hand pulled back to pin him because he's wide open and puts his glove down. and he turns around, that's the end of the fight and Frasier said and as far as I know this is true, that fight dominated him like Frasier had a big grudge and he was a terrible guy up until that point.
He fought and then he was gentle and he was civil, he civilized him and so on, but that gesture that Ellie made was that great gesture because she could have crushed him well and he had every reason to be a man, she got him, she took him apart. Ali. He took hits like crazy in that fight and then in the final analysis, when he knocked Frazier down and was struggling to get to his feet, he just let him go, man, nobility of character, right there, impressive thing to behold, so? why do you define people like when you are saying this, why do you say that you are a miserable and miserable life?
Because there are plenty of people who don't have miserable, miserable lives who also just want to get better, why does it have to be the worst case scenario? It has to work, it has to work, the theory has to work in the worst case scenario, that's fine, so using the worst case scenario isn't because you think that might alienate someone who doesn't have the worst case scenario, no, No, I don't think so because well, you know, it depends on how much time you have to sketch out the ideas, but you know what I, because even if things are going great for you now, there will be a time in the future where things are difficult you know. that you are going to be sick members of your family are going to be sick a dream is going to fall apart you are going to be you are going to be insecure about your work situation as if the flood is coming the apocalypse is coming, it is always like that in life and there are to be prepared for it and the question is how to prepare for it and the answer is to find a way of being that works even in the circumstances that mark the diary, that is the problem. and so you describe and I mean I'm pessimistic about this in my approach in a sense because when I talk to my audience the same thing doesn't happen that happened in my book Maps of Meaning and in 12 Rules for Life.
I'm presenting the worst case scenario, which is kind of like hell, things are going really bad for you and sometimes there's only one possibility associated with it and you and the people around you are doing stupid things to make it worse, okay. What have you done? In those circumstances, you have the possibility of slowly getting out of the mud, you have the possibility of doing exactly what the fighter does when he is defeated, that is, well, regardless of the circumstances that could have led to my defeat such as even if there were mistakes by part of the referee this is not the time to complain about it this is the time to take stock of what I did wrong so I can improve it in the future and that is the right attitude, you know.
In the Old Testament, one of the things that's really interesting about the Old Testament stories is that in the Old Testament the Jews keep getting beaten up by God, it's like they fought and formed an empire and then they just got beaten up and then everything got crushed there and They are out of it for generations and then they fight to get back up and form an empire and then they get demolished again and it happens again and again and the attitude of the Old Testament Hebrews is that we must have made a The mistake is never shake your fist at the sky and curse fate, it's never that the presupposition is that if things don't work out it's my fault and that's an incredible presupposition and you could say, well, of course, you know, what is that? that underestimates the degree to which there is systemic oppression, etc., etc. and the whims of fate it's like I don't underestimate it, that's not the point the point is that your best vantage point is how am I insufficient and how can I rectify that is what You have and the thing is that you are insufficient and you could rectify it.
Both are within your reach if you aim low enough. One of the things why you see that. That's another thing you keep saying. Aim low enough. Have a low enough bar. Why do you say that? Well, let's say you have a child and you want him to get better. You don't set a bar so high that it's impossible for them to reach it. You take a look at the boy. and you think he's okay, this kid has this range of skills, here's a challenge we can throw at him that exceeds his current skill level but gives them a reasonable chance of success, so I say it ironically. to some extent you know it's like but if you're doing it as an aid to humility it's like well I don't know how to start improving my life someone could say that and I'd be like well you're not aiming low enough there's something you could do. and what you're considering is trivial that you could do what you would do that would result in real improvement but it's not a big enough improvement for you so you won't stoop low enough to take advantage of the opportunity Incremental steps, yes, and this too It is what is achieved through exercise.
It is one of the most important. Well, what do you do when you go and lift weights? You don't continue as if you didn't bench press before not putting. 400 pounds on the damn bar and let go and let the bar fall through your skull. I know you're thinking, look when I started exercising as a kid. He was about one hundred and thirty pounds and was six foot one, very thin. The kid and I smoked a lot. I wasn't in good shape. I wasn't in good physical shape and I went to the gym and it was very embarrassing, you know, when people came and helped me with the damn weights, that's how it's done.
I'm supposed to wear this, you know, it was humiliating and maybe I was pressing 65 pounds or something at the time, you know, but what am I going to do? I'm going to lift a hundred and fifty pounds and hurt myself right away. I did not do it. Going in there and stripping down and getting skinny in front of the mirror and thinking, motherfucker, there are all these monsters in the gym who have been lifting weights for ten years and I'm struggling. 50 pounds off the bar, bad luck for me, but I was able to lift 50 pounds and it wasn't fair that it took a long time until I could lift 75 and well, you know how it goes, but I never got hurt when I was late to the lift and the reason why For which I never pushed myself beyond what I knew I could reach and I tried very hard.
You know, I gained 35 pounds of muscle in about three years of college. I had to stop smoking because I ate so much that I couldn't. endure it by boiling like six meals a day, it was just taking too much time, but there is humility in determining what the miserable creature that you are can really manage to aim low and I don't mean don't aim and don't mean don't aim, but you have to. accept the fact that you can set a goal that you can achieve and there won't be much glory in it to begin with because if you are not in very good shape, the goal that Yuuka Day could achieve tomorrow is not very glorious, but it is much better That nothing and overcomes the bitterness and is much better than blaming someone else.
It's much less dangerous and you could do it. And what's good about it? There is a statement in the New Testament called the Matthew Principle and economists use it to describe how the economy works in the world. Those who have everything will be given more. Those who have nothing will have everything taken away. That's how it works. which is very pessimistic in it makes a certain sense because it means that as you start to fail, you fail faster and faster, but it also means that as you start to succeed, you succeed faster and faster, so you take an incremental step and well, now you can lift 55 pounds instead of 52 point 5 pounds, you think well, what the hell is it?
It's like it's one step on a very long journey and it is and it's starting to aggravate you, so a small step today means it puts you in a position to take a slightly bigger step. for the next day and then that puts you in a position to take a little bit bigger step the next day and you do that for two or three years, you're starting to move forward, you know?I have so many people reaching out to me now. This is one of the incredibly fun things about this tour, which is so positive. It makes me cry regularly, it's mind-blowing because people come up to me and this is happening everywhere I go now and they say they're so polite when they come and They talk to me, you know, and they always apologize for interrupting and so it's never narcissistic and it's never annoying.
I'm really happy to see people come up to me and say, well, I know you've heard this many times before, but I've really been putting it out there. my life together since I've been watching your lectures and then they tell me a story about where they were in some dark place too much alcohol too many drugs they didn't get along with their father they didn't get along with their mother they didn't have a vision for life being nihilistic play too many video games you know you like being suicidal that happens a lot having post-traumatic stress disorder sometimes as a result of combat whatever little bit of hell they were occupying they say look I've been, I've been listening to your lectures and I've been developing a vision for my life and I've been trying to take responsibility and I've been trying to tell the truth and things are much better and that's absolutely perfect, it's the right way to go as far as I'm concerned and those are people who took stock of themselves, they said I'm in a dark place and I'm a dark person and here are some things that this dark person in this dark place could do little things that they could do I'll clean my damn room I'll make my bed I've had I don't know how many people have They came and they told me it's so strange they said well I started making my bed and that made everything The difference is like, well, yeah, you decided to be a mop and the first concrete instance of that was you made your bed and you think, well , that's nothing heroic, it's like no, but a man on top is heroic, that's something and then you lower yourself to the point where you are not above the mess in your room you know you are not superior to that you lower yourself to straighten yourself You appreciate what you have in front of you and you take care of it and you put it in.
It's like suddenly things start to get better and it's wonderful to do this tour because I see that that's what this tour is about for me, it's not political. I never talked to people after the talks, for example, that I talked to. 150 people tonight we never talk about anything political it's always this I wasn't doing very well I'm getting my life in order I get along better with my father I get along better with my wife I get along better with my children I have some meaning in my life thank you very much that's a lot better it's like yeah, that's the right thing to do it's very beneficial for people and they need to hear that and there's something that comes with that that's critical and what that is to say, an honest assessment of yourself, an honesty that that kind of honesty, the honesty with yourself, it's very difficult for some people and they don't have the tools for it and it hasn't been explained to them how to do it, why you're safe, why you should do it.
Yeah, one of the things that happens when you go to school they tell you what to do, they never tell you how to think, they never also tell you that you're okay the way you are, that's self-esteem, yeah, you are okay, the way you are it's like no you're not and this is something else you're going to be and you're not right you're fine as a human appearance if you want to be a black belt in jujitsu and you just started your first class you're fine just the way you are you're a human being , but you're not good at the goal, that's a bigger goal, incremental improvement is important, you have to honestly evaluate your position and move forward, yeah, well, that's it. a position, yeah, their track record, yeah, right, and when you tell someone you're okay because of your position, that's not good enough because you have to say well, wait a second, you need a track record and maybe you're okay. if you are fine. in your position and your trajectory but you know the self-esteem movements and all that will accept you as you are it's like no because you need a trajectory and one of the things that I think is one of the reasons why the public is responding to it What I've been saying in my lectures and what I've been writing about is that I don't tell people it's okay the way it is now, I say no, no, you could be so much more than you are and they're relieved about that. , because if you're in a dark and terrible place and someone says you're fine just the way you are, then you don't know what to do about it, that's right, no I'm not. to have everything well to have a very bad time and I have no hope you are fine the way you are fine so what what is that that is where I am and what do you want to say to a young man you are seventeen years old you are Okay, just the way you are, it's like no, you're not , you have 60 years to be better and you could be much better, you could be incomparably better in multiple dimensions and in seeking that better, that is where you will find the meaning of your life and that will give you the antidote to suffering the way that I always describe it to people, as there are disciplines that you can follow and those disciplines are a vehicle for developing human potential and if you improve at these things, you can improve at anything. and if you discover what it takes to improve at any sport, any art, or whatever, you are following the same principles that you can apply to the way you treat people, you can apply them to the way you educate yourself. apply to the way you keep your body in shape all those things are connected that's why you have to care about imposing order people have asked me in my book why I wrote it as an antidote to chaos you know because well technically there is no nothing wrong with it chaos chaos is a place of great potential well, the question is what is the right balance between chaos and order, potential of chaos and order, well, the answer is look, when you are a child, you are all potential, It is chaotic potential, it can manifest. in many ways and maybe you don't want to give up on that, so you're like Peter Pan, you want to be a kid forever because you don't want to give up on potential and you look at the world and all you see is Captain Hook, you know, who lost a hand, who was chased by death because that's the clock on the crocodile, he already tried it terrified by death and is a tyrant, well, I don't want to grow up. be it so, I will not be disciplined at all, that is not good because the way potential is transformed into reality is through discipline and so, as you said, this is the trick, although you have to choose a path of discipline, whatever the path. of discipline that you have to choose is a different topic there could be a rule the rule could be the rule it could not follow this rule the rule could be that you have to follow some rules then it is an important rule and the meta rule is that you have to follow some rules discipline yourself and the problem is that's not really the relevant question, you can choose a disciplinary path, that's why I often tell my clients, especially young ones, they say well, I don't know what to do, okay, Nobody is going to do something. do the best thing you can think of, put the best plan you have into practice, it won't be perfect and it will change along the way, but it will change in part because you become disciplined by following the path and as you become disciplined you become more sage. and as you get wiser you are able to formulate better and better plans so you can start vague and confusing and develop a plan that is not so good and you start implementing it and then you accumulate incremental wisdom as you implement your flawed plan and that allows you to fix the plan and that's part of that process of incremental self-improvement and one of the most difficult aspects is personal honesty, like being honest with yourself, being honest with yourself about what you're doing.
Self-assessment is very difficult for people, they are never there, they never taught it, it is not something that is encouraged, no one is depressing, maybe imagine you only have 100, you only have $100,000 to buy a house, so you go buy it and you go to look in this house and it's like Jesus, this man in the house it's like he needs a lot of work it's like well that's all you have why are you going to pretend that the house is fine the way it is? Let's go find where it's rotten. and where the plumbing doesn't work and where the stove doesn't work, you have to go and look and see where everything needs to be fixed and that's how it is, tough man, but in order to do it correctly, someone has to have I taught you that look, you don't You are your problems, well you are you most fundamentally, so if you face your problems you can solve them and that is the hero myth in a nutshell, by the way, the hero is the person who faces horrible chaotic potential and tames it. do it and do something well, that's the fundamental human story, but the problem is that you have to face what you don't want to face to fix it, yeah, and then you look at all the things about yourself that you need to. you have to do without that and that man, especially in the beginning, especially if you're screwed, that maybe like 95% of you just has to go up in flames and it's painful even some of those things that you have to burn off don't want to die and He will scream in agony as you burn him, it's not pleasant, but if you know you are what can transcend your problems more fundamentally, if you know you are what you need. that if you face problems you can transcend them, then you have the faith that will allow you to take stock of who you are and you have to do it in small steps because most people have no experience in transcending their problems, so they really don't know what It feels, it seems like a foreign concept, it seems like something other people can do, but if you do it incrementally, you can prove to yourself that you can do it.
I mean, it's one of the reasons they have belt systems and martial arts you start off slow, oh my gosh I have a stripe on my white belt, oh my gosh I'm a blue belt, you feel an improvement, yeah, and for some people is the first real improvement that marks an absolute improvement in their life. Yeah, sure, then that's it. Something interesting also because you have a measurement system right there. We have this system set up online called the future creation program and we've implemented it because we've tested it three times, we implemented it at Mohawk College in Canada. and we had people write about their ideal future and also to include measurement strategies, okay, here's your ideal future, this is how you're going to break it down into goals, this is how you're going to mark progress toward those goals because you have to be playing It's a fair game with yourself, because when you progress you want to reward yourself, so you have to identify what the progress is and you have to reward it.
As a consequence, we had people write a future plan for just one hour when they came to their school. orientation in the summer before I went to is a community college and they reduced the dropout rate among you men by 50% and he, yeah, I'm not kidding, 50%, yeah, and what that meant to me It was just thinking about it. What it means is that these kids have been educated for twelve years and no one has ever sat them down and said, "Okay, what the hell are you doing and why and how are you going to get there?", "Where do you want to go, why do you want to go?" get there".
How are you going to get there? How are you going to mark your progress? They have never been guided through that exercise. You guide people through that exercise just to get them to do it. That increases the probability of them staying on track by 50%. That is incredible. Well, one of the things I've always complained about is that you know people teach you facts, they don't teach you how to deal with life, they don't teach you how to think, they don't teach you how to deal with why. face the insecurities and the different traps that your mind will set for you, yeah, well, that's part of the fun of doing this speaking tour because that's exactly what I'm talking to people about. think why bother thinking it's like you think well that's obvious it's like no it's not really that obvious it's like the topic I discussed a lot with my students in college okay why write a good essay my brother how to get the grade It's like no It's not for that reason, and if you think about it, it's better than not thinking that there is any reason to write, but it's a bad reason to write well.
Writing is a way of thinking, in fact it is the most demanding way of thinking. I would say that there are other ways that are. demanding, so how do you write a good essay? Choose a topic that matters to you because if you don't write about something that matters to you, it's like you're not experiencing something meaningful, that's wrong, you're not going to write a good essay. Because you're wrong, you have to care to begin with, why does it matter? what does it mean that it matters well it means that it will affect the way you make decisions in your life something that matters affects the way you make decisions in your life, well why does it matter how you make decisions in your life?
Because if you make some stupid decisions, you're going to greatly increase the sum total of suffering, you're going to do stupid things to yourself, you're going to do stupid things to other people, and you're not going to be as good a person as you could be. So not only are you going to do stupid, terrible things, but you will not have manifested the good in the world that you could have manifested, so that is the blockage, so you write an essay to be able to think and you think to be able to live properly. and then you're right, very carefully, you make sure every damn word is a wordyou want to use and you make sure that the sentences you put the words into are as strong as possible and you make sure that the sentences are well constructed and that they are organized into proper paragraphs and that the paragraphs are sequenced and that the content of the subject matter and put your soul into it and know when you've done it because it's exciting when you write, it's significantly engaging and this is another thing that I've been sharing with my audience, which means it's actually an instinct like thinking that it's Okay, so we've already decided that incremental self-improvement is the right route.
So how do you know when you are improving gradually and adequately? The answer is that it is deeply attractive, it is deeply meaningful and the reason is that you are actually neurologically adapted to identify the path of maximal incremental improvement which was a conceptual discovery by a guy called Vygotsky, who is an avalanche of neuropsychologists who coined the term zone of proximal development every now and then you hear people say that they are in the zone of proximal development and that is the place you occupy when you are improving at the rate that is optimal for you and your sense of intrinsic meaning means that this is how your The damn brain is wired and then you might as well say what the antidote to the tragedy and malevolence of life is and the answer is to put yourself in the zone of proximal development because that's where the ultimate meaning is and that really prepares you for life.
And so the question of why do I think it's good, you think before you act and you act to put yourself in the zone of proximal development and you do it as an antidote to the catastrophe of life, well, that's the answer and what it is. Okay that and then this is, I think part of what I've been telling people, that kind of novel is good, where's the meaning? The meaning is in the responsibility, you know, because people avoid responding, that's Peter Pan again, he avoids responsibility, it's just a burden, it's like. no, it's not, it's a burden, but hoisted voluntarily it is the place of maximum meaning and the more responsibility you take on, the more meaning you have and that is the antidote to the catastrophe of life and everyone knows it too because look, it's very simple when you are fed up with yourself well that is when you are being useless and irresponsible with yourself and with your family and with your community you are not even taking good care of yourself you cannot sleep with a clear conscience unless you are a psychopath yes no You are taking care of yourself and then the wind can use the window.
Don't you wake up in the morning at 3:00 in the morning breaking down with a guilty conscience? It is when you have done something useful, at least for yourself, that you know it and you can? say oh, well, mark one on my side, you say, okay, very good, you take a little responsibility for yourself and you can sleep with a clear conscience. What if you had chosen total responsibility for yourself and then for your family? A lot of the people that are coming to talk to me tell me now I've really been trying to bring my family together like I've made it a goal.
I'm trying to heal my family and bring it back together and it's working, so here's a story. I love this story, man. It just killed me. I was in Los Angeles at the Orpheum. You know, downtown Los Angeles is tough. It is located around the Orpheum. Tammy and I, my wife, because she travels with me and she's a big help with the way we were wandering around downtown. Los Angeles, good morning after the talk and we're walking down the street and we're on streets that we probably shouldn't have been on, but anyway, because what the hell do we know if we're stupid Canadians and we were walking down the street and this car stopped next to us this boy jumped out he's a handsome latin boy 20 21 something like that he jumped up and said he's very excited he said are you dr.
Peterson said yes, he said, "I'm very happy to meet you. I've been watching your lectures for a year and a half and I've been trying to get my life together and it's really working. I'm really doing it." best, I really wanted to thank you and it's lovely when you're walking through a difficult area and someone stops next to you and jumps out of the car to tell you how much better their life is, it's a very good day and then, but that's not all that passed mm-hmm he ran back to his car he said wait a minute wait a minute he went back to his car and took his dad out and they walked up together and his dad was just smiling like a real smile, you know, and the kid was too and he They hugged and said, look like we've really been working on our relationship for the last year and a half and it's going great, we want to say thank you.
You and his dad were like, I'm so happy I got my son back, it's like, that's what this damn tour has been, it's great and everyone who comes to these conversations, that's what they're dealing with. to do, you know? I have 3,000 people in each audience and what they're trying to do is figure out how I can take maximum responsibility for my own life. How can I imbue it with meaning that helps me endure tragedy and suffering? How can I be a better person? And wouldn't it be great if that was of optimal benefit to my family and the community?
You're getting really excited about this, well, it's something, Joe Jesus. I've seen a hundred and fifty thousand people in the last two months, you know? and this is what it is, well you'll get a chance to talk to Ruben about this too, this is how it's been, it's so positive I can't believe it and it's just one person after another saying, look, I was, I was having a It was a difficult time, I am very happy to have come across what you have been talking about. I've really been trying to piece things together and it's really helping you.
Rubén was quite impressed. We had a long conversation about it. he just feels like there's this crazy movement that something is changing in the world because of this, this new avenue of learning and development is opening up for these people, well, and I've been thinking about that too because you know, like I said. At first, if you're surfing, you don't want to take responsibility for the wave, so, first of all, a lot of what I've been telling people are things that I've learned from the clinical literature and in this psychological literature it's not that This happened to me on my own, I'm passing on information that I've learned from very, very wise people, and that's it, but we also don't want to underestimate the usefulness of the right technology because now we have this long form technology and it allows us to have this discussion and so we can go deeper into things publicly and socially than we could before and I see this, I see this as a manifestation of that and and and I also hope that maybe what is happening because we will have to adapt a lot in the next 20 years, as the Things change so quickly that we can barely understand it and, hopefully, how we will be able to understand it.
Managing that is thinking and hopefully these long discussions will provide the political or public forum for us to think and engage at a deep enough level so that we can master the transformations and I think that is possible and He is part of the reason why I wrote this book and, well, part of the reason why I would be doing what I have been doing for the last thirty years because I have really believed since 1985 that the way out of political polarization is the way out of the excesses of the right. and the left is through the individual.
I think the West got it right. The fundamental unit of measurement is the individual and the fundamental task of the individual is to participate in this process of humble self-authorization. it gets better, I think that's the case and that's where the meaning is and that's where the responsibility is and I think and I hope that if there are enough people in the West and then in the rest of the world, but we are very polarized in the West right now , if enough people take responsibility for ordering their individual lives, then we will be wise enough not to allow this process of political polarization to take us back to the same places we went so many times in the past. 20th century I see no other antidote for this it is not political it is ethical this is the message I always hear from you and this is you as a friend this is the you that I understand but this is not how you are commonly represented You are the most misrepresented person I have ever met in my life.
I've never seen someone who has so many positive things that are ignored and where people look for every little thing that they can possibly misrepresent and change and change and I'm a little stunned by that, I mean I'm really not sure what it is. in you who is so polarizing with all these different people who are deciding that you are a sexist, transphobic, evil person who is right-wing, okay, the figure you know even to the point where it's a little funny to me sometimes when I read some of these shots about you, what do you think it's about?
What do you have? This is something new for you. Do you mean this has only been the last few? years you've gone from being a relatively unknown professor at a university to being Anto to being a global figure where obviously your message resonates with people in a very big way, but the people who oppose you vehemently oppose you. What do you think is collectivist? They don't like me. Collectivists, what do you mean people who think the probably appropriate unit of analysis in the world is political and group B oriented? Identity politics types don't like me at all and they have every reason not to because I'm not a fan of identity politics.
I think that's why you are distorted, but mentally there are other reasons. I mean, I spoke out against this bill in Canada's Bill C 16 which was hypothetically intended to do nothing more than increase the domain of rights that applied to transgender people, but there was so much more to that bill of law, let me tell you, and I read the policy, it points out the policies that accompanied it and it was a bill that required expression and that is why I opposed it with the argument that politicians are not supposed to go outside their own sphere. and start forcing yourself to express yourself.
This is not the same as banning hate speech. I think hate speech should be left alone. personally for all sorts of reasons, but compelling the content of speech is something completely new that has never been done before in the history of British common law. The English common law and, in fact, it's the Supreme Court in the 1940s in the US said that that was not allowed and that it was a major transgression and they said, well, we're doing it for all the right reasons, It's like no, no, you don't understand, you can't force yourself to talk.
I don't. I don't care what your reasons are and why I should trust your damn reasons anyway, what makes you so holy. I like it so that you can violate this fundamental principle and I must assume that you are doing it only out of compassion and that you are wise enough to handle it properly. It's like I'm sorry, no. I read your policies. I see what you're doing. I don't like collectivists, I think they are incredibly dangerous and I have reason to believe that, so I think that when the time comes, if your unit of analysis is the group and your worldview is a group and its claims to power against all others groups that that is not acceptable, it is tribalism in the worst form and leads to nothing but chaos and desire and part of the reason you do it is not because of your compassion, but because you are envious and do not want to take responsibility of your own life and I'm asking you to do it and that's why you don't like me so I must be a good figure I must be a Nazi saying your house needs a lot of work man there's a lot of rot in the floorboards the plumbing is leaking the water is coming in you are not the wise and the saint you think you are there is so much work you have to do on yourself it would almost kill you if you took a look at it do everything you honestly think that's why people respond to you in a negative way, they just have their own personal problems that they are avoiding, you can't possibly represent to them something cruel or something. that's not compassionate to people and their differences and their flaws and their humanity because I think it's certainly the case that the view that's been generated of me is yes, that's it but that's what I mean oh yes, there's that too, but because?
These layers say that it is their, well, part of the political polarization, you know, right now we are seeing almost everything that happens in the world through a political lens, at least journalists, at least in the first place, in First thing I have to make clear is that many journalists have treated me very well, as if the best journalists in Canada have been on my side since about two weeks after bill c16 broke and those would be the journalists that an independent voice and that they have created their own following and are in several different media outlets, mostly print, okay, and there is a coalition of newspapers in Canada, the postal media group, 200 newspapers that they totally went out in favor. of my stance on bill c60, so many times journalists have treated me appropriately, there are a small number of very vocal journalists and a small number of very well organized activists who havebeen on my case from the beginning. and those are people who are generally driven by a very radical left-wing progressive agenda and I'm not on their side.
I am on their side as individuals. I'm on your side as people who could fight forward, but the collectivist vision is deadly, but you. He seems to be the model for this characterization as simple as almost a caricature of what the figurehead of the extreme right is. For me, as a person who knows you, it's very strange to see this happen and then when they can find something. what you say could, without further explanation or definition, be misinterpreted as appealing to this definition of you, as for example, when all this, when this, I guess they call themselves in the cells, involuntary celibates, when all this happened , this car crashed his car into a group of people, it's a horrible tragedy, one of the things you talked about inside the cells is that and this was part of Rome, what was it?
There's a New York Times watch, yeah, you said one of the cures for this is forced monogamy, people decided And you know, I'd never heard that term before, honestly, and that was what it meant, it's a psychological term and what it means is imposed by culture, it is a monogamy of good value, yes, because polygamous societies tend to become ultra-violent, yes. and that has been known in anthropological literature for a hundred years and, certainly, left-wing anthropologists were among those who discovered it as if she knew that journalists knew perfectly well what she meant by making me comply, she was stupid, it's a you use it as if everyone wants to understand it because you are an intellectual and because you are a teacher.
It was also two minutes of a two-day conversation. You know, it's like that. If that's seen socially, well, it's a lot of fun. It was fun in a way. because my feeling is that if you want to pillory someone you have to attribute to them views that someone somewhere has had and the implication of that part of the New York Times article was that I wanted you to know, to take nubile young women on edge of pistol. under state law enforcement and handing them useless men, it's like no one believed that, so Trinity sounds like yes, it's really an optics of that statement is very bad, but the question is why there was no follow-up. questions and if there were follow up questions for you to define what you mean by law enforcement, they weren't right, they just weren't included in the piece, that's a real problem, yes, that's a real problem, that's a real problem , because that's all.
Is it so ridiculous because inaccurately defining who you are is one of the things I've continually said? And this is recorded in several places. Okay, so you're a young man mm-hmm and all the women reject it. You who have the problem, not all women are the wrong path to follow if all women reject you, it is you. We both agree on this, but why is imposing monogamy the solution for people who are involuntarily celibate? Well, it's the solution for them. It is the solution to the relationship between men and women, fundamentally it is a monogamous social norm.
Men are unattractive if this was a suggestion to them, but if these men are unattractive to women, I don't mean just physically unattractive, it means women don't seek them out as partners, hmm. they need to become men, yes they certainly do for this illusion, that is the solution absolutely and we both agree on this, yes what they need to do in this society where monogamy is the social norm but it is not a social norm of anyway, well, that was partly my point, although as we deviate from that we lean towards a more violent society, I was making a very minor point.
I don't think they're related, honestly. No, I don't think involuntary celibates. I don't think that having imposed monogamy as part of our cultural norm is going to help those people, how is it going to help them? Because what happens is that if a polygamous society develops, which is the alternative, then a small minority of men get all the women. What happened, well, I could see that that is the only point at which Allah can be feared in a theoretical world where polygamous societies exist and are concentrated and then you have this problem with this small group of men who are all women, but That's not what we're talking about. and also making women feel unhappy because they don't have any access to a genuine one on one intimate relationship for a long period of time which doesn't work well, no it's the whole thing and it's best that women want that right .
If you have children, true, but I still don't think that's why these men are involuntarily celibate and I don't think it's the solution. I think the solution is that they need to become attractive. Yes, that is the solution. I don't think the two are well related, all I was making is a minor point, the minor point was that one of the ways that societies around the world have discovered that young male aggression can be kept under control is by imposing monogamous standards because it gives everyone a chance, in a sense, a chance, which means it becomes clearer, there will be more women available for one-on-one relationships instead of just some guy you know, whoever it is, for whatever reason, what you see, well, you see this happening in universities where women outnumber men. the man hypothetically has more sexual opportunities, but that's not what happens, what happens is that a small minority of men have all the sexual opportunities, a fairly large minority of men, right?
Women know how because they can't Find a committed person. relationship is bad for most men and men who have all the sexual opportunities become cynical, but doesn't this somehow go against your idea of ​​equality of outcomes because now you're talking about equality of sexual outcomes? these men James, that's the dominant basketball player that just kicks everyone's ass, this is a guy that has been successful at the highest level, well, there will be people like that sexually, there will be people who are better at finding a partner and that this It's what they enjoy, they enjoy having many partners, they enjoy being yes, but if this is what they enjoy, if it's a man who doesn't want a family and enjoys dating multiple women, why is it so bad?
Well, I think the fundamental reason he's bad is. because in the long run it's bad for the kids, it's bad for the kids if he chooses to have kids, a fundamental issue as far as I'm concerned, right, and I think that's the answer, look to give the journalist credit, that's the point she was making known. Aside from ridiculing and caricaturing me in my perspective, that was the point she was making. Well, first of all, I'm not in favor of unbridled hierarchies. I already said that you know that the propensity of a hierarchy is that all the loot. go to the person at the top right and that can destabilize the entire structure.
Yeah, oh, we have to have a dialogue about how to rectify that, but how is it possible to rectify that if a man is, for example, if we have a six-footer? five beautiful men who have a perfect body and yet are brilliant and just want to date a bunch of women, yeah, and the rest of the people are five foot one and fat and lazy and like what this guy will do If this is the competition he is going to win, yes, yes, there is no way around this and yet he decides to impose monogamy where it becomes a popular thing that women will be more attracted to him if he decides to date them, they might decide that I would prefer to have done it. he sometimes never really what happens, but what's wrong with that well, what's wrong with this is that it destabilized society and it's bad for children, right, you said that, yeah, but that's what It happens if they don't want to have children, but there are many people who don't want to have children.
There are many people who choose to spend their entire lives without having children. There are men in their 30s. Some of my friends have vasectomies. They don't want to have children. mm-hmm. So , because I would do? that in some way help these involuntary celibates well, I think you tilt society to serve the interests of good, that's a good question for you, but you get my point, I see your point, there's no doubt about it, I almost do. you're having. almost forcing and in equal results, no, that would not be her point to him to the extent that she had a point, that was her point now and, but I, but I am not the one who does not go against my opinions, which the issue of the result.
It must be addressed. I already said that there needs to be a reason for the left and the right and then the problem with hierarchies is that they can become too pronounced and destabilize everything that happens, particularly in the sexual sphere, and there is a lot of anthropological evidence. but you could still say, well, who cares, because the men who are winning should be allowed to win and the women should be allowed to choose yes, except there's the problem of children, so the Society intervenes on behalf of children and you can say, well, a lot of people don't want to have children, yes, and that's more true now than before, although many of those people end up having children anyway, you know the guys who They sit all the time so that this is not avoided.
The problem, but for me the problem here is not men or women, but children, if we are trying to establish societies where the probability of children growing up in an approximately optimal environment is optimized and that will mean sacrifice. of opportunity and choice on the part of the idiot is necessary. I agree with you, but I think what we're talking about reflects what we're talking about in sports, it reflects what we're talking about in business, it's everything else that's going on. To be people who are better at all different aspects of life, there will be people who are talented in terms of getting women to like them.
Yes, that's true. That's why I look too. Correct females have High Pergamum, which means they mate. in a crew are found through knops dominance hierarchies, so if you are a male who is successful in a given hierarchy, the likelihood that you will have additional mating opportunities is exceptionally high, it is an incredibly good predictor that the Hypergamy is a very uncomfortable discussion, yes there are certainly many discussions that are important, although it is the idea that it defines women's sexual choices by the fact that they want to beg more, better, someone who is more successful and someone who is higher in the social level. scale of what they are used to or what they are accustomed to, well, what women do is like choosing a partner is a very difficult problem, so how is it solved well?
That's how women solve it, throw men in the ring, let them compete in whatever they want. We are competing in assuming that the man who wins is the best to marry. Yes, it is a brilliant solution, it is a market-oriented solution, it is actually the solution that seems to have driven our evolutionary move away from chimpanzees, it is a biological solution, It is a logical solution that cost what is the cost? well the cost is the cost is polygamy and that's why we control it with forced monogamy and we do it to provide stable and stable circumstances for children is it polyamorous is a polyamorous society as unattainable as this Marxist utopian yes, yes I think so because It seems like this is another point I was raising that wasn't covered in the article or what I wrote at length on my blog: Society's inclination toward monogamy around the world is human Universal now which doesn't mean people don't have polygamous or polyamorous tendencies because they certainly do and it is certainly also true that one of the ways that women manipulate this system is that, like the number of women and children that are in a say, you are married and have children with your husband but you also have an affair so we have a child with another man that's more common than anyone suspected so it's part of the way women solve the problem you just described and I'm not saying anything For or against this, this is a purely objective biological statement: they choose a monogamous marriage and cheat with high-status guys.
Now you know, obviously, within the confines of marriage, that's a terrible thing, but it's a very uncomfortable topic. although for women in particular it is an uncomfortable topic for everyone, true, but it is a terrible topic, they do not like the idea that this is something common, that women choose a safe man who is willing to be monogamous with them and maybe they are above him. in a social class or sexually and then they will cheat on someone who is common, but it is not the norm, it is still the norm not to do, the norm is fidelity, but there are many exceptions, this applies. the culture of monogamy is the norma, okay, so my son is getting married in September, so let's say he comes to me in a year and says, "Hey, dad, guess what I've had three affairs in the last year and them." We have all been successful.
They haven't caught me. I'm not a good guy. What I'm gonna say?. No. What the hell are you doing? That's not what you're supposed to do. guide them in a way thatyou think so, yes it is a harmonious family, yes it is deeply rooted in cultural norms and if that starts to destabilize then there are problems and that doesn't mean that it is not prone to all the problems that you raised. Look, there is no bigger problem than successful reproduction, it is the big problem and all the solutions we have generated are full of flaws, like this is an example, the gender pay gap.
Okay, there is no gender pay gap. There is a maternal gap. There are other reasons too but women really take a hit when they become mothers, okay that's unfair, fair enough man what the hell are you going to do about it? It's not just that, though, right, and this is what I'm starting to bother you too, but this is it. What's one of the things you wanted to mention with our kind of losing track? Your misrepresentation reflects the misrepresentation of the gender pay gap because it is a convenient misrepresentation that, upon further inspection and understanding, you realize that a gender pay gap does not exist. the gender pay gap when people discuss it and don't understand it and I've had these conversations with really smart people who just listen to what's on the news or read some really quick article that talks about this problem that we have and they assume that a man and a woman work the same job, but the woman is unfairly paid 79 cents for every man's dollar, that is not the case, it is not so similar to the case where women choose different professions that do not pay Therefore, they work fewer hours and often get married and have children and because they have children they take paternity leave, they make less money than us and they earn less money because those are ten or twenty reasons for the gender pay gap, one of them is motherhood . but there are a lot of them, but in all dangerous jobs, men work outside, men are more likely to move, but it is never discussed, it's just that guys don't like multivariate problems, but it's not just that it is a deliberate misrepresentation of a reality and I.
I think it reflects this unfortunate misrepresentation of where you are and where you are and I think this is all related to people who want evil and good, they want a one in zero, they want things to be very binary, yes, they want them to be binary . the way they already understand it, it was all to fit their ideological lens and things are more complicated than that, this is a complex discussion that you're not going to have in a five minute segment on a talk show that we're not going to have. to have. this on a radio show you're not going to get this in an article edited by someone with a biased opinion, yeah, and this is the problem with the mainstream media and this is the problem with ideas, period, Warren's book Farrell, wrote a book called Warren Farrell is the guy who would be ridiculed the most for pointing out the real reasons for the gender pay gap.
He wrote a book called Why Men Earn More. Who D writes it for his daughters. Why because he wanted to help provide it now. Obviously, he was also doing it for public consumption, but one of the motivations was that while men earn more, why? And if women want to earn more, what could they learn from men who earn more? How to earn more? And the answer is yes. The question is whether they will or not and the likely answers are that most women won't because how much you earn is not the only hallmark of success in your life.
You know it's like it's a measurement and it could be a measurement. so the really competitive men compete and do it, and that's partly to provide access to Warren wrote this to lay out all the reasons why men earn more, but it was so that his daughters, at least in part, could figure out how to be socioeconomically successful. It's as if, but that's not the only seal. How much socioeconomic success are you willing to sacrifice to spend time with your children before they do? You're three years old, well the answer to that shouldn't be any because we seem to already know this, for example, once you make enough money to keep the collectors at bay, then that's kind of the lower and upper working class that says something like even the centrist working class keeps the bill collectors at bay extra money doesn't improve your quality of life other things do maybe it's a rational response when you're like 30 look at the irrational man here's the irrational man maybe they run the world but they are irrational men, more success is always better along this unitary dimensional axis of achievement, well Gordon Gekko, greed is good, well there is a small percentage of men who are hypercompetitive to along that single axis of competence and maybe they drive most of the things that probably but that doesn't make them right, it doesn't make them the majority of people and it doesn't make them happy, well, happy, it's a completely different topic. different, right, that's what prevents them because everyone is fine, you, you, although in the pursuit of success it is implied that happiness goes with that success, otherwise, why do you do it?
Yes, well, Dominus, power of domination, charisma, prestige, well, you apply it, it is success and happiness, or they are inexorably connected in our perception. Yeah, well, it's often a flawed equation. I know what's up Look, I worked in law firms with law firms for a very long period of time and I worked for a lot of high level women, a lot of them and they were like they were usually extremely attractive, they were extremely intelligent, they were extremely motivated. They were very, very conscientious, they varied in how nice they were, some were unpleasant litigator types and some were nicer, they often had difficulties in law firms, but law firms lose all their women in the 30s, they all rescue at the partner level. many of them are well regarded, Jesus, it's, yes, it's a good percentage, it's a huge percentage and it's not because law firms don't want them, law firms want them because you can't find people like that, they really are It's weird, especially if there are rainmakers too, if they can make money, so law firms go out of their way trying to retain women, they can't retain them, why, well, women decide that, oh, I'm working 18 hours a day.
All the time, seven days a week, my husband makes a lot of money, if I made half the money he made, we would still have a lot of money, why am I working 18 hours a day? Well, that's not the question, the question is why. Could someone work 18 hours a day? That's the mystery and the answer is that a small minority of men feel driven to do that and so they will do it no matter where you put these guys, that's what they do. Yeah, okay, but that means it's right, I think something is wrong with these women, they made it to 30, they caught up with their mate, they reached the top.
I mean, they could continue if they wanted to, but they achieved their goal. They've definitely shown the lady how damn good she is, in the game and they wake up at 30 and think, oh wait a minute, I want to be in a relationship and I also want to have some time to spend on it. I would like to have children and in fact I would like to see My children, it is that irrational. This is another thing that you and I agree on, but when I see people talk about the way you talk about women, they twist what you say and paint you the way I think they intentionally paint you, they do. . by the way they paint you as a misogynist I don't understand why I don't understand if it's because they don't agree with you on things so this is a convenient way to demonize your position by demonizing you as a human being but wow, it's also partly because I've argued that there are differences between men and women, yes, but why that's not a feminist case is beyond me, it's like no, they're exactly the same, no they're not, it's ridiculous, it is and it's ridiculous, it's confusing, confuse it on purpose, yeah, and then the thing is the data is there, so look, people have accused me of pseudoscience, you know, which I actually think is quite comical because the studies that I'm reporting on are not who accused you of pseudoscience.
Oh God, journalists, journalists of all kinds, especially when I talk about differences between men and women, it's like, oh, that's pseudoscience, not really, it's not conventional fucking science, both biology and psychology, but why? What do you like to do well? because it seems that there is a reason that goes hand in hand with the radical leftist agenda that if a world of equal results exists it cannot be achieved and that is the desirable world if there really are differences between people, real differences like that cannot be They're just constructed socioculturally in a way that you can manipulate, there's also something if you're really power mad and you want to believe that human beings are infinitely malleable because then you can mold them into whatever image you want and if you say no, they actually have a character. . something built then that interferes with the totalitarian regime, but this is what happened: look, we have a good personality model, we have had it for about forty years, something like the Big Five model, five dimensions of personality and were established statistically. theoretically by left-wing psychologists, that's fine and I'm not saying that they are ideologically contaminated, but what I am saying is that there is no evidence that right-wing psychologists produced the big five because there are no right-wing psychologists, so there are enough that that's not the reason the big five came about, so once you have a good personality model you can say, well, men and women differ and the answer is yes, it turns out yes, there are quite a few differences, but the biggest ones are women are nicer, so that's one of the traits of kindness and it's the dimension of compassion and courtesy and they are more prone to negative emotions, anxiety and emotional pain and that reflects a psychiatric literature showing worldwide that women are more likely to be diagnosed with depression and anxiety, just as men are more likely to be incarcerated for antisocial behavior, which is reflective of the older low concordance, this is true everywhere in the world okay so there is no evidence of any bias unless you say everything is biased everywhere in the world it might well be but we have controlled for that too so now there are personality differences between men and women, the first thing we could point out is that they are not that big, so if you take a woman and a man at random from the population and you have to bet on who is more aggressive, less pleasant and you bet on the woman, you would be right forty percent of the time, which is actually quite a lot, you would be right enough, but if you choose the person out of a hundred who is the most aggressive, the least pleasant. there is an overwhelming probability that they are men because the differences become more extreme.
Athletes at the extremes of the distribution, people don't understand statistics. You can have two populations that are quite similar and still have radically different results if you just add a little more to them. It is important to know who the most powerful physical fighters in the world are, all men, what does that mean that there are no women who can beat a man in a fight? No, it doesn't mean there are many women either. that they are more aggressive than men, but if you take the most physically powerful aggressive people, they are all men because they are like one in a thousand people or 1 in 10,000 people, so you can have huge differences in the extremes despite the majority .
Similarity in the environment people do not understand that, but the following is fine, there are differences between men and women in terms of personality, in addition to the biological ones, they are those caused by cultural differences. Well, it turns out we can answer how countries are classified. Because of how egalitarian their social policies are, does everyone agree? Yes, yes, the Scandinavians are at the top. Everyone agrees. Left, right, it doesn't matter. Everyone agrees. Alright. So you stack cultures based on how egalitarian their social policies are and then you look to see. how big are the differences between men and women in that hierarchy of egalitarianism and if as societies become more egalitarian the differences between men and women disappear then it is sociocultural, that is not what happened, what happened was that a As societies became more egalitarian the differences between men and women became bigger, not smaller, it means that people build socioculturally and I'm talking about you, build socioculturally, people, you're wrong, you're wrong, you make societies become more equal, men and women become more different, who? makes the argument in opposition to this, although all the social constructionists, all the radical leftists and what they are, use facts, notthey have facts, but then they criticize the whole idea of ​​facts, then they pursue the whole idea of ​​science as a Western science. patriarchal construction what is its motivationthe motivation is that if people are different, equality of results is neither desirable nor achievable and why do they want itequality of results why is that so that is a good question well, part of this is part of this it's real compassion look around you it's not good that some people lose and it's certainly not good that some losers lose all the time who wants to make you happy when you walk down the street and see homeless people it's like, hey look at the hierarchies at work , look at these homeless people, no one is happy about that, right, okay, so failing within a hierarchy of values ​​is painful, so give the devil his due because you give the left his type, to the Just like you give it to the right, it's like, it's painful that hierarchies produce dispossession, damn it, what's the cure?
Get rid of the hierarchy. Hey, wait a minute, man, you get rid of the hierarchy, you get rid of the. value structure you get rid of the tools that allow us to generate absolute wealth and prevent people from starving, it is a catastrophe, okay, so there is the problem that you have to have the hierarchy, but it is also not just compassion on the part of the left is envy. Okay, yes I am, if I'm defending the dispossessed, which makes me so sure that I'm not just against the successful, and maybe it's because I'm bitter and jealous and envious and resentful, and it's certainly very likely if you look at what happened in left-wing societies that tried to pursue utopia and don't read envy and resentment into that.
You don't know the story because that's clearly why they became murderers. This is the question. it is as if it were clearly the case that the Soviet Union, for example, was motivated by the desire for equality of outcomes as its primary motivation. What happened? 25 million people were killed. Because? Why was it all compassion and love for the dispossessed or was it absolutely bitter resentment? and hatred for anyone who has had even a modicum of success on any possible dimension of evaluation, so this compassion for people who don't do well when used incorrectly or approached incorrectly leads to attacking to people who are doing well, so there is the danger of pity, that's exactly good, look what happens if you get hit, you think, oh look, isn't it lovely that the mother bear takes care of her cubs?
Yeah, it's charming, man, until you get between her and her puppies, then it's not so charming. and that's the other side of that affiliative kindness, it's like you, if you're on my side, you know, if you're the baby that takes refuge under my wings, it's like I'm, I'm the absolute epitome of maternal love and care. , but If I have identified you as a predator, you better look closely and that is manifesting itself in our political landscape at a very, very rapid pace, that is the feminine side of totalitarianism, as far as I can tell, the feminine side of Totalitarianism, it's not just that.
It's not just that kindness motivates aggression because it certainly does, but also the envious and resentful can use compassion as camouflage for their true intention, which is to tear down anyone who has more than them, so you realize. When there are discussions about the 1%, we already talk about this, well, who is the 1%? Well, it's, I'm, I'm, I'm in and I'm in the park in New York demonstrating against Wall Street down with the 1%. % is like wait a second you are in the 1% there is mr. protester no, no, you don't understand that the rich are those who have more money than me, yes, of course, that's the definition, who is rich, someone who has more than me, not me, it's like, well, why not It's 1% of North America, why not, because it's Inconvenient, that's an inconvenient fact, so that's part of it, but there's the envy and the resentment.
This is that the real pathological end of the total compassion that motivates the radical left is like, yeah, you like poor people, what makes you think you just don't? You don't hate the successful and that is a question, because you are not a perfect man, there is hate in you and the probability that it is more powerful than love is quite high, so look at your own look and your own point of view before to go out. and trying to fix the hierarchies of the world exactly what that is and it's worse, like in the Russian Revolution for example, let's just say to argue that the first rung of revolutionaries were just driven by compassion, maybe they all had it .
They were killed, they were killed by the people who came after and they weren't that interested in compassion at all, they were interested in finding out everyone who was even remotely successful in any dimension and taking them down, and that happened in wave after bloody wave. they killed all the successful farmers those were the kulaks they killed them all they surrounded them all they killed them they raped them they stole other property they sent the remains to Siberia they froze them to death ten years later six million Ukrainians died because they couldn't farm why? Do you think people are so opposed to discussing these things or challenging cultural norms because one of the things I've seen, especially in terms of the differences between men and women, is this reaction to some of the things you've said?
It's been very, it's very strange to me, it's very strange that people don't recognize that these are unbalanced approaches and that there's some of that just complicated, Joe, it's like well, let's say there are differences between men and women just for the sake of of the argument. By the way, the biggest differences seem to be of interest and therefore what is going to happen is that if we leave men and women to fend for themselves, there will not be many female engineers and tektites and there will be many women. Nurses there won't be many nurses and healthcare types there won't be many primary school teachers, but is this a gap?
Well, that's the question who knows, do we know? I'm not familiar with the idea of ​​having an equal society where gender inequality is completely eliminated. the gender pay gap is non-existent, yeah well that's a problem because it's a booze wallet, so is it, yeah, equality of outcomes is a non-starter, if that's okay with men and women. be classified into different occupations, which seems very likely. I don't know if that's okay and then it's also okay compared to what alternative, for example, all primary school teachers should be women, all psychologists should be women because that's what's happening The answer to that is well, I don't know, but there is another answer which is: what do you propose as an alternative to free choice that is not going to cause more problems than free choice because I would say well, let's say that I?
I'm a feminist for the sake of argument so I think there are differences between men and women, there are real differences and some of them are biological, some of them are strategic in a sense because women pay a higher price for reproduction and so that will take them to make different decisions that are simply rational based on their rationality based on biological differences, so it's like a second order biological difference, there are differences in temperament and interest that are going to lead to making different decisions. that a pro-feminist or anti-feminist stance is only anti-feminist if you assume that everyone has to be exactly the same and the results have to be exactly the same if your goal is to leave people alone as much as possible let them make their own informed decisions and free, then you let the differences manifest in the world and take your hits for that, the problem with that is this narrative of equality, the equality of outcomes that you now have and just one quality. of human beings well that is seeing people as we are all the same, what we are not, just some people are different, things were the same in terms of our rights or in terms of the way we should treat each other metaphysically and equal, yes, of course. but err, all the other dimensions were radically unequal and there is pain in that is the process the problem that is the problem is the pain in that is real the only thing that is worse than the pain of inequality is the pain of forced equality and I'm not being quick about that it's like look I see IQ problems are what kill me the most it's like if you have an IQ of less than 83 you can't be inducted into the US military by law why Why isn't there?
One damn thing you can do that isn't counterproductive even though the military wants you because they can't get enough personnel, that's what they decided, okay, so you're at the lower end of the cognitive distribution, what are you? I'm not going to do much and it's going to get worse it's that good, it's not good, it's horrible, do we know what to do about it? It's not right and we can't have equality of outcomes between people with IQs below 83, right? Nobody defends him. that's why no one is asking for that, well, people say, well, IQ tests are not valid, it's like, yeah, I found one of the conversations you have shocking and it started a trend of misquoting you and misrepresenting you when you wrote a article. an interview with Vice and yeah, they used a snippet of one of the things you said and tried to pretend that you had made these same Curt statements and one of them liked it so it was annoying so I went like Curt and that was probably my fatigue. makeup mistake is that the one you talked about yes yes yes makeup and the way people dress you know and yes what I was trying to draw in the first place how annoying he knew everything he knew everything well it was just in his attitude what you know he was calm bulking up he wanted wanted this from the beginning this was him mm-hmm arms crossed right right eyes up it's like a I know more than you and B you're probably that reprehensible person I've thought about extra work to reveal that I was indicating that is from the left he was deciding that what you were doing was representing the patriarchy you were representing dominant male structures that he was saying are not correct yes, yes, but it wasn't even that he was from the left.
I've talked to reasonably left-wing people, it was built into his attitude and so he gave me a little test here of what could have been, what my strategic mistake was and you know. I asked before, well, why am I ridiculed with some regularity and part of that is probably my own inadequacy? You know, it's, it's not, it's not that I've handled every opportunity I've had perfectly, you know, and I can take advantage of them. hot under the collar is a mistake is a mistake because the correct approach in these situations is to use the minimum force necessary and allow myself to get irritated, let's say even a little, when confronted by someone who is doing this is not productive.
It works well and I really need to keep it under control and when I keep it under control it works better. Makeup was particularly upsetting to me because I think it's a valid conversation, it's an interesting conversation, I said and they didn't put this in their opening cut I said I'm not saying women shouldn't be allowed to wear makeup in the workplace. . I said it explicitly right, that's why people were so angry when they saw the full version, I mean the full version. was released, someone leaked it, someone who felt like it was being misrepresented and the editing was unfair, decided to actually make the kit and people were absolutely furious, yeah, well, I guess I think the people at Vice actually released it, but other people took the full release and I clipped it with the class statement and it showed how it was being misinterpreted, yeah, but okay, so the makeup thing is okay, look, here's the first one of all.
Sometimes I make a mistake in treating journalists like I would treat my graduate students, so when I'm having a conversation with my students and we say, well, here's a problem, it's an intellectual exercise, it's a sexual behavior, how do we regulate which ones? It's the norms around sexual behavior in the workplace, so that's the question, it's a question we don't know, okay? there are a lot of possibilities here, possible rules, right, no flirting, no hugging, no eye contact for more than five seconds, that's Netflix, right, no hugging, that's awesome, damn, no eye contact for more of five seconds, that is sacred, not hugging, that was that real, it is real.
What if you are chatting with a woman who is your boss and she asks you questions about things? Can you look down every five seconds? Christ, that's reevaluating it. It is real. It is real. It's so bad. It's such a terrible idea. Yes, yes, it's a terrible idea. but there are a lot of women that I'm friends with that I've never had any sexual interest in and we look at each other, you say that, but you're a potential manifestation of rapists, yeah, right, yeah, you get the big picture. So if you have an argument, you say, well, look, what are the rules governing sexual behavior in the workplace?
Okay, can you come to work in your robe? No, how about boxers? If you are a man, no, okay, then there issome with short skirts. that this is what the hell is in the damn details right, yeah, it's like, okay, we, you can't come to work naked, you can't come to work in your underwear, you can come to work in a suit, okay, so the line is somewhere in between. boxers and suit where exactly is the line exactly? Can a man wear shorts? Well, you can't help why a woman can wear a dress the same way as men. professional organizations the way men solved this problem was that everyone wore a uniform and a uniform makes you a uniform, that's why you wear it and the uniform is the suit and it is a derivation of a military uniform, so the idea was what If you want to get rid of the excess diversity in clothing, wear your damn suit, then we know that you are playing and we don't have to be distracted by what what are you wearing.
Well, that's what the man did. Now the women come. in the workspace it's like hmm, what do they do well? There is proper professional attire and there are some rules about it, but what are the rules exactly? And I was thinking, well, we're worried about sexual misconduct in the workplace, you can't watch. You can't hug someone for more than five seconds okay, what about the makeup? Shall we have a discussion about makeup? oh well, no, we have a kind of discussion about that, it's like, well, this makeup, sexual signaling, it's like, well, if you are and if you're an evolutionary biologist, the question is makeup, sexual signaling, that's not even It's not even a question, well, obviously, that's what it is, that's why that conversation was frustrating because he was saying because they want to do it, they want to use it, they want to use it. to look good good and maybe it's not even me well that's true that's right that's how he eats that but let me think well everyone knows what that means what you all have to say no he has to say that because in his tribe you have to communicate that way Oh, women wear makeup because they want to look good, but he does it because it's his opinion or because he's trying to irritate you, what's irritating you right now, as a journalist, is it his idea or his job is challenge you in some way and at least offer the devil's advocate opinion, sure, explain better why they shouldn't wear makeup, they just want to look good, you need to explain better why you say he did it was like Oh dr.
Peterson, it's obvious what looking good means to them, as everyone knows. Do you think I don't know? Maybe like he was intellectually sparring with you and was being aggressive about it. I think he felt that I think he felt that I I think he felt that it was necessary to challenge me, that that was his role as a journalist, but fundamentally he was cocky, he thought he came out of the whole conversation with an air of intellectual condescension, he was embedded in the discussion from the beginning and I never dropped it, it's like well I know what you're doing and I know what's up and I know how to disarm you and I know that whatever you're talking about is just an attempt to defend your original opinions, oh god, about one hour. something like how much they used Oh, in the clips almost none of that, I don't even know a couple of minutes, so yeah, yeah, so your tendency to get angry can be exploited, yeah, of course, and it's the problem of deviating. from the doctrine of minimum necessary force, like the best times, the best interactions that I've had with controversial journalists is where I've kept absolutely calm, you know, but and like Kathy Newman, yeah, exactly what you're saying is fine. , that's what he was.
Like, like I know who you are and I know you're covering it up, it's like, well, these are these DS concepts, these are complex situations where you find men and women who are sexually attracted to each other and they work in confinement. environments for long periods of time and they essentially spend more time with the people they work with and with their lovers and their wives and their husbands and it's strange, you know, men and women interacting with each other and locked in boxes, it's strange. Brenden's offices are closed. in the painting they were all together and if they find each other attractive and are interacting socially with each other, especially if there is some interaction that strays outside of the work discussion, you don't want them to find each other unattractive either, right? you're inviting someone to dinner at a business dinner, it's like even if you're guys hanging out together, let's just say it's not like you're working on finding each other unattractive and I don't mean sexually, you want to come across as why. they enjoy each other, yes, they do and they want to be charismatic and they want to be witty and all that stuff and that's nuances and especially when you add assuming a heterosexual environment, you add a heterosexual component to that the lines become blurred and so I was talking about border conditions, yes, well, let's have a conversation about this, let's talk about border conditions, oh no, we can't do that, it's like the discussion you guys wanted, why do you go ahead and agree to have these conversations? is going to be edited oh well that's a good question, Jim Jefferies' was another one, yeah Jim is a friend of mine, but I mean he gave you a good question and you really gave a good answer, you said actually I probably wrong, yes, yes and you were talking about whether or not homosexuals should, if someone should be forced to bake a cake by cake for homosexuals, yes, I said forced to do it, probably not, they said well, what if they don't want them?
Bake a cake for black people? and he said, well, actually, you should probably force yourself to do it, yeah, I'm probably wrong, yeah, I was probably wrong about everything I did and that part of the discussion because I hadn't thought about that topic enough to give a good answer. He didn't expect that problem because this is not something that is commonly talked about, no, and it's actually complicated, right? I mean, obviously the whole "I won't serve you because you're black" thing isn't cool, but then again, you have it too. You have the right to choose who you're going to affiliate with, but that's complicated because it's a business circumstance and then if you're making a pie, is it the same as serving or is it that obligatory speech, it's like, Oh my God, these are borderline cases. . that causes a lot of controversy, I'm not talking about serving black people, obviously, that's not a border case, but these cases that caused a lot of controversy are where two principles are at odds and it's not exactly clear where to draw the line and I'm not happy with your answer, you know, I'm not happy with my answer, but I hadn't spent the week that it would take me to think about the issue and really get a holistic perspective.
You didn't expect it to be a topic. Anyway, no, no, how long did you talk to Jim? Oh, I think about 45 minutes, maybe an hour first. Oh, two minutes, yes, well, my daughter has told me and my wife too, my son too and these discussions we've been thinking about. about how to handle the media, which is a very complicated question and one hypothesis is not to do interviews that will be edited and I have thought about that and and and and I am thinking about it and that could be the correct answer, could be the correct answer is to deceive, is correct and well, it could easily be, although it's the only way they can't misrepresent you, it's just that all the problems I've seen with you, they all come from you being edited, yes, I mean, there are complex Topics that people don't I would agree with you, but when you see completely mischaracterizations of your point, they have been established due to editing.
Yeah, well, I guess the only counterargument is this, and I mean a lot of these opportunities arise. I've had opportunities come at me at a pace that doesn't allow me to think about them as much as I optimally could, but then there's another thing and that's that it's not necessarily a mistake to put yourself out there. attack because sometimes it reveals the motives of the attackers, like that's what happened in the interview with Kathy Newman, no, that could have really gone sideways, like I was lucky to some extent because she interviewed me for 40 minutes or so whatever and something like that and then they cut it down to seven minutes or three minutes and it was exactly what you expected and that's what I expected after finishing the interview.
I thought, "Oh my God, they're just going to cut it into reprehensible segments and pillory me," but I walked away because there were 50 other things to do, but it was so funny because they did that and then they published the whole interview and the reason why. They published the entire interview because they thought the interview went well. Didn't they know that this was going to cause a commotion? Not at all, not even a little bit, not a bit, and I know this is a fact, so they published the whole interview and then, well, what happened was what was really happening was revealed and that was very, very effective now. that the fact that that happened meant that I had exposed myself to substantial stress and risk because that was stressful.
I mean, first of all, there was the interview, second of all I thought, "Oh my God, they're going to ridicule me for that." They posted the cut, then they posted the whole thing, then there was this whole response and then the people at Newman, who were absolutely flabbergasted by the negative response, were like, Oh Peterson has unleashed his army of trolls and poor Kathy had to come in. hiding it is like there is no evidence of credible threats, they said they called the police, but you can do it for no reason, you can just say that, which is what they said, they played a victim narrative instantly, although one thing they Kathy Newman isn't even. although he might play at the behest of his employers, he is a victim, he is one of the most powerful people in Britain, he is not a victim, so to play the victim card in a situation like that is absolutely reprehensible, but that is what they did and then about a dozen.
The papers did it and said, "Well, the Peterson trolls are attacking poor Kathy and I thought, 'Oh, now I'm really screwed.'" You don't own your fans, the other people who are interested in the stuff you have. to say, that you have control over them. Like you can give them marching orders, yeah, well, and how many millions, how many millions of people does it have to be before they're not all trolls, yeah, because that was the real problem, okay, ten thousand people commented on the video. , trolls, okay? about a hundred and fifty thousand, well how about ten million?
Well, now if you look at the video, which is about ten million plus all the clips, it's like 50 million and the comments from the professionals, the comments that are critical of Cathy Newman's behavior are running. fifty to one, so that's all trolls, I don't think so, it's absurd, the narratives are absurd, but you see, that was a good example of taking the risk and I'm not saying it's justified and I think it's very, very stressful, you know, but you know, you take the good, you take the bad along with the good and maybe maybe it's time for me to disappear to some extent completely, you know, worried about being overexposed, oh, definitely, me.
I've been worried about that for a long time, yes, and is there any benefit to that? Is there any benefit to more exposure? Are we talking about the same thing we were talking about before regarding men working crazy hours? I mean, is it your message? Enough so that I don't have to do these ridiculous interviews done on the fly maybe now I'm okay and I don't want to become a parody of myself and all that I mean, I think and I'm trying to manage, listen. I have people advising me that we are trying to figure it out.
I think this tour is a good thing, yes, but that is very controlled. I think it's also completely unpublished, yes, exactly, it's in long conversations, yes, and me. I think coming to your podcast and talking to Rubén on his shows and so on. I think the interaction with journalists is good. I'm certainly not taking advantage of the amount of opportunities that I have in front of me, but we're trying to do it. be very careful when choosing, but that doesn't always turn out well and it's like it might be that you shouldn't do anything that's edited at all, that's certainly possible, so this is the problem that you talk about in these you talk in these podcasts and long interviews and you have the opportunity to extrapolate and unravel some pretty complicated issues and compare them to other complicated issues and try to find meaning and a middle ground and try to illuminate certain positions when you expose By editing yourself, you expose yourself to someone with an idea of what the narrative should be and how to frame your positions in it dishonestly, yes, and you're seeing it over and over again when he lays out the problem in a middle-of-the-road way. the Aspen Ideas Festival last week, which is a whole story in itself, but a journalist from the Atlantic Monthly interviewed me there and it was a relatively long interview.
I think we talked for 40 minutes, something like that, and it's going to be edited now I trust her I trust her now if that will be okay how it will play out in the final edit I don't know because she won't be the only one to make the right decision well, The question is should I have done it? Well, look, it was the Aspen ideas festival, it's a different audience, it's left-wing. I thought, well, maybeI'm going to speak to a left-wing audience. People always criticize me for not doing that. I don't normally do it because they didn't invite me, but I went and talked to them, and Barry Weiss interviewed me in front of the Aspen ideas festival and that was uncut long form and I put it on the web, so maybe that was helpful for the Atlantic, well. could be good, we'll see how it goes.
However, expose me to the risk because it will be edited like this and it was wise to do so. I've been lucky so far even though I've been taken out of context on occasion and a fairly significant proportion of the time, but not the overwhelming majority of the time the net consequence of all that has been to involve more and more people in a complex dialogue, as far as I know, so that's the good thing, that's the good thing, it doesn't mean the strategy that I have implemented. so far is the only strategy that will work in the future, we can also clearly establish that you did not plan for this to happen, all this that happened when you opposed that bill and then you got to where you are, how many years later, now two . years, that's crazy, yeah, I mean, you think about the transformation of your life and your public image, I mean, it's unprecedented.
No, I can't think of a single public intellectual who has gone from universal college professor to essentially a household name, I mean, you were raised at least with my circle of friends all the time and people I meet all the time. time. I can't tell you how many people you've run into after comedy shows or at an airport who talked to me. about you, so this is a common thing and yes, well, then it is unprecedented, no, in part, you know, that is also part of the consequence of this technology. He's like yeah, no, like 2013. I was like, huh, I wonder what will happen if I put My lectures on YouTube are like watch out, man, and that's what I thought when I made Bill c16 videos.
I got up around 2:00 in the morning. I thought this is driving me crazy, that the damn University is going to force unconscious bias retraining. which is not a process validated by any stretch of the imagination of your employees and I work for the University and I am a psychologist, so what is the reason why they do that, why would they do that, would they do that to silence people? . who are protesting, are they doing it because they want to impose a certain type of behavior? Why do I think there are two reasons why I think there is genuine concern for the dispossessed and then there is some hatred for the successful and some envy and some resentment? everything people do is calm, you know, but the pathology is that the human resources guys, for example, at the university, think that it's okay for them to retrain other people on their hypothetical views in case of that they can be racist and force them to do it. admit that they are racist by making them agree to participate in the training, I don't think so, but for me that wasn't even the problem, although it was, the problem is that we can't measure unconscious bias reliably and validly I'm a psychologist in a research psychologist I know the literature that is a misuse of it is a misuse of it and the damn University was doing it, they were hiring consultants who did not know what the hell they were talking about, let me ask you, this, if they are, they are universities, yes, this is a higher education establishment, how can they act on something when there is no clear evidence that it is real, that it works, that it is effective, and that they are doing it just to make people happy? just to make themselves happy or simply to reinforce an idea that they want to be true that's what is part of it for me was part of the hegemony of the radical left it's like no, no, no, you're not going to do that at the University I exercise without telling people that there is no authorization for that from the psychological community, so anyway I got up at 2:00 in the morning and made these videos.
I thought, well, let's see what happens if I make these. videos is like well this is back to the technology thing, it's like I didn't know what YouTube was when I put my videos on it, you didn't know what YouTube was, well you know what I, no one knows what YouTube is, how did it come about ? Well look what happened to you, you have a million and a half billion downloads a year, it's like you're definitely riding a giant wave, like what did you predict 15 years ago? No, so you know you're in the right place. and the right moment and you are a very interesting interviewer because well, especially for long formats, because you are very, very curious, but also very, very tough, it is interesting to watch you because if you don't understand something, you will go after the person. and you're not doing it in a vindictive way, but you're a formidable interviewer and I've been trying to figure out why you're so successful and so much smarter than anyone would think, which is quite interesting, so you're a strange combination because You know that your personality doesn't scream intellectual, but you are very intelligent and tough as a boot and you ask really provocative questions and not because you are provocative and that's why your personality. in this long form they seem to fit together very well, you're also very good at chasing things you don't understand rather than assuming you know what you're talking about, so you take the listeners on a journey, right?
It's a journey. exploratory. but fundamentally what propelled you to stardom in a sense is not just your skill, which is not trivial, but the fact that you are on this giant technological wave and you are an early adopter and I am in the same situation as us . We are the first to adopt a technology that is as revolutionary as Gutenberg's printing press and all of that is happening in real time, it's like looking at what's happening, yeah, well, the spoken word is now as powerful as the written word, something that had never happened before in the history of humanity. we're at the forefront of that, for better or worse, that's a really good way to put it, the spoken word is just power, yeah, and maybe even more so, why is it so accessible to people who don't have the time to read well? or stuck in traffic, you know, or and here's another possibility, maybe ten times as many people can hear complex information as they can read complex information in terms of their ability to process it, sure we easily don't know, maybe it's the same thing.
It is certainly easier for me to listen to a book on tape than to read it. Yeah, well, for us, the question is how many people is that true for and I would say it could be true for them and for most people. and then people are doing hybrids, you know this because you can time your book with audible correctly so that they read when they have time, but then when they've found time, which is also an important component of this, that's the time when While you're driving or when you're doing the dishes now, suddenly, you can educate yourself during that found time.
This is a big revolution and the band that exploits the bandwidth makes a big difference because, although we talked about it at the beginning. It seems that people are smarter than we thought and you and I are and the rest of this dark intellectual web that is what unites us says that everyone has an independent platform, practically everyone has an idiosyncratic point of view and is interested ​​in having discussions. and they seek to expand their knowledge even though they might have an a priori ideological commitment. Not Sam, I guess I do, and Ben Shapiro certainly does, but they are still interested in having the discussion, but the most important thing is that they are capitalizing on the long form and the fact that that is possible is a reflection of this transformation technology and the transfer of technological information can be completely profound, so it seems, and you know, I've been trying to figure this out because I keep thinking why the hell.
Are these people coming to listen to what I'm saying? It's like well, I'm a guru, you know, I'm a sage, it's something like that, it's like, don't think that first, think if there are situational determinants, take your damn personality first. Other than that, okay, what's going on? Oh yeah, this is all fueled by YouTube and fueled by podcasts. What's new about that? There are no bandwidth restrictions, no barriers to entry, possibility of dialogue because people cut YouTube videos into pieces and make their own comments on it. It's a completely new communication technology, also a lack of interference from executives and producers and all these different people who have their own bodies without mediation, yes, without mediation it's giant, yes, yes, well, that's part of the That's why you're so popular too, is like you just said.
This is so that you have exactly the right balance of competent production because there is nothing excessive about it, as if it were competent, but no more than that. I know it's by design, but you don't edit it either, it's like what you see is what you understand, it's like everyone is relieved because we can make our own damn decisions. No, I think that's very important. If you're going to have a conversation with someone who's honest, you can't decide what to leave in and what to take out, and it's just. Well that's also partly why I deal with the press the way I do, yeah, if I'm going to have a full conversation it's like I'm willing to take the hits, yeah, and I get what you're saying. saying, but that's one of the reasons.
The reason it frustrates me so much is because I look at what they're doing and I think what you're doing is old. What you're doing is what people did twenty years ago, thirty years ago, because you can. I don't really do that anymore, you can't misrepresent people which you used to be able to do if you were in the press, you could take people, quote whatever amount of context, do whatever you wanted, put an article on them, they couldn't do anything about it. regard. It happened to me in '19, it was like '99. I made a comedy CD that came out and this woman wrote an article about it and she just lied, lied about my perspective, lied about the parts that she misquoted. the parts he not only paraphrased them, but he changed what they were to make them, you know, misogynistic or hateful or whatever and in doing so, I thought there was no recourse, there was nothing I could do about it, like, wow !
I had never experienced that before. I thought this is awesome and then I found out this person did it a lot and this is what he did and there's a supreme power that comes from being the person who has the pen, being the person who has the typewriter and you're the person. who works for you, you know the Boston Globe or whatever publication that is, that's something that has always existed, you know, and that you had to be a friend of the press, you had to play ball, you had to bend to their will so that you could do what they wanted. that you did and they could twist you and choose to paint you any way they want and it's one of the reasons why I don't do anything anymore.
I don't do interviews anymore. I don't do anything I don't want to do anything yeah I do this enough man you want to know about me there's a thousand podcasts there's over a thousand I think there's 1,100 and there's a bunch of other three. true, it just doesn't make any sense, yeah well that's it, may also be the position I find myself in more and more. I think that's the right position because then the misrepresentations don't exist anymore, so the only problem is the dispute about the actual ideological conversations or the actual concept, but you know, the thing is, you know you made a point there that's quite interesting, it's like we're in a new media landscape so now if someone comes out as a media figure with some institutional credibility and misrepresentations are exposed and then the question is how much risk should they shoulder to expose the propensity for misrepresentation of the media and the response to that might be something now might be moving, you know, maybe I've done enough of that.
I mean it would be easier for me in many ways if I just stopped doing it, but there is some benefit and there is some benefit in it working so well, so I am trying to take advantage of only those opportunities that seem to have more benefit than risk and when I define the benefit well the question is then what constitutes benefit and I suppose what constitutes benefit is good, that would boost the attempts that I am making to bring information to a large number of people that could possibly help them stabilize and improve their individual lives, that is worth a certain amount of risk, well it certainly raises your profile, raises your profile and even if you know you have 60% of these people will have a bad perception of you, 40% of these people have never heard of you. now let's understand who you are because they do more research yes so there is some benefit to that but the negative is I get texts from random people I was friends with years ago let's say this Jordan Peterson is such liar and he is this not only I don't even know who you are and then second of all why are you contacting me?
You know, I'm saying hey, you're saying he's a scammer, he's a fraud, he's in this and I'm like, wow, so you'll see an interview, you know, like the Jim Jefferies clip, it's like a minute or whatever, or the Vice piece or the opening Kathy Newman piece and they just form this certain position in you andpolitical, but bordering on political, well, the band is just more political, oh yes, he is the most, yes, but he is also a very sophisticated political commentator, so it borders on both. philosophical and religious, yes, and then we are all new adopters of this new technology, so that is enough to put us in a group and then it turns out that we have all been talking to each other. another, but part of the reason is that we are all doing the same thing online, so it is not surprising that we are talking to each other, so I always look for simple explanations first, you know, it is not a movement exactly what the demonstration is of a new technology and then well, we have anything in common worth discussing that would make this a viable group, let's say, and the answer is: I don't know, you know, I've been on tour with Rubén, that's been good, it's It's been good to have a comedian and he's also a good interviewer, he does the questions and answers with me and it's good to have some levity in the mix because the conversations are the discussions with the audience are very serious, although I can make a joke and I can't tell a joke, but if there is something.
It's funny that I can say it and sometimes it's funny, so that's something you know and we've been discussing it quite a bit and I had good conversations with Shapiro and Harris, so there's a lot of interaction between us. but I think that's more because we inhabit the same technological space as we inhabit the same ideological space, aside from the fact that we're actually fundamentally interested in dialogue, so we'll see. I mean, I'm looking at it with curiosity. You are worried? I think there are potential downsides to this, so there are a lot of downsides. There are surely many disadvantages.
I mean, first of all, you know that most of us are on an individualistic path. I have not come. I'm not really a big group guy. I know I'm in this group. Well, I'm glad to be associated with you, that's for sure, but I don't really know what it would mean or if it should mean anything or if it'll ruin what I'm doing. What I'm doing or if it is, I don't know anything about it, but mostly I'm curious, it's like, eh, this is a group. I thought this is the Rat Pack. I thought what I walked into the restaurant because we were out last night was Ben Shapiro Sam Harris Eric Weinstein Dave Rubin Joe Rogan and me and my wife Tammy, so we were all walking there and I thought, well, this is like being in the 1950s.
I thought Well, I know maybe it's not. but that's what came to mind, so I thought it's funny and it's kind of cool and interesting and edgy and all that, but no, I'm not taking it seriously, I'm not taking it seriously either, you know. I'm not taking it seriously either, but I'm just watching, I'm watching everyone interact because it's a very heterogeneous group of people, it's like that and they're very different, but it was a great joy, thank you, okay, so why? Did you think it was funny? It's a good conversation. I mean, yeah, everyone that was in that group has been on my podcast or I've been on theirs and you know, it's a fun group of really honest and interesting people that you learn some really quirky people from, especially Eric. yeah, he's listening right now, I'm with him, I love that guy, but no, I mean, they're all there, they're all there, they're all different but also unique and they all contribute a lot and that's the interesting thing, you know, think about it. queer. collection, yeah, you know, I don't know what to think of that, when Eric called me to tell me the whole New York Times thing.
I told him: what are you talking about? Why did you do that? What did I do? What did you do? be part of the New York Times article I barely was I only answered a couple of questions but there is a review do you have a photo yes they didn't direct they didn't obsess they shouldn't take my photo I was dressed like I was going on stage at the Comedy Store I didn't wear nothing different, they were trying to make a big deal out of it. I say, look, I don't have time. This means you want to take a photo, that's what I'm wearing, yeah, and we did it in the parking lot above the comedy store and it started raining.
I'm going, we're done, I have to go, I have to get on stage. I can't be soaked, you know, and then let's go. on stage and that was it, you know it was good, so your opinion is that it's good, in turn it's their interest, yeah, well this is probably another thing that unites that group of people, they probably all in that group of people get into trouble because they find too many interesting things, right, and commercial openness is another thing that unites us all, yes, yes, and so on, and you know, curiosity killed the cat, and yes, but we are not cats.
True curiosity also built the pyramids, it did it, it did it and it also saved a lot of capital letters. Let's get it over with, okay, okay, Jordan, okay, pleasure, my friend, chewy again, goodbye, yeah, that's it folks, see you soon.

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