Jordan Peterson on Gender, Patriarchy and the Slide Towards Tyranny

Hi, I'm Anne McElroy and welcome to the Intelligence Squared podcast partnered this week with Economist Radio. You can learn more about Intelligence Squared podcasts and live events at Intelligence Squared Comm. My guest is Jordan Peterson, a clinical psychologist and professor at the University of Toronto. he just wrote 12 rules for life an antidote to chaos rule number one is stand with your shoulders back rule number four compare yourself to who you were yesterday not to who someone else is today rule number six get your house perfect order before you I criticize the world. I have already felt that one and rule number twelve pet a cat when you meet one on the street.

So far, he's wildly popular, but Peterson is better known these days as a scourge of much of modern liberal thought, a stance that has led to him ultimately following fans and detractors—it all began when, beyond the living room lectures, Peterson took to answering questions on an online forum, he says his procrastination-induced musings struck a nerve, they certainly did, he now has hundreds of thousands of followers on social media, his YouTube channel has more than a million subscribers with videos like identity politics and the Marxist lie of white privilege and the psychological meaning of biblical stories that want to bring order to a world of chaos.

Jordan Peterson welcome thank you very much for the invitation why do you think that your The book twelve rules for life is already on the bestseller lists and the online videos that accompany it have struck a chord on the site because I am firmly on the side of my viewers and readers and I am doing everything I can to help them. understand how to live a responsible and meaningful life and that there is a conjunction between those two questions of responsibility and meaning that has not been adequately addressed in our culture for a long time and when you say that your viewers and readers are thinking here of a specific group of people They are aimed at a particular group, no, I wouldn't say that, so I have more male viewers online, but on YouTube the standard viewer is male, so it's not obvious that that is a consequence of my philosophy.

To say more than an artifact of technology, I think that male activity is viewed with much more skepticism than is warranted at the moment and that is certainly a problem and is part of the point of view that assumes that what our culture is is interpreted better as an oppressive

patriarchy

of some sort and that any activity within that should be seen as a manifestation of that propensity towards

tyranny

, which is an absolutely appalling view in my opinion and I make that leave what you would call opinion Let me be clear enough, but for me most of this is a matter of psychological effort, not political effort.

We could come back to the propensity for

tyranny

later and how that relates to how you see this argument, but just your interest in young men, particularly young men in Western societies, in Western societies. who speaks often. beyond that, but mainly I think that's their focus, it wouldn't be fair to say that their focus is on how men feel in societies and where there is no honor. I don't think that's my approach. I think my approach is the approach that you would expect from a clinical psychologist and educator who helps people, regardless of their group identity, live better lives.

I think the fact that what I mean to do is interpreted that way is a consequence of the absolutely overwhelming influence of identity. politics and postmodernism in our political and philosophical discourse, what I'm doing is constantly seen as a manifestation of identity politics and that's why people talk about my particular attraction to young white people, it's like I'm sorry, that's not true, There is virtually no evidence that the audience that comes to see me is and I hate to even categorize them this way because it's part of playing the same game but very diverse ethnically and with respect to

gender

as well, so the problem is that the the way our discourse is framed right now it's impossible to avoid being dragged into a box of identity politics and I think that's what I think there's nothing about that that's not reprehensible.

You said I'm very interested in exploring what you know. Where are you starting but you don't sound very angry? How do you feel? Well, I am, I am, I am appalled by the role that universities have played in this, they have influenced the culture. so this is the way our speech is carried out that the main question is which group what you are saying is directed at, like my group, why what I am saying is not directed at groups, in fact, it is interpreted precisely as an antidote to the idea that your message should be directed at groups, I'm interested in the individual and it also makes sense given my background, firstly, I met teachers so I teach individual students and secondly, and maybe not in that order.

I am a clinical psychologist, not a sociologist or politician, none of that focuses on the development of the individual and when I go to give my talks, thousands of people come to my talks and, as a consequence, I meet thousands of people. to do that personally and none of them talk to me about politics, they all say the same thing, they've been watching my lectures online or they've been reading my book, they were in a dark place in their life, they've been trying. adopt personal responsibility and a vision of the future and as a constant and tell the truth to the extent that they can take responsibility for their own behavior and improve the lives of their families and their communities and by doing those things they are much better for themselves and that is the history.

I'm interested that you've chosen a kind of self-help journey here with the book Rules for Life takes us back to Samuel's smiles and the self-help manuals of the Victorians in some ways. a tradition, but you're someone who doesn't like being told what and you think you know that a lot of modernity is like saying a little, pointing fingers or telling people what to do, so why would you accept their rules? Jordan Peterson's rules if you weren't Jordan Peterson oh, good point, yeah, well, you know, you might as well ask in a sense how can I get away with this because you know, for example, last year I gave a series of lectures on The Bible is in Genesis and it's very easy to turn that kind of thing into a finger-pointing moral, but I don't include myself on the list of people who need to improve.

I'm not speaking from the top down to my audience. I know I'm stating a pretty blunt fact: we have a lot of tragedy and malevolence to deal with in the confines of our lives and we need to figure out how to deal with it appropriately without becoming bitter. and cruel and resentful and these rules are guidelines to help people avoid those traps rather than moral mandates designed to make them feel guilty and that's why elections are attractive because that kind of top-down morality is actually absent from them and One insight into this huge popularity that you're enjoying right now, if you like it, you wouldn't be the time, is that you've captured a kind of space between what a lot of people think and what they're told to think.

That sounds familiar to you and do you think it's a fair description? It's something your graph aims to do well. I think people have a sense that, once again, the way our public discourse is conducted has a tremendous danger and the danger is essentially the elevation of the collective over the individual and that poses a danger both to the left as for the right and I think that by appealing to the notion of individual sovereignty, which I would say is the main one, would you say that is the goal? There's a message behind all the things I've been writing about that people find this a huge relief even though what I'm asking them to do is take more responsibility for what they do than they would normally be inclined to. do it, so but that's all you see, look, I'm facing some of the problems that people face in their lives very directly.

I believe in the fundamental religious truth of the idea that life is suffering, it is suffering because we are mortal and fragile and because we are also subject to malevolence at our own hands, which at the hands of others is a constant existential problem and that can make you bitter. and become hopeless, nihilistic, depressed, anxious, pro- and prone to substance abuse. Of various kinds, such as medicine or escape, it can be an omen to enter in a number of ways and I am suggesting to people that there is a way out of that and the way out is to confront it frankly and take responsibility for your own life and try to to make the world a better place and that it is necessary to do that and that if you don't do it things will go wrong and it is a relief for people to hear that because they know it, they already know it. so control yourself well, it is more important to find something in your life that is worth doing and that the fact that you are going to suffer is justifiable, but if that something were a value, for example, or someone who decided that they were a radical feminist. or a radical trans activist that would be something of great value in their lives, but these are not positions that I think you think they have been if you don't have great value in their lives because what they're doing is abdicating their personal responsibility to live. for its own truth, let's say, adherence to an ideology and I'm not a fan of ideologies, I think they're incredibly dangerous and I don't really care if they're left or right, so being a feminist or being a trans activist or embracing that vision of the world that that group promoted, I think it is generally a mistake and I don't think it serves people well, not generally, and it also allows them to adopt and this is something else that is very, very What has gone What is very wrong with our political discourse is that it allows people to adopt an undeserved sense of moral superiority and also omniscient knowledge because in India all that is offered to you is that and there is nothing in it that is useful, so what you have is the right thing. but then what you have is not an ideology or not, it is not an easy ideology and there is not a strong collection of ideas in a certain sense it is always an ideal no, it is not, it is not and it is a mistake to think that way because All that means is that the way you construct the world is a battleground between different ideologies and if one ideology is only one that serves a power elite, let's say it's part of Neel's postmodern Marxist interpretation, then everything which is always is a battle of opinions and there is nothing underneath that and everything is power and that is not an appropriate way to see the world in the first place, there are many forces at play that are not mere power competition, it is one of them assume that there are some things worth doing. and then with respect to ideology, I wrote a book about that, the first book I wrote is called maps of meaning and it's a description of the relationship between archetypal or mythological thinking, appropriate religious thinking, I would say, and the structures parasites that emerge from that. which are basically ideologies and can be technically differentiated.

What do you think of liberalism? I would consider myself a classical liberal. You would consider yourself oh yes, although Jesus also has beliefs attached, true, it arises from a tradition of evolving beliefs, but there is also a radical liberalism that feeds into feminism that believes that progress is something better than no progress. Really the economist is based on those basic concepts and that people can discuss what they want to take or leave, but is this included? so liberalism as one of the isms that you would say is in crisis right now always got right, it depends to some extent, as you pointed out, on how you define liberalism, but one of the things I like about the view classical liberal view about the world, something that I believe and to which I believe we owe a great debt of gratitude to Britain for its development, perhaps more particularly than any other country, is that individuals must be regarded as the sovereign entity in the understanding political, but that is not really a political question.

He claims that it is a statement that underlies politics, it is actually a theological statement that is derived from the Judeo-Christian tradition and because in the Judeo-Christian tradition of India, the individual who suffers is the sovereign entity and we established a political system based in that metaphysical axiom, so I would say. that to the extent that liberalism represents the idea of ​​the sovereignty of the individual, it is not an ism, it is not a political position, it is much deeper than what it is based on and the idea of ​​the sovereignty of the individual is an idea that arose with great difficulty over tens of thousands of years or more than that, has an immense history of development that radically predates, say, the Enlightenment or any articulated political belief, it is a much deeper notion than anything that can be summarized politically, but if we look at the great of the great classical liberals of the 19th century and we look back, at men, for example, there is a very strong individual freedom from Locke onwards, a kind of sense of sovereignty and no one, from the monarch down, has the right to unjust actions.sovereignty of another man or a woman, but you also have a strong sense of progressiveness that develops as liberalism develops and leads you towards the right to vote for women towards, actually, in Mills's case, a fairly widespread feminism If Jess Mill were sitting here in my place, would you agree on whether it was a good idea?

Well, again, I think it depends on what you mean by feminism. I mean the idea that it would be good if the world were organized in such a way that the talents of women were as available to be used by the collective, say by the group or by society, as the talents of men, then obviously that's all for the Well, I don't have a problem with that because talents are scarce and it's a foolish society that wastes that, no matter where it manifests itself, racial or ethnic divisions or any other equality of opportunity. I don't see how you can be a sensible person and women don't have opportunities either, so women have equal opportunities than in general in Western societies compared to what it seems compared to not having equal votes compared to a hundred years ago yes compared to fifty years ago yes compared to most places in the world throughout history yes, compared to a hypothetical ideal no, but am I a very, very good idea or a bad idea, well, It depends on how you define equality, if you define it as equality of outcomes then it is a catastrophic ideal, look this is something.

For you, one of the things I've been struggling with recently is the idea of ​​limits, let's say we absolutely know and this is relative to you, relevant to your question zone progressivism, we know the left can go too far and we know that the right can go too far. I mean, I would say that's the most abject lesson of the 20th century. Both can go too far and we know when the right goes too far. We'd probably think the right goes too far if you had to sum it up. On the one hand, when people start making claims of racial or ethnic superiority, that seems to be the marker, but we don't know when the left goes too far, and to be frank, the left isn't very careful about differentiating between those who are pursuing a reasonable progressive agenda and those who have seriously gone too far and I would say that when people push an equal outcomes agenda they have gone too far, although it is not as blatantly horrifying, say, as claims of ethnic superiority or racial that The consequences of implementing that idea in the world seriously are not good, but they surely are, you know, they are two types of doorstops, they are the extremes of the arguments, I mean, I think very few people are on the left and there would be some who would advocate absolute equality of outcomes and everything that would be necessary to achieve a not so clear difference, so there may be many things that are wrong on both the left and the right that do not imply that the right being openly racist and the left wanting absolute equality of outcomes is surely a space in the middle that matters and that is why I suppose people feel that sometimes their argument also leads to choosing fighting over liberalism.

I guess I would encourage them to take the best and we can have the argument about what is the best and what is the worst of each thing is in the middle no, I think the left represents a much greater danger than your analysis suggests. I certainly see this on campuses and the drum is being beaten very, very loudly, maybe not. Both here and in North America, equality of opportunity or equality of results under the rubric of fairness and equity is essentially a doctrine that Foster's notion that equality of results is not only desirable but should be pursued as an object or as an explicit objective. aspect of public policy the idea is that if there are none, there is equivalent representation of all possible groups at all possible levels of all possible hierarchies, which indicates a tyrannical prejudice that must be eradicated and that is having an effect Absolutely pernicious.

In the case of institutions, especially educational institutions in North America, that is not an increasingly widespread view and I think it poses much more danger than anything else. Is it possible that opinions become more attractive when something is not satisfied and when aspirations that are reasonable aspirations have not been met and then you can say that the answers are wrong or that, oh, but they say that if this is a point of view so popular to cite your example on North American campuses, it may be that there is something out there that existing society has not satisfied.

What has not satisfied the ever-present human tendency towards envy and resentment, that's for sure, is not always driving it at all, but it is an enormous amount of what is driving it and an absolute lack of gratitude for what we have managed to achieve. and what we have in front of us, I mean injustice, that number? Well, injustice is a very poorly defined term. I mean, it's not that obvious either, it's not that obvious what is fair either. So, for example, you know that last time I was involved in a dispute. I was with you in the UK on the issue of the

gender

pay gap and you know, from a social science perspective, that the idea of ​​the gender pay gap is so poorly formulated that I find it almost astonishing that people can even conceptualize it.

This way it's not a univariate problem, it's a multivariate problem, men and women don't break up and then we can let them know that not only might we have to do it and we can't assume that just because in all situations women do it. . They don't make as much money as men, although there are some situations where the opposite is true, by the way, the reason is prejudice and depression, there are many reasons for it, one reason, so there is a book of Wit by Warren Farrell, for example, called Why. men earn more and describes 42 reasons why men earn more money than women, one of them is that men are much more likely to take on dangerous occupations, not at 42 and then some of the reasons, but maybe just start by talking a little more about gender.

With you, that insecurity in a tense territory always seems to increase. Do you agree with people who maintain that, in general terms, gender is a social consequence for STUV? All of that is an axiomatic statement rather than a consequence of the analysis of empirical data and I mean, what do you believe? means a social construct genitals are not a social construct height differences are not a social construct difference is what we did, you said that Italy is well built to a certain extent because there are environmental and cultural effects on anything that is complex and that is certainly the case and differentiating what they are is a very difficult thing to do, but the psychometric work on this has already been done and done well and when I say, what do you mean by a second metric look?

I mean, psychologists in particular have spent 40 years working out an empirically derived model of personality, that's the Big Five model, which is well accepted among personality psychologists in the mainstream, most of whom lean on the left by an overwhelming majority, so there is no right to there being five, yes, but it is just one of the interesting things. The thing about the taxonomy is that it was a theoretical derivative, it is purely a consequence of the statistical analysis and therefore I am not sure where that takes us. To what extent gender is socially constructed. Well, the first thing we need to do is figure out what the parameters are when you talk about something like gender, then the parameters are, let's say, temperament parameters, because you said well, we're not going to talk about everyone, we're going to talk about what is derived from that, so we could say temperament, okay, so we know the temporal mental dimensions, we know that they differ between men and women and they differ between cultures, but the most important thing is that this is the crucial distinction, well, we don't know because I mean, I'm just looking at some recent research on temporal mental dimensions. brain that concludes that there are two types of Ranaut's brain, there are others who did the research, it is the new scientists who interpret that there is no such thing as a male or female brain, just so you know what you want, yeah baby, no one who has any sense would do it. claims that if there were a male and female brain, okay, these differences are not absolute, what do you want?

So should we take that as a question? You want to address that question in two types of brains and then we can be a little clearer. they are good brain types and men and women are more alike in personality than different by a substantial margin there are more similarities than differences yes there are more similarities than differences but that doesn't mean the differences are irrelevant so let me give you one For example, If you pick two people at random from the population and you have to guess which one is more aggressive and you guess which one is the man, you will be right 60 percent of the time, that's about the magnitude of the difference between men and women, which is six . sixty forty and that's exactly less but but but and this is where things get more sophisticated, so imagine you have to pick the most aggressive person out of a hundred and put them in jail, which is what we do, they're all men , so although at the midpoint the difference between men and women is not so extreme, at the extremes the difference is extraordinary and most of the activity in complex situations occurs at the extremes, which is why men are more interested ​in the things that women are more interested in people than men on average and, by the way, those differences are greater in Scandinavia, so there is no evidence that there is a sociocultural construction and one of the consequences of that is that if you leave men and women to make free decisions, well, let's leave aside that Scandinavia is not an option, it is not just a country that has many different cultural political differences, but the point is that, and this is the fundamental point, is that the more egalitarian the country is, the greater the differences will be. between men and women, bigger I have no idea how it is possible to classify countries according to their sociocultural policies from egalitarian to non-egalitarian and then look at the magnitude of temperament differences between men and women in those countries. and you do that in your definition of temperament, but this, but there is no definition of temperament that is valid outside of the psychometric community locked into a particular definition within what you call the psychometric community and other people can just say look, I experienced the world very differently and I have evidence of my dealings, if I'm a man, if I'm a woman, if I'm looking at how we get along together and what we do to improve things that don't fit that, you know.

The question is then what is the evidence, the fact that someone has a lien on it is not relevant, you have a relevant problem is whether what the evidence suggests, unless you are willing to rule out the scientific enterprise, which you are not. I would recommend, no. I'm certainly not doing that, but I think you have to attribute it to a narrow definition of psychometric testing, it's not merit, it's five dimensional, it's not narrow, the whole world only has four dimensions, the five dimensional model is actually extraordinarily sophisticated, it has four dimensions and then weave in five, that is magical, well, you have five dimensions, there are many multidimensional spaces, but reality itself has four dimensions and there are many complexities. you do with the evidence because Trading is good, all I do with the evidence is moral reasons for the gender difference, so what do we do with this?

Let's say we decide there are differences and we can discuss whether that's about the average, I mean, who is? the average woman am I the average woman? mm-hmm in some ways probably in others it's okay, good to know, so what do we do with it? This brings us to this discussion about what progress and the gender pay gap should look like. a good example of that, as you say, many different ways of describing it, many different approaches to approaching it, the challenge for you would still be: do you think that the situation that we have is, generally speaking, fair in the workplaces and that Are women themselves? -select out of progressing up the paid chain rather than being to a point under the pressure of parenting that is probably not taken into account or where they are not adequately helped, is it really their decision or Is it possible that structures do not play a role? here when there are no structures that defeat this right no no no what you have to be completely crazy is to reduce the whole issue to gender and assume that it is a consequence of oppression there are multiple factors at play and prejudice is one of them the issue is up to how much prejudice or arbitrary categorization, let's say, and the lack of provision of opportunities for womenis contributing to the pay gap and to what extent other factors are contributing, so there are other factors as I already said, men are much more likely to do dangerous jobs, they are also more likely to do jobs that escalate, for example, because Women are more interested in people on average than men, they tend to work in people-oriented companies and are difficult to scale and because you can't scale. it is harder for them to multiply income men are more likely to move than women men are more likely to hold trade positions they are more likely to work with heavy machinery they are more likely to work outside of all these things add today If you put them up to date with them, if you go into working with heavy machinery, which some women do, but we can say that more men will choose and choose to do that, there's a lot of things in there that there aren't, you know.

We are all pushed throughout our lives to make certain decisions that we did not make. You have to accept the push, but then you would accept that women have lacked opportunities that they have liked, that push has not worked in the same way, so, but you say, well, they end what time at the spa, you can choose cheesy tights and say 100. years, if you like well, the time lapse, the point is that women, in a sense, are already going through all this, going through a series of doors in life and wider than others, complicated, I mean, I think that men, men, were led along narrow paths of ways. that women were not like that, for example, they were much more likely to be drafted into wars, which actually turns out to be a non-trivial phenomenon because it resulted in the death, ending and demolition of many men and therefore of both sexes.

They are subject to the arbitrary restrictions of culture, and you may argue that women had the worst of it, although it is not such an easy argument to make. I'd say the added pressures of parenting and the inevitability of pregnancy played a huge role. in that and we didn't address it effectively until 1960, so one of the things that I really don't like about men, women were oppressed by men throughout the historical narrative is the fact that both men and women They were terribly oppressed by nature. throughout history and that's not factored into the equation and I think what men and women did for most of history, the decent ones anyway, was team up and partner up and try to make the life the least miserable for both of us and yet we read this. reverse narrative and we say well, the reason men and women did not operate equally in the sociocultural landscape was because men oppressed them, it's like I'm sorry, no, that represents a small fraction or a proportion, but it had a lot. more to do with the fact that everyone was poor and miserable and that women were trapped in a reproductive cycle from which they had no practical escape.

I mean, we didn't fix that until the '60s, which might irritate some working women, and even some women, whether you work or not, you can look at something like the gender pay gap and distinguish how difficult it is, or you could say, "well, let's try to figure this out and have an intelligent discussion about how to fix it better." This and the argument that women self-select out of the workplace actually becomes an obstacle, but women self-select out of the workplace all the time, if you look at the legal profession, that's absolutely crystal clear. It is clear that women are overrepresented at the lower ends of the legal profession, but they stop operating at the higher ends when they are in their 30s and it happens in all types of professions and there are good reasons for this.

I have good intentions because women in their twenties tend to decide that they don't want to work 80 hours a week, they would rather have a family and spend some time doing that, which is a perfectly reasonable thing to do, another possibly reasonable thing to do is child-rearing roles of men and women to achieve greater balance and then allow with some compensations for life to be imperfect allow women to return sooner assuming you put it, you know, you put it in the window no, no , not at all, that's not a fair characterization in the slightest, your argument is based on the idea that the advantage for women is not to return to the workplace, but many women decide, especially once they have children, that having children and spending time with them is actually more valuable than returning to the workplace and that's a reasonable thing. decide, in fact, you might think that it's the smart people who then go back into the workforce and pay, that's something you mentioned earlier and the fact that women pay a price disproportionate to long-term career earnings term if they become mothers, it is a very narrowly focused issue and it is an issue that perhaps needs to be addressed, but it is not the same as the gender pay gap.

It's a much more defined problem, yes, and part of the problem is how do we get you to make a profit on it? part of the feminist tree save no if it is part of the feminist crusade no, because that would mean that I would have to carry a banner of what I consider a quite reprehensible ideology, but feminism is a reference now, well, what percentage of women British? They consider themselves feminists no, 7% question I guess I know well if reasonable measurements estimated that there is something like that, it is a very small percentage, yes, it really is a very small minority, even if it is not 7% ​​and part of the reason to do so is inherently wrong.

I mean, I'm not sure it's 7% and you know, I think I said we'd all go and ban Giovanisms, but would that necessarily be a bad idea? I mean, you should do it. Sometimes I have defended the rights of minorities even if the idea that you say in your book that women are not a minority, by the way, in reality you are a precisely safe majority, so in that sense they are not minority rights that we are talking about here yes I am talking about women, women's rights. I have defended the rights of minorities. I don't see the world.

You've seen an example of the 7% that would suggest that even a small group within women thought feminism was something you decide for yourself where feminism is. whether it's a good thing or not it doesn't really matter, I think it's not a good thing because it plays identity politics games and I'm not a fan of identity critique games and the collectivist point of view. I don't think men should be. against women I don't think we should see the world as a competition between men and women I don't think we should see history as a structure that pitted oppressed women against oppressive men I don't like that story I think it's a nasty story and I think it's designed, it's meant to divide us in ways that will not be good.

I think it's a story based fundamentally on resentment. I don't think that's an accurate view of the path. Things developed in the past and I don't think women were as powerless or unable to contribute as feminists claimed before 1960, you thought things evened out for women in the 60s so seeing their history was good about the sixties. Yeah, I thought the birth control pill was invented and the reason women now have a lot more flexibility, let's say, in their lives is fundamentally because they have more control over reproductive status and that never really happened until the 1960s, it's They may have reached other conclusions. in that apart from that great I can control my fertility it's great I can control my fertility now what's the question that what more good that's but that's but that's exactly that's precisely that's precisely the question we're dealing with but but the but the order causal of that is oh now I can control my fertility now what is a biological revolution but that has consequences for both men and women of course it does and their constant surveillance men have to change we have had we have had Here I focused a lot in how women have had it better than that maybe you think that feminists modern feminists think so I don't know, I don't know, it's necessary to change I don't know if women had it better than modern feminists I think that women did. difficult in the past, which it certainly is, the amount of that was attributable to male oppression is small/tiny, much less than feminists claim because nature had its hand in it, you know.

In 1895, the average person in the Western world lived on less than a dollar a day, a figure that today is below the UN poverty guidelines, so life was very hard for men and women for most of the century. human history and seeing that as part of a I think the narrative of oppression by men is one of the things that is very difficult for young men, for example, when they are trying to take their place in the world. So how would men have to change because women have control over the world? reproductive function is an open question I don't know, casual sex is much more available than it used to be, that's one way men have been able to change, they haven't had to take the responsibility of adopting a long-term monogamous life. relationship to gain sexual access, so it's a big change, it's also allowed men to not grow as well.

I'm not sure if you're grateful that it's not, I'm not, I'm not saying it's a good thing, it's just a concept, so the moves that bring you all the hookup culture difficulty of the mating game to debate must therefore be a good thing and presumably you would know it too. I don't think maybe, but I would appreciate it if I think there is very little good in hookup culture. I think there is very little good in casual sexual relationships. I don't think they're good for either men or women, and I mean, where do you stand on me campaigning?

The good thing is that I think it risks damaging Emma's presumption of innocence. I mean, there's a lot more to this than that, oh sure, women, women, women face the arbitrary mix of sexual advances and performance in the workplace and in the workplace all the time. It is something very complicated to solve. I don't know how to fix it exactly because you know, I mean NBC, for example, the American television station has made it a policy not to hug your coworkers, which you know may be true, although I don't think that's the kind of thing . There is something that a corporation could be deciding for people, but we don't know exactly what the rules are that govern the failed behavior of men and women in the workplace because we've only been working together for about 35 years and we don't know after 35. years to discover something, not when talking about a transformation in behavior, which is so profound.

I mean, we don't know how men and women can work together properly in the workforce, it's very complicated, men and women all over the world, but they are the ones who asked about me you will also listen to me with the other - okay me - is an expression of the fact that men and women are having difficulty regulating their behavior in the workplace is the only reason I answered That because I think the question suggests more broadly that some men are having a serious problem with what is the lesson of the Harvey Weinstein story. Someone should have said something about Harvey Weinstein much sooner, but we could start somewhere else.

Harvey Weinstein was wrong to do what he did before we left; yes, other people should have spoken up. The second order is pretty fair. I thought it was unnecessary to say that there will be psychopathic predators, that they will exist and what needs to happen. What happens is people have to stop them because they won't stop themselves and I thought that was kind of implicit in the statement, obviously he shouldn't have done what he did, but don't you think that the culture that he was operating in that there was particularly in Hollywood in his world and in many other worlds that there was a culture of you know, this guy is a powerful guy, he's the big silverback gorilla, let him move on, oh, I think that culture was everywhere. .

Hollywood, so I hope well, Hollywood in particular. I mean the idea of ​​casting has been around for a very long period of time and I think the Hollywood types who are upset about this should look into their own devices regarding the role it played in fostering the culture that achieved that, so culture, we talked, we were talking about cultures, so I mean, certainly, it's Hollywood, what's the most sensible thing women can do with me? In your opinion, and what is the least sensible, that is a difficult question. and it's not obvious to me exactly what men and women have to do in the workplace to make that kind of sexual predation much less likely and everyone submitsalso to restrictions on the sexual element aspect of their existence that would be unbearable. difficult, which would be unbearable: what if everyone wears the same uniform to work?

This is how Mao also looks at if you want to eliminate sexual differences between men and women in the workplace, you have to limit sexual differences. I mean, men wear suits. to work we don't have to eliminate sexual differences for people to work together respectfully you have to eliminate them to a certain extent why I'm Jenny because you're trying with your tribe the question here is to what extent should sexually related behavior be unacceptable in the workplace good, it depends on how you define it you should be able to dress attractively and if you can dress attractively what do you mean by attractively exactly as precisely as organized I mean, I dress well today you look very well dressed for I'm right, your man and I am a woman with a well-dressed base.

Now we continue with the interview. What is the problem? Well, the problem is the limits of what constitutes being well dressed because there is an appearance because part of what constitutes attractiveness. what constitutes being well dressed is sexual attractiveness because you can't separate human attractiveness, sexual attractiveness from human attractiveness, so the question is exactly where the boundaries are and that's what the discussion about where the boundaries are in They describe dinners for a change. a prologue to her book where friends enjoy debates and disagreements. Do you think that in the broader conversation we have lost that spirit or are we in danger of losing it?

Oh, I think we are always in danger of losing that spirit because the lack of freedom is much more likely than freedom, we have to be very careful to maintain it because it is always threatened, but I think it is threatened now. that people have Be very careful with what you say in ways that are not good. I think the fact that a lot of comedians aren't performing on college campuses now is a pretty good indication that that's a canary in the coal mine scene, but let's move on for a moment, what kind of polarization does it affect someone like you? or someone with their message, in a sense we are arguing that the polarization of society is a bad thing if people no longer have a shared space or a shared understanding, even of debates, disagreements and nuances. and yet you are part of that problem, you are absolutely the culture that votes up and down on everything, in a kind of margin on one of your YouTubes and there are many Jordan Peterson destroys so and so he kills someone, yeah.

It seems like a very strange and reprehensible cut to me. This is a consequence of the way his argument is presented. Do you feel any responsibility? Well, I feel responsibility. I guess the question is what the question is. What is the appropriate level of care? analysis, let's say well, first of all, people are making four thousand videos from my videos a week on YouTube, so we're going to expect there to be a huge amount of variation and how people do it and compete for views just like mainstream video media competes for views and one of the ways to compete for views is to become sensationalist and capitalize on polarization and I think that's a very bad idea and I think a lot of that is happening, don't you think?

I think you will fall into that trap sometime. I'm always safe. I think I fall into that trap, although I wouldn't say video. Well, you know, because of my disgust at what happens on college campuses and my shame at being associated with it because of. Because of my academic situation, let's say that maybe I become more irritable by the fact that identity politics could be optimal, although I think that in general I am quite careful and I am often under extreme pressure and I think that's what you have, you you feed and I think this is a social media environment that sometimes pushes a lot of us in this direction beforehand, what have you said that about identity politics or possibly when you ended up in a big discussion about trans rights, have you said things you regret?

I may have become more emotional about things that could have been optimal in terms of things that I've said no to, that have been okay so far and I've been very careful about what I've been saying and do you think people listen? things? The way you look at them, I just watched a lot, as you say, a lot of videos have been made and they're often cut from speaking engagements or appearances, but when you talk about domestic violence and there's kind of a thesis behind it and I. I'm putting it here in a nutshell, so feel free to rephrase it by saying that in the end, men, if men are pushed too far by too aggressive effeminatism, there will be a backlash and you know there's some kind of undercurrent. of violence, note that Sam Ordnung Nora Nora, that's a warning, suggests that there may be some kind of flaw in those who take progressivism too far, they will get a backlash, some people of course see it as an environment a little permissive of bad behavior, well, people.

I tend to confuse describing the probability of something with supporting the fact that it exists, and I am describing the probability of something not supporting the fact that it exists. If you push too far to the left, you will get a backlash on the left. right, that's how things work and this is just a derivation of that as far as I'm concerned, how does that domestic work in the context of domestic violence? Oh no, I don't think it applies in the context of domestic violence at all. I don't think those things are completely separate issues. I mean, you mentioned it to me as we were and I was just speaking politically regarding the reaction, which was a comment on the political reaction and had nothing to do with it.

With domestic violence, that's a completely different topic, but violence often appears to you in your work or something that you think drives things that I think you've said that in relationships between men they are more regulated by a threat of force of force. bottom and that's why men have a hard time with women, no, that's why men have a hard time with women who are completely out of control, but women who show up well for women, other women, men, society It's like everyone is controlled, I mean, you are controlled by society, I am controlled. by society and thank God for that I mean, partly funny, I mean you described yourself as a liberal and I think a liberal doesn't believe that society controls women woman well let's say it regulates I'm a psychologist as well as a woman what it is this? creature, how do we know when we met one?

I'm sure you've met women in your life who acted up to you and bullied and detested Manor. It's very difficult for women to deal with that because they don't have any real relationships. Female recourse and harassment can be incredibly cruel and usually that takes the form of reputation destruction. Innuendo and gossip. It is well documented. It is very difficult. And you know men do it too, but men know it. A new vision. Oh, no, sir, yes, when yes. disproportionately women, that's what the data indicates. I mean, if men are data on innuendo gossip, well, it's among antisocial behavior among adolescents, it's a well-documented field, so people see aggressive and antisocial behavior in women and in men and in Women are intended to take the form of innuendo, gossip and reputation destruction and in taking mana it tends to take the form of outright physical aggression.

There is a whole literature on that, it is not a surprise to anyone. This has been known to suffer for thirty years. I'm referring to the ethics indices right here, the woman. Agosta is probably before she was thirty no, that doesn't make it gospel, but people don't, but people have watched how women express it. Women have to express aggression in some way, unless you're willing to say they're not aggressive, they tend not to do it physically not to the extent that men do, so they use other channels and what other channels are there besides the physical aggression, if you're going to be aggressive, well, you go after people verbally, you go after people with innuendo and gossip and reputation. destruction and that's how it works and to make it clear that you think it's predominantly a woman did it, so it's probably not that I think it's the clinical literature indicates it, it's that I think it's good not to interview clinical engineering. you would use well I am a psychologist and scientist and tend to base my opinions on what I have read in the extensive relevant clinical literature.

I'm not making these things up. I've studied antisocial behavior for about 15 years, I'm actually quite an expert on this and we know that men are more likely to look, look at it this way. Okay, women are much more likely to attempt suicide and men are much more likely to commit suicide and kill their children. The reason for this is that men use lethal force and women don't, that's a big difference, so you say, well, women display aggression toward themselves to others, but they don't use lethal force, they don't use physical force. same way. as men do it, they have to do it another way, any way, to something, otherwise, people are at war against your base, your hope is Ian, like half normal, half Hobbes, half Rousseau.

That's why I'm not an ideologue because I don't think people are good or bad I think they're both I don't think culture is security or tyranny I think they're both and I don't think nature is benevolence or catastrophe I think they're both and so I'm not an ideologue. I need you to cite the rule now because I have 28 pieces of paper here, but I'm going to continue in the meantime because we need to get to the end and warm up well. The disruptive effect of social networks, but also technological changes in the media and mass media consumption.

My argument was that this could be what leads to polarization. People like you, who are immensely successful in this million-dollar year, also boost your book sales. I just think as I'm talking to you you get to the top of the Amazon list here in the UK, but you know that the moment you become part of the problem that you've put your finger on, you want people to take well, you want men and women, just kind of a trade-off, we don't quite agree on where these trade-offs are, but you know we're here to argue about it, and yet at the same time, you're more successful when you say something. very provocative that goes viral, no, I don't think that's when I'm most successful, so, for example, one of the incidents that propelled me to... just a success, let's say in terms of public recognition in the UK , was my interview with Kathy Newman and the reason that propelled me to success was not because I said something provocative but because I refused, under substantial duress, to say something provocative and therefore part of the reason why What I have become popular to the extent that I have been is that I am actually very good at keeping my temper in situations that I wouldn't be in situations where there are substantial reasons not to say so and I would also say that the good that I have done with regarding my online lectures far outweighs any harm that may be caused by the fact that people are clipping them and making them provocative titles and interpreting this as some kind of fundamental political war, but it's not just other people, if you look at it at all thus, the model that you partly know.

What is used to promote your work is the crowdfunding site, so the more you provoke a reaction, the more loyal your Patreon site will be, the more loyal the subscribers will become, the more money will be raised for the causes you want to promote. No, that's not how it works. The reason I give away all my online content for free in the first place, so that people who subscribe to the pager and don't subscribe to anything, support me and then don't support me because of my political stance, mainly . supporting me because they have seen my videos and it has helped them as individuals and they hope that this can happen to many others, yes, if you want, if you see self-help and want to give it as a gift. not at all, so why bring money into the equation and why do I have this high octane guy?

It's that your crowdsourcing depends on people coming to you to pledge their money. Why put money into it, right? an area where I think it would be best left. After all, I am an evil capitalist and I really don't apologize for that. I created my Patreon site mainly out of curiosity because I've been interested for a long time. time on how creative people can monetize their creative productions because that's actually part of my technical interest because it's very difficult to monetize creative productions because they have long-term benefits, but it's difficult to show why you want to monetize well because I can do useful things . with money and partly because I'm curious partly because I need to live partly because my job was at risk for a long time and that's not going to help mehappen again partly because I had to leave my clinical practice for other considerations partly because I have a family partly because I want to use the money for a cause or it's about raising money for you, well, I don't separate myself from what I'm doing , so I can't really answer that question what I want to say for myself.

What am I going to buy a yacht? No, you know, I'm not a luxury person. I'm not looking to live a good life. I'm 55 years old, for God's sake, what would I do with that? You know I have. There are many things I would do with some money. One of the things I want to do is build an online university, but that's not the only thing I want to do, so I suspect I would put the money to good use, or at least at a reasonable price. use and the reason people provide me with this money that they don't have to make is because they expect me to continue doing what I'm doing and that's exactly why they provide it to me and My leftist critics have been constantly saying that It's actually quite comical, look at all the money dr.

Peterson is generating with his Patreon account, it's like, well, I'm not selling anything, everything I do online is free, it's not even advertised, so if people want to support me on Patreon because they think what I'm doing is useful, so As far as I'm concerned, I'd like more power to them, and do you feel it when the response you get on that site and then others is that your judgment is equally good when it comes to detecting things that were too far and this I can't from an extreme left and attitudes that come from the right the extreme right is fine and I'm not mixing these categories with you, can you differentiate which ones, do you feel like you're listening? better in one direction than another ah no, I don't think so.

I mean, this week, for example, a Jewish newspaper accused me of harboring Nazi sympathies, which was pretty miserable, but at the same time a good article came out today telling me that I was a puppet and an accomplice of the Jews, so I I imagine I'm pretty much in the middle if I can attract that kind of criticism on both sides and so on regarding the right-wing issue that the right does. It does not pose a threat to the integrity of universities in North America and Europe, but the left certainly does and that is well documented and No for my part there are no conservatives in universities of social sciences and humanities, they do not exist and that does not It is a good thing and the radical left in the universities absolutely exists and from the beginning it has threatened the integrity of those institutions and to the extent that I have concentrated on the radical left it is because the radical left has usurped the universities that could well be said in the global context and authoritarianism that often shifts to the right is a threat to compete with doctoral universities towards absolute rules and I have written extensively. about right-wing authoritarian threats to freedom broadly, let's not ignore the big American elephant in the room, Donald Trump, do you see him as an expression of a lot of the attitudes, the kind of unhappiness, discontent, no, no, rude or something as well as Jenner?

It's a different thing, well first of all you know Americans voted 50% Republican and 50% Democrat for five elections in a row, nothing changed, the Republicans had Trump as their candidate and the Democrats had Hillary and that's how it turned out. and I mean it was a 50/50 split, so I don't see that there's been a massive change in the American political landscape, that's for sure, yeah, definitely, that's that, that's the interesting thing, I mean, Trump did something very interesting. in the primaries and eventually has control over the Republican nomination and I don't really know what to make of that, it's certainly, to some extent, that the fact that he won was an expression of the fact that people were I'm unhappy with the tilt of the Democrats went into identity politics because they lost a good chunk of their working class base, but I think that can be entirely attributed to the Democrats, they made a big mistake in doing that because the working class needs a political voice and the Democrats decided to play identity politics, so he blamed them: is there something wrong with Trump or something wrong with Trump?

You know, I mean, it doesn't take a genius to put them out there, although it's quite grandiose, it seems kind of narcissistic. On the other hand, he certainly is a master at manipulating the media, I mean it, and he is a very peculiar character, it doesn't take a genius to list his flaws, which means Trump. I don't know, I can't, I can't put my finger on it, but let's conclude with: I don't think he's some great coming of Satan. You know, I don't think America is any more polarized than it was in 1972 and the U.S. economy.

It's booming right now and it hasn't gotten us into any particularly idiotic wars yet, so I'm very happy with that liberalism, what does it need, what does it need to change, you said before that you were launching it, really, it's a bit rushed. what that might mean in terms of the causes his supporter used to dissociate from the radical left, which he refuses to do, he won't take on the conceptual difficulty of deciding when the left has gone too far and I have to ask him: do you have a favorite feminist? Do I have a favorite feminist?

I don't think about things that way. I'm not a favorite video log. Do I have a favorite admirable woman? Who would be my favorite admirable woman? I'm sorry, I have a difficulty. It is difficult to remember names of the woman who established nursing as a profession in Britain. It's nice, yeah, Florence Nightingale, it's like it's good for Florence. She thought that men were not suitable for nursing because she had gender stereotypes. Should we scold her? Well, some. men are not suitable for nursing and some are not and there are unlikely to be unlikely heroes or heroines.

I'm a big fan of Tom Waits, don't wait. I think we can agree on that, Jordan Peterson, thank you very much, thank you very much for the invitation.