#1139 - Jordan Peterson

July 2, 2018

Jordan Peterson is a clinical psychologist and tenured professor of psychology at the University of Toronto. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCL_f53ZEJxp8TtlOkHwMV9Q All Dr. Peterson’s self-improvement writing programs at www.selfauthoring.com 20% off for Rogan listeners. Code: ROGAN

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oh hello ladies and gentlemen I got a bunch of tour dates for swap thank you everybody that came out to Tucson my first time of Tucson had a

and Boise man boys was beautiful I had a great time and both those place to sounds beautiful to an interesting way a desert way I enjoyed it I enjoyed both of them had a great fucking time thank everybody for coming out I got a lot of new shows new stand-up that I'm doing bought a new gigs and Joe Rogan. Com for all that stuff

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all right folks my guess today is a great friend a guy that I've really gotten to know well over the last couple years I enjoy his company immensely as one of the wisest people I know and one of the most misunderstood people misrepresented people online for whatever reason that is please give it up for the Great and Powerful dr. Jordan Peterson

The Joe Rogan Experience

hello Jordan Peterson hello mr. Logan how you doing a lot of these big gigantic what do you call those things these concerts you guys are doing what are you doing speeches lectures discussions is 3000 person audience but it's not because if you pay attention to the audience they're constantly in the individuals in the audience they're constantly providing feedback so it's a discussion as far as I'm concerned feedback in Applause laughter sometimes they shout things out to her as shuffling shuffling yeah well really what you want if you're on track if you're where you should be then it's dead silent and everyone's focused and listening and so if that's not happening I mean you know there can be laughter of that kind of thing but generally speaking you don't want to hear noise from the audience

so if you're you're on if you're pursuing 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 cuz that's all I can see because of the light trying to make sure that everyone's on track with the talk and you know there's people just here with their face and they just do with the rise and they shake their head and they know I wouldn't be lots of things to pick up and if you're not speaking 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 yeah it's an interesting thing you're doing because you have experience in doing that with lectures and colleges and universities but now it's the general public and people just pay to see it and develop these huge

gigantic theaters I mean I've seen some of the places that you guys are doing it even Sam just got done doing one in Vancouver and she would you like 5 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 ask the audience Bret Weinstein who was moderating ask the audience if they wanted to go to cure or continue the discussion and you know that the response from the crowd was definitely continue the discussion and so we ended up talking for about 2 and 1/2 hours each night and again it was the audience is along for the ride you know when they were good discussions as far as I'm concerned you know it was kind of marketed as a takedown and some sense Paris versus Peter right but the discussion itself was an attempt on Sam's part and my part to further our thinking about the topic and to bring everyone along for the ride you know for the journey

so to speak yeah what you guys had to podcast that you did over the phone so this these were the first meetings that you guys had in person the first one that you two had was marred by this discussion about what is truth and it was a strange sort of you got stuck you guys got kind of stuck in that first conversation but I feel like the second one was much better as you could eat me to both of you kind of recognize there was an error is made in the first podcast that or I we are and so that wasn't so good yeah and I wasn't in Tip-Top shape for that first discussion while I wait for the second one for that matter but they've been getting each discussion I've had with Sam has been getting better so as far as I'm concerned I think he feels the same way and I mean we're trying to sort something out that's really really difficult and it's the relationship between facts and values which is parallel to the relationship between

say objective truth and a narrative or parallel to the distinction between scientific fact and religious truth all of those things sort of layered on top of each other and it's an extraordinarily difficult topic and so it's not surprising that it's taking all of this discussion to even vaguely get it straight it's being a central bone of contention among philosophers for a while probably forever but certainly since the time of of David Hume several hundred years will one of the more fascinating things is coming out of the realm of podcasting is these kind of discussions these long-form live discussions in front of a normal groups of people where you go over very complex issues it's a new thing I mean and it's it's something that's greatly received by the public which is really interesting I mean you guys are selling out all over the place yeah well one one one ever even trying to make sense of this say because I'm thinking well what the hell is going on why why am I selling out 3000 person auditoriums and then and then but not just me or

please Sam is doing it and you're doing something on a larger scale but very similar with your longform podcast sand and and then there's this whole rise of of what Barry Weiss described as the intellect to dark web that's actually Eric Weinstein coinage & Soul there's a group of us that would be sort of clumped together for for reasons that aren't obvious but I've been trying to figure that out as I do these lectures and how do you think I'm doing with the lectures or the discussions is trying to continually further the development of my ideas I use the stage at say as a as a opportunity in real time to think I've been thinking what if you're surfing you don't confuse yourself with the wave right that's that's a real mistake he might be on top of the wave but you're not the way then I think this long form discussion and the public hunger for that is best conceptualized like that there's a technological Revolution it's a deep one the technological Revolution is online video and audio immediately accessible everyone Auto

the world and so what that's done is it turn it turn the spoken word into a tool that has the same reach as the printed word so it's a Gutenberg revolution in the domain of video and audio and it might be even deeper than the original Gutenberg Revolution because it isn't obvious how many people can read but lots of people can listen and now it turns out so I mean you got a little bit of that TV right in the yard a little bit of a trip with radio but there was bandwidth limitations that were really strange and especially in TV where you could get 30 seconds if you were lucky and 6 minutes if you were Stellar to to elucidate a complicated argument so you can't do that everything gets compressed to a 2-2 a kind of over simplified entertainment but now all of a sudden we have this form for long-form discussion real long-form discussion and turns out that everyone is way smarter than we thought

right we can have these discussions publicly and there's a great hunger for it and I see this parallel to an end this would be what would you call supporting evidence for this hypothesis the same things happened in the entertainment world because you know TV made us think while we can handle a 20-minute sitcom or maybe we can handle it an hour-and-a-half made-for-tv movie but then Netflix came along and HBO as well with the band with restrictions gone and all the sudden it turned out that no no we can handle 40-hour complex multi-layered narratives where the character shift where the complexity starts to reach the same complexity is great literature and there's a massive market for it and so it turns out that we're smarter than our technology revealed to us and I think those of us who have been placed in this intellectual dark web group and there's some things we have in common we more or less have independent voices because we're not beholden to any corporate Masters except peripherally and we've been operating in this long form space and

technology has facilitated that and so all of a sudden it turns out that there's more to people than we thought and thank God for that I'm struggling with

oh I want to I want to use the word hate there's there seems to be a non acceptance or a resistance to the idea that anything of quality could come out of this group of people it's really interesting to me and I'm wondering why when I listen to you speak or Sam or Eric Renys people been or Dave and I are here very interesting points and I'm like why are people resisting that these are interesting points why there was just a mess and I think there's a lot of people that are beholden to mainstream organizations whether it's newspapers or magazines or television shows that feel trapped I think they feel trapped by this format that they're stuck in its a very limiting format and it's a format that in my opinion is like when it might as well be smoke signals or ham radio or something it's fucking it's dumb you know this this I did you going to go to commercials every 15 minutes

you know and in between you have 15 people arguing I mean I watch the panel on CNN once and I think we counted 10 people that were trying to talk during this 5-minute segment make who what genius thought that it would be a good idea to get 10 people struggling for airtime barking over each other no one saying anything that makes any sense because Everybody's Talkin over and trying to stand out and trying to say the most outrageous thing and I'm seeing like some of the resistance to this when we spend pretty far you know from Sam and I lean more left and Ben liens more ride and you're what you would call A Classic liberal and Eric's very difficult to Define and Brett is fiercely Progressive I mean he's a brat and protect yourself very left-wing guy but this desire to label in into to have this diminishing label is like all right or

right-wing fascist it's very strange to me about there's a couple of things going on I think

one of them is that the technological transformation that I laid out and then the other is that I do believe that especially for the radical leftist types the whole notion of free speech among individuals is not only an estimate but also something that isn't possible within their framework of reference I've been trying to take this through very carefully because you know free speech and some senses become identified as a right-wing issue and I thought well how the hell did that happen and then I thought oh yes well if you're radically left and you're playing the identity politics game is actually no such thing as free speech because you're only the mouthpiece of your group whether you know it or not so you don't get to talk as Joe Rogan you get to talk as like Joe Rogan patriarchal white guy not sit and your audience is aren't a reflection of your own opinions as an individual but there an attempt on your part whether you know it or not to justify your position in the power hierarchy and so everything right now and this is where the technology and the

cast of the mainstream media and end this and this political polarization all unite everything is turned into a political conversation in the in the mainstream media and media and it has to be cast is left vs right and if you're criticizing the left and all of a sudden you're right and right wing and it has to be about politics so I call it doesn't have to be a politics you could be about philosophy it doesn't have to be cast in political terms and then it's also subject to a form of of of well it is made more stupid than it has to be by this terrible bandwidth limitations. Bean on me and stream TV talk shows and it's a very strange experience because you're definitely content in a marshall mcluhan said the medium is the message right the medium shapes the dialogue and it doesn't in great and great in a tremendous way powerful way you go on a TV talk show and maybe it's an hour-long something like that and is 5 gas and you've got you

8 minutes something like that and you have to be bright and chipper and entertaining it and intelligent sort of glitzy and it puts that facade of momentary Charisma on you and if you don't play that out you actually fail because you can't start a long-form discussion when you got six minutes and if you're trying to talk about something that's that's deep and difficult while you want to talk about it because you've got the access then in the opportunity but you've got your your 6 minutes you can't help but turn into sort of a glitzy Entertainer and so it cheapens everything and then the other thing that I think is happening is it as the mainstream media television in particular dies

beat the quality people are starting to Desert like rats leaving a seat sinking ship I guess they're good raps if their quality people but and then that the there's Evermore enticement to use clickbait journalism to attract a diminishing portion of the remaining audience know it's like one of the things that's happened so if you look at the five major indices of violent crime in the United States did the decline by 50% in 25 years it's absolutely Beyond Comprehension it's so good this includes violin gun crime by the way and yet the reports of violence in media have going up and up and think about what's going on it's like well it's it's it's clickbait it's the it's the equivalent of clickbait and then to turn everything into a polarized political discussion takes no real intellectual energy but it's also driven by the death spiral of the classic media I think and I think that's actually why the polarization seems to be so cute now some of it is genuine but some of it is

some of it is the consequence of this underlying technological transformation in the death throes of the smoke signals fundamentally what you're talking about when you're when you're saying people especially radical leftist have to concede certain points whenever they discuss things that this is so true and so important because you see that play out over and over again there's a very little variation from the official narrative when they talk about important subjects or controversial subjects and whatever they are whether it's you know transgender rights or whatever it whatever is in the news that's that's big and then you know it's very popular right now there's these the certain things that you're not allowed to deviate from and that that's an insanely restrictive perspective and it who's establishing these Norms like who's established

wanting to legislation like Title Nine so and so and so they've been driven into the ceiling Title Nine four people insured that women would have equal access to sports events and so forth at the University's that's what it was designed for but it's become this umbrella legislation that pushes equality of outcome essentially a cross every possible to mention in the universities and it's being used as a weapon by the radical left but you know some of that striven by legislative necessity

what's happening what the reason that I think this is coming from the universities is because I don't think that this could all there's all these activist disciplines that are essentially subsidized by two high tuition fees and also by state funding and they produced an entire substructure of of activist and those activists are doing everything they can to lay out the theoretical structure for the radical left and that's it that's a structure that involves just buzz words right diversity is one but that means diversity by race and ethnicity and and sexual preference for example as as if those have anything to do with genuine diversity of e d Asian and they don't and there's no evidence that they do inclusivity I never even sure what that means equity which is a marker for what would you call it is so cold word in some sense for equality of outcome which is absolutely dead the doctor I think of all the mistakes that the radical left arm aching and the moderate left for not calling them out on it the equity Doctrine is at the top of the list now there's other Associated things like white privilege that's a good one and sister

bias and which is it it's an absolute embarrassment from the perspective of a reasonable academic psychologists because psychological tests have been used to prove that there's this implicit bias that lurks everywhere and the tests aren't reliable and valid enough to make that claim that's even the people who made the test the implicit association test have admitted except for Modern Biology who's the chairman of the Department of psychology Harvard they've admitted that the tests aren't reliable and valid enough to be used for the purpose of there being using for and there's also no evidence that all that these unconscious buying bias ra training seminars have any effect whatsoever that's positive it's all nonsense pushed by this logical what fulminations of the radical left is there any benefit in having these conversations talking about implicit biases and recognizing that

there's an extreme push Back Against Racism or sexism and all these different things and that even though these things these these these ideas that they're pushing might not be tested and proven the idea of putting it out there in the mainstream that there's a shift in Consciousness in terms of like how people will or won't accept racism or sexism and homophobia or whatever else is being discussed that maybe it's far left but maybe it's moving the needle towards where it needs to be certainly believe that there's space and necessity for a constant dialogue between the left and right this is also something that I've been developing more particularly during these lectures so so I'm going to lay out a couple of proposition imagine that you have to move forward in the world you have to do things and the reason you have to do things is because well if you just sit there and don't do anything then you suffer and die so that isn't an option you have to move for

have to move forward towards value things she have to have value hierarchy has to be hierarchy because one thing has to be more important than another or you can't do anything right here or to split with your choices do you have to do things you have to Value you have to Value some things more than others then you have to act out what you value in the social environment because your social creature and you're not going to do things alone then as soon as you start to act out things of value in the social environment you would never did we produce a hierarchy and the reason you do that is because no matter what you're acting out some people are way better at it than others and it doesn't matter it does matter if it's basketball or hockey or Plumbing or law doesn't matter as soon as there's something valuable and you're doing it collectively there's a hierarchy okay so then what happens well the hierarchy can get corrupt and rigid and and then it stops rewarding confidence and it starts rewarding criminality and power and so there's always the danger of the hierarchy will become corrupt the right-wingers say

we really need to hire keys and we should abide by them that's sort of the motif of patriotism and and and and and and and positive group identity and the left Winger said yeah but wait a second there's a problem he ate your hierarchy can get corrupt and might and be because some people are way better at it than others you going to put a noose a bunch of visit dispossess people at the bottom and that's not only good not only not good for the dispossessed people it actually threatens the whole hierarchy so you have to be careful you have to attend to the windows in the children let's say the widows and the orphans okay so now that is an eternal problem you can't do without hierarchies but and that's the right wing play me some since you can't do without her keys and they're valuable but they're also prone to corruption and they dispossess people okay so now that's an eternal problem the question is what do you do about it and the answer to that is there's no final answer to the problem so what you have to do is you have to have left wing and you have to have a

right-wing I'm have to talk all the time about whether the hierarchy is healthy and whether or not it's dispossessing too many people and then the problem with that is that discussion can go too far because the right-wingers can say hi Rocky Uber Alles right that we've the state is correct and everything's right and so that's the right-wing totalitarian types and the last can say will flatten everything so there's no inequality it's a both left and right can go too far now the problem is we don't we know how to define I think one of the problems as we know how to define when the right goes too far I think we learned that after World War I think if you're making claims of ethnic or racial superiority you get to be put in the box and put off the shelf right you're not in the dialogue anymore it's obvious that the left can go too far even though they're necessary participants in the discussion but we don't know when to we don't know how to define when they've gone too far end of an obvious example you might take well that's the moderate leftist problem it's their moral responsibility

dude associate themselves from the radicals just as it's the moral responsibility of reasonable conservative to dissociate themselves from the Birch John Birch and and Ku Klux Klan types that's a very important point but the problem but it isn't just the moderate left problem because even the people on the right don't know what the point to when they say know you've gone too far as a leftist now I've tried to It's Complicated because I think it's it it might be more than one policy I think the really deadly left is presumption is equality of outcome I think as soon as you start talking about equality of outcome you should be put in the box and put off the shelf but it isn't obvious why I like that doesn't sound like you know white people overall it doesn't have the same guttural punch that the excess of the right house it's all your for equality of outcome why is that that well it's bad because when you play it out in society and there's an endless evidence for this it's an instantaneously murderous Doctrine and I think it's because it's shift

so quickly into a victim victimizer narrative had a great opportunity in the last month-and-a-half I got asked to write the preface to the 50th anniversary edition of Social and it's in school a cappella go and so I've been writing that in one of the things solzhenitsyn did which was one of the things he one of the things that made that book arguably the greatest work of non-fiction of the 20th century it's in the top 10 anyways what's the point out very clearly that the excesses of the Russian Revolution started right away it wasn't Lennon was a pretty good guy and then Stelling came interrupted everything was like it was not a pretty good guy the revolution got bloody really fast I want to seem to happen so imagine you you started to divide the world up into oppressor and oppressed right and you're going to do something about the oppressors the problem is is that you can Define people multiple ways this is the intersectionality problem and almost everybody can be defined in terms of their group identity in some way that makes them an oppressor

so like if you were a black man well you could argue that you were oppressed because you're black but what about the fact that you're a man

and so does that make you an oppressor or someone who's depressed and the answer is as the revolution progresses if there's any Dimension along which you can be categorized as oppressor you end up dead to that part of the pathology of the quality of what I mean by that like you end up dead end up rounded up you ended up being put into the oppressor camp right it's so it is only so far I can go with that right mean you can put all men in the oppressor can't there be no men left like what do you look for equality of outcome Union we don't know how many people died be reasonable estimates look like about 25 million that's dead that's not just that's not in prison that isn't family is destroyed that's just dead and in that was China it might have approximated a hundred million just just internal repression and so what what seems to happen as soon as you decide that the hierarchy is unfair because there are

Arsenal pressed then you can go after the oppressors with moral virtue but the problem is is that there's almost no limit to the number of ways that you can categorize someone as an oppressor fit the category just starts to expand if the Communists killed all the Socialist

they killed all religious people they killed most of the students they killed all the productive farmers and they killed the productive Farmers because they owned land in one maybe a little house in a few cows you know I mean to be a successful farmer in Russia at the turn of the 20th century didn't mean you were Rich right it just meant you weren't starving like I killed all those people because they were oppressors because they had more than someone else that's how they Define didn't order to get the people to Rally against it yes and the definition kept slipping because even now it's like let's say we rally against the 1% in Owenton those would be the money owners let's say like okay who's in that group

well everybody North America is in that group worldwide yeah well it's $30,000 a year since you in the one percent worldwide right right so so does that make all of us oppressors basically everybody lives above poverty in America is in the 1% of the world's right fuel pressure oppressed narrative is that you can multiply the oppressors endlessly and there's no end to going after the right in the soon as you make a definition you can move the boundaries and then the next person and then you keep going well and you also see the interesting thing to is that this is complicated so I've been thinking about this proclivity of the left to to destroy members of the moderate left it's like there's the game part of the games that's being played as far as I can tell the idiot logically pathological game is I'm more virtuous than you

no look if if you're on the on the radical left and you say well you're more virtuous than a right winger it's like well who cares that's obvious because the right-wingers rr-rr pathological so being more virtuous than damn that's not much of an attainment but if I have my moderate leftist can Patriots standing right beside me and he's pretty damn virtuous but I'm even more virtuous than him then that's a real that's a real attainment on my part it's a moral attainment with no effort on my part if I can figure out some way of classifying that previously virtuous person has an oppressor Lonesome Dimension then all of a sudden I get an increment my moral virtue and that happens all the time in these leftist revolutions run amok that was just a constant feature so it's not good it's not good

why is it missing something it's always puzzled me why is it that the left is defined by this excerpt there's certain values and one of them is when you look at the right you you automatically think of racism potential racism at least disliked for gay people homophobia there's there certain qualities that are always attributed to conservatives and then there's certain qualities are as in that dude in these are social things and then I'm not quite sure I understand like why is it that the left is always associated in support of gay rights the left is always associated in support of all Races and all genders and there's imagine that

you make these High Rockies and they're hiring keys that are devoted towards a goal and that the sum total of all those higher key says something like the patriarchy even though I hate that word until weird words like that weird at all but but that's what we're speaking within the confines of that theory Define and how you're using it what do you mean by the patriarch of the patriarchy is is is the sum total of all Western hierarchies let's say it's towards the left the radical leftist vision of the sum total of all Western hierarchy it's always mail well that's the theory is that male dominated and it's a funny thing because of course there's lots of elements there's lots of sub elements of the patriarchy that aren't male-dominated sobret health care for example universities the education system in general there's lots of places where these these elements are female-dominated defined as the patriarchy Define Healthcare

if you have a sub element of the patriarch and it's dominated by women is that still the patriarchy like the structure still intact it still performing the same function well now the women are running it was that the patriarchy an answer to that is what we're all vague about what the definition is so we don't need to address that issue where somebody answer your some clear ones right like major corporations the vast majority of CEOs are male that is part of the patriarch government never been a mailman never had a female president of vast majority of senators congressmen Etc mail yeah so I guess we could say well the patriarchy is all those elements of hierarchical structure that are still dominated by men male mostly mail fractionate the patriarchy into pieces you can't you can no longer talk about it as uniform structure if you're going to take out all those pieces that are dominated by women say well that's not the patriarchy but the thing is is that the

concept is so weird to find that it's the Big R's description what's up with you how are though right I mean that's that's the other thing that's the claim the other claim is that all hierarchies are predicated on power which is a claim that absolutely appalling it's like plumbers they part of the higher Curry hierarchy you got roaming bands of armed aggressive tyrannical plumbers coming to your door saying use our service or else that's not how it works you go look when you going looking for a plumber you go look for a massage therapist you look or a surgeon for that matter or a lawyer you go look for the person who's most confident and one of the things the left can't tolerate is the idea that hierarchies are predicated in part even on confidence which they clearly are the best predictors for success in Weston hierarchies our intelligence and conscientiousness what are the best psychological predictors of success they only account for about a third of the variation and success maybe a third is probably about right so there's still lots of room for random

and even for systemic discrimination but the notion that are our systems aren't predicated in part on confidence is clearly wrong. You asked a question about the left is like why are the left always on the side of the people who don't fit in let's say or don't been so easily at night I think that is a matter of the consequence of hierarchical structures is the show imagine and every hierarchy there some people who don't do very well in any given hierarchy and imagine that imagine across all the hierarchies that there's a subset of people who are very likely to not do well in any of them so you might say while they're systemically discriminated against the left would be on their side because they're on the side even temperamentally of the people who are dispossessed and the thing about that is that it's it's valid look we need we need a spokesperson politically for the dispossessed that's what the Democratic party used to do when they work for the working class is the working class needed the political voice like okay that's

Democrats why do they need a political voice what do to keep the hierarchy from degenerating into region tyranny as part of the political discussion but now the problem is is this is the problem with the left is that well what's the hierarchy it's a tyrannical patriarchy it's like no it's not it's partly corrupt like every system but it's less corrupt than most systems and there's a lot of elements of it there devoted towards self-improvement self-monitoring you have to be a little nuanced and subtle about these sorts of things and you can't throw the baby out with the bathwater in the left is rhetoric has got so intense that the idea is and if people believe this why the world is going to hell in a handbasket everything is getting worse and all possible ways and their system is racism everywhere and it's really unfair and it should be torn down and rebuilt so I know it's actually functioning unbelievably well even though it still has its problems

you know when there's a big difference between saying there's systemic racism everywhere and the reason that there isn't perfectly equal outcomes is because of prejudice and saying no no look the system is functioning or blood say it's 75% it's doing alright it's got some problems including systemic Prejudice which hopefully will work themselves out across time and which show every bit of evidence of doing so and so we don't need a radical solution you know one of the things I've started to do with my Twitter account is to tweet out good non naive news because one of the things the topping in the world and is being half a dozen books on this or more written in The Last 5 Years by credible people is that the distribution of the idea of individual sovereignty and property rights and and free-market economies Etc out into the rest of the world is making the non-western world is making the non-western world Rich really really really fast

so between 2000 and 2012 the rate of absolute poverty in the world fell by half half it was the fastest. Of economic development in human history we beat the UN you beat the optimistic you and Target by 3 years staggering you know the the rates of child mortality in Africa are now lower than they were in Europe in 1950

the fastest growing economies in the world are in sub-Saharan Africa many millions of people millions of people a month are getting access to this incredible technology that somebody didn't cell phone right people have access to fresh water like they never had access before the chop kids R kids are getting immunized at a rate that's that's fun for unprecedented and and yet we have this idea that's become rampant in the west that there's something ultimately corrupt about the patriarchal tyranny and that it has to be dismantled right down to its core and Laura that's being taught by the activist disciplines and universities and I just don't get it it's not acceptable so they see these hierarchies and their proposal to level everything off and to take away the insane power the very top is equality of outcome is unprovoked unproven in terms of its never been it's never been done

unsuccessfully to a utopian right well I don't even think you can do it in principle because if you accept the proposition that the propositions I laid out which is you have to pursue things of value and if you pursue things in Value Inn in a social space so you do it properly and competitively do with other people then you're going to produce differential outcome because people will be differently good at it yes I was like okay if you don't believe that it's like okay do you listen to random selections of music online or do you do what everyone else does you go for the one tenth of 1% of songwriters can you only listen to that you want to listen to the one you only read the production's of one tenth of 1% of writers you only listen to the podcast of one tenth of 1% of podcast broadcasters right when you watch sports on TV you only watch the athletic contributions of one tenth of 1% of athletes so like where's the equality exactly where is that in your life you people who are

equality of outcome you manifest that in anything you do you don't you're unbelievably selective just like everyone else and the reason you're selective is because you

there are things that are happening that need to have a northerner entertaining and interesting and you want the best in all of those realm that's how it works and there is a best that's the other thing that's so painful that actually is painful you don't want here's a problem of dispossession a real problem

one way to not do very well in any hierarchy is to have a low IQ

and so IQ is normally distributed and if you have an IQ of less than 85 it's hard for you to read well enough to follow instructions that's about 10% of the population might even be higher than that okay so given that block how are you going to compete in the answer is you're not because low IQ is a good predictor of Parvati now the spiral because you know if your if you if your cognitively if you're on it in the if your if your last cognitively gifted then

how do you have children they're going to be in the lesson Rich environment leasing spiral but you still have the essential problem that's the essential problem of the dispossessed it's like hierarchies are complex tools to obtain necessary but they dispossess people what do we do with the people that they dispossess the answer is we don't know

so we have to talk about it constantly to figure out how to solve it cuz it's an ongoing problem that transforms and that's the reason the political dialogue is necessary and then the dangerous is that the political dialogue will polarized into the radical left no hierarchies whatsoever or the radical right are hierarchies 100% right at all costs and so those are the we have the internal problem in those are the two poles that we have to negotiate between it's interesting because the accusation is always been that what the left is trying to do with this equality of outcome thing is sort of an infantile ization of the populist right in the best example that is sports when you look at sports clearly the best people win right the fastest Runners win the race of the people that have the best strategy when the game the infant infant that's a weird word infantile ization I never get it right but of that is what we do with children where you get participation trophies

no one wins you know when my daughter was 3 years old shoes in Soccer and they didn't keep score but everyone knew everyone knew these kids scored and they didn't at the end of the game they didn't announce a winner there was no no you can't have a soccer game without keeping score on the soccer game anymore it's something else but the score was capped of course just wasn't discussed it was the strangest thing but this is to treat these little kids because they couldn't handle it so you know she cried when the other team scored I'm like that'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-year-old so when are you going to run Hills is she going to practice drill so that she feels that good feeling more and then there's a point where that becomes too far there's a point where you becoming obsessive over winner right and this is the people that want to crush their enemies then you become Conan the Barbarian this is this is the well our end of it this is what the left is terrified upright the idea of the left is the demure the song

off the the the people that are Kinder and gentler the idea of the right is the Conqueror the people that you know their work hard play hard go kick ass go America that kind of shit and so these are the type of people that are going to be crueler they're going to do what it takes to win and the the people that you would consider that would like equality of outcome of the people that are trying to slow that down is this make sense yes absolutely and I think that's how it plays itself out temperamental you do psychological this is the motivation for all this although it's also Lindsay let's not forget about that and Izzy absolutely has one reason to stand up for the dispossessed is because you're pathetic you know when Dan empathy is not an automatic good this is something we make a big mistake about we think well I'm feeling sorry for you therefore I'm good so I know I might be feeling too sorry for you I might not be demanding enough of you

so not too terrible devouring mother you know from a psychoanalytic everything you do deer is okay so I know it's not the developmental psychologist he was very interested in figuring out a way out of this and it's very much relevant to your concept your talk about about Athletics okay so so imagine this because this is also something that points the way to a proper morality which is actually something that John Piaget was very concerned about he wanted to he wanted to reconcile the distinction between religion and science that's actually what drove him even though he was people don't know that he was arguably the world's greatest developmental psychologist so here's the idea you know how you tell your kid to be a good sport you say don't doesn't matter whether you win or lose it matters how you play the game okay so I've been unpacking that in my Lexus because it's really really complicated so I can you tell your kid that and they look at you and they think

what what do you mean by that what I supposed to try to win the soccer game I'm I'm supposed to win and you say well yeah you're supposed to win but it doesn't matter whether you win or lose it matters how you play the game you know that that's right but you don't know how to explain it to your kid you say what you want to be a good sport okay so imagine if this is how it works in this is crucially important so first of all life is not a game

even a game is not a game because a game is most of the time the game is the beginning of a series of games so let's say that you're on a soccer team weather is winning the game but the game isn't the issue the game is the whole series of game so maybe the game is winning the championship and winning the championship and winning a game are not the same thing and the reason for that is well maybe if you want to win the game the best thing to do is to let your star player make all the moves but if you want to win a championship maybe the best thing is for your star player to do everything he or she possibly can to develop all the other team members that's a different strategy and reason it's different is because it did rates across time okay so I'll tell you a quick story so when my kid was playing hockey went when he was about 12 or so he was in the championship game just at a local arena you know and it was really fun to watch the teams were pretty equal which is something that you want so that everybody can expand their skills while they're playing and it was like 5 Seconds to to the end of the

payment the other team made a break away and came down the guy came down ISIS gorgeous beautiful goal and it was for 3 and that was the end of it right and all my kids team there was the kid who is the star and he was pretty good hockey player he was very annoyed about what happened he smashed his stick on the cement and was complaining about the refereeing and acting as if he'd be robbed at his father came up and instead of saying get your act together kid that's no way to display yourself after I lost he said oh yeah man you were robbed at the referees didn't ref right in and you play the Bastion you should have what and I thought you absolute son-of-a-bitch you're ruining your son and then the question is why cuz his son was the star and was trying to win why was he ruining his 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 so that's a series of games but then life isn't the championship life is a whole bunch of championships it's a whole sequence of it so what you're actually trying to train your son to do is to be a contender in the entire series and the way you do that is by helping him develop his character and it the character is actually the strategy that would enable him to win the largest number of games across the largest possible span of time and when will you do that if your kid is like what what do you want to do with your kid you don't want to teach him to win you want to teach him to play well with others and that's to be reciprocal so that means to try to win but also to pay attention to do to developing the other people around him and not to put winning the game about everything at all times so then he's fun to play with and this is absolutely crucial you get you can you can help your kid become fun to play with between the ages of 2 in the age of 4 if your kid is

fun to play with then what happens kids line up to play with him and adults line up to teach him and if kids line up to play with him didn't have friends is whole life and you'll be socializing to be invited to many game some of which you win all of which will be able to participate in and if he's fun to play with in adults will teach him things and then he wins at life and so when you say to your kid it doesn't matter whether you win or lose matters how you play the game what you're saying is don't forget kid that what you're trying to do here to do well at life and you need to practice the strategies that enable you to do well at life well you're in any specific game and you never want to compromise your ability to do well at life for the sake of winning a single game and there's a deep ethic in that in this the ethic of reciprocity in Games part of the reason we're so obsessed with sports is because we like to see that dramatized you know like the personally really admire as an athlete isn't only the person who wins we don't like the narcissistic winners their winners

not supplies but if they're narcissistic they're not good team players they're only out for themselves then we think while you're a winner in the narrow sense but your character is suspect you're no role model even though you're a winner because we're looking for something deeper we're looking for that the manifestation of character that allows you to win across the set of possible games and that's a real thing that's a real ethic it's a fundamental ethic I think what you're pointing as it's very important as we're searching for the person who's got it all nailed someone who tries their hardest but is also

honest enough about the circumstances to not cry foul when it's gone the other person's way you don't get to score on every shot doesn't mean you shouldn't take the shots doesn't mean you shouldn't try to hit the goal but part of part of being able to continue to take shots is to have the strength of character to tolerate the fact that. In that instance you weren't on top it's more trivial in games that it isn't fights and it's all the response is much more negative to the it from the fans if you lose a fight and complain about it it is it's ruthless there because they understand that you've made a huge character error why do you think it's more important in fights and it isn't games why do you think it is because the consequences are so grave because you recognize that the high is much higher and the lows were much lower to lose a basketball game sucks but it's nothing like those

fight there's no comparison it's not even so what do you think it is the damages the fighter if he complains about losing why is that a mistake why do the fans respond so negatively because they know they know that you lost they know that you're complaining for no reason and you're not a hero they want you to be better than them they want you to be the person that has the courage to step into a cage or ring or wherever wherever you with whatever the format is you're competing and to do something that's extremely difficult and when you do that they hold you to a higher standard to lose with Grace especially if you were a champion that is one of the most disappointing things ever won Champion complains and it is okay so responses horrific from the audience with Grace do announcers fairly straightforward he accepts the defeat and thanks okay what what is it that I have left to improve that will decrease the possibility of a similar defeat in the future

right so so so what he's doing is because the great athlete and the great person is not only someone who's exceptionally skilled at what they do but who's trying to expand their skills at all at all times yes and the attempt to expand their skills at all times it's even more important than the fact that they're great to begin with because the trajectory is so important more important in particular to the audience it's extremely important. It's because you are the person who's competing you are expecting them to live out this life in a perfect way or in a much more powerful way than you're capable of the scale because who is the willingness to push the skill farther into new domains of development with each action and that's really what people like to watch right they don't like to watch a perfect athletic performance they like to watch a perfect athletic performance that's pushed into the domain of new risk they want to see both at the same time you're really good at what you do and you're getting better okay so you lose a match which is not any indication that you're not good at what you do you might not

as good as the person who beat you but if you lose the mountain and wine what you've done is sacrifice the higher-order principle of constant Improvement of your own skills cuz you should be analyzing the loss and saying the reason I lost insofar as it's relevant to this particular time and place is the insufficiencies I manifested that defeated me and I need to track those insufficiency so that I can Rectify them in the future and if I'm blaming it on you or the referees or the situation that I'm not taking responsibility and I'm not pushing myself forward and so then you also take the meaning out of it but one of the things I've been doing on my door people are criticizing me to some degree for saying things to people that are obvious well first of all it's not like I didn't let you all know they were obvious when I wrote the one room and up street with your shoulders back you know treat yourself like you're someone responsible for helping it's like I know perfectly well that those can be read his cliches the question is crochet let's say is something that's so

true that it's that it's become that it's become is widely accepted by everyone but we don't know why it's true anymore and so is this issue the issue that we're talking about here at the issue of being a good sport we need to figure out why that's true and the reason that it's true is that you're trying to push your development farther than you've already developed at every point in time and now that's the proper that's the proper moral attitude so

when you see an athletic performance where someone is pushing themselves beyond what they are you see someone dramatizing the process of proper adaptation it isn't the skill itself it's the extension of the skillet when you see someone acting like a bad sport then there sacrificing that and so they're sacrificing the higher for the lower and no one likes that in the fights it's going to be see the question is that something I can't quite figure out is why that would be even exaggerated in a fight situation and you said it's because the stakes are so hot yeah the consequences of Victory or defeat there they're just so much greater is your your health is on the line it's one of the rare things that you do wear your your health is on the way your physical health right so there's more extreme Victory it was more than the way people treat the Champions it's it's a it's a very different thing it's the the respect and adulation that a champion receive

it's the Pinnacle Sports in terms of the the love from the audience when someone wins a great fight it's there's nothing like it and this is one of the reasons why these people are willing to put their house on the line because that high the high of Victory and it's not just a victory it's you know what is it who is it who is it who said Victory is really the victory over the Lesser you it's a victory over the victory is over you you got to realize what a guy like Steve Bay miocic who defends his heavyweight title this weekend in the UFC he is he's the heavyweight champ of the world but he's not undefeated he lost in his career he's lost a couple of times and he you know is I'm sure you lost wrestling matches and sparring sessions in the gym and he's a product of improvement he's a product of discipline and hard work and thinking and strategy

constantly improving Upon A skills and so is the baddest man on the planet so my in my book rule for is this is 12 rule for is compare yourself to who you were yesterday not to someone else's today yes cuz you need to be you need to have a hierarchy of improvement you need to do to be aiming stop for something and that means you going to be lesser than people who've always already attained a long not to mention nothing to give rise to Envy so the question is who should you defeat in the final analysis in the answer is you should defeat your former self you should be constantly trying to do that and you're the right control for yourself too because you're the one who's had all your advantages and disadvantages and so if you want to compete fairly with someone then you should be competing with you and it is the case this is what we were talking about do with regards to the self-improvement of the fighter is well if you're improving yourself than what you are doing is competing with your lesser self and then you might also ask Will what is that less or self

Annette lesser self would be resentful and bitter and and aggressive and vengeance-seeking and all of those things that go along with having a negative moral character and those are things that interfere with your ability to progress as you move forward through light so it's very necessary to understand that this is why you know I've been stressing this idea of personal responsibility is like while personal responsibility is to compete with yourself is to be slightly better than yourself the next day and it better in some way that you can actually manage and that's humility to write like well I'm a flawed person I've got all my problems could I be as good as person acts like not break question the right question is could you be slightly better tomorrow then you're currently flawed self and the answer to that is if you have enough humility to set the bar properly low then you could be better tomorrow than you are today because what you also have to do is you have to say well here's all my flaws

hi my insufficient season the best that someone that flawed an insufficient could do to improve and actually do it is this and that's not worth going out in the street and celebrating with black hearts you know it's like this why I tell people to clean the room it's not going to brag to someone that you did that but someone is insufficient as you might be able to manage it and that means you actually are on the pathway to self improvement in your transcending your former self you might say well what's the right way of being in the world if there is such a thing and it's not acting according to a set of rules it's a tempting continually to transcend the flawed thing that you currently are and what's so interesting about that is that the meat meaning in the meaning in life is to be found in that Pursuit so I've been laying out in these discussions to because it's a Well the fundamental issue is that life is tragic and difficult very tragic and difficult for everyone and it's also painted by malevolence because no matter how

things are tragic and difficult but there's always some stupid thing that you could do or someone else to do that could make it even worse than it has to be so that's life and you need an antidote to that because that can in bitter you constant contact with that just the tragedy but the tragedy combined with betrayal in malevolence that makes it even worse especially if it's self induced okay so you need something to set against that so you don't get bitter and resentful what do you said against that doing something worthwhile buy your own definition say you need some reason to get the hell out of bed on a terrible day cuz you got something good to do well what's the best thing you can do transcend your current wretched and miserable self there's meaning to be found in that in real respond that's that's a meaning that's associated with responsibility one of the things that I've been trying to lay out clearly is that

life is hard it's tainted by malevolence in betrayal that can make you bitter you need a meaning to offset that wears the meaning to be found not in rights not an impulsive pleasure button responsibility you take responsibility for yourself so you take care of yourself if you're good at it you can you have some excess left over to take care of your damn family if you go to both of those then you have some excess left over to take care of your community those are heavy burdens you pick up the burdens you find that's meaningful the best way to pick up the burden is to continually improve yourself and that's where the meeting is to be found and so that meeting is in the continual self-transcendence that's letting your old self died and the new self be reborn you did you watch when we were Kings Elliott Frazier right at the end so early defeats Frazier basically by letting him to feed himself right cuz Frazier is angry he's got a chip on his shoulder and it doesn't conduct the fight properly so we exhaust himself chasing Ellie and Ellie is basically just trained himself to take the

blokes right into where Frasier out that's his plan then right at the end of the movie narx Frazier down and it's pretty much the end of the fight but Frazier sort of struggles to his feet and always just getting up off the mat and now he's got his hand pulled back to just mail him cuz he's completely laid open and he puts his glove down and turns away that's the end of the fight and Frazier said and this is true as far as I know that that fight tame him like Frasier had a big chip on the shoulder and it was kind of a dreadful guy I feel that fight and afterwards he was affable and he was he was civilized at least civilized and so but that gesture that we made with the great gesture because he could have flattened them every reason to take it apart and punches like mad in that fight and then in the final analysis when he had freezer down and you struggling to his feet he just let him go man nobility of character right there something impressive to behold

so

why are you defining people like when you're saying that's why you saying you're miserable ratchet life because there's a lot of people that don't have miserable wretched lives at all so just want to improve why does it have to be the worst case scenario in order to Warren equipment have to work the theory has to work in the worst case scenario okay that's why you're using the worst case scenario as an example you think of that perhaps May alienate someone who doesn't have the worst case scenario it just wants to Improvement I don't think so because things are going really well for you now there's going to be a time in the future where things are rough you know you're going to be ill family members going to be ill a dream is going to fall apart you're going to be going to be uncertain about your employment status like that the flood is coming right the apocalypse is coming it's always the case in life and you have to be prepared for it in the question is how to prepare for it and the answer to that is to find a way of being

works even under the diarist of circumstances that's the issue and so you outline I mean I am pessimistic about this in my Approach and some sense because when I'm talking to my audience is in the same thing happened happened in my book maps of meaning in the 12 rules for life I'm laying out the worst case scenario not sore like hell it's things are going really badly for you and that's just chance associated with that sometimes and you and the people around you were doing stupid things to make it worse like okay what have you got under those circumstances you've got the possibility to slowly raise yourself out of the mire you've got that the possibility to do just what the fighter does when used to feed it which is to say well regardless of the circumstances that might have led to my defeat I can even if there were errors on the part of the referee this is no time to whine about it this is the time to take stock of what I did wrong so that I could improve it into the future and that's the right attitude you know in the Old Testament one of the things that's really interesting about the Old Testament stories is in the Old Testament the Jews keep

by God it's like they struggle up and make an Empire and then they just get wallet and then it's all crushed in their in their they're out of it for generations and then they struggle back up and make an Empire and then I get demolished again and it happens over and over and over and the the attitude of the Old Testament Hebrews is we must have made a mistake

it's never to shake their fists at the sky and curse fate it's never that the pre supposition is if things aren't working out it's my fault and that's a hell of a pre supposition and he might say well of course you know what's

that that underestimates the degree to which there's systemic oppression etc etc end and the end the vagaries of Fate it's like it doesn't over underestimate it's not the point the point is your best strategic position is how my insufficient how can I Rectify that that's what you've got and the thing is you are insufficient and you could rectify it both of those are within your grasp if you aim low enough one of the things you see that that's another thing you keep saying aim low enough have a low enough bar why do you why do you mean that it's so high that it's impossible for them to attain it you take a look at the kid and you think okay this kid's got this range of skill here's a challenge we can throw at him or her that exceeds their current level of skill but give a reasonable probability of success and so what if your but I'm doing it as an aid to humility it's like well I don't know how to start improving my life

one might say that and I would say well you're not even long enough

there's something you could do that you are regarding is trivial that that that you couldn't do that you would do that would result in an actual Improvement but it's not a big enough Improvement for you so you won't lower yourself enough to take the opportunity incremental steps this is also what is achieved through exercise it's one of most important what do you do when you put 400 pounds on the damn bar and dropped it and drop the bar through your skull I know you think I look when I started working out when I was a kid I was I was wait about a hundred and thirty pounds and I was six foot one too thin can 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 Bloody embarrassing you don't people would come over and help me with the goddamn wait to hear is how you're supposed to use this and it was humiliated and maybe I was pressing 65 lb or something at that point you know but what am I going to do I'm going to lift up a hundred 50 lb and injure myself right off the bat no I had to go in there and strip down and put my skinny God

damn self in front of the mirror and think son-of-a-bitch there's all these monsters in the gym be lifting weights for 10 years and I'm struggling to get 50 pounds off the bar tough luck for me but I couldn't lift 50 pounds and it wasn't very long until I can lift 75 and now you know how it goes but I never injured myself when I was little weight lifting and the reason for that was I never pushed myself past where I knew I could go and I push myself a lot and I gained 35 pounds of muscle in about 3 years in University I kind of had to quit cuz I was eating so goddamn much I couldn't stand it seem like six meals a day it was just taking up too much time but there's a humility in determining what it is that The Wretched creature that you are can actually manage aim low and I don't mean don't aim and I don't mean don't aim up

but you have to accept the fact that you can set yourself a goal that you can attain and there's not going to be much glory in it to begin with because if you're not in very good shape the goal that you could date could attain tomorrow isn't very glorious but it it's a hell of a lot better than nothing and it beats the hell out of bitterness and it's way better than blaming someone else it's way less dangerous and you could do it and what's cool about

there's a statement in the New Testament it's called the Matthew principle and Economist use it to describe how the economy in the world Works to those who have everything more will be given from those who have nothing everything will be taken it's like what's very pessimistic and some sense because it means that as you start to fail you fail more and more rapidly but it also means that as you start to succeed you succeed more and more rapidly and so you take an incremental stepping well now you can lift 55 lb instead of 52.5 lb you think what the hell is that it's like it's one step on a very long journey

it's so it's it and it starts to Compound on you so a small step today means put you in a position to take a slightly bigger step the next day and then that puts you in a position to take a slightly bigger step the next day and you do that for 2 or 3 years man you starting to stride you know when I have so many people coming up to me now this is one of the things that so insanely fun about this to her which is so positive it's it brings me to tears regularly it's mind-boggling because people come up to me and this is happening wherever I go now and they say they're very polite when they come and talk to me and honor always apologetic for interrupting and so it's never it's never narcissistic and it's never annoying I'm really happy to see people and they come up to me and they said well I know you've heard this lots of times before but I've really I've really been putting my life together since I've been watching your lectures then they tell me a story about where they were in some dark place too much alcohol too much drugs not getting along with her father not getting along with your mother not having a vision for the life being nihilistic playing too many video games you know like

being suicidal. That happens a lot having post-traumatic stress disorder sometimes as a consequence of combat whatever Little slice of hell they were occupied they say look I've been listening to your lectures and I've been developing vision for my life I've been trying to take responsibility and I've been trying to tell the truth and things are way better and so that's absolutely perfect it's it's it's the right way forward as far as I'm concerned and those are people who they took stock of themselves they said I'm in a dark place and I'm a dark person and hear some things that this dark person in this dark place could do little thing that they put actually do a clean up my damn room I'll make my back I've had I don't know how many people have come and told me it's so strange Lisa by started making my bed and that made all the difference it's like why you decided a mop man in the first concrete instantiation of that was that you made your bed you think well that's nothing heroic it's like no but a man up his heroic that's something and then lowering your

to the point where you're not above the mess in your room you know you're not superordinate to that you lower yourself so do you straighten up you you're grateful for what you have right in front of you and you take care of it you put it in order like all the sudden things start to get better and so wonderful to be doing this to her because I see so that's what the store has been about for me it's not political I never talk to people after the talks for example I talk to about a hundred fifty people tonight we never talk about anything political it's always this I wasn't doing very well I'm putting my life together I'm getting along better with my father and getting along better with my wife I'm getting along better with my kids I've got some meaning in my life thanks a lot it's way better it's like yes that's

that's the right thing is very beneficial for people and they need to hear that and there's there's something that comes along with that that's critical and what that is is an honest assessment of yourself and honesty that type of honesty honesty with yourself through difficult for some people and they don't have the tools for it and they haven't been explained how to do this so why you should know why you should yeah one of the things that happens when you go through school you're told what to do you never told how to thank you never trust me I know you're not in this is another thing that will you are and you're not right you're okay as a human look if you want to be a black belt in Jujitsu and you just started your first class you're okay as you are you're a human butt in the goal you're not okay in the greater goal the incremental Improvement is important you have to you have to honestly assess your position and move for your position

trajectory right and then when you say to someone you're okay because of your position that's not good enough because you have to say what wait a second you needed trajectory and maybe you're okay if you're okay in your position and your directory but you know the self-esteem movement in all of that will accept yourself the way you are it's like no cuz you needed trajectory and one of the things that that I think one of the reasons that audiences are responding to what I've been saying in my lectures and what I've been writing about is that I don't tell people that they're okay the way they are. I say no no you could be way more than you are and they're relieved about that you see because if you're in a dark and terrible place and someone says you're okay the way you are then you don't know what to do about that is no I'm not I'm having a terrible time and I'm hoping you're okay the Way You Are

well then what what that's it that's it that's where I am and what do you want to tell me young person you're 17 you're okay the way you are like no your not you got 60 years to be better and you could be way better you could be in comparably better across multiple dimensions and in pursuing that better that's where you find the meeting in your life and that will give you the antidote to the suffering the way I would describe it to people as there are disciplines that you can pursue and those disciplines are vehicle for developing a human potential and if you get better at these things you can get better at anything and you figure out what it takes to become better at whatever sport it is or whatever art it is whatever you're pursuing the same principles you can apply to the way you treat people you can apply to the way you educate yourself you can apply to way you keep your body in shape all those things are connected that's why you have to import impose order people have asked me in my book why I wrote it as an antidote to chaos you know because there isn't anything technically wrong

chaos chaos is a place of great potential for the question is what's the proper what's the proper balance between Chaos and Order chaos potential and Order well the answer is look when you're a kid you're all potential chaotic potential to manifest itself in any number of ways I need to eat maybe you don't want to give that up so you're like Peter Pan you want to be a kid forever because you don't want to give up the potential and you look out the world and all you see or Captain Hook's you know who's lost a hand chased by death because that's the clock in the crocodile it's already got a taste of a terrified by death and he's a tyrant why don't want to grow up to be that so I won't be disciplined at all but that's no good because the way the potential transforms itself into actuality is through discipline and so then you as you said this is the trick though you have to pick a path of discipline weather what path of discipline you have to pick as a different issue there could be a rule the rule could be

the crew might not be follow this rule the rule might be you have to follow some rules to the matter rule in the matter rule is you have to discipline yourself an issue as well how that's not really the relevant question you can pick a disciplinary path until my clients especially young people this is why I don't know what to do that's okay nobody does go do something you're the best thing that you can think of put the best plan you have into practice it's not going to be perfect and it will change along the way but it will change partly because you become disciplined pursuing the path and as you become disciplined you become wiser and as you become wiser you become able to formulate better and better plans so you can start vaguely and confused and develop a plan that's not so great and you start implemented and then you you you accrue incremental wisdom as you implement your flawed plan and that enables you to fix the plan it so that's part of that process of incremental self-improvement as well one of the more difficult aspects of that is personal honesty

being honest with yourself being honest with yourself about what you're doing self-assessment very difficult for people they don't they're never there never taught it it's not something that's encouraged hundred-thousand-dollar to go buy a house

so you go white you go look at this house and it's like Jesus this house man it's like it needs a lot of work it's like wow that's all you've got why you going to pretend that the house is okay the way it is we going to look for where it's rotten 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 now it's like that is Harsh man but and then in order to do that properly someone has to have taught you it's lucky you are not your problems or you are your most fundamentally that which if it confronts its problems can solve them not the hero myth in it in it in a nutshell by the way the hero is the person who confronts horrible chaotic potential and tames it and make something of it right that's that that's the fundamental human story but the problem is is that you have to face what you don't want to face in order to fix it and so you look at all the things about yourself that need to be burned off that need to be dispensed with and that man especially at the beginning especially if you're screwed up that maybe like 95% of you just have to go up in flames

and it's painful even some of that stuff that you have to burn off doesn't want to die in Scream in agony while you're burning it off it's not pleasant but if you know that you're the thing that can transcend your problems most fundamentally if you know you're the saying that if it faces the problems can transcend them then you have the faith that would enable you to take stock of who you are and you have to do that in small steps because most people don't have experience in transcending their problem so they really don't know what it even feels like it seems like an alien concept it seems like something other people can do but if you do it incrementally you could show yourself that you can do it and it's one of the reasons why they have built systems in martial arts you you start off slow oh my God I got a stripe on my white belt oh my God I'm a blue belt UE feel Improvement down for some people it's the first real Improvement marked absolute Improvement in their life right well then that's an interesting thing too because right there you've got a bit of a measurement system we have this system setup online called the future authoring for

Grandma we did last time we implemented it cuz we tested it three times we implemented that Mohawk College in Canada and we had people write about their ideal future and also to put in measurements strategies it's like okay here's your ideal future here's how you going to break it into goals here is how you're going to Mark progress towards those goals because you got to be playing if they're game with yourself right because when you make progress you want to reward yourself you have to identify what the progress is and you have to reward it the consequence we had people write a future plan for only an hour when they came for their school orientation in the summer before going to it's a it's a community college and drop the dropout rate among young man by 50% and is yeah no kidding 50% yeah and what that meant was to me what that meant was just think about what that means is that these kids being educated for 12 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 like where do you want to go why do you want to get there how are

how are you going to mark your progress and never walked him through that exercise you walk people through that exercise just to get them to do that increases the probability that they will stay on track by 50% that's incredible things I've always complained about is it that no one to people teach you facts they don't teach you how to approach life they don't teach you how to think they don't teach you how to confront insecurities and different traps that your mind will set up for you because that's exactly what I'm talking about why do you think why bother thinking

it's like musical that's obvious it's like no actually it's not so obvious it's like the issue that I discuss with my students at University law as well why write a good essay

why bother to get the greatest like no that's not why and if you think that well that's better than not thinking that there's any reason for writing a bunch of bad reason why I write a writing is a form of thinking it's actually the most demanding form of thinking I would say there's other forms that are demanding

Charlie write a good essay

pick a topic that matters to you because if you're not writing about something that matters to you it's like you're not living something that's meaningful it's wrong you're not going to write a good essay cuz you're wrong right to begin with an attitude why does it matter what what does it mean that it matters what means that it's going to affect how you make decisions in your life

something that matters affects how you make decisions in your life well why does it matter how you make decisions in your life cuz if you make some stupid decisions you're going to increase the sum total of suffering a lot 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 will you do stupid and terrible things but you won't have manifested the good in the world that you could have man of it so that's the lap she write an essay so that you can think and you think so that you can live property until you're right damn careful you make sure that every single bloody word is a word that you want to use and you make sure the phrases that you put the words in or a solid as they can be and you make sure the senses are well constructed and if they're organized into proper paragraph in the paragraphs are sequence and the content of the thing matters and you put your soul into it and you know when you've done that because it's gripping when you write its meaningfully engage in this is another thing that I've been sharing with my audiences meaning is actually an instinct like you think

okay so we already decided that incremental self-improvement is the proper root okay so how do you know when your incrementally self-improving properly in the answer is it's deeply engaging it's deeply meaningful and the reason for that is you're actually adapt neurologically to identify the pathway of maximal incremental Improvement that was a discovery conceptually by guy name of the god ski who was a Russian neuropsychologist who coined the term zone of proximal development if you're now and then people say they're in the zone that's the zone of proximal development and that's that place that you occupied when you're improving at the rate that sought to you and your sense of intrinsic meaning signifies that that's how your Bloody brain is wired and so then you might say well what's the antidote to the tragedy in malevolence of life and the answer is to put yourself in the zone of proximal development because that's where the maximum meaning is and that actually does prepare you for life and so the question why I think is well you think before you act and you act to put yourself in the zone

proximal development and you do that too as an antidote to the catastrophe of life will not stay well that's the answer and the thing that's cool about that and then this is a part of what I've been telling people that sort of novel is well where's the meaning the meaning is in responsibility you don't because people avoid respond. Peter Pan again avoid responsibilities just a burden it's like no it's not it is a burden but voluntarily hoisted it's the place of Maximum meaning in the more responsibilities you take the more meeting you have and that's the antidote to the catastrophe of life and everybody also knows that because just look so simple

when are you sick of yourself well that's when you're being useless and and irresponsible for yourself and for your family and for your community you not even taking care of yourself will you can sleep with a clean conscience unless you're Psychopathic if you don't take care of yourself and then when can you when are you not awake in the morning at 3 in the morning tearing yourself apart with a guilty conscience it's when you've done something useful at least for you you don't even say oh well check one on my side you say okay so fine you dropped a little responsibility for yourself and you can sleep with a clean conscience what happens if you dropped it full responsibility for yourself and then for your family lots of the people are coming to talk to me say now I've been really trying to put my family together like I made that goal I'm trying to heal my family and bring it together and it's working so here's a story I love this story about it just killed me I was in LA at the Orpheum you know it's rough downtown in La places around the Orpheum too and tell me and I hit my wife because she's traveling with me

is a big help by the way we're wandering around downtown LA good morning after the talk and we're walking down the street and they're on streets we probably shouldn't be no one but any any case cuz what the hell do we know being stupid Canadians and so we're walking down the street and this car pulled up beside us this kid hopped out it's good-looking Latino Kid 2021 something like that he jumped over and he said that is all excited he said are you dr. Peterson I said yeah yeah he said I'm really really happy to meet you I've been watching your lectures for like a year and a half and I've been trying to put my life together and it's really work and I'm really doing way better I really wanted to thank you and so it's lovely hey when you're walking down a kind of rough area and somebody pulled up beside you and they jump out of the car to tell you how much better their life is that's a pretty good morning and so but then that is all that happened he ran back to his car he said wait a minute wait a minute went back to his car and he called his dad and they came over together and his dad was just smiling away like a real smile you know and so is the kid and they had their

around each other and they said look like we would have been working on a relationship for the last year-and-a-half and it's going just great we want to thank you enough father said something like I'm really happy that you got my son back to me like yes that's what this bloody Torres been like it's great and everybody that's coming to these talks that's what they're trying to do now I got three thousand people in each audience and what they're trying to do is figure out how can I take maximal responsibility for my own life how can I imbue it with the meaning that helps me with Stan 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 getting very emotional about this something you seem like a hundred and fifty thousand people in the last 2 months you know when this is what it's way you'll have a chance to talk to Ruben about this to this is what it's been like it's so positive I can't believe it and it's just one person after another saying like look I was I was having a rough time I'm really happy that I've been encountering what you can talk about it really been trying to put things together

and it's really helping your Reuben was pretty Blown Away by we had a long conversation about it about be just feels like there's some crazy movement going on at something's changing in the world because of this of this new Avenue of Learning and Development is opening up for these people I've been thinking about that too because you don't like I said at the beginning if you're surfing you don't want to take responsibility for the way then so you know I mean first of all the Lord of what I've been telling people or things that I've gleaned from the clinical it and the psychological literature it's not like I'm coming up with this of my own accord right I'm transmitting information that I've learned from very very wise people so there's that but also we don't want to underestimate the utility of the technology right because we have this long form technology now and it's enabling us to have this discussion and so we can get deeper into things publicly and socially then we were able to before and I see this I see this as a manifestation of that and then and I'm hoping to that maybe maybe what's happening cuz we

going to have a lot of adaptation to do in the next 20 years as things change so rapidly we can hardly comprehend it and hopefully the way we're going to be able to manage that is to think and hopefully these long-form discussions will provide the political or provide the public for impressed actually think to actually engage at a deep enough level so we'll be able to master the Transformations and I think that's possible and the reason that I wrote this book while part of the reason I be doing what I've been doing for the last 30 years and because I really have believed since 1985 something like that the way out of political polarization the way out of the excesses of the right and the left is through the individual I think the West got that right the fundamental unit of measurement is the individual and the fundamental task of the individual is to engage in this process of humble self-improvement I believe that's the case and that's where the meeting is and that's where the responsibility is and I think and I'm hoping that if enough people in the west and then and then the rest of the world for that

we're very polarized in the west right now if enough people take responsibility for getting their individual lights together then we'll get wise enough so we won't let this process of political polarization put us back to the same places that we went so many times in the 20th century I don't see another antidote for it it's not political its ethical this is the message that I always hear from you and this is you as a friend this is the you that I understand but this is not how your commonly represented you are the most misrepresented person I've ever met in my life I have never seen someone who has so much positive that gets ignored and where people are looking for any little thing that they could possibly misrepresent and switch up and change and I'm kind of stunned by it I mean I'm really not sure what it is about you that so polarizing with all these different people that are

deciding that you are some sexist transphobic evil person that's this right-wing alright figure you know even to the point where it's it's

it's kind of humorous to me sometimes when I read some of these these takes on you

what do you think that's from like what what is have you this is a new thing for you you mean this only been the last few years that you've gone from this relatively unknown professor in the University of Toronto to being this worldwide figure where people you're obviously your message is resonating with people in a very huge way but the people that are opposing you their vehement Lee opposed what do you think that is collected this don't like me collectivists what do you mean by that

people who think they're probably proper unit of analysis in the world is a political and be group-oriented the identity politics types don't like me at all and they have every reason not to

cuz I'm not I'm not a fan of identity politics I think that's why you miss represented what you mentally hypothetically reported to do nothing else but to increase the the domain of rights that were applied to transexual people but there was a there was plenty more to that bill bad let me tell you and I read the policy. The policies of went along with it and it was a compelled speech Bill and so I opposed it on the grounds that the politicians are not supposed to leave out of their proper domain and start to compel speech it's not the same as forbidden hates me I think hate speech should be left the hell alone personally for all sorts of reasons but to compel the contents of speech of the whole new thing it's never been done before in the history of British common-law English common law and it's actually the Supreme Court in the 1940s in the US said that that was not to be allowed it so 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 get it you don't get to compel

each I don't care what your reasons are and why should I trust your damn reasons anyways what makes you so st. like so that you can violate this fundamental principle in I should assume that you're doing it for nothing but compassion and that you're wise enough to manage that property like sorry no I read your policy I see what you're up to I don't like the collectivist I think they're unbelievably dangerous and I have reason to believe that so I think that when push comes to shove if your unit of analysis is the group and your worldview is one group and its Power claims against all other groups that that that's not acceptable it's it's tribalism of the worst form and it lead to nothing but may have a disaster and part of the reason you're doing it isn't because your compassion it's because you're envious and you don't want to take responsibility for your own life and I'm calling you on it so you don't like me so I must be an alt-right figure I must be a Nazi saying your house needs a lot of work man there's a lot of rotten in the floorboards the plumbing is leaking the water's coming yet

you know what the sage and Saint you think you are for so much work you have to do on yourself that it would damn near kill you to take a look at it but do everything honestly think that that's why people are responding to you in a negative way that they only have their own personal problems they're avoiding did he can't possibly be that you represent to them something that is either cruel or something that it is not compassionate about people and their differences in their flaws and their their Humanity generated of me is yeah. That's what I heard I'm getting a well part of its the almost everything that happens in the world through a political Lance at least the journalist at least first of all first of all I think I got it I got to make this clear

first of all I've been treated well by lots of journalist really will like the best journalist in Canada have been on my side since about 2 weeks after the bill c16 thing erupted and those would be the journalist that have an independent voice and that her that that have created their own following and there in a number of different media places mostly in print okay and there's a coalition of of newspapers in Canada the post Media Group 200 newspapers they came out fully in support of my stance on on Bill C 16 and shoulders lots of times that I've been treated properly by journalist there's a small number of journalist very noisy and a small number of active it's very well organized who've been on my case right from the beginning and those are people who are generally driven by a very radical leftist Progressive agenda and I am not on their site I'm on their site as individuals I'm on their side of people who can struggle forward but the collective is Vision it's deadly but you seem to be the Pope

your boy for this very simple

characterization like almost a caricature of what the the the alt-right figurehead is it's in its to me as a person who knows you it's very strange to watch his take place and then when they can find anything that you say that could without further explanation or definition the misconstrued as appealing to this definition of you like for instance when all this when this

what would I guess they call themselves in cells involuntary celibates when all this stuff went down this car drove his car into a group of people is horrible tragedy one of the things that you talked about within cells is that this was a part of the wrong what was it that it is a New York Times you said one of the cures for this is enforced monogamy people decided in you know I've never heard that term before quite honestly and I was like what the fuck does that mean it's a psychological term and what it means is enforced by culture that it is a good value I swear mom knows who discovered it like she knew the journalist knew perfectly well what I meant by enforcement Olga be stupid

would you use it as if everybody would understand it because you're an intellectual and because your professor in this what you do it's also 2 minutes out of a two-day conversation if that's how she needs that was funny and some sense because my sense is if you want a pillory someone you should have tribute to the Views that someone somewhere has had and the implication of that part of the New York Times article was that I wanted to you know take nubile young women at the point of a gun understand enforcement deliver them yet this was mad it's like no one has ever believe that sounds like that it's a real Optics of that that statement of very bad but the question is why didn't why wasn't a follow-up questions and if there was follow-up questions to get you to Define what you mean by enforcement not that's a real problem

things I've said continually I'm in this is on record in multiple places it's like okay so you're young man and all the women are rejecting you

who's got the problem it's not all the women that's a bad road to go down if all the women are rejecting you it's you we both agree on this but why is in for monogamy the solution for people that are involuntary celibates the relationship between men and women unattractive if these mothers attractive attractive to women I don't mean just physically unattractive me women aren't seeking them as mates they need to become men yes they certainly Solutions the solution absolute and we both agree on this so I hope what I need to do that in the society where monogamy is the social Norm but isn't it all social Norm anyway to the degree that we deviate from that we tell two words more violent Society I was making a very minor Point don't think they're related quite honestly I don't think that involuntary celibates

I don't think that having enforcement exam as a part of our cultural norm is going to help those people I really don't how's it going to help them which is the alternative then a small minority men get all the women that's what happened okay I just makes the world where polygamy societies exist and mass and then you do have this problem with his of a small group of men that are fucking all the women but that's not what we're talking this to a genuine intimate one-to-one relationship over any long. Of time do women want that sure if you have children but I know I still don't think that that is why these men are involuntary celibates and I don't think it's the solution to that I think the solution is that they need to become attractive yes that is the solute to a related

I was making a minor point the minor point was that one of the ways the societies around the world have figured out that you keep young male aggression under control is by enforcing monogamous standard cuz it gives everyone a chance in some sense and meaning it it clears more more women will be available for one-on-one relationship rather than one guy who is some you know

whatever for whatever reason to Marge figure in society where women outnumber men so that the man hypothetically have more sexual opportunity but that is what happens what happens is it a small minority of men have all the sexual opportunity a fairly large minority men don't the women are unhappy cuz they can't find a committed relationship it's bad for most of the man and the man who have all the sexual opportunity gets in but isn't this in some ways against your whole idea of equality of outcome because you're you're talking about equality of sexual out come now if these men have you see the bron James that's a dominant basketball player that just kicks everyone's ask this is the this this is a guy who succeeded at the highest level right well there's going to be people like that sexually is going to be people that are better at finding mates and that this is what they enjoy the enjoy having many mates they enjoy being yes but but if this is what

play enjoy if it's a man who doesn't want a family and enjoy dating multiple women why is that bad the long run for children it's bad for children if he chooses to have children that makes sense that is the point she was making it all apart from pillorying me and and then and trick-or-treating my perspective that was the point she was making the first of all I'm not in favor of unbridled hierarchies already said that you know the proclivity of a hierarchy is that are all the spoils go to the person at the top that can destabilize the whole structure and is but a safe and got one 6 foot 5 beautiful man who's got a perfect body and yet brilliant and he just wants to date a bunch of women and all the rest of the people

five foot one and they're fat and they're lazy and like this guy's going to if this is the competition he's going to win

yep there's no way around this and even if you decide to have

enforce monogamy where becomes a popular thing the women are going to be more drawn to him if he chooses to date them they might decide I would rather have him sometimes then never at all what does happened what is wrong with that what's wrong with it is that it destabilize society and it's bad for children right you said that they don't want to have children but there's a lot of people that don't want to have children there's a lot of people to choose to go their entire life without having children as men in their thirties I'm wanted some of my friends have a sec to me they don't want children so why why would that help in any way these involuntary celibates Society so that it serves the interests of well that's a good question to you but you see my point I do almost any doubt about it you almost having you're almost forcing an in equality of outcome to agree that she had a point that was her point

no but I but it's not doesn't run contrary to my opinions that the issue of outcome has to be addressed already said there's needs to be a reason for the left and the right and then the problem with hierarchies as they can get to Steep and destabilize everything does happen not particularly happens in the sexual domain and have plenty of anthropological evidence for that but you still might say well who cares because the man who are who are winning should be allowed to win the women should be allowed to chew sits right yes except that there's the problem of children and social Society steps in on behalf of the children and you can say well lot of people don't have children yes and that's true or now than it used to be although many of those people end up having children anyways you know the guys who should be around all the time so that doesn't circumvent the problem but the issue here for me Isn't the man or the women it's the children were trying to set up societies where the probability that children will be raised in something approximating optimal environment is optimized and that's going to mean sacrifice of opportunity and choice on the part of adults

I just necessary I agree with you but I think the what were talking about mirrors what we're talking about in sports hit mirrors were talking about in business it's everything else there's just going to be people that are better at all different aspects of life is going to be people that are talented in terms of like getting women to like them yes they make Crossing up dominance hierarchies and so if your a male who successful in a given hierarchy the probability that you're going to have additional mating opportunities is exceptionally high it's an unbelievably good predictor of that hypergamy is a very uncomfortable discussion of choices by the fact that they want bigger bigger better than someone who's more more successful someone is higher on the social ladder than what they're accustomed to or what they have now

it was like made choices very difficult problem so how do you solve it but here's how women solve it throw them in a ring let them compete at whatever they're competing at assume that the man who wins is the best man marry him yes it's a brilliant solution it's a market-oriented solution it's actually the solution that appears to have driven all revolutionary departure from chimpanzees it's a biological solution and it will show the next what is the cost of the cost is the cost is polygamy

and so we ran that in with in-force monogamy and we do that in order to provide stable stable circumstances for children is polyamorous is a polyamorous Society just is unattainable as this utopian Marxist idea I think so because it looks like this is not the point I was making that didn't get covered in the in the in the article of the road about it someone extensively on my blog is that societies tilt towards monogamy across the world is human Universal now that doesn't mean that people don't have polygamous or polyamorous Tendencies cuz they certainly do and it's also the case that one of the women ways that women gerrymander this system is that like the number of children who are in a say you're married and you have children with your husband but you also have an affair so we have a child by another man that's more common than anyone suspected so part of the way that women solve the problem that you're just describing and I'm in the I'm not

saying anything for this or guess this is a purely factual biological claim is a pic of monogamous marriage and they cheat with high status guys

now you know obviously in the confines of the marriage that's a terrible thing but that's a very uncomfortable subject of for women in particular but they don't like the idea that this is a common thing that women choose a safe man that is willing to be monogamous with them and perhaps maybe they're above him in a social class or in sexually and then they'll cheat with someone who is plenty of exception this is enforcement Alchemy the very definition of it in September and so so let's say he comes to me and Ernie says Hey Dad guess what I've had three Affairs in the last year and they've all been successful I haven't got caught aren't I a good guy

what am I going to say to that know what the hell are you doing that's not what you're supposed to be doing that's enforcement all to me

enforcement on me being the people around you try to guide them in a way that you think it's going to wait till it's apart monius family and that doesn't mean that it's not prone to all the problems that you laid out look there isn't a bigger problem than successful reproduction it is very big problem and all of the solutions that we've generated for it are full of flaws like here's an example the gender pay Gap okay there's no gender pay Gap there's a mother Gap there's other reasons too but women really take a hit when they become mother's okay that sounds fair fair enough man what the hell are you going to do about it's not just that though right in this is what also I'm starting to wrap your hair but this is what's 1 of things that I want to bring up but I kind of lost track of it the misrepresentation of view mirrors the misrepresentation of the gender pay Gap because it's a convenient misrepresentation that upon further inspection and understanding

realize there is no gender pay Gap the gender pay Gap when people discuss it that don't understand and I've had these conversations with really intelligent people that just listen to what's in the news or read some very quick article talking about this problem that we have and they assume that a man and a woman to work in the same job but the woman is unfairly paid $0.79 to the man's dollar that's not the case is close to the case cases women choose different professions that don't pay as much they work Less hours and they often times get married and have children and because they have children to take paternity leave and they make less money do they make less money because that so it's one of them but it's never discuss its multivariate problem and I think it mirrors this wolfel misrepresentation of

where you stand and I think they're all tied in together with people want bad and good they want a one and a zero they want things to be very binary we already understand the illogical Lance and things are more complicated than this is a complex discussion that you're not going to get in a 5-minute segment on a talk show can I get this on a radio show you're not going to get this in an article that gets edited by someone with a biased opinion and this is the problem with mainstream media and this is the problem with Ideas. Book on he wrote a book called Warren Farrell is the guy who's most what would you call be most pilloried for pointing out the real reasons for the gender pay Gap he wrote a book called why men make more hoodie rated for his daughters why because he wanted to help provide and now he obviously he was doing it for public consumption as well but one of the motivations was well men do make more what why

unemployment want to make more what could they learn from the man who make more how to make more in the answer is yes the question is whether or not they'll do it in the probable the probable answers most women won't because how much you make isn't the only Hallmark of success in your life you know it's like it's one measure and it might be a measure that really competitive men compete for and they do and that's partly to provide access to to to to increase mating opportunities cuz that's built into the structure something we never talk about either although we could so Warren wrote this to lay out all the reason that men make more but it was so that his daughters at least in parts of a discharge can figure out how to be socioeconomically successful but yeah but that's not the only Hallmark how much social economic success are you willing to sacrifice to spend time with your kids before the three years old be none

right because what makes look we already know this for for example once you make enough money to keep the bill collectors at Bay

so that's kind of lower upper working class say something I even Centris working-class keep the bill collectors at Bay additional money doesn't improve your quality of life

other things to do so maybe it's a rational response when you're like 30 see the irrational man here's the irrational man maybe they drive the world but they're the irrational man more success is always better along this unit dimensional axis of achievement of competition and maybe they drive most things they probably do but that doesn't make them write it also doesn't make them most people it doesn't make them happy happy is the whole different issue dancing around a bit because everyone is well you are though you in in pursuit of success it's implied that happiness goes with that success otherwise why the fuck you doing yeah well domination Charisma Prestige while connected in our perception

you don't like what happened to look I worked at law firms with law firms for very long. Of time and I work for lots of high-end women lots of them and they were like they were usually extremely attractive they were extremely intelligent they were extremely driven they were very very conscientious they buried and how agreeable they were somewhere disagreeable litigator types and somewhere more agreeable they often had a harder time in the law firm but the law firms lose all their women in the thirties did they all be allowed at partner-level a lot of the law firms want them because you can't find people like that they're really rare especially if they're also rainmaker's if they can bring in money and Warfarin Bend themselves over backwards trying to keep the women they can't keep them why for the women decide that

I'm working 18 hours a day flat out all the time 7 days a week

my husband makes a fair bit of money if I made half as much money as I made we still have plenty of money why am I working 18 hours a day

well that's not the question the question is why would anyone work 18 hours a day that's the mystery and the answer is a small minority of men are driven to do that it so they'll do that no matter where you put these guys that's what they do yes okay but that does that mean it's correct think there's something wrong with these women they hit 30 they've hit partner they've hit the pentacle mean they can keep going if I wanted to but they've accomplished their goal they definitely showing their bloody well in the game and they wake up at 8:30 and they think I'll wait a minute I want to have a relationship and also I want to have some time to put into that I'd like to have kids and I'd actually like to see my kids like that irrational this is another thing that I you and I are in agreement on but when I see people talk about the way you discuss women they misrepresent what you're saying and paint you in what I think willfully paint you they do it on purpose they paint you as a misogynist

I don't understand why I don't understand if it is because they disagree with you on things so this is a convenient way to demonize your position by demonizing you as a human being but I was partly too because I made the case that there are differences between men and women like why that isn't a feminist case is beyond me so I can know they're exactly the same like no they're not it's ridiculous it's confusing purposefully confusing so look

people have accused me of pseudoscience you know which I really think is quite comical because it's this the studies that I'm reporting aren't who's accused you to do especially when I talk about differences between men and women so I called that pseudo-sciences like actually no it's not it's bloody mainstream science both biology and psychology but why do they like to do that because it seems to be there was a reason that goes along with the radical leftist agenda that if there are a world of equality of outcome could not be achieved and that's the desirable world if there are actually differences between people actual differences like that aren't just socio-cultural started so that you can there's also something as well if you're really powermadd you want to believe that human beings are infinitely malleable because then you can mold him in whatever it is you want and if you say no they actually have a character right there something built-in then that interferes with the totalitarian regime but here's what's happened just like look we got a good personality model we had it for about 40 years something like that

5 more 5 dimensions of personality and they were established statistically a theoretically by left-leaning psychologist okay and I'm not saying that they're idiot logically contaminated but what I am saying is there's no evidence whatsoever that right wing leaning psychologist produced The Big 5 because there are no right leading psychologist so enough of that that isn't why the big five came up okay so once you have a good personality mortal you can say okay well do men and women differ and answer is yeah turns out they do there's quite a few differences but the biggest ones are women are more agreeable that's one of the traits agreeableness and it's the compassion politeness Dimension and they're more prone to negative emotion anxiety and emotional paid and that mirror is a psychiatric literature that shows worldwide that women are more likely to be diagnosed with depression and anxiety just like men are more likely to be in prison for antisocial Behavior which is the reflection of Lowa grilled this is true worldwide okay so there's no evidence of any bikes and less you see

everything's biased everywhere in the world fine could be but we've also controlled for that so now there are personality differences between men and women out the first thing we might find out if they're not that big so if you draw a random woman and a random man out of the population and you had to bet on who is most aggressive least agreeable and you bet on the woman you be right 40% of the time which is actually quite a lot right quite a lot but if you take the one in the hundred person who's most aggressive

least agreeable there's an overwhelming probability that they'll be mailed because the differences get more extreme at the at the ends of the distribution people don't understand the statistics you can have two populations that are quite similar and still have radically dissimilar outcomes if only the extremes matter

who are the most powerful physical fighters in the world

men all of them what does that mean that there are no women who can beat a man in a fight know it also doesn't mean that there are there's plenty of women who are more aggressive than men but if you take the most aggressive physically powerful people they're all men all of them because they're like one in the thousand people or 1 and 10,000 people so you can have warping differences at the extremes despite multiple similarity at the middle people don't understand that but then the next thing is okay well there are differences between men and women personality-wise depart from the biological what are those caused by cultural differences hey turns out we can answer that how

rank order countries by how egalitarian their social policies are does everyone agree yeah yeah the Scandinavians are out the top everyone agrees left right doesn't matter everyone agrees it's like okay so you stack up the cultures by Howie Gala Therrien their social policies are and then you look to see how big the differences are between men and women up that hierarchy of egalitarianism and give out of the societies become more egalitarian the differences between men and women disappear then it's socio-cultural

daddies and what happened what happened was is it as the society's got more egalitarian the differences between men and women got bigger not smaller it means the socio-cultural construct people and I'm talking to you social cultural construct people you're wrong you're wrong you make the societies more egalitarian men and women get more different who makes the argument in opposition to this all the all the social constructionist all the radical left-wing or say what are the uses fat they don't have back but then they criticize the whole idea of fact then they go after the whole idea of science as I as a western patriarchal construct what's the motivation the motivation is that if people are different than equality of outcome isn't isn't neither desirable Norwich evil and why do they want equality of outcome why is it so that's a good part of it is part of his actual compassion

lose all the time who wants that you happy when you walk down the street see homeless people like hey look the hierarchies working look at these homeless people no one's happy about that but the fact of failure within the hierarchy of value is painful and sold to give the devil his do you give the left it's do just like you do the right is like yeah it's painful that hire rookies produced dispossession bloody right okay what's the cure get rid of the hierarchy hey we'll wait a minute man you get rid of the hierarchy get rid of the value structure you get rid of the tools that allow us to generate absolute wealth and stop people from starving it's a catastrophe okay so it's so there's there's a problem you have to have the car key but then also it isn't just compassion on the left its Envy

it's like okay if I'm so if I'm standing for the dispossessed what makes me so sure that I'm not just standing against the successful and maybe that's cuz I'm bitter and jealous and envious and resentful it certainly it's highly probable if you look at what happened in the left as societies the tried to pursue Utopia and you don't read NV and resentment into that you're not you don't know the history cuz that's clearly why else did they become murderous but this is the questions like it's clearly the case that the Soviet Union for example was motivated by the desire for equality of outcome as a primary motivation what happened 25 million people were killed why why what was it all compassion and love for the dispossessed or was it absolutely bitter resentment and hatred for anyone who have any shred of success whatsoever on any possible dimension of evaluation so this compassion for people that aren't doing well when you lies the rub

on the way or when approached the wrong way leads to attacking people that do well this is lovely that the mother grizzly bear takes care of her Cubs yeah it's lovely man till you get between her and her Cubs then it's not so damn lovely and that's the flip side of that Affiliated agreeableness like if you if you're on my side you know if you're the infant who's Sheltering under my wings it's like I am I'm the absolute epitomy of maternal love and care but if I've identified you as a predator you better look the hell out and that's playing out in our political landscape in a very very rapid rate that's the female side of totalitarianism as far as I can tell the feminine side of totalitarianism it's not just that it's not just the agreeableness motivates aggression because it certainly does it's also that it's that the envious and the resentful can use compassion as a as a

camouflage for their true intent which is to tear down anyone of us more than them that's the why you don't like when there's discussions about the 1% where we talked about this who's the one percent what's a timer I mean in I'm in the in the Park New York demonstrating against Wall Street down with the 1% wait a second you're in the 1% there mister protester no no you don't understand the rich are those who have more money than me right that's the definition who's rich someone who has more than me not me it's like why why why isn't the 1% North America

why not cuz it's inconvenient that's an inconvenient fact

so that's part of it but there's do the envy and resentment this is that the real pathological end of the full compassion that motivates the radical left like yeah you like the poor do you what makes you think you just don't hate the successful

not a question it's like because you're not perfect man there's hatred in you and the probability that it's more powerful than love is pretty damn high so

to look to your own look to your own Viewpoint before you go out there and try to fix the hierarchies of the world just exactly what it is and it's worse like look in the Russian Revolution for example let's say just for the sake of argument that the first rung of revolutionaries were only driven by Compassion maybe they were they all got killed they got killed by the people who came after and they weren't so interesting about you at all they were interested in ferreting out everyone who had a modicum of success on any Dimension end and doing them in and that happened in wave after bloody wave they killed all the successful farmers

those were the kulaks killed all the run them all up kill them rape them stolen property sent the remnants to Siberia froze them to death 10 years later six million ukrainians. Did they couldn't raise crops

why do you think that people are so opposed to discussing these things or to challenge and cultural norms because want one of the things that I've seen especially in terms of the differences between men and women

this this reaction to some of the things that you said has been very it's very strange to me it's very strange that people aren't recognize these are unbalanced approaches and it did there's some of it's just complicated Joe it's like by the way so what's going to happen is that if we let men and women sort themselves out there aren't going to be very many female engineers in Tech types and there's going to be a lot of female nurses is not going to be many male nurses and Healthcare types of an email Elementary School teachers what is this oh well that's the question who knows do we know I don't know well the idea of having an equal Society where gender inequality is completely knocked out gender pay Gap is does non-existent

women sort themselves into different occupations which looks highly probable I don't know if that's okay and then it's also would like okay compared to what alternative should every Elementary School teacher of the female should every psychologist be female cuz that's what's happening and the answer to that is well I don't know but but there's another answer which is well what do you propose as an alternative to free choice that isn't going to cause more trouble than free choice cuz I would say wow okay let's say I'm a feminist for the sake of argument or right so I think while there are differences between men and women there actual differences and so some of those are biological some of them are our strategic in some sense because women pay a bigger price for reproduction so that's going to lead them to make different choices that's just rational based on its rationality based on biological differences so it's like a second-order biological difference there's differences in temperament interest there going is going to lead them to make different choices is that a pro-feminist answer.

Stan's Sony anti feminist if you assume everyone has to be exactly the same in the outcomes have to be exactly the same if if you if your goal is no leave people to hell alone as much as possible let them make their own informed and free choices then you let the difference is Manifest themselves in the world and you take your you take your Knox because of that the problem with that is this Narrative of equality equality of outcome and just a quality of human beings on the best looking at people as we're all equal what would not it just some people are better at different things or equal in terms of our rights or you can go in terms of the way we should treat each other better physically right but every other dimension were radically unequal that's the problem the problem is real the only thing that's worse than the pain of any quality is the pain of forced equality and I'm not being fast out about that it's like look I see the IQ issues that is the killer 1

it's like look if you have an IQ of less than 83 you can't be inducted into the American Military by law why cuz there isn't a damn thing you can do that isn't counter productive despite the fact that the Army want to cuz they can't get enough manpower that's what they decided so I can okay so you know you're on the way to the cognitive distribution what are you going to do

not much and it's going to get worse is that good it's not good terrible do we know what to do about it no Brian we can have equality of outcome of monks people with lower than 83 IQ right no one's at no one's advocating for that no one's asking for that one of the conversations shocking and it started trend of misquoting and misrepresenting you was you did an article interview with Vice and they use a snippet of one of the things you said and tried to pretend that you had made these very Curt statements and one of them like you know and yeah what are you trying to draw look first of all how is he annoying

do you know everything

you know everything what was just in this attitude you know it was you he wanted he wanted this from the very beginning this was him arms crossed hey I know more than you and be your probably that represents one person that I thought about an inside job he was signaling he's left leaning he was deciding that you what you were doing was representing the patriarchy are you were representing male-dominant structures that he was saying that are that they're not correct the reasonable left-leaning people it was built right into his attitude and so it made me a little test here then I might have beat which is my Strategic Air and you know you asked earlier what why do I get pilloried with some regular and some of it is probably my only an adequacy and it's not

it isn't that I've handled all the opportunities that I've had perfectly you know when I can get hot under the collar it's a mistake it's a mistake because the right approach in these situations is to use minimal necessary for me to allow myself to get

irritated let's say even mine early when I'm faced with someone who's doing this is not productive doesn't work well and so I really need to keep that under control and when I do keep it under control it works better the makeup one was particularly annoying to me because I think it's a valid conversation it's an interesting conversation and they didn't put this in their initial cut I said I'm not saying that women shouldn't be allowed to wear makeup in the workplace explicitly well that was why people are so angry when they saw the full version of it I mean the full version was released someone leaked it right right someone who felt like you were being misrepresented in the the editing was on just decided to leak it and people were absolutely Furious released it but other people took the full release and clipped it with the release and showed how it was being Miss roselli was the makeup thing it's like all right look here's the first of all I make a mistake sometimes and treating journalist

like I would treat my graduate students so when I'm having a conversation with my students and we say well here's the problem is electrical exercise sexual how do we regulate what are the Norms around sexual behavior in the workplace that's a question it's a question we don't know okay here's a bunch of possibilities possible rules right no flirting no hugging no I contact for more than 5 Seconds Netflix right no hugging no damn right you're having a conversation with a woman who's your boss and she's asking you questions about things can you look down every 5 seconds so I can Christ Is that real yes yes it's real it's real bad terrible idea but there's a lot of women that I'm friends with that I've never had any sexual interest at all and we look at each other say I

do you know how about boxers if you're a man know okay so there's some about a short skirt well that this is the thing the devil's in the bloody details right now it's like okay you can come to work naked you can't come to work in boxer shorts you can come to work in a suit okay so the line is somewhere between boxers and suit where exactly is the line exactly can a man wear shorts

why can a woman wear a dress the way that men in in professional organizations the way that men solve this problem was that everyone wore a uniform at a uniform makes you uniform that's why you wear it and the uniform is the suit and it's at the derivation of a military of military Garb and so the idea was what we want to get rid of diversity right and clothing wear your damn suit then we know you're playing the game and we don't have to be distracted by what you're wearing okay so that's what man did okay so now women come into the workspace do they do Whoppers business professional dress right and if some rules around that but but what are the rules exactly exactly and I was thinking well we're worried about sexual misbehavior in the workplace he can't look at someone for more than 5 Seconds you can't give them a hug okay what about makeup do we have a discussion about makeup oh I know we kind of a discussion about that will just make up sexual signaling it's like well

if you're a few and evolutionary biologists the question is makeup sexual signaling that's out of the question like obviously that's what it is that's why that conversation was frustrating because he was saying cuz they want to do it they want to wear it they want to look good and maybe does that even mean well that's right that's right that's right what does that eat but does that mean everyone knows what he has to say that he has to say that because in his tribe you have to communicate that way right here this is it was implied take or because he's trying to rile you up what you getting riled up right now as a journalist it's kind of his idea or his job to challenge you and some way and it is very least off of The Devil's Advocate opinion explain yourself better why shouldn't they wear makeup they just want to look good you need to explain yourself better why you saying something wrong with me

someone knows that do you think that's why I like perhaps like he was intellectually sparring with you and he was being aggressive about it I think he felt he felt that I think he felt that it was necessary to challenge me that that was his role as a journalist but fundamentally he was smogged he thought he came out the entire conversation with an air of intellectual condescension it was built right into the discussion right from the beginning and he never dropped it at all so I know what you're doing and I know what's up and I know how to take you apart and I know that whatever you're talking about is just an attempt to defend your hourly rate got about an hour something like that how much do they use in the clipse hardly any of it I don't even know a couple of minutes so yeah yeah so your tendency to get riled up can be exploited yes of course it's the problem of deviating from the doctrine of minimal necessary Force like the best times the best interactions I've had with contain

journalist is where I'm absolutely kept my cool you know but I got to Newman what you saying is

yeah like I know who you are and I know you're covering it up it's like well it's these, these Concepts these are complex situations when you find men and women who are sexually attracted to each other and they're working in confined environments for long periods of time and they essentially spend more time with the people you work with and they do with their lovers and their wives their husbands and it's weird you know men and women interact with each other in closed in boxes is weird they're all together and if they find each other attractive and they're interacting with each other socially especially if there's any interaction that deviates outside of work discussion they start talking about different things to find each other unattractive dinner it's like even if it's guys going out together let's say it's not like they're working to find each other unattractive and I don't mean sexually there's you want to manifest yourself is what I enjoy each other

yes you do when you want to be charismatic and you want to be witty and all of those things and that Shades and especially when you when you add assuming a heterosexual environment you add a hetero sexual component to that the borders become fuzzy and so I was talking about border conditions yet while we're going to have a conversation about this let's talk about the Border condition oh no we can't do that why do you why do you continue to agree to have these conversations are going to be edited oh well that's a good question the Jim Jefferies one was another one friend of mine but it mean he gave you a good question and you actually give a good answer and you said actually I'm probably wrong about that you were talking about whether or not gay people should whether someone should be forced to bake a cake for gay people you said forced to probably not they so what if they don't want to bake a cake for black people and he said well actually probably it probably should be forced to

I did not in that part of the discussion because I hadn't thought that issue through enough to actually give a good answer than expect that it should because it's not something you talk about commonly obviously the whole I won't serve you because you're black thing is not good but then again you have you also have the right to choose who you're going to affiliate with but then that complicated because it's a commercial circumstance and then if you're making a cake is that the same as serving or is that compelled speech it's like oh my God these are border cases that cause a lot of controversy I don't mean serving black people obviously that's not a border case but these cases that cause a lot of controversies where two principles are at odds and it isn't exactly clear where to draw the line but I'm not happy with you know I'm not happy with my answer to that but I hadn't spent there like week would take to Think Through the issue and really have a comprehensive perspective on and expect that to be a subject anyway how long do you talk to Jim for

I think about 45 minutes maybe an hour what do you time and we've been thinking about how to handle media which is very complicated question and one hypothesis being don't do interviews that will be edited and I thought about that and I've been thinking about it and that might be the right answer might be the right answer going selling it is already seen with you all of them come from you being edited yes I mean there's complex subjects that people would disagree with you want but when you look at the completeness characterizations of your point these have been established because of edit

I mean Lord of these a lot of these opportunities come I've had opportunities that are coming at me rate at a rate that doesn't allow me to take them through as much as I could optimally but then there's another thing which is

it isn't necessarily a mistake to lay yourself open to attack

because sometimes it reveals the motives of the attackers like that's what happened in the Cathy Newman interview now She interviewed me for 40 minutes or whatever and something like that and then they did chop it down to 7 minutes or 3 minutes and it was exactly what you'd expect and that is what I expected after I walked away from the interview I thought oh my God they're just going to chop this into reprehensible segments and pillory me but I walked away from it because there was 50 other things to do but then was so funny because they did do that and then they put up the whole interview and the reason they put up the whole interview was because they thought the interview went fine

it isn't that they knew that that was going to cost to motion not at all not a bit not a bit and I know this for a fact so they put up the whole interviewing and then well what happened was what was actually happening revealed itself and that was very very effective now that having that happened meant that I had to expose myself to substantial stress and risk cuz that was stressful I mean first of all there was the interview second afterwards I thought oh my God I'm going to get pilloried for that then they did release the cot then they released the whole thing then there was all this response to it and then then then the Newman people who were absolutely flabbergasted by the negative response said Peterson is Unleashed his army of trolls and poor Kathy had to go into hiding it's like there's no evidence of any credible threats they said they called in the police but you can do that without there being reason you can just say that which is what they said they played a victim narrative instantly although one thing Cathy Newman is not even though she might play it

at the behest of her employees is a victim she's one of the most powerful people in Britain she's no victim so the play the victim card in a situation like that is absolutely reprehensible but that's what they did and then like a dozen newspapers did it and said well Peterson's trolls are attacking poor Kathy and I thought I will now I'm really screwed you don't own your fans did the idea that people that are interested in the things you have to say that you have control over them like you can give them marching orders how many million how many million people do there have to be before they're not all trolls 10,000 people commented on the video troll okay what about a hundred and fifty thousand what about 10 million will now if you look at the video which is about 10 million plus all the clips it's like 50 million and the comments the pro the comments that are critical with regards to Kathy Newman's conductor running about 50 to 1 so that's all trolls is it I don't think so its purpose

stop narrative example of taking the risk taking the risk and I'm not saying it's about Justified and I think that 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 it might be time for me just to disappear to some degree all together and only worry about being Overexposed I will definitely I've been worried about that for

a long time yeah and is there any benefit in in that is there any benefit in more exposure we talked about the same thing we were talking about earlier with regards to men working insane hours I mean have you is your message out enough that you don't have to do these ridiculous interviews constantly I think and I am trying to handle this and I've got people who are advising you were trying to figure it out

I think that this too or is a good thing yes but that's that's very controlled I think will tell him completely on additive yes exactly it is and long-form conversations I think the coming on your podcast and talking to Ruben on his shows and so forth I think that's good

the interaction with the journalist I'm certainly not taking anywhere near the number of opportunities that I have in front of me right we are trying to be very careful and picking and choosing but that doesn't always go well and it didn't like it could be that

it could be that I shouldn't do anything that is edited at all that certainly possible so

well this is the problem you you speak in these you speak in these longform podcast and interviews and you get a chance to extrapolate and unpack some pretty complicated issues and compare them to other complicated issues and try to find meaning in middle ground and and try to try to illuminate certain position

when you expose yourself to editing you expose yourself to someone's idea of what the narrative should be and how to frame your positions in it in and dishonest way me and you're seeing it time and time again and it exposes the problem with medium look I went to the Aspen ideas Festival last week which is a whole story in and of itself but I was interviewed there by the journalist from the Atlantic Monthly and it was a relatively long form interview I think we talked for 40 minutes something like that and it's going to be edited now I trusted her I trust her now whether that will be how that will play out in the final edit I don't know because she won't be the only one making the decision the question is should have I done it well look with the Aspen ideas Festival two different audiences left-leaning I thought well maybe I'll go talk to the left-leaning audience people are always criticizing me for not doing them I usually don't do it because I don't get invited but so I went and talked to them it's like in Barry Weiss interviewed me in

are the Aspen ideas Festival now with long-form uncut and put on the Whip and so maybe that was useful the Atlantic thing well it might be good we'll see it does expose me to the Bristol because it'll be edited so and it wasn't wise to do it

look I've been fortunate so far

despite the fact that I've been taken out of context at times and fairly significant proportion of times but not the overwhelming majority of times the net consequence of all of that has been

to engage more and more people in the complex dialogue far as I can tell so

that's the good that's the good it doesn't mean that the strategy that I'll be implemented so far is the only strategy that will work into the future we can also clearly establish that you didn't planning this to happen this this whole thing that happened from you opposing. Bill

and then going to where you are how many years later now 2 years almost at fucking crazy yeah I mean you you think about the transformation of your life and your your Public Image I mean it's unprecedented I don't I can't think of a single public intellectual that has gone from being a universal University Professor to be essentially a household name and then you get brought up with at least my circle of friends all the time and people that run into all the time I can't tell you how many people are running to after comedy shows are in an airport that the talk to me about you so if this is a mainstream thing

and it was so that there's no president well it's probably you know that's also part of the consequence of this technology select yes it'll happen if I put my pictures up on YouTube it's like

beware man and that's what I thought when I made the bill c16 videos I got up at like 2 in the morning I thought this is bloody while driving me crazy that damn University is going to force unconscious bias retraining which is not a validated process by any stretch of the imagination on its employees and I work for the University and I'm a psychologist so what is the what's why are they doing that why would they do that do that to the silence people protesting are they doing that because they want to enforce a certain type of behavior by the bank and then there's some hatred for the successful and some Envy in some resentment it's like everything that people do it's complicated you know but the that the pathology is well that that the HR types for example at the University think it's okay for them to read train other people about their hypothetical views on the off chance that they might be racist and then forcing them to admit that they're racist by making them agree to participate in the training I don't think that but

me that wasn't even the issue although it was an issue the issue is we can't measure unconscious bias reliably invalidly I'm a psychologist in a research psychologist I know the literature that's a misuse of it it's a misuse of it and the damn University was doing it they were hiring Consultants who didn't know what the hell they were talking about let me ask you this if they are this is University's used to this is an establishment for Higher Learning

how can they possibly act on something when there's no clear evidence that it's real that it works that it's effective and they're doing it just to make people happy or just to make themselves happy or just to reinforce an idea that they want to be sure that's the thing that's for me it was part of the head geminii of the radical left so I just know know you're you're not going to do that at the University I work out without me telling people that there's no warrant for that from the psychological community so anyways I got up at 2 in the morning and made these videos I thought well let's see what happens if I make these videos so I call this is back to the technology issue it's like I didn't know what YouTube was when I put my videos on that you didn't know what YouTube was well you know what I know what is

how do you say well look at what happened to you you have a million billion and a half downloads a year it's like you're definitely riding a giant wave like would have you predicted this 15 years ago no social you know you're in the right place in the right time and you're very interesting interview because well especially for long-form because you're very very

curious but also very very tough like it's interesting watching you because if you don't understand something you will go after the person and you're not doing it in the vindictive way but you're quite a formidable interview and I've been trying to figure out why you're so successful and like you're a lot smarter than anyone might think which is quite interesting so you're a weird combination because you know your persona doesn't shout intellectual but you're damn smart and you're tough is a bloody Boot and you ask pretty provocative questions and not because your provocative and so your personality in this long form seem to suit each other really well you're also really good at pursuing things you don't understand instead of assuming that you know what you're talking about so you take the listeners on a journey right it's an exploratory Journey but fundamentally what's propelled you to superstardom in some sense is not just your ability which is non-trivial but the fact that you're on this giant technological way and you're one of the first the doctors and I'm in the same situation were first two doctors I'm a technology that says revolutionaries

Gutenberg printing press and so that's all on folding in real time it's like look at what's happening yeah well the spoken word is now as powerful as the written word that's never happened before in human history and we're on The Cutting Edge of that For Better or Worse that's a very good way to put it the spoken word is this power yeah and maybe even more so what is it so accessible to people that don't have the time to read or stuck in traffic you know are orange here's another possibility maybe 10 times as many people can listen to complex information as can read complex information in terms of their ability to we don't know maybe it's maybe it's the same it's certainly easier to listen to a book on tape for me than it is to read a book The question is for how many people is that true and I would say it might be true for the for the majority of people having people are doing hybrids you know so because you can sync your book with audible right so they read when they have the time but then when they have found time which is also a major component of this

that's the time when you're driving on the time when you're doing dishes is now all of a sudden you can educate yourself during that found time this is a big Revolution and the band blowing out the band with makes a huge difference because while we talked about that at the beginning looks like people are more intelligent than we thought and you and I are both in the rest of this intellectual dark web that's kind of what unites us a is everybody has an independent platform virtually everybody they have an idiosyncratic Viewpoint they're interested in having discussions in pursuing the furtherance of their knowledge even though they might have a priori ideological commitment Sam doesn't I suppose I doing and Ben Shapiro certainly does but they're still interested in having the discussion but more importantly they're capitalizing on the long form and in the fact that that's possible is a reflection of this technological transformation and the technological transformation might be utterly profound it looks like it and so that's you know I've been trying to sort this out because I keep

you know I'm a sage it's something like that it's like don't be thinking that first

I think if there's situational determinants first take your damn personality out of it okay what's going on oh yes this is all fostered by YouTube and Foster by podcast what's so new about that

new band with restrictions no barrier to entrance possibility of dialogue because people cut up the YouTube videos into chunks and make their own comments on it the whole new communication technology also a lack of interference by Executives and producers and all these different people that have their own bias son mediated is giant bike so you got exactly the right balance of competent production cuz there's nothing accessible out it looks confident but no more than that but I know that's by Design but you also don't have it it's like what you see is what you get so I can everyone so relieved by that we can make her own damn decisions and I think that's very important if you're going to have a conversation with someone that's honest you can't decide what to believe in what to take out it's just well that's also why I deal with the press the way I do if I'm going to have a full conversation it's like I'm willing to take the hits yeah I understand what you're saying but

that's one of the reasons why it frustrates me so much is that I see what they're doing and I'm like what you're doing is ancient what you're doing is it's it's this is what people did 20 years ago 30 years ago for you can't really do that anymore you can't miss represent people used to be able to if you were in the Press you can take people quote about a context do whatever the fuck you wanted put an article about them they couldn't do a goddamn thing about it happen to me and 19 boy it was like 99 I did I had a comedy CD that came out in this woman wrote an article about it and it just she just lied she lied about my perspective she lied about the bits cheap Miss quoted the bits she didn't just paraphrase them she changed what the bits were to make them you know misogynist or hateful or would it whatever it was and in doing so that there was no recourse at there was nothing that I could do about them like wow I've never experienced that before I was like this is stunning I found out this person

that a lot and this is what she did and there's ultimate power that comes being the person has the pain being the person has a typewriter and you're the person who works for you know the Boston Globe or whatever the publication is. Dad is something that existed forever you know and that you had to be either a friend of the press you had to play ball you would you had a been to there will you to do what they wanted you to do and they can miss represent you and choose to paint you in any way they like and it's one of the reasons why I don't do anything anymore I don't do any interviews anymore I don't do anything I don't want to do anything cuz I do enough man me a fucking this a thousand podcast there's more than a thousand

what does 1100 is a bunch of other ones too it's just it's it doesn't make any sense I increasingly find myself I think it's the right position because then the misrepresentations don't exist anymore so then the only problem is the dispute over the actual ideological conversations or the other than the actual Concepts or interesting is like we are in a New Media landscape so now if someone comes out as a as a media figure with some institutional credibility and misrepresents it's exposed until then the question is how much risk should you shoulder to expose the proclivity for media misrepresentation and answer to that might be some now it 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 stop doing it but but there's some utility and having it play out and so

well so I'm trying to get I'm trying to only take those opportunities that appear to have more benefits than risk and when I defining benefit well the question is then what constitutes benefit and I guess what constitutes benefit is

well that would further the attempts that I'm making to bring information to a vast number of people that could conceivably help them stabilize and improve their individual lights that's worth a certain amount of risk but certainly increases your profile increases your profile and even if you know you have 60% of these people going to get a bad perception of you 40% of people have never heard of you now we're going to understand who you are because they do further investigation there's some benefit in that book that the negative I mean I've got your text messages from random people that I was friends with years ago that say this Jordan Peterson is just such a lying sack of shit needs this it's not like I don't even know who the fuck you are and then second of all like why are you contacting me you don't even say hi if you're saying Jordan Peterson is a missive this she said that he's a scam artist he's a fraud he's a bit and I'm like wow and so they'll see an interview you know like the the Jim Jefferies clip which is a minute-long or whatever it is or the vice piece or

initial Cathy Newman peace and they just form this determined position on you and then read hit pieces on you and then this is where they take their pinyo this is where it's from it's and it's I feel like these are the Last gasps of a Dying medium I really do I just I think to I don't I don't think that people appreciate it I think the people are listening to this that do appreciate long-form conversations and with all warts and all all the ugliness and then mistakes in the critical errors and the people that appreciate that they they they have a real hate for being lied to you know because it's it it changed when when you trying to being treated as if they're stupid yes yeah yeah that's both that it's just it's it's deceptive when you when you added someone and take their words out of context and change them around you're being deceptive a New York Times did that

getting this week they had some philosophy Professor from Hong Kong University Writing piece on me and he he took they quoted me the first phrase was in quotes and then there was some joining words and then the second phrases and quotes and images of joining words and then the third phrase was in quote and the three quotes added up to a statement that bore no resemblance whatsoever to what I was saying how can they do that in the New York Times that seems to me to be something that should be the the I don't take the sister what they stand for and so fast that they that they can't but it's so disturbing to me as a person has been a fan of the New York Times forever mine I just don't understand how they could allow that to happen how could you allow your what what is the gold standard for journalism how could you allow it to become something that will fully misrepresent someone we never did to push an ideology put my book on the New York Times bestseller list it's quite comical how's that possible

the book is published in counted and distributed in the United States then it doesn't count even though they've had books like that on the New York Times bestseller list before and I think okay well is this bad or good like well it's bad because to the degree that I might want to be on the New York Times bestseller list although I haven't been losing any sleep over a year selling I know how many books are selling yeah it's basically being the best selling book in the world since January but it should be the number one New York Times bestselling books until you're done because it's a fatal error you have the gold standard for measurement you're not measuring properly you're burning up your brand you think while we're the New York time so we can burn up our brand it's like no you can't Newsweek is gone Time Magazine is a shallow is a shell of its former self like the big things disappear and they disappear when they get crooked and India logically rigid and so that's why

happening at the New York Times with everyone there but with plenty of them in but it's die faster than people think but it's so confusing to me that it didn't used to be that yep and now it is and they just responding to this new world where you have to have clickbait journalism and you know what will people are struggling to find people to actual by physical newspapers which is well two different things hard to say like because maybe see it's weird because you don't have to resort to clickbait because these long-form discussions are the antithesis of clickbait right there are they struggling in terms of like how many people buy the newspaper oh absolutely every newspaper newspapers in Canada went down to the federal government for subsidies about 6 months ago because they're dying so fast and so some of it is there being supplanted by technology that's a huge part of it but as they are supplanted they get more desperate they publish more polarizing stories that works in the short-term to Garner more views but it's

really makes people from the Brandon speeds their demise classic death spiral of a big of a big organization and then that's going to clean things out like mad I mean I don't know where CNN is in the cable news rankings power cable show rank is but it keeps falling but it's falling in the rankings as cable itself disintegrates and die why do you need cable TV on TV are the people who figured haven't figured out yet that you can replace it entirely online for like one tenth the price with with much less hassle But the irony is people want a location then go to to find out what's going on in the world and this is the one thing that they use to represent and you know I mean I don't think Fox News is any better I think you just have these ideological extremes left and right and I remember very clearly watching the election coverage before the election like we were the leading up to the election I would go Fox News and then I go see an ant I just would go pick up north of them on my cable and I would just be laughing like what

is really happening in the world because I'm getting two different stories I'm getting Russia and I'm getting Hillary's emails this is I don't know what the fuck is what what is happening I'm getting pussy grabbing and I'm getting you know the Benghazi this is what I'm getting like why is obviously ideological this is not just physical polarization increases as the thing dies right there struggling for anyone to pay attention in this is the way they have to do it to insure and I think what's happening which is decide you occupy say is that a new technology that's long form that deals with many of those problems is emerging and it's going to emerge it's going to be victorious but in the meantime he be victorious in the meantime baby stuff still exist in the digital world you know and then you're getting a lot of the articles that are written about you people are absorbing these articles not from a physical form getting it from from digital

so then the senses well do you have fundamental trust in the Judgment of your fellow man let's say am I answer to that is yes because although I've been pilloried to a great degree by the radical types in the commentary on TuneIn in the classic journalists no comments with regards to me on YouTube are 50 to 1 in my favor and and that's even the case when the alarms put up videos about me they're designed to discredit me and I sold a million and a half books it's going to be published in 40 countries and thousands of people are coming to my lectures so I would say the attempt to discredit me aren't working

so and now. I think that's because that even like even if you go to YouTube you can see Jordan Peterson smashes leftist journalist you know is a clickbait thing someone's taking a 2 minute clip from a video and they put it out in there using not clickbait headline to attract attention it's like it does attract attention and that probably even further is polarization but I think that most people enough people that's the prayer enough people are going for the long form thorough discussion so that the sensible will will Triumph that's what I'm hoping for the sensible will try it and I agree and I think that is what's happening I think that's why this 50 to 1 number exist is that there but the the number one in that 50 the 50 versus you know the 50 people that are actually understanding what's going on on the green with you with versus the number one that are trying to willfully misrepresent you they still exist in their loud and they're fighting to be right and this is one of the things that people love to do they love to fight to be right

set of examining their position in wondering whether or not they are taking you out of context and Miss representing your positions to the world willfully and doing so in order to paint a negative picture of you that does not accurately represent who you are what you stand for but by doing this they're destroying they're trying to win they're killing themselves that's a good multi for the entire conversation so I can try hard to do hard to win you kill yourself you were talking last night when we were at dinner you said that one of the most deadly things for a fighter to do is to overestimate his his own position you're going to get your abilities you you're you're in deep deep trouble right cuz you're going to get a wake up call and objectivity is one of the most critical aspects of development you have to be you have to be objectively assessing your strengths and weaknesses at every step of the way

Knott's brevet bravado right I'm trying to prove how punishment when so powerful I'm so powerful San Diego shield and that's why I was saying that the ego is the enemy were talking about I think this is a fascinating thing with you personally that your diet you're on this carnivore diet now dietary expert so I'm not speaking as an uninformed citizen this is anecdotal evidence from a human being. That is dealt with autoimmune issues have done this for how long now I've been on a pure carnivore diet for about 2 months and a pretty a very very low carb greens only modified carnivore diet for

about a year so in the year and Anna and and a low-carb diet for 2 years so from the time that I've known you I've known you for what two and a half years now so funny how when I first met you you had much more weight on your body you look different and you were back then you're eating like a standard diet right like normal people guess pasta bread chicken whatever you shift it over to only meat and greens I saw you on my you look fantastic I'm like what are you doing do you like I changed my diet I only eat meat and greens I was like wow that's fast and well I felt like okay what you're doing is cutting out refined sugars and all these different things that are problematic preservatives all the bullshit processed foods and you're having this extreme help benefit I was like wow that's really excellent you showing great discipline then you decided to take it to another place and cut out the greens yeah I know what was the motivation for cutting out the greens

because she has an unbelievably serious autoimmune disease I just talked to her this morning called well it's Rich arthritis but it does there's way more to it than that but the arthritis was the major said it sent them she had 40 affected joints and she had to have her hip replaced in her ankle replaced when she was 15 and 16 and so she basically haul boots around on two broken legs for 2 years and extreme Agony now it's just a tiny fraction of the of the whole set of problems I just talked to her this morning she's in Chicago looks like she has to have her ankle replacement replaced so that's next on the Verizon but a but apart from that she is doing so well now it is absolutely Beyond Comprehension so she's she's she's very trim it she had a baby but she's very trim she's down to about a hundred eighteen pounds she's about 5 foot 6 she's just glowing with help all of her autoimmune system symptoms are gone all of them and she was also seriously depressed like severely depressed way worse than you think she couldn't stay awake for more than about 6 hours

without taking Ritalin and she was dying and I had a cousin my cousin's daughter she died when she was 30 from an Associated autoimmune condition so what there's a fair bit of this in our family it was Bloody Bleak I'll tell you and my wife always had a suspicion that this was dietary related you know and

well we did notice that when McKayla was young if if she ate oranges or strawberries but she get a rash like they weren't there and then when she developed arthritis if she ate oranges in particular that would definitely cause a flare was the only thing we could see the problem is is that in order to identify dietary component the response has to be pretty quick after you eat the thing like if it's two days later how the hell are you going to figure that out these responses appear to be delayed for 4 days and last a month so good luck figuring that out anyways Michaela noticed about 3 years ago no more than that now 5 years ago she was at Concordia University of in struggling with her with her illness and and all the association Associated problem she noticed that around exam time she was starting to develop real skin problems

and my cousin's daughter who I mentioned had really bad skin problems and wounds that wouldn't heal in that was partly part of the process that eventually killed her and she thought or must be stress and then she thought wait a second I reach my diet when I'm studying all I do is eat Bagels all I do is eat bread sandwiches she thought maybe it's the bread so she cut out gluten first and it had a remarkable effect like really remarkable effect and then she she went on a radical Elimination Diet all the way down to nothing but chicken and broccoli and then her symptoms started to drop off one by one like and like one of the things that happened she started to wake up in the morning she started be able to stay awake all day when you're only staying awake for 6 hours with Ritalin stay awake all day that's like having a life it's a whole bunch of things improved dinner depression went away and I've had depression since I was 13 probably a very severe and I've treated the right of way some of them quite successfully but it's been a constant battle in my father had it in his voice

look at it and it's all just write in my family my wife has autoimmune problems and her niece a depression Define it it's a blanket term well imagine imagine that you wake up in that you remember that all your family was killed in a horrible accident yesterday you would feel that even sometimes wrong one of the things Michaela told me when she thought for what's it like to be depressed imagine you have a dog and you really love the dog and then the dog dies and then about 3 years ago our dog died and it was McKayla's dog like that dog and she said that was bad but it's nowhere near as bad as being depressed and I asked for two at one point when she was about 15 or 16 I said look you got a choice kid here's the choice you can either have depression or arthritis which what will take the arthritis

well that was after she lost two joints

so it was no joke it's no joke man it there isn't any no I wouldn't say that I wouldn't say there's nothing worse cuz worse is a very deep hole right but it's bad yeah people prove you wrong right oh yes definitely worse worse is a deep hole anyways her depression went away the only symptoms went away and like radically so what changed her from chicken and broccoli to carnivore she kept experimenting and she got very sensitive to all sorts of foods in the aftermath of that too so this is why I wouldn't recommend that anybody does this casually because we don't understand much about it but the upshot was that what she kept she kept you kept experimenting and she started to add things back and take them away and sometimes when she added things the results were devastated she was like done for a month she hit the wrong thing done for a month all the symptoms came back the depression came back she thought that her hold dietary theory was wrong because it lasted so long it was so extreme and like it took her 2 years to figure out that really what she could eat was beef and greens and then she pay

doubt that you could only eat beef themselves well look so what happened okay so 2 years ago she said dad you have tried this diet because you have a lot of the same symptoms as me but I have a lot of the other symptoms and I thought oh Christ okay McKayla I can try anything for a month she said try for a month I thought okay whatever I can hang by my fingernails from the windowsill for a month it's like it's just not that big a deal and so I I eliminated I went down really low carb diet okay so this is what happened

I had gastric reflux disorder and I was snoring quite a lot

stop snoring the first week I thought what the hell that supposed to be associated with weight loss cuz I had gained some weight I weigh 212 pounds and I'm about six one and a half so that was my maximum weight stop snoring which was a great relief to Tammy. Just quit and that's a big deal right cuz if you snore you sleep apnea and then you don't sleep right it's like not a good thing okay next I started waking up in the mornings but never been able to wake up in the mornings my whole life I always had to stumble to the shower and then maybe I could wake up took me an hour and I felt terrible and so all the sudden I woke up and I'm clear headed and things aren't gloomy and horrible it's like he's not weird then I lost 7 pounds the first month I thought seven pounds that's a lot in a month and I'd already gone for a whole year on a sugar free diet I didn't lose any weight exercises sugar-free but did you cut out bread and don't know it was just no desserts no sugar and I thought that might do it didn't make any difference at all seven pounds

well then then I lost seven times for next month and I lost seven pounds next month I lost 7 pounds every month for 7 months so I can throw away all my clothes I went back to the same weight that I was when I was 26 and my psoriasis disappeared and I had floaters in my right eye and they cleared up and then the last thing that went away from me I was still having a bit of a time with mood regulation not suck because when I change my diet I won't respond antidepressant properly anymore they weren't working and so although I was getting better physically on a variety of ways like radical ways I was really having a bitch of a Time regulating my mood and I was having

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