00:00:00
if you want to know something about yourself sit on your bed one night and say what's one thing I'm doing wrong
00:00:05
that I know I'm doing wrong that I could fix that I would fix you meditate on
00:00:12
that you'll get an answer and it won't be one you want but it'll be the necessary one when you're trapped some
00:00:18
of it's your own inadequacy what you can do to begin with is every bloody thing you possibly can do to put yourself in
00:00:25
the most virtuous and Powerful negotiating position possible wherever I
00:00:30
go in the world people come up to me and they often have a pretty rough story to relate it's an awful thing because you
00:00:36
see even in the revelation of their Triumph the initial depth of their
00:00:44
despair so I wouldn't change that but it's not nothing it's certainly not just
00:00:52
happiness it's better than happiness but it's almost
00:00:58
unbearable quick one can you do me a favor if you're listening to this and hit the
00:01:05
Subscribe button the follow button wherever you're listening to this podcast thank you so much the
00:01:10
conversation you guys have been waiting for I say that because of the thousands
00:01:15
and thousands of messages I've had since I announced that Jordan Peterson the man
00:01:20
himself all the way from Canada came here to sit in my kitchen and have a
00:01:26
conversation with me and what a conversation it was one of the most moving moments in the history of this
00:01:32
podcast takes place in this conversation and I think the thing that people love about Jordan Peterson is his
00:01:39
unrelenting desire to just say what he believes to be true not what he believes
00:01:45
to be correct not what people want to hear not what people will be happy to hear and
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it's because of that it's because of his Pursuit Of Truth that he's managed to change millions and millions and
00:02:00
millions of people's lives that is absolutely no
00:02:05
understatement so without further Ado I'm Steven Bartlett and this is the D of CEO I hope nobody's listening but if you
00:02:12
are then please keep this to
00:02:21
yourself Jordan um first I feel I feel like I owe you a debt of gratitude and I
00:02:26
want to say thank you for the the impact you've had on my life and I I'll point at the the specific impact you've had on
00:02:31
my life um I and you asked me before we started recording why this podcast had been successful one of the reasons is
00:02:37
actually something I've I've gained from from reading and listening to your work and that's this real commitment to
00:02:43
trying to be your true self and trying to be your truth this podcast wouldn't be successful and I wouldn't have been
00:02:50
successful in terms of um pursuing myself had I not understood the the importance of Truth across all facets of
00:02:57
life and in my relationships which is a real pivotal thing for me and that's than so what's changed in your
00:03:02
relationships as a consequence of that so um I I believe it's really difficult to
00:03:10
truly connect some with someone if you're not be speaking and being your truth and I I wasn't I was I I think I
00:03:18
was wearing a mask in my relationships in a context if I didn't express how I was thinking and feeling I was trying to
00:03:24
be who I thought my partner wanted me to be and at the point when I like I let down the mark
00:03:30
and I started speaking my truth unex actually as I was departing
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from the relationship the relationship got stronger than ever before and it was like we were never actually connected
00:03:40
until I was being true with her with my feelings with what I wanted with my life and since then I I would categorize my
00:03:48
relationship as being the strongest thing I've ever seen in terms of a a romantic connection with someone and so
00:03:54
when you were starting to talk in your relationship in a more truthful manner what did that mean that you had to admit
00:04:01
I mean you just said that part of it was a disconnect between who you were trying to be and who you really were so that's
00:04:06
a Persona issue right so you think maybe and everyone has this proclivity to some
00:04:12
degree is they're deeply um self-conscious and uncertain and so
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instead of allowing the person they're with to connect with that underlying uncertainty and inadequacy they act out
00:04:25
of persona yeah and then the problem is is that well perhaps the person falls in love with that persona but there's no
00:04:33
real connection there it's it's an artifice and you know having said that
00:04:38
one of the things that Carl Yung the great psychotherapist said about a Persona is don't be thinking that you're
00:04:45
better off if you never formed one so for Yung it was a voyage from say
00:04:52
undifferentiated self in infancy and so forth through Persona to authenticity
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because you have to to act out your ideals to some degree right and and and you also have to formulate a avatar of
00:05:07
yourself in some sense that's a mediator between you and other people in casual
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social encounters like you don't want to walk into the bank and have the teller tell you about his or her day when you
00:05:19
say how are you doing right I mean now and then that can happen but generally it's too much intimacy too quickly and
00:05:26
so you need this this functional shell but the problem arises
00:05:32
when that functional shell is all that there is and then the real person underneath is just desperate and and
00:05:39
unhappy because nothing of what's being acted out reflects a true underlying
00:05:45
reality what is the consequence the long-term consequence of acting so many
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people especially because of the world I live in in Instagram and social media we we kind of build out these personas and
00:05:57
then we almost follow the implicit instructions that come with those personas well that's the problem right there is that well that that I'm trying
00:06:05
to get a hold of the Disney people at the moment because I want to do a lecture series on Pinocchio because I
00:06:11
think Pinocchio is brilliant work of art um
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and if you're a puppet and an actor and Pinocchio is both at times in that movie
00:06:23
both a puppet and an actor so why an actor like why is there why is there something wrong with being an actor well
00:06:29
the first question is well who sets your role and then the second question is
00:06:36
who's pulling your strings so you've put on this front that is there to make you
00:06:41
popular and sexy and desirable and to mask from yourself your own inadequacies but that's a role well who wrote it and
00:06:49
for what purpose and so Yung said for example that we all acted out a myth and whether
00:06:54
we knew it or not and you know maybe you're acting out a tragedy may maybe you're acting out narcissus you don't
00:07:01
know because you've put that you've put that on yourself in an attempt in some ways to deliver to people what they want
00:07:08
or more accurately to look as though you're delivering to people what they want and it's not nothing to do that
00:07:14
right because at least you're attempting in some sense to adapt to the social World someone who's really infantile and
00:07:21
dependent someone who's never left home part of their problem is that they haven't crafted a
00:07:26
Persona so you don't want to denigrate entirely but it's no substitute for the
00:07:31
real thing and it turns out that not only is what we want from each other the
00:07:37
real thing but that's also the adventure of your life and so if you aren't
00:07:43
truthful and that means unfortunately especially at the beginning when you start to be truthful it means deeply
00:07:50
coming to terms with your inadequacies inh humility so it's very painful
00:07:56
without that you don't have the adventure of your life you have the role that has been that
00:08:01
you've acquiesced to and that'll take all the meaning out of your life the
00:08:06
adventure of your life you say imagine who you could be and then aim single-mindedly at that um I encounter
00:08:13
these young people who appear to know who they could be or they they've imagined who they could be but for whatever reason they seem to choose the
00:08:19
certain misery of their current situation the job that's sucking their soul out or that relationship um over
00:08:26
the uncertainty they'll encounter as they go on the adventure of their life so what would I say to these young people who always say to me Steve I I
00:08:33
want to do this but you can see them stifled by fear because it's like yeah well it's like make a plan man it's so
00:08:40
when I was doing my clinical work which I I did a lot of career work with my
00:08:45
clients both at a beginner level I would say like really a beginner level with people who had no employment whatsoever
00:08:51
no history of employment who are undereducated and who lacked every skill you could possibly imagine these were
00:08:57
people who were really in dire Straits up to people who were operating at the top of their profession but who could
00:09:04
still strategize forward and so for example let's say you're at a dead end
00:09:10
in your job Cas so I don't find my work meaningful all right so that's a problem
00:09:16
statement it's like well why not I find the work I do repetitive and boring and without spirit I have a bad relationship
00:09:24
or a neutral relationship with my boss who doesn't know who I am um I have
00:09:29
problems with co-workers all of that needs to be differentiated right and analyzed in detail so we might say for
00:09:36
example let's say you believe that you're undervalued at work and maybe you are what you need to do is you have
00:09:43
something to say and we would have to figure out what it is that you have to say but it would be some variant of I'm
00:09:50
bringing more value to the table than I'm being compensated for and that's
00:09:55
demoralizing me and it's also not good for you you being my boss because if I'm
00:10:00
actually more valuable than is being recognized then the fact that you're not
00:10:06
valuing me properly means that I will become demoralized I won't work properly and you won't get the best out of me so
00:10:12
it's bad for both of us and if your boss is in principle not amenable to such a
00:10:18
discussion then what you should seriously consider doing is finding another job okay so let's say we're
00:10:25
going to set you up for this okay this isn't like next week's Enterprise man this is your life so the first thing I
00:10:32
would ask is well do you have your resume or CV in order well I haven't
00:10:38
typed it up for three years well what do you think about bringing it up well I'm pretty nervous about that because
00:10:44
there's some holes in it and you know I didn't do so well in college and I'm kind of embarrassed about my resume it's
00:10:50
like okay bring it in let's go through it let's let's let's at least update it
00:10:56
let's look where the holes are let's look at where the inadequacies are as far as you're concerned right this isn't
00:11:01
my judgment it's your judgment let's walk through those judgments and see if they're warranted because maybe you're
00:11:08
just too guilty and ashamed and self-conscious and anxious and you're not you're looking at your resume more
00:11:13
critically than someone else would and maybe there's some holes that you need to rectify you know you're you're at you
00:11:20
you were two courses away from your ba and you dropped out or something like that well maybe we need six months to
00:11:27
address that and at at least even if you can't be fully educated you could be taking some courses online and so when
00:11:34
you went to a new job interview and they said what about this hole you'd say well I I came to terms with that six months
00:11:41
ago and in an effort to rectify it I'm taking the following courses and here's my plan for completion that's a really
00:11:47
good answer and anyone with any sense who's interviewing will accept that as
00:11:53
an indication that although you're not perfect and who is that you have a good plan and that you've thought it through
00:11:59
like that's the kind of answer that in all likelihood will cement your candidacy for the position okay so now
00:12:05
you're going to go to your boss well you have to have your CV and your resume in order and you have to be able to stand
00:12:11
on it solidly and which at least means that you're prepared to address the
00:12:16
inadequacies in a credible realistic believable and truthful manner all right
00:12:22
now what you do is apply for like 10 jobs you don't have to take them but
00:12:29
maybe you have to go to an interview or two or three or four and maybe there's a bunch of opportunities out there for you
00:12:35
that you didn't even know about and maybe someone offers you a job and so
00:12:40
now now you can go to your boss and say here's the situation I'm in here at
00:12:46
work um here's my evaluation of the problems in relationship to me here's
00:12:52
what I could do for you if you gave me a 40% raise and the opportunity to
00:12:58
progress but I'd like to see a plan for that and um I've been looking for other opportunities before conducting this
00:13:05
discussion and I have some well then if your boss treats you with contempt at that point and doesn't
00:13:11
listen then perhaps he or she is a little more narcissistic then might be optimal and it's time to find a new job
00:13:18
but this isn't something you do trivially and so when you're doubtful say you're trapped you ask yourself
00:13:26
well why am I trapped trapped that's a hard question right because some of it's
00:13:32
your own inadequacy a lot of it and all of the part of it that you can deal with
00:13:38
is your own inadequacy so even if it's unfair you know even if you're hemmed in for any
00:13:44
number of reasons inappropriate like ethnically predicated
00:13:49
oppression let's say or maybe you live at you're in a a workplace that really is sexist in some fundamental sense well
00:13:58
that's not good it's not just it's not fair it's it's not meritorious all of those things and maybe you shouldn't be
00:14:05
there but what you can do to begin with is every bloody thing you possibly can
00:14:10
do to put yourself in the most virtuous and Powerful negotiating position
00:14:16
possible and you have to think like a snake in some sense to do that you got
00:14:22
to get the details right you have to be prepared to bite and and you have to have your eyes on the prize so to speak
00:14:28
and people aren't taught this sort of thing ever really they're not taught how to negotiate they're not taught how to
00:14:34
goal set they're not taught how to conceptualize appropriate success in some broad sense in some sense that's
00:14:40
what the humanities are supposed to teach people so on that point of understanding my inadequacies or
00:14:47
someone's inadequacies I I really believe um that it's really difficult to
00:14:52
undergo self-development if you don't have self-awareness and I was I was really trying to understand from your
00:14:57
writings how someone one is to build their self-awareness it's almost like the unknown unknown if you don't have it
00:15:02
how do you build the thing I know a good exercise for that it's like a prayer in some sense in fact I would say it's
00:15:09
proper prayer if you want to know something about yourself sit on your bed one night and say to yourself you got to
00:15:15
mean this like you got to be desperate this is no game this it's like my life
00:15:20
is not everything I wanted to be and perhaps it's not everything that I need it to be and by need I mean my life is
00:15:28
so unbearable that the suffering that's attended upon that has make me nihilistic cynical bitter resentful
00:15:37
homicidal genocidal in unable to have a good relationship Pro prone to punish people
00:15:44
for their virtues because of my jealousy uh driving the proclivity to
00:15:50
see evil everywhere except within my own Heart Like These are problems man and
00:15:56
you ask yourself you sit on the bed and say okay man I'm ready to learn something like what what's one thing I'm
00:16:04
doing wrong that I know I'm doing wrong that I could fix that I would fix it's
00:16:12
like you meditate on that you'll get an answer and it won't be one you want but
00:16:18
it'll be the necessary one you know and it it's often something that will point
00:16:24
you to small things so Carl Jung said people in the modern world don't see God cuz they don't look low enough and so
00:16:31
imagine you're in your messy bedroom you know and you're sitting on the edge of the bed trying to have an
00:16:37
honest dialogue with yourself and the little voice says you know it's pretty disgusting in here and you think well
00:16:44
I'm way above Such trivial niceties as organizing my room it's like well that's
00:16:50
Pride that's arrogance if you're above organizing what's actually yours
00:16:59
how in the world are you ever going to organize anything else and so you get on your knees and you think well it's time
00:17:05
to you know take a brush to the toilet and maybe that's where you
00:17:10
start and so and that works like that works you start making those micro improvements like real micro
00:17:17
improvements real on the ground actual micro improvements to things you know that are wrong you'll improve
00:17:23
unbelievably rapidly what you're talking about there sounds to me a lot like
00:17:29
come an overdose of arrogance and also the need for humility do you think the Western World suffers from arrogance
00:17:37
because of our our our relative um privilege and luxury that we kind of
00:17:42
Overlook of course well that's a Temptation right I mean when the when the left radical Lefty types go after
00:17:48
people for their unearned privilege they have a point now the point is the
00:17:56
existentialists called it thress which is another that's a hiigaran term
00:18:02
and thrownness is the fact that we kind of experience life as if we're tossed
00:18:07
into it thrown into it you know you're you're male and not female you're you're Hindu and not Christian you're tall and
00:18:15
not short you have an arbitrary range of talents and an arbitrary range of limitations none of which in some sense
00:18:23
you chose it's the cards you're dealt now some of those are cards of privilege
00:18:29
you know maybe you're born intelligent maybe you're born symmetrical maybe you're born healthy um maybe you're born
00:18:36
into a culture where it's much easier not to be absolutely deprived maybe your
00:18:41
parents are rich and so all of that in some sense is unearned now along with
00:18:48
that comes a good dose of existential guilt because at the same time and this
00:18:54
is true for anyone regardless of their cultural background the ground we walk on is soaked in the
00:19:02
blood of historical atrocity and so that's on you because
00:19:08
you know people think well who's the Nazi well it's the fascist or it's the
00:19:13
or who's the radical communist it's the radical left-wing ideologue and the
00:19:19
fundamental truth of the matter is that's best dealt with as a spiritual matter is the adversary is within
00:19:28
really most profoundly and so you have to take the responsibility for that historical atrocity onto yourself I was
00:19:36
talking to guy Richie this week about his movie King Arthur it's quite an interesting movie in many ways and when
00:19:43
Arthur who could be the hero takes the sword he's so overcome by visions of his
00:19:48
murderous uncle that he can't pick up the weapon well think about that now you
00:19:54
have weapons at your disposal but they they've been used by your murderous Uncle how dare you wield
00:20:02
them and the answer is maybe it's easy just to leave the sword on the ground
00:20:08
because you do want to be responsible for atrocities going forward and don't think you couldn't be and don't think
00:20:14
you might not enjoy it and so the way you pay for your privilege is
00:20:20
with your virtue I mean that most particularly you have these opportunities and this existential guilt
00:20:28
and the way you expiate that and atone is by doing your best to live the best
00:20:34
possible life you can manage to speak the truth to treat people with respect
00:20:39
to abide by the principles of the Dignity of the individual and to put your house in order and that's how you
00:20:45
pay for your unearned privilege all of us and we all have our Privileges and
00:20:51
our and our curses you know all of us have that that's why it's not useful to be envious of people you know you see
00:20:58
some you're a young man you see someone drive by in a Ferrari with a blonde and you think my God he's got everything and
00:21:05
you know the woman in the car is a prostitute who's got a cocaine addiction and her her life is just one catastrophe
00:21:12
after another and he's had to lie and cheat his way into this position and he's afraid that everything's going to
00:21:18
come crashing down on him and that's what you're jealous of and it's just not
00:21:24
that profound you don't want someone else's fate man your Fate's enough and your
00:21:30
adventure is enough it's plenty it's more than you can ever fully realize and so that's also part of the reason that
00:21:37
we all believe that the individual has some intrinsic dignity it's don't be so sure that your position and your room is
00:21:43
so damn trivial it might be your attitude towards it that's trivial and if you're in Dire Straits and dire
00:21:50
circumstances just look at how much opportunity you have to make things better so not that it's easy I you don't
00:21:58
even want it to be easy you know
00:22:03
so on that point of you don't want it to be easy I've really contended with this idea of struggle and Chaos in my life
00:22:09
and the role it plays and once upon a time I thought I was trying to rid my
00:22:15
life of chaos and struggle I thought that's why I was trying to get rich and get the Ferrari and the blonde I thought
00:22:21
that would create a life um free of Free of struggle but then I looked at some studies and I S heard about this thing
00:22:26
called gold medal depression when ions come back from the Olympics and they've lost orientation and then the day when someone offered to buy my company for a
00:22:33
eight nine nine figure number and it filled me with this emptiness and this dread and I I and I tried to understand
00:22:40
the role that struggle would would would have to play for me to be a fulfilled human being for the rest of my life yeah
00:22:46
well that the the observation with regard to your company that's a that's a great observation I mean we're built to
00:22:52
walk up hill and when you reach the Pinnacle of the Hill you want to stop
00:22:58
and appreciate the vision but the next thing you want is a higher Hill in the distance because it's the uphill climb
00:23:05
that it's it's from the uphill climb that we derive our value and I mean this technically so almost all the positive
00:23:12
emotion we feel especially the the the the emotion that fills us with
00:23:17
enthusiasm and that's to be filled with the spirit of God by the way because that's what enthusiasm means
00:23:24
that's experienced in relationship to a goal and so in some sense and this is
00:23:29
part of the religious Enterprise you want a goal that you can never attain right so you can always move closer to
00:23:36
the goal that recedes as you move towards it you think well that's frustrating it's like cifas pushing the rock uphill but it's not because as you
00:23:44
pursue that goal you put yourself together and your life does get better and richer and more abundant that's why
00:23:51
the highest levels of virtue and goal are in some sense Transcendent you want
00:23:56
them to be above everything you're doing so you can continually move towards something that's more Sublime and better
00:24:03
that's what you are you're you're here to live not to not to sleep and the
00:24:08
problem with the vision of my Ties on the beach is that well first of all that's an invis that's a vision of of
00:24:14
drug induced unconsciousness second it's only going to work for about a week third you're going to be a laughing
00:24:20
stalk in a month and depressed and aimless and and goalless it's no that's
00:24:26
not it's it's you want a horizon of ever expanding possibility and so it does
00:24:31
happen to people is they because they've staked their soul on the attainment of an instrumental goal and it it can be a
00:24:38
pretty high order goal it was in your case but then you think well I've now I'm there now what well the answer can't
00:24:46
be well I'm going to live in the lap of luxury and never have to leave a f what do you want to be a giant infant with a
00:24:52
gold with a gold bottle you never have to do anything but lay in your back and suck it's like
00:24:58
well you see the problem with that as a as a as a conceptualization it's no you
00:25:04
want to be like an active Warrior moving uphill with your sword in hand and
00:25:10
that's that's Dynamic that's exciting and that's why so many young men disappear into video games it's that's
00:25:17
all acted out in the video game so they have to act that out in their own life not that I despise video games because I
00:25:23
don't but they're not a substitute for life they might be good training under some conditions for life so one of the
00:25:31
things I was also really really Keen to ask you was about the the the what's happened in the world over the last two
00:25:36
years one of the shifts we've seen in the business world is this move to remote working and I hate it and I hate
00:25:42
it for a variety of reasons because I feel like there's very few institutions in in our in my life where I have a
00:25:49
chance to meaningfully connect with with people dating has become screens socializing has become screens and the
00:25:56
office the institution of the office in my life was one of the places especially as a younger man where I got to meet
00:26:03
pretty much 90% of my current best friends and also partners and and I
00:26:08
really worry about um sitting behind a zoom uh doing my work um for for the for
00:26:15
the next 10 years what is your take on remote working well I like it and I don't like it I I
00:26:23
think it's very difficult for us to understand our embodied environments well enough to duplicate them in a
00:26:29
healthy and comprehensive manner in the virtual world because we just don't
00:26:36
understand what it is that we're doing when we actually do things rather than represent them so for example I've
00:26:42
thought a lot about online university okay so then you could
00:26:47
imagine well you can certainly imagine online lecture courses uh and you could say well the
00:26:54
fact that they can be delivered on a large scale very inexpensively is a
00:26:59
virtue you can bring the knowledge to a very large number of people at a low cost so why not do that and so that's
00:27:07
half the university and then you could say well imagine that you generated the system of universal tests which is
00:27:13
possibility and that means you could bring accreditation to everyone at a low cost as well and that's that
00:27:19
universities online but that presumes that you know what the university is and
00:27:25
you don't because well here's some other things the university is an excuse for young a credible excuse
00:27:33
that socially sanctioned for young people who have not yet established a career goal to adopt an identity of
00:27:40
upward striving for four years away from their parents while they meet a new group of friends like that might be 90%
00:27:47
of the university for all we know because it's certainly the for me for example when I went to college I I left
00:27:55
home when I was 17 and I left a small this small town I had grown up in and in many ways I left the peers that I had
00:28:02
been associating with now a couple of them came to college with me so I had a Toe Hold there but I made an entirely
00:28:08
different group of friends and they were friends whose goals were quite radically different from the friends that I let's
00:28:14
say in some sense Left Behind well the reformulation of my peer
00:28:22
Network might have been the most important part of of the first part of my education now I was fortunate at this
00:28:28
place it was called Grand Perry College I had seven professors seven which is really good
00:28:34
who really love to teach and so I also learned a lot in the formal sense but
00:28:40
while I was doing that I was also negotiating well how much partying do you actually do because zero isn't the
00:28:47
right amount but every goddamn night till 3 in the morning isn't the right amount either because you have to
00:28:53
balance that in some sense with practicality and upward striving and so so and and how do I live with other
00:29:00
people my roommates so I had one roommate who's a really good friend of mine still and he walked a thousand
00:29:05
miles with me this year when I was Ill literally so um I really liked living
00:29:11
with him because he was tough guy worked in lead smelters and he was a cowboy and
00:29:19
he was a tough guy four years older than me about 3 years older than me had' come back to school after bouncing around
00:29:25
through these like tough working class occupations and he had his feet on the ground in lots of ways and I re liked
00:29:32
him as a roommate because I'd buy some groceries and then he'd buy some groceries or I'd make dinner and he'd
00:29:38
make breakfast and none of that was ever explicitly negotiated he was just very
00:29:46
aware of this reciprocal it's reciprocal altruism technically he was very good at
00:29:52
we were both good at tracking our mutual obligations and fulfilling them so we had very peaceful relationship I lived
00:29:59
with him for a year and and then a little bit in different at different times and in different places and I I
00:30:05
learned to live with a whole variety of roommates I had many roommates uh we had
00:30:12
a kind of a frat house in the first college I went to and I think anywhere from six to 20 people lived there
00:30:17
depending on the week you know it was really it was ridiculous was way too much fun and that was also a problem but
00:30:25
when I look back on that time in my life I certainly can't reduce the educational experience to Virtual classes and
00:30:33
virtual tests that's maybe that's 10% of it and we don't know how to replicate
00:30:38
those environments that are so formative especially in in their everydayness you
00:30:44
know because you live with your roommates that's a 24-hour thing and so
00:30:51
the problem with virtualization is that we don't understand our environments well enough to be certain that we're not
00:30:58
excluding something vital when we concentrate only on what we think conceptually is important now I meet
00:31:06
with my son pretty regularly for a project we're working on which is an app
00:31:12
that will teach people to write well they write and use it so we're quite excited about this but I meet with him
00:31:18
virtually once a week and it's actually very efficient he's on the screen we can
00:31:24
see our project in front of us we can do Mutual editing of of the of the uh underlying material educational material
00:31:31
there's a real place for it and I have a cottage up north in Toronto where we've
00:31:36
set up a studio like your studio here although ours isn't quite as impressive but I can have a interview and
00:31:44
discussion with anyone anywhere in the world even in a foreign language and that's like unbelievably remarkable but
00:31:53
but that doesn't mean that we know how to virtualized reality or that we should
00:31:59
flee into it right and these new technologies they're unbelievably
00:32:04
radical and they're very hard to master and so we all have to be careful and try to keep our feet on the ground to some
00:32:11
degree when we're using them so for example now I've really only figured this out in the last three months I get
00:32:18
up and I I do a series of O exercises that my wife taught me that are based in
00:32:23
the Kundalini Yoga tradition that's real helpful flexibility and breathing exercises that reduces my anxiety during
00:32:30
the day I would say about 25% and then I try to reserve some time
00:32:36
either for writing or I'm working on a number of artistic projects and so I'm going to do one or or those for a couple
00:32:44
hours in the morning and then maybe a walk or something with my wife and breakfast I have breakfast during all
00:32:49
this and then I can turn to the sort of connected World email and the podcasts
00:32:56
and so so forth and so there's this balance between privacy introverted privacy let's say and disconnect from
00:33:04
everyone except for my wife and then uh
00:33:10
contemplated reconnection with the virtual world that seems to be working out pretty well and you want to get a
00:33:16
balance of that that's actually to use a terrible cliche sustainable right so you want to hit your projects hard but you
00:33:24
have to leave in that not with entertainment but with culture because
00:33:29
those are not the same thing um entertainment is an approximation to culture and you need to leave in that
00:33:36
with culture that's Beauty and drama and art and all of that and then with intimate relationships and friendships
00:33:43
and well it's very difficult to get the balance of all that correct and it's
00:33:49
very difficult to do that virtually so but I certainly wouldn't forgo the technology and neither would the rest of
00:33:54
us it's like people complain about their their phones but they carry them with them everywhere they go and I'm not
00:34:00
cynical about that the phone it's not a phone God only knows what it is but it's
00:34:05
definitely not a phone and so it's not surprising that since it just appeared and it's so
00:34:13
insanely powerful that we don't know what to do with it and that might even wreck everything like God only knows
00:34:18
Twitter itself could bring civilization to a halt we we don't know how to manage the unintended consequences of our
00:34:25
technological prowess and that's exactly it that's it's the we we invent technology often it seems for
00:34:32
efficiency or to increase productivity and it's almost impossible because of that ignorance to what the um the
00:34:39
unintended consequences might be to predict them ahead of time so we we
00:34:44
optimize essential doctrine of conservative political philosophy right is beware of unintended consequences
00:34:51
it's like oh no this thing will just do what I want it to do and nothing else it's like no even Marx knew that wasn't true
00:34:58
Marx Marx developed a concept the concept of alienation you know we get alienated from a the products of our
00:35:05
effort that's part of the reason he didn't like factories uh and and fair
00:35:10
enough you know because factory work which is repetitive in some sense
00:35:15
destroys our artisanal relationship with what we produce now the problem with Marx's analysis is that yeah but it's
00:35:22
pretty damn efficient and it lifts people out of absolute poverty really quickly so but that doesn't mean that
00:35:29
and existential philosophers after marks develop the concept of alienation to quite a high degree and Technology does
00:35:37
alienate us because of its artificiality and its and its its coldness and its
00:35:43
mechanistic nature all of that and well we have to contend with that wisely and
00:35:48
then you ask well how do you contend with things wisely and I would say well don't pollute your thoughts with deceit
00:35:55
you compromise your own wisdom how are you going to make intelligent not Intelligent Decisions wise decisions
00:36:00
that's why you shouldn't lie it's like you're warping the mechanism that orients you in the world do you really
00:36:07
want to do that this is a brutal world man and I've seen this in my clinical practice people whose houses are built
00:36:14
on foundations of sand and the wind starts to blow and the floods start to rise and they are in such trouble such
00:36:22
trouble if you're lucky and something terrible comes your way and you're
00:36:28
reasonably honest and your relationships are in good order maybe you won't end up
00:36:33
in hell and and I mean hell I don't mean death there's lots of situations you can
00:36:39
get yourself in where death would be far preferable to what you're going through
00:36:44
so you you need to be afraid of that it's like don't lie I in my clinical
00:36:50
practice in 20 years working with every sort of person you could imagine I never
00:36:56
ever saw anyone get away with anything even once
00:37:02
so yeah we're all subject not least to the Judgment of our own conscience try
00:37:07
to escape from that no one can escape from that over the last two years the world has gone
00:37:13
through this this pandemic for a lot of people this is the first time um espec for a certain generation this is the
00:37:19
first time they've experienced such unpredictable tectonic um uh dis
00:37:26
stabilization in their lives like we I didn't even believe Society was something that could close I didn't
00:37:32
believe the tech there was I didn't even know there was tectonic plates under my business that could shut down my
00:37:37
business right and also in your over the last two years you've undergone some
00:37:43
really you know I don't even know what the right adjective is to use to to tonic's not bad we'll go with tectonic
00:37:49
then sure um tectonic you know unfortunate um challenges I'll say in
00:37:56
your life but also you know with your family what are the lessons we learn from the the pandemic and from that type
00:38:03
of tectonic suffering about what actually matters in our lives well we'll see with regard to the pandemic
00:38:10
because although in some sense it is in some ways over our reaction to it is by
00:38:17
no means over and part of the reason that we overreacted I would say so precipitously to it is that we were
00:38:24
unprepared for such things in our naivity and then we rush to imitate a totalitarian Society in the immediate
00:38:31
aftermath of the pandemic emergence and that's something that everybody should think about a lot and we're not done
00:38:38
with all that totalitarian nonsense yet a lot of that's driven by well fear and
00:38:43
naivity I mean 50% of Democrats in the United States believe you have a 50%
00:38:48
chance of being hospitalized with Co and 25% of Republicans believe the same
00:38:54
thing and you can point a finger at people and laugh at their ignorance but you should really ask well why is this
00:39:01
overestimate of that magnitude and what does that mean in relationship to policy
00:39:07
and I've had conversations with people advising at the highest level of government in particularly in Canada
00:39:13
who've told me flat out and they're very reliable sources that none of the covid
00:39:21
policy for the last year was driven by Reliance on science it's all opinion poll and that's really pernicious
00:39:28
because well who's asking the questions and how did they set up the answer and who's answering and in what emotional
00:39:35
state and so to what degree are we led by considerations of short-term
00:39:41
propitiation of unwarranted fear well that's no way for free people to live it certainly won't work in the long run
00:39:48
we're already seeing tremendous supply chain disruptions and likely the
00:39:53
emergence of an inflationary pressure that we haven't experienced since the 1970s in the aftermath aftermath of the
00:40:00
oil shocks and none of that has sorted itself out yet I believe that we will
00:40:06
conclude that our response to the pandemic caused more death and misery
00:40:11
than the pandemic itself and we have no endgame in sight another thing I asked
00:40:17
the people that I was speaking with it's like when is this over well we don't know what would over look like well we
00:40:25
don't really no and now what you see is this insistence on about a monthly basis
00:40:31
that a new and radically different variant has emerged and this virus
00:40:37
viruses mutate all the time but this virus particularly mutates and there are small mutations and medium-sized
00:40:43
mutations numbers let's say and also effect and and larger scale mutations
00:40:50
when is that a variant well how about whenever it's convenient for the pharmaceutical companies think well
00:40:56
that's cynical it's is it now the biggest lawsuits in the history of the American Judicial System have been
00:41:02
levied against the largest pharmaceutical companies on a regular basis for the last 20 years and since
00:41:09
when have has it been a proposition of the political left that pharmaceutical
00:41:15
companies necessarily have our best interests in mind now I'm not particularly cynical about
00:41:21
pharmaceutical companies I think they have a hard job both in terms of research and development and marketing
00:41:26
and sales and they're going to do what they can to Market and sell but that
00:41:32
doesn't mean that they are now to be the Arbiters of all public policy because our politicians are too cowardly and
00:41:38
incompetent to do anything but devolve their responsibilities to so-called experts domain experts politics is not
00:41:46
Public Health that's medicine politics is the art of
00:41:52
analyzing the entire situation and charting a course forward All Things Considered and for politicians to trot
00:41:59
out the experts and say follow the science just means that they've abdicated their own responsibilities and
00:42:04
I think it's appalling I mean I'm not convinced that the evidence that masks work is scientifically credible it's
00:42:11
certainly at least doubtful and that's just masks I read a paper the other day suggesting that to prevent the
00:42:18
transmission of one case of covid you have to lock down a thousand people like
00:42:24
how is that justified especially given that the mortality rate of covid is actually quite low unless
00:42:30
you have a pre-existent health problem particularly obesity and although old age also qualifies as it does for most
00:42:38
uh diseases but not all and with regards to let's say the issue of child vaccination it's like
00:42:44
children have an unbelievably tiny chance of dying from covid I don't think
00:42:49
there's any scientific justification for immunizing children under 12 now at
00:42:55
least at least it's debatable and I'm not a domain expert although I'm a decent scientist and I know how to read
00:43:01
the research material and so well we'll see what we have to learn
00:43:07
from these tectonic shifts underneath and you know you might ask yourself well was that a tectonic shift in dire
00:43:14
physical necessity because the covid virus was genuinely so dangerous or was it an indication tectonically of our
00:43:22
absolute inadequacy in the face of even a moderate existential challenge
00:43:27
and maybe it's a little column A and A little column B you know so I have to
00:43:32
ask the question if if we were to make your Jordan Peterson the president of
00:43:37
the world and these were your decisions to make do you know what you would have done
00:43:43
um differently or in response to this virus emerging in Wuhan I would say well
00:43:48
thank you for the offer but I declined the position and the reason I would say that is because I think the right
00:43:54
solution to the more serious ious problems is to be found at the level of the individual so I don't think if I wanted
00:44:02
to pursue what I regarded as the ultimate goal I the ultimate goal for me is the encouragement of the individual
00:44:10
and that's not a that's not essentially a political Enterprise it's essentially
00:44:15
a theological Enterprise and politics has to be subordinate to that and so
00:44:20
I've debated throughout the entire course of my life whether I would adopt a political career it was my initial
00:44:27
ambition when I was very young 14 I would say but when push came to shove at
00:44:32
every decision point in my life if I had to choose between working on the encouragement of
00:44:39
the individual and pursuing a or pursuing a political career um I always
00:44:45
chose the the former and that's happened every time the decision has come up I've
00:44:52
have been approached by people in Canada to involve myself more deeply in a
00:44:57
practical role um and also publicly as a political figure but I'd rather do what
00:45:04
I'm doing I'm in contact with people working politically all the time both on
00:45:10
the people in the middle people on the right people on the left I'm agnostic about that because I know full well that
00:45:19
conservatives have something to say and left leaning liberals have something to
00:45:24
say that's basically predic ated to some degree on their temperament so
00:45:29
conservatives tend to be more conscientious so that's orderly and industrious dutiful patriotic uh willing
00:45:36
to make and keep verbal contracts reliable capable of implementation at the level of detail that's kind of
00:45:43
conservative virtues there but they tend to be lower in creativity openness to experience they don't think as
00:45:49
divergently and their conscientiousness tends to constrain their creativity
00:45:55
where whereas the liberal types they're high in openness to experience that's the creativity Dimension but they tend
00:46:00
to be lower in conscientiousness particularly orderliness and so what that means is those with a liberal
00:46:07
temperament tend to be creative entrepreneurs and those with a conservative temperament tend to be
00:46:14
managerial and administrative that doesn't mean they can't run businesses well you want a conservative person to
00:46:20
run your business you might want a more liberal person to Pepper you with off thee all ideas you know and then if
00:46:27
you're going to run an Enterprise business or a society there has to be a continual dialogue between people of
00:46:34
different temperaments so that we can keep the ship of State let's say tracking to an Ever moving destination
00:46:42
that's why free speech is so necessary it's not another right it's the right so
00:46:48
because none of us know what's going on in the final analysis because the future is different than the past really we
00:46:56
have to talk about what to do all the time because even if we made wise decisions in the past that doesn't mean
00:47:02
that we can mindlessly replicate those decisions right now in the present to
00:47:08
deal with a changing future so I want to help encourage people to become the sort
00:47:15
of people who can engage in that free dialogue and I think that's the best way forward especially as we all become more
00:47:21
technologically powerful it's like you better be smart enough to use your iPhone B and that's pretty damn smart
00:47:28
let's say wise because that's no trivial Gadget and if you're not careful with it
00:47:33
it will turn on you it will build authoritarian presumptions into our
00:47:39
artificial intelligence systems for example and then look the hell out so if
00:47:46
you're going to have a hydrogen bomb you better be wise enough to wield
00:47:53
it on that point of the encouragement of the individual we all have people in our lives that we want to encourage we hope
00:48:00
yeah we hope right and um we sometimes fall foul of trying to force our own
00:48:07
bias our own intention for them on them what is the best way if I've got a friend in my life or you know partner
00:48:14
that I want to encourage to come out of their place of Despair into a better place how do I effectively do that
00:48:21
without overpowering them or stifling them or making them feel inadequate which is sometimes the consequence of
00:48:27
trying to change someone you love well example's
00:48:34
good but then I would say disabuse yourself of the notion that you know
00:48:39
what is best for this person you don't not only do you not know you actually don't want that responsibility for two
00:48:47
reasons let's say they do what you say and something good happens to them well
00:48:53
whose Victory is that yours are theirs and if it's yours did you just steal it
00:48:59
and then let's say they fail following your advice well they pay the price for
00:49:05
that and you can skip away merrily and say well I should have spoke more carefully it's like you don't mess about
00:49:11
with people's Destiny you do not know where they're headed now having said that you do what you're doing in this
00:49:18
interview in this podcast you ask people questions real questions you know like
00:49:25
how are you feeling I'm not doing so good today well you know what's up what's going
00:49:32
on and you can't think well I'm going to ask questions to lead this person in a particular direction because that's the
00:49:38
same game the same instrumental game you have to see what it is that you want to
00:49:44
know I see this when people ask me questions after my lectures you know now now and then or during a Q&A now and
00:49:51
then people get up and they'll ask a real question it's part of the ongoing dialogue something inst struck them they
00:49:56
stand up there's something they really want to know it's honest question and that goes real well but not infrequently
00:50:04
someone stands up with a little prepared speech that's packaged as a question so
00:50:09
I get this from Christian traditionalists fairly frequently they get up and they ask me about my religious convictions but really what
00:50:15
they want to do is Corner me into admitting that I should accept Jesus Christ as my savior and and join a
00:50:21
particular let's say uh um denomination it's not a
00:50:27
question it's just a manipulation and so your questions like
00:50:32
your statements your questions should be honest and if you ask people questions and you really listen they will untangle
00:50:41
themselves and that's partly why people love to be attended to you know
00:50:48
like if I meet people on the street you know I ask them their name they're all usually flustered when they come up to
00:50:55
me they don't really want to interrupt me and then they're flustered and the first thing I do is shake their hand and
00:51:00
ask them their name and I listen you know not that good at remembering names but I listen to it and and they know how
00:51:07
to say their name and so it kind of settles them down and then it sort of marks them out as a person against the background eh and then if I pay
00:51:15
attention to them and listen they will tell me something in like 10 seconds that I need to know cuz they're they
00:51:21
have something to say you know and then if you listen people tell you what they have to say and then you get wise
00:51:27
because you collect all that and so you want to help someone well first of all you would
00:51:33
decide that you're aiming towards help right and and that you do that in the
00:51:40
spirit of ignorance this is what every good clinician learns is I don't know where you're headed I don't know what's wrong with you this is a hard problem
00:51:47
man it's like what's your problem I don't know what your problem is so let's find that out first and then let's find
00:51:53
out one thing you you can ask people this is actually useful in an argument with someone you love they're they're
00:51:59
upset with you what are your preconditions for satisfaction now I wouldn't state it
00:52:06
like that it's like if I could give you what you wanted right now in the context of this argument and I wasn't doing it
00:52:12
in a manipulative way what is it that I would have to say or do that would in principle satisfy
00:52:19
you and that's a hard question you know and the person might say well I think you should apologize and about this and
00:52:26
you know and then I will say what words should I use and they'll say well if you
00:52:32
love me you'd know and I would say no I'm stupid and ignorant and I don't know
00:52:39
what the right words are to satisfy you so why don't you give me a hand with that and all utter them inelegantly and
00:52:46
awkwardly in a good faith demonstration of my commitment to peace and that won't
00:52:51
be so good because maybe it would have been better if I came up with it myself but maybe next time I can do slightly
00:52:57
better and that works it it requires the person who's after you to think
00:53:05
through the question even of whether there's anything that could be said or
00:53:10
done that would satisfy them and if the answer to that is no well probably the relationship is over but
00:53:17
certainly the person that they're accusing has been put in an absolutely impossible position but usually
00:53:25
almost inevitably if the person meditates on it for a bit there is something that would
00:53:32
satisfy them that can be negotiated as long as they're willing to give you the opportunity to do it you know stupidly
00:53:38
and badly so listening Man Jimmy car I talked to Jimmy car two
00:53:45
weeks ago theous comedian yeah he's real interesting um he said comedy is the
00:53:51
most dialogical of of the entertainment forms and I thought well what do you
00:53:56
mean by that because you're just talk it's a monologue right now I do monologues but I pay attention to the
00:54:02
audience right I'm always talking to individual people in the audience and watching their reactions and listening
00:54:07
to the audience as a whole so even though it's a leure let's say or a
00:54:12
talk I'm watching the audience and responding so we're in a kind of dance well Carr pointed out that comedians
00:54:20
before they hit the road and this is virtually in invariably the case they have their new routines so their their
00:54:28
their Corpus of potentially funny jokes and then they do 200 shows in front of
00:54:34
small audiences and the audience either laughs or doesn't and if you're
00:54:40
listening you collect all the jokes that people laugh at if you do that 200 times
00:54:45
you have nothing but hilarious material but you listen and then you can go out on the road and that was very
00:54:52
interesting to me because humor is a mysterious phenomenon experientially and
00:54:58
conceptually and it's sort of precognitive and instinctual but it's also extremely sophisticated then
00:55:03
there's an element of transcendence about it right because you can laugh at yourself and that's in some sense the
00:55:08
highest form of humor and so it's so interesting that we can criticize and
00:55:14
Elevate ourselves at the same time and that we find that intensely pleasurable
00:55:19
and so a good comedian collects ways to do that shares them with the audience and he's listening
00:55:25
and so if you want to help someone the best way to help someone is not to give them advice but to listen to them
00:55:35
so I had a guest actually come on this podcast before Jimmy car Jimmy car was on two weeks ago and we had a great
00:55:40
conversation about um happiness and the nature of happiness and the guest before Jimmy car wrote in my diary which is a
00:55:46
tradition we have now where all the guests that come on write a question for the next guest so there is a question in there for you but the guest wrote a
00:55:53
question um which changed his life which is um are you happy and I from reading
00:55:59
your work and understanding your position on happiness and it not being the thing to aim for which really struck me because I thought you know the I
00:56:06
thought life was the north star of Our Lives was to try and be happy I guess my question is what I was going to ask you
00:56:12
that question aim to be good and pray for happiness so the question I was going it's pretty much that is what is a
00:56:18
better question for me to ask you if I'm checking in on you because we ask that question with good intentions are happy
00:56:25
what's a better question for me to ask Jordan Peterson how are you doing how are you doing how are you
00:56:42
doing brilliantly and
00:56:49
terribly that's
00:56:57
you know when you listen to a profound piece of music one that sort of spans the whole
00:57:05
emotional experience it's not happy happy is elevator music and probably you just
00:57:13
shouldn't listen to that at all right and and you think why well it's harmless it's trickly it's
00:57:21
sweet uh it's simple it lacks depth it's shallow that's a problem
00:57:30
um it doesn't have that deep sense of awe and horror I would say that is
00:57:37
characteristic of the best of all music you know you listen to some Mis simple
00:57:42
music so-called Hank Williams is a good example you know the blues Cowboy from
00:57:47
the 50s who died of alcoholism when he was 27 and whose voice sounds like an 80-year-old man simple Melody you know
00:57:56
but there's nothing simple in the song and and in the voice it's deep you know
00:58:03
it's like the blues it's it's like Black Blues in the States from the 20s and this was certainly influenced by that
00:58:09
tradition there's this admission of a deep suffering at the same time as you
00:58:17
get the beautiful Transcendence of the music and that's meaning you know
00:58:25
that's awful in the most fundamental sense but you need an antidote to
00:58:32
suffering and it has to be deep and know deep moves you tectonically and it's not
00:58:38
a trivial thing and but that's better than happiness and maybe if you're lucky
00:58:45
while you're pursuing that and while you're immersed in it you get to be happy and and you should fall on your
00:58:50
knees and be grateful for that when it happens you know it's a gift it really is a gift
00:58:55
and it comes upon you unexpectedly your happiness you know but you aim to climb uphill to the
00:59:02
highest peak you can possibly Envision and that's that's better than
00:59:08
happiness why did you include terribly well for example now when I go
00:59:16
wherever I go in the world people come up to me and they're usually I wouldn't say they're happy to
00:59:22
see me they're often in tears you know
00:59:28
and they often have a pretty rough story to relate you know they were suicidal or nihilistic or homicidal or
00:59:36
trapped desperate you know and they tell me that real fast and then they say I've overcome
00:59:44
that to a large degree and thank you for that and and you think well that's really something to have that happen
00:59:51
over and over in some ways you might think well how could anything better possibly happen to you than to have
00:59:57
people come up to you all over the world strangers and open themselves up like that like their old friends so quickly
01:00:03
but at the same po time it's an awful thing because you see even in the
01:00:10
revelation of their Triumph the initial depth of their
01:00:18
despair so I wouldn't change that but it's not nothing it's certainly not just
01:00:26
happiness it's better than happiness but it's almost
01:00:43
unbearable God tears
01:00:48
again it's been quite a two weeks in the UK it's been May
01:00:55
amazing it's been amazing such a great country this country such a profound
01:01:01
place and was so wonderful to see Cambridge and Oxford and to be welcomed
01:01:07
by the students and I saw the cues around the block and the the reaction you got I watched the talk in Cambridge
01:01:13
and um it was so wonderful to see because it you know I know that you don't do what you do for credit that
01:01:18
kind of seems to be you know the antithesis of pursuing your truth and doing it for the in the cause of Truth
01:01:24
but um it was so wonderful to see someone that I know has had such a profound impact on so many be received
01:01:30
in such a way we have a closing tradition um one of the you know I don't nor do this but one of the the really
01:01:36
great CEOs in our country young guys bought a multi-billion dollar company really great guy sat here yesterday and I actually told him for the first time
01:01:41
who he was writing the question for and I couldn't believe his face oh my God that's the one person I want to have
01:01:47
dinner with this is probably the most successful young person in our country and he was and so he knew who he was
01:01:52
writing the question for so the question that the previous guest wrote is for you
01:01:58
is why do you do what you do to see what
01:02:03
will happen some programs you you cannot
01:02:09
predict right you cannot predict how they're going to end you have to run them well you know I believe that truth
01:02:16
will save the world I believe that so you speak
01:02:22
truthfully and you watch what happens and you take your consequences you know and maybe you hope
01:02:29
and have some faith that in the final analysis things will work out in your favor but perhaps they will and perhaps
01:02:36
they won't but that's Faith they that's Faith it's Faith isn't believing in
01:02:43
things you regard as ridiculous sacrificing your intellect it's a decision you know will truth
01:02:51
beauty and love save the world well well you could find
01:02:58
out thank you doesn't seem to quite cut it for the impact you've had even on me and also for giving me your time and I
01:03:03
know you understand the tremendous value of time I've I've seen it so much in your work so I'm going to say thank you
01:03:09
but I'm also going to make a commitment to do something which I think is more important which is just to be truthful
01:03:15
and I think with the platform I have and the years I have ahead of me maybe that's the greatest good that I can do to the world so because you've come here
01:03:21
that's a pledge and a commitment I want to make to you as my highest form of thanks that I can give in a karmic way
01:03:27
hopefully that will make the world a better place for for everybody well at least it will
01:03:33
help ensure that you won't make the world worse
01:03:38
place thank you so much thank you for everything thank you much appreciate
01:03:44
huge honor thank you so
01:03:53
much
01:03:59
[Music]
01:04:09
ah