https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=gAMCVTrQ6nQ
Well, Jordan Peterson joins me now. Jordan Peterson, welcome to Piers Morgan Uncensored. That’s my first question, and there will be people genuinely wanting a simple answer. Yeah. But there’s a bigger answer, too. Who is Jordan Peterson? Well, I’m a clinical psychologist and a professor, and I’m doing that on a broader scale now, I suppose. But it’s an extension of what I’ve done since 1987, really. I mean, I taught the same things I’m teaching, although I’ve expanded them. Throughout my academic career and my classes were very popular, and not popular exactly. The students found them extremely useful. Why have you become so notorious? Because I look at it as I’ve actually watched a lot of your lectures. I’ve listened to hours of you and Joe Rogan talking about stuff. I don’t see the devil that some people try and portray you as, at all. And it seems to me the one thing we may share in common is certainly not intellectual prowess, where, unfortunately, I’m many yards behind you. But what we do share, I think, is that a lot of people seem to have drawn an opinion about us based on either what they’ve seen in a tiny clip, taken out of context a lot of the time, or what they’ve been told to think about you by other people. Yeah, well, that’s some of it. I mean, I got tangled up in a political controversy in Canada. I mean, tangled up. I put my foot in it to some degree, because I wasn’t very happy with what I regarded as government overreach in relationship to who is in possession of my tongue. And I decided a long time ago, and really a long time ago, that I was going to say what I thought. And sort of independent of the outcome. You know, often people craft their speech. You know, I could have come here on your show, for example, I spent half an hour thinking, well, what do I want out of this show? But I don’t think like that. I wanted to come here and have a conversation with you. You don’t actually make notes, I’m told, before your big lecture. I make notes, but I generally don’t use them. So I have to prepare, you know. And are they different? When you go on tour, is every night different? Yes. I never do the same after class. How do you decide what to talk about? Well, at the moment, sometimes I’m taking questions from the audience, and so I just do a Q&A, but I don’t look at the questions before I go on stage. And I ask my wife, who asks me the questions, not to show them to me. And then if I prepare a lecture, I usually have a question in mind, often that relates to one of the topics in my books, but sometimes something I’m thinking about. And then I use the lecture as an opportunity to explore that question and answer it while I’m watching the audience to see if my words are landing. And so it’s an opportunity to think on my feet. And I think part of the reason the lectures are well attended is because it’s a high wire act in some sense. Because I never know when I go on stage whether I’m going to bring the lecture to something like a punchline, to something like a conclusion. And I have no idea, because I’ll have a variety of ideas up in the air. I think it’s extraordinary. You have no idea where it may lead to. No. No, no. It’s an exploration. Is it a little scary? I mean… Yes. But, you know, there’s an idea that the truth will set you free, right? And that’s a very strange idea, because you could imagine that I could come here and I could decide there are things I want to do to promote my books, let’s say, and I could tilt our conversation towards that. Or I could just say, well, I’m going to pay attention to what’s going on here and I’m going to see what happens and I’m going to say what I think. And then I’m going to assume that whatever the outcome is, is the right outcome, because it was based on something approximating the truth. What is your… Ultimately, what is your goal? What is the point of Dr Jordan Peterson? What do you hope to achieve through what is now huge global fame? I hope to encourage people. Other than that, I want to see what happens. You know, I want to say what I believe to be true as clearly and… and carefully as I possibly can. And I want to see what happens as a consequence. And what people don’t understand about that, in some sense, is… Your happiness… The purpose of your life is not going to be happiness. Sometimes it is. Sometimes that will come. But there will be difficult periods in your life and happiness won’t suffice then. But what you can have in your life is an adventure. You can have an adventure. And the truth is the best adventure. There’s no doubt about that. And there’s a couple of reasons for that. One is, you don’t know what’s going to happen if you say what you think. Now, I don’t mean incautiously and I don’t mean provocatively or any more than necessary. You don’t know what’s going to happen. But also, if it’s you and your voice, then it’s your adventure. And if it isn’t, like if you’re crafting your speech or manipulating in any way or parroting or abiding by the dictates of the crowd, then I don’t know whose adventure you’re having, but it’s not yours. On free speech, it seems to me, in my 57 years of being on this planet, that free speech has never been under more ferocious attack, not in places you would expect, like authoritarian regimes, but actually in democracies. I never thought I’d come to a day in my lifetime where people were literally being fired or, in some cases, imprisoned for expressing honestly held opinions, even if I find those opinions critically wrong or offensive. It’s worse than that. People underestimate the significance of this because it isn’t… We’re not having a fight about who has the right to speak freely. That’s nothing. That’s a peripheral problem, even though that can be serious in and of itself. We’re having a fight about whether or not your claim that free speech exists is nothing but a masquerade for your willingness to dominate and use power. And so if I was taking that tack, I’d say, it’s all well and good for you to speak about free speech, but look, you’re white and you’re middle class and you’re British and you’re privileged and you have this theory about free speech that your ancestors derived, but the only reason they ever derived that to begin with is so they could exercise their power. There’s no such thing as free speech. That’s just a lie to mask a power claim, and that’s a way worse cynical criticism of the notion of free speech than, you can’t speak because I don’t agree with you. It’s a form of fascism, isn’t it? It’s worse than that. The ultra-woke brigade out there, they categorise themselves as liberals, but there’s nothing liberal about that mentality. When you have a cancel culture, which is driven by, if you don’t agree with what I say, you’re going to get shamed, vilified, cancelled, fired, maybe even imprisoned. That is actually what fascist regimes do to people, to their populace. Yeah, but the fascists are more straightforward about it, because they basically come out and say something like, shut up or we’ll beat you. Whereas the compassionate types, who are narcissistic compassionate types, they come out and say, well, we’re really trying to save the world, and we’re acting in everyone’s best interests, and we think it would be better if you should just regulate what you say, because if you don’t, you’re not a good person. And so it’s much more… I’d take the fascist bully over the narcissistic, over the compassionate narcissist anytime. They’re way more straightforward. We live again in an era where the hashtag be kind almost invariably is used by people who are the least kind people I think I’ve ever encountered. In other words, people that love to be utterly vicious. And yet they hide behind this fake persona of hashtag be kind. Yeah, well, kindness is tricky, you know, because one of the things you deal with very commonly, if you’re a clinical psychologist, apart from depression and anxiety, is, well, behaviour therapists offer assertiveness training. And now the people who need assertiveness training are often people who are too agreeable, compassionate, polite, by temperament. Now the problem with that is that they let people walk all over them, because they don’t stand up enough for themselves. And the consequence of that is they get resentful, and then they get bitter, and then they get conniving, and then they get… and then they’ll mob. And so, because they’re not… they’ll do anything for everyone else, but they push themselves beyond their limits, and then they won’t even recognise the limits, because they feel, well, if I’m not doing everything for you, then I’m not a good person. It’s like, no, a good person does a little for you. Like, if I’m acting properly with you, say, in this conversation, there’s something in it for you, and there’s something in it for me, right? And we want that to be reciprocal. The cost of me bending too far in your direction is that I’ll become bitter and resentful and conniving. And that, and resentment, is an unbelievably toxic state of being.