https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=64MlP8mbJPo
Dr. Jordan Peterson. Good morning. Good morning. Thank you so much for coming in You’re developing this enormous power and reach is it a heavy burden for you Well, it’s heavy and light at the same time, you know, it’s it’s constant I I generally don’t know what I’m doing day to day until that day I have people managing my schedule and I’m busy enough so that I pretty much attend to the next thing But the responsibility of getting into all these heads and you are influencing people significantly aren’t you? Well, I guess I take solace in the fact that so many thousands of people now have written to me and also talk to me to say that Things are better for them because they’ve been trying to do some of the things that I suggest in my lectures And so it is a heavy responsibility when when you have influence of that sort But it lightens it when you also have evidence suggesting that it seems to be doing people a lot of good you’re changing lives That seems to be the case Saving lost well, I would say there were six people in the audience last night. I was talking in Melbourne I would say there were six maybe there were more but there were at least six so half a dozen and they were young men Who told me that that that’s that’s what they said But you had to be like, yeah, yeah, how do you feel about that? Breaks me up. Why I mean, it’s a very positive thing you’ve done. What do you mean it breaks you up? Well, it’s sad that there’s so many people in that State of crisis, you know and they don’t need That much encouragement That’s the thing so It’s sad that it only takes that much encouragement to make that much difference. There’s a lot of lost people in the world So it’s a good thing to be able to help that It’s overwhelming. Well, I can tell that you’re very emotional about it Yeah, well, it’s really something. You know what? I hadn’t thought much about what had happened last night, but you know probably 500 people lined up after the talk and Most of them say the same thing, you know about a quarter of them say look You’re putting into words things. I already knew I always knew but I didn’t know how to say it’s like Well, that’s what archetypal stories do and and I guess that’s what articulate people do, you know so that’s a good thing, but then the other three quarters of them say some variant of Of you know, my life has been turned around they say I was addicted or I was drinking too much or I wasn’t moving ahead my Relationship with my girlfriend. I wasn’t getting along with my family. I didn’t have any direction in life I was nihilistic or hopeless or anxious or any number of variants of those and I’ve been trying to put into practice what you’ve been talking about in your YouTube lectures and podcasts and and It’s really helped my turn my life around. Thank you. It’s like Yeah You feel fragile about that Well No, I wouldn’t say exactly that I seem to be able to handle this It’s been going on a long time now It’s been 18 months and I would say in many ways now it’s better than it was because at the beginning Especially when I got when I put my hat in the political ring Let’s say because I felt that the Canadian politicians had overstepped their boundaries Mmm, you know my job was threatened and quite severely and I thought I might lose my clinical license as well and Things were up in the air in a big way Now things are a lot more gender. Yeah was my refusal my stated refusal to abide by the by the requirement that that I modify my language in a certain manner that I Felt was I felt it was inappropriate of the government to demand that I modify my language the government has no right to Intrude on people’s lives to that degree. It’s very very dangerous when that happens And so anyways, there was I’ve been in one scandal after another in Canada Like seriously like non-stop for 18 months the last one just two days ago I was at Queen’s University in Kingston and there was a big Demonstration there was a very eerie Occurrence they arrested a woman who was carrying a garrote for God’s sake You know and front that was not good. The Queen’s University thing was not good. We were in a hall It was kind of like a church this this hall is what it looked like it was lined with stained glass windows and probably 20 of them and there was a Protester had climbed up in the window well of all 20 windows Probably five or six feet off the ground and they were seven feet high these windows and they were pounding on them and forcefully forcefully enough in one case to break the window and So there was 900 of us inside and it was we were surrounded by this group that were pounding on the windows and yelling and pounding on the doors and It was and you know, you could see against the stained glass You could see these shadowy forms pounding away and it was it was very eerie No one and no one in that hall will ever forget that experience. Why? Why were they trying to get in why the garrote why the it sounds like hate is it hate? Some of it was hate for sure. What do they had you? Because they because of who they imagine I might be I guess that’s part of it You know, it’s it’s it’s easy to hate someone who’s been caricatured and so but there’s more to it than that I have been very Forceful, let’s say in my criticisms of the radical left not only in Canada But in the West in general not critical enough in my estimation, so I hold no stock whatsoever for the radical leftists I’m absolutely appalled that they are the force they are in the universities and I do believe that in many ways the universities Have done more harm in society than good over the last 20 years And I say that you know with a fair bit of regret because I’ve been obviously associated with universities since 1993 It’s a really interesting I Sometimes enjoy dealing with the radical left in universities. I think you’re gonna grow up You’re gonna get through this and I enjoy the the challenge and the drama and the yeah It’s a challenge of youth saying you’re wrong. I’m right and I know I’m right because I’m 20 and I know everything What’s not the students so much? I’m concerned about staff is it? Oh, yeah, it’s the extra for the administrators and no It’s not the students I mean look I go I’ve been protested against I watched the protesters and most of the time the vast majority of them are young people whose whose desire to have a positive influence in the world is Channelled into this particular political expression at the moment so many of them are manipulated by the faculty members Hmm, and there’s no excuse for that and what they’re doing is is far more dangerous than it looks why do young men? need you Well first of all, you know It’s not I would say it’s not just young men part of that’s an artifact of the fact that most of the people who watch YouTube are young men but but I won’t evade the question I mean because See to some degree Maturation among men is a voluntary process. It’s not so voluntary for women. They have to grow up fast They have a lot of things to do before they hit 30 Yeah with men it can it can take longer and they need a call to adventure Let’s say and they need a call to responsibility and they need to be they need to to be initiated into Responsibility and to have a case made for its utility and so I’m saying look it’s better to be adult than to be a child It’s better. It’s better to be in control of your own destiny There’s a place for you in the world the world would be lesser if you don’t take your place in it That you have a responsibility to bear to sort out your education to straighten out your life and to become who you are Grow the hell up grow up and and for reasons that are positive for you positive for your family positive for everyone So is but is this generation lost? They they desperate they’re clinging to what you’re saying and doing you know desperate I’m not criticizing what you’re saying or doing but they need it. They need it desperately. Why why they think I think that I think that every generation needs a message that that that supports Maturation and and responsibility. I think that we’ve done a bad job as a culture of putting that message forward So to me since the mid 1960s Our young people have been fed a never-ending diet of rights and impulsive freedoms something like that And that leaves a hole because most of the meaning that people People manage in their lives and so that would be the meaning that you can offset against the tragedy of life that comes from adopting Responsibility and carrying a load like human beings in some sense are designed for a load and the heavier the load the better It’s it’s one of the things that gives you You know, there’s this this proclivity among psychologists to attempt to facilitate self-esteem, which is a word I don’t care much for I think that self-respect is a much better term and I think you develop self-respect by carrying a responsibility. I Feel very lucky to have been born in this country. I think it’s essentially a decent country It does follow a lot of what happens in the United States and I get to that in a moment But I was talking to some welfare workers police Salvation Army yesterday saying to me they think Society is becoming and particularly the younger the age group we’re talking is becoming more aggressive more cynical more angry Do you agree with that? And if so, why well, I don’t think the statistics bear that out because what we’ve seen overall Over the last especially the last 20 years is a remarkable decline in violent crime I do think that there might be an epidemic more of aimlessness and and and depression and anxiety that sort of thing and I think that that’s partly because the case for growing up is not made Well, and and and because we’re also so cynical about our own societies, you know I was in Amsterdam month ago talking to a group of well-placed intellectuals They’re all friends of Theo van Gogh who was who was killed in in in Amsterdam about 15 years ago was stabbed And there he said that embarrassment about the Dutch culture is rampant in their society I that just makes my jaw drop because I go to Holland and I think my god This is such an amazing place these people they scrape this country out of the bottom of the ocean Built dikes to hold back the waves. It’s it’s free. It’s it’s liberal. It’s it’s compassionate. It’s orderly. It’s beautiful If they’re embarrassed by they’re embarrassed by it because of its tyrannical patriarchal nature It’s like well, who are you comparing it to? It’s like what are we comparing our societies to? Where do you want to live on on on the planet or in time anywhere? But in the West not if you have any sense you’ve been you’ve sort of been described as a warrior against political correctness Is that fair? Yeah Tell me about this in our national carrier quantus got some attention earlier this week and I was thinking about this I knew you were coming in and they were taking advice from a diversity group. That’s that’s a bad idea Yeah, that’s a bad idea. They wanted to ban words like guys and chairman husband and wife Replace replace words like mankind and chairman. What’s your reaction to that? I think that it would be better if people tried to solve some real problems Instead of playing these idiot diversity games. I think that Everyone who plays identity politics whether they play it on the right or the left is going to pay for it in ways They can hardly imagine. It’s a very counterproductive way of dividing up the world It’s an it’s impossible to come to a peaceful solution in the identity politics universe Even the identity politics types themselves. They’ve run into this problem. They call intersectionality Right, so, okay, so you classify people by race and by sex, let’s say So and and seek for equity along those dimensions, but then well, what about the intersection between those dimensions? So you you have enough? Ethnic minorities in your in your organization, let’s say you match by population Which is a foolish way of doing it, but you do that and maybe you’re matched by sex But then what about the intersection between race and sex? Well, then what about the intersection between race sex ethnicity? Then you could add social class to that then you could add social proclivity then you could add attractiveness There’s never-ending way of dividing people up into groups and you can’t equalize across all those ways. It’s just technically not possible Do you think people need to make a stand on issues like this and when an airline like Qantas makes these decisions? Do they need to stand against it? Do they need to boycott it? I know do that sort of thing I think they need to understand it at a deeper level It’s like we have to decide if we’re going to divide people up if we think that dividing people up primarily by their group Identity is a good idea and it’s not it’s a bad idea. It will lead to an enhancement of our tribal proclivities and I don’t think that if you’re a an advocate of peace that you would push and advocate for Our further division into tribal entities, it’s a it’s not wise is this transient will we move through this? We’ll see it’s been not transient in the past. It’s caused tremendous troubles in the past This is another reason why I’m not a fan of the radical leftists So the the radical left ideologies were were murderous in their expression throughout the 20th century I mentioned earlier this country follows a lot of the US trends good and bad We’re a little bit behind but it can be fashion Well What do we need to be alert to what do we need to be aware of what we need to avoid we need to We need to be alert to the benefits of the societies that we now inhabit We need to be grateful for their existence and and note very carefully the unlikelihood of their continued success No, I don’t understand how we managed it In the West we have societies where the default assumption between human beings is trust I do not understand how we manage that because There’s so many ways that you can be betrayed by someone especially if you don’t know them How do you set up a society where the typical interaction between strangers is straight? Oh How many societies in the world are like that like 30 40 something like that? How did that ever happen? We don’t know and it’s an ongoing miracle and we should do everything we can not to disrupt it Because the alternative to that Generous trust that courageous trust which is unbelievably productive is rule by thug and that’s the rule in most of the world So do you have optimism or not for the future? I? Think we’re in a time of extreme Chaos things could go unbelievably well if we are careful There’s so many good things going on in the world right now. They’re almost miraculous So for example between the year 2000 and 2012 the level of absolute poverty in the world was cut by 50% That was the fastest rate of improvement by a large margin in human history It was three years faster than the most optimistic projections had suggested There’s hundreds of thousands of people a week now being being pulled into the electrical power grid almost everyone has access to almost infinite Computational power and all the educational resources that go along with that We’re wiping out most transmissible diseases the fastest growing economies in the world are in sub-saharan Africa Like there are a lot of things there’s no starvation in China There’s a huge middle class in China and India these things are absolutely miraculous So and and God only knows what we could accomplish if we got our act together in the next 20 years I you know the sky’s the limit So but we’re playing very foolish games in the West and we could bring the house down around us, so we’ll see Thank you so much for coming in good luck with the burden Thanks very much for the invitation and for the interview Jordan B Peterson 12 rules for life an antidote to chaos