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April 6, 2017 - Jordan B. Peterson Podcast

58:11

2017/04/06: Dr Jordan B Peterson Chats with Some Black Guy

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	Hey, how's it going everyone?
	So today I have a very special guest, Dr.
	Jordan B. Peterson.
	He's a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto and a practicing clinical psychologist.
	And I want to read just a little bit of a paragraph, just a little piece from his own website.
	Jordan Peterson has published more than a hundred scientific papers transforming the modern understanding of personality and revolutionizing the psychology of religion in his now classic book, Maps of Meaning, The Architecture of Belief.
	As a Harvard professor, he was nominated for the prestigious Levinson Teaching Prize and is regarded by his current University of Toronto students as one of the three truly life-changing teachers.
	Dr.
	Peterson, thank you for coming on.
	And hearing that, is it safe to say, is it fair to say that you are considered a rock star now?
	My YouTube channel seems to be, have become very popular, and I've been, yeah, I mean, I hate to use that characterization, you know, but yeah, there's been an explosion of media interest and then public interest in the sorts of things that, not only the sorts of things that I've been dealing with, say, sort of philosophically and politically, but also in the In the lectures that I'm putting up for people on YouTube, which I've been doing for about four years now.
	And I think it's the combination of the stance that I took on compelled speech and on political correctness in general and also the content that I've been providing with people.
	They come to the channel for the political Yeah, there's been a shift of people wanting to hear stuff like this.
	They're really excited to hear a position of free speech when a lot of people have been railing against it.
	It's really interesting the times that we're in because unfortunately it's coming from a lot of people on the far left.
	There's like this authoritarian left type of movement taken afoot and that's basically where most people kind of recognized you from because they saw a protest that was going on at your university and it was about Bill C-16.
	Yeah, that's right.
	I made a video that Where I expressed my opposition to the Canadian government's attempts to make certain kinds of speech mandatory and also to oppose the University of Toronto Human Resources Department's attempts to impose what I regard as inappropriate and likely harmful so-called unconscious anti-bias retraining on the part
	of their Human Resources employees, which I think is a very dangerous incursion into the civil rights of their staff, as well as being based on very poor science, in my estimation.
	So, yeah, people...
	There was a protest as a consequence of that, and that got a lot of attention on YouTube, and that was one of the things that drew a lot of attention to my channel.
	So...
	Yeah, absolutely.
	I mean, it's how I found you.
	I actually did a video on it, and I saw that you tweeted it out, so I was actually like, oh, he's seen it.
	And I feel strange because the type of content I make, I try to be very lighthearted.
	I try to crack a lot of jokes and have people at least have some fun through the madness.
	So when I was also seeing that, I was like, oh, I wonder what he thinks because I don't know.
	I got a real kick out of your coverage.
	I thought it was really funny.
	And it's funny because some of the best conversations that I've had with people on YouTube so far have been with people who have a background in comedy, roughly speaking.
	And I think it's partly because people who have a good sense of humor and who have a comical take on things are also likely to tell the truth.
	Because there's almost nothing funnier than telling the truth, right?
	If you say things that other people think but won't say, then, you know, they're...
	That often makes you very funny.
	I think your channel is very comical and witty.
	I appreciate that a lot.
	Hearing stuff like that, sometimes I'm doubting myself.
	Should I try to be more?
	I guess I've been shoved in this community called the skeptic community on YouTube.
	I do try to be skeptical, but at the same time, like I said, I try to be more just on the comedic side.
	I was thinking about being more serious and try to be, say, more respected, I guess, in the community that I'm in.
	But I kind of want to just...
	I was like, no, no, no, there's enough people.
	I don't know if you watch, say, if there's any YouTubers in particular that you watch.
	I don't know if you've seen, say, anyone like Sargon of Akkad or Armored Skeptic.
	I'm going to be on Sargon's show in the relatively near future.
	Awesome.
	I suspected that much, especially he just did a video about it.
	I saw it recently.
	And that was actually something that I wanted to ask you about because he was talking about McMaster University.
	Oh, yeah.
	And that's actually something that I wanted to – I was really interested in knowing, like, say – You're officially on a target now, where now you're being shut down, where we've seen it happen to other people.
	People that, say, Miley Annopoulos, but he's, I could say, a provocateur.
	And so it's very telling that they would go out of their way just to shut you down when, I don't know, it just seems like you're not saying anything that is irrational.
	You're not saying anything that is even remotely extreme.
	And I just wanted to get your take on How did you feel when you got your shutdown at McMaster?
	Well, it's a funny thing because when I was there, I didn't really think of it as being shut down.
	And the reason for that is because things aren't exactly what they appear to be anymore.
	And so, for example, now when I go and talk at places, the place I'm talking at is barely the place where the event is happening at all.
	The real event happens on YouTube.
	And so I went there and I saw all these people acting in a very...
	What would you say?
	Well, it was partly a vulgar manner because they were yelling things at me that were...
	Just asinine.
	They're not the sorts of things that you'd expect even protesters who had any sense to be shouting.
	They're just low-rent insults, you know?
	Low-grade insults.
	And behaving very badly and laughing about it on their cell phones and misbehaving in a very bad way.
	And having the goal, for example, to appear at the McMaster talk behind a huge banner with a hammer and sickle on it.
	Like, as far as I'm concerned, and I really mean this, There is no difference between appearing behind a banner with a hammer and sickle on it and appearing behind a banner with a swastika on it.
	And the fact that you can get away with that at a university and that that's considered, what would you describe it as, a reasonable stance In the aftermath of the events of the 20th century where we know that at least 100 million people were killed by communist totalitarianism is absolutely reprehensible.
	But when I was at McMaster I thought, and I thought this ever since that first protest where I was shouted down, increasingly the appropriate thing to do when surrounded by protesters is to document it and let them destroy their own credibility.
	And so far, virtually every time I've had an encounter with the radical social justice types, and I just let them be, which is, I think, a reasonable approach, they've undermined their own position dreadfully.
	And so I don't think of it as being shut down at all.
	I just think about it as another route to victory, and even an effective route, because maybe 150,000 people have watched that protest now at McMaster University, maybe more, far more people than were at the event itself.
	Yeah.
	No, yeah, you're absolutely right.
	It actually, I mean, when this stuff does happen, it does bring these issues to light, and it shows just how ridiculous these people are acting and showing that you can't take them seriously.
	And I 100% agree about the hammer and sickle thing, like 100%, because especially when you see what's been happening at, say, for instance, like Trump rallies around the United States, where a lot of these people that consider themselves communists or Marxists or whatever...
	Or anti-fascists or just beating the hell out of people in the name of fighting fascism.
	It's the most ironic thing that I've witnessed in quite a while.
	It's pretty sad to be honest.
	But like you said, people are just in droves trying to shy away from that and be like, this is not the way to go.
	Yeah.
	So yeah, it actually is a very good thing that we'll say there's the silver lining for you getting screeched at and shouted down and everything.
	Yeah, it's a massive silver lining because now I'm in a situation that I suspect is very frustrating for those who are opposing what I'm doing where… If I go speak somewhere and there are no protesters then I get to speak and I'll get a viewing of a couple of hundred thousand people and if I go somewhere and I don't get to speak then that gets a viewing of a couple of hundred thousand people and so at the moment I'm in this extraordinarily fortunate position where as
	long as I don't do anything too unforgivably stupid and get carried away or get arrogant or anything like that that as long as I'm cautious If I keep pushing forward with what I'm doing, then I seem to come out in a positive light either way.
	And that's a great position to be in.
	It's an amazing position to be in.
	I've learned some really interesting things here as well.
	So one of the things that's happened, you were talking about my YouTube popularity.
	I can tell you some details about that that you might be interested in.
	First of all, The overwhelming majority of the people who come to see me live and who are watching my YouTube videos are men.
	It's about 90% men and you know you might think that that's because my political stance say doesn't necessarily appeal to women but I don't think that that's what it is because when I looked at the demographics for my lectures my personality lectures and my other university lectures that I put online since 2013 even before this political issue became central Let's say.
	About 85% of the people who were watching my lectures were men.
	And that's strange because about 75% of psychology students in universities are female.
	And so I've been trying to figure out why is it that men are coming to watch me and why is it that men are watching my lectures?
	So I've been speaking to the audiences about a variety of different things and I've been concentrating mostly on the right to free speech.
	and in an apolitical manner in some sense like i'm making the case that it's necessary for free speech to be placed above all other political virtues so that no matter who it is no matter whose position that's being put forward they have an opportunity to engage in political dialogue but also i've been talking an awful lot about responsibility and responsibility is the other half of rights right because your rights are my responsibility and My rights are your responsibility.
	And so you actually can't have a discussion about rights without having a discussion about responsibility unless you're willing to forget about half of the story.
	And the radical leftists in particular, and even the moderates I would say, have been pushing this idea that the quality of life that someone enjoys is entirely dependent on the rights that they're granted.
	or the rights that they take to themselves and I've been putting forward the counter story which is well just hold on a minute there guys you should be concentrating more on responsibility that you should be upholding in the community and Getting your act together as individuals and living in a way that makes you valuable to your family and to the broader community and learning how to bear a heavy load like a civilized human being.
	And the men, the young men, man, they are so hungry for that message.
	It's just unbelievable.
	Their eyes light up.
	And, you know, I've got this program that I wanted to talk to you about, too.
	I designed this program a while back called Future Authoring.
	That's available at selfauthoring.com.
	And it's a program that helps people write out a plan for their life three to five years down the road.
	And so the program asks you some questions.
	It asks you, okay, so imagine that you were taking care of yourself like you're someone that you were cared for.
	So you're trying to set your life up so that you have a good, high-quality, valuable life.
	However you want to define that, it's up to you to define it.
	And you're asked to think about, well, what do you want from your friends?
	Or who do you want your friends to be?
	What do you want for your career?
	How are you going to educate yourself?
	How are you going to use your time in a high quality and productive way outside of your obligations?
	How are you going to handle drugs and alcohol?
	What do you want for an intimate relationship?
	How are you going to structure your family?
	You know, the You can think about that as the basic dimensions of a functional life.
	So the question is, if you could have what you wanted, what would that look like?
	And assuming what you wanted was also best for you, you know, that you were heading in a positive direction.
	So you're asked to think about that and then you're asked to write for 15 minutes without too much concern for grammar or structure about what your life could be like three to five years down the road if it was set up in a manner that you would find optimal.
	And then you're asked to write a counterposition, which is, alright, so think about yourself critically for a minute, and then imagine that you let your bad habits and your resentment and your hatred and everything about you that's subpar or suboptimal get the upper hand, and it augured you into the ground.
	What sort of hell would you be in three to five years down the road?
	So we basically imagine you specify a heaven that you can strive for and a hell that you want to avoid.
	And that sets you up for maximal motivation because you're running towards something you want and you're running away from something you don't want.
	And then you're asked to lay out an implementable plan and to come up with detailed rationale for what you're going to pursue.
	So okay, so that's all a long story.
	But we've tested this program In a number of universities in Europe and in North America.
	And we found the same thing each time.
	We found that it works better for students who are doing worse.
	It's not just for students, by the way, but we've tested it in students because it was an easy population to actually assess its effectiveness.
	And so, we found that it increased students grade point average by about 25%.
	And decreased the probability that they would drop out of university by about 25%.
	So a huge effect.
	But what was really cool was that the biggest effect was on men.
	And if you look in the universities now, and in schools for that matter, women are outperforming men.
	Yeah, definitely.
	And I think it's because the men, well, we don't have to get into why that is, but they are.
	But if they do the Future Author Program, the men catch up.
	And then, here's the kicker.
	This is something I think is absolutely fascinating.
	So, when we did our big study in Holland, I worked with a woman there named Michaela Shippers, and another professor named Ad Sheepers.
	And we ran about 7,000 students through this program now.
	And then we broke them up not only by sex, but also by ethnicity.
	And so we broke them into male and female, and also Dutch national and non-Western ethnic minority.
	And then we looked at their initial performance before they did the program.
	And so the highest performing people were the Dutch women.
	And then the Dutch men, and then the non-Western ethnic minority women, and then the non-Western ethnic minority men, who were underperforming the Dutch women by about 70%, so a huge margin, and dropping out far more frequently.
	When they did the program, the non-Western ethnic minority men caught up to the Dutch women and passed them within two years.
	Interesting.
	No kidding, man.
	That just blew me away.
	Because that's so unlikely, right?
	Usually when you produce an intervention that's designed to improve things, first of all, it usually fails.
	Sometimes it makes things worse.
	And then even if it does succeed, what usually happens is it makes the higher performing people do even better.
	But that isn't what this did.
	What it did was take the people who were doing the worst, And it increased their performance up to the point where they were indistinguishable from the high performers.
	And so there's a bunch of things about that that's interesting.
	And the first is that people make the claim all the time that, say, in European communities, that if you're a visible minority, the reason that you're not attaining the same accomplishment level, let's say, is because of sociological or political or economic reasons.
	But we produced a psychological intervention that helped people get their acts together at the individual level to set concrete goals for themselves that they wanted.
	And that removed the effects.
	And so that's one of the things I wanted to talk to you about because, you know, among your listeners, there are going to be people of all sorts who are drifting.
	Yeah.
	And a lot of what I'm doing when I'm talking to live audiences on YouTube is to tell people, help people figure out how to get their act together and aim at what they want.
	But what seems to be the case is if you can get men to sit down and think about How they can take responsibility for what they want in a way that would also simultaneously benefit the community their performance goes way up and their quality of life improves and their mental health improves and I've got like hundreds of letters now from people who have listened to the lectures or done that program and said that you know it's turned their life around stop them from being nihilistic stop them from wasting their time constantly and doing foolish things and
	set them on a path that they regard as much As much more powerful.
	That's the thing too.
	The other thing that isn't taught to young men now is that the reason you get your act together is so that you have power and influence.
	So you get strong and indomitable and so that nobody can get in your way.
	And I don't mean that you become a cruel monster, although being able to be a cruel monster is actually extremely useful.
	That doesn't mean you should be one.
	But being able to be one means that you're no pushover.
	What kind of man are you if you're a pushover?
	You're not good for yourself or anyone else.
	Anyway, so that's been very exciting.
	Yeah, it sounds amazing.
	The results are just...
	That's fantastic, hearing that stuff.
	And I totally understand that.
	And it's something that, say, for example, it's something that I kind of would need.
	I was even telling one of my friends the other day that I'm like, you'll succeed much better, especially if you have something mapped out.
	If you actually can physically see it, not just thinking about it and you're bouncing all over the place.
	It's something that I would do a lot.
	Recently, I've been saying, okay, I want to get better physically and mentally, especially physically.
	I've just been kind of all over the place.
	I was just like, okay, I need to sit down and I really need to figure out what I'm going to do.
	I need to actually just Write it out and this is the type of food I'm going to eat.
	When I can actually see it, it's so much easier to just obtain.
	It's so much easier to...
	I don't know.
	I always just feel like saying in your head you have so many thoughts so it's hard to just lock on to one thing.
	When you can actually just focus on something like this program that you have, it sounds exactly what a lot of people need.
	It sounds like something that my friend that I hang out with Every week, it sounds like something that he can really benefit from.
	And I'm sure he'll watch this because he actually does watch my channel.
	He's a good guy.
	Look, I think what I'll do is, maybe what I'll do is I'll set up a discount code for your viewers.
	And I'll send you that.
	You can put it in the link in your YouTube video link.
	Oh, definitely, yeah.
	Yeah, let's do that.
	That'd be good.
	And I'll send you a couple of codes too.
	And if you feel like, if you're inclined to do the program, if you're interested, maybe we can have a conversation about it after you're done.
	Yeah, I'll give it a shot, man.
	I mean, I'm sure I could benefit from it myself.
	Especially my audience knows how chaotic my life has been.
	They never know what setting I'm going to have in the background because I move around so much.
	And I mean, I'm just trying to, you know, I'm figuring things out as I go, too.
	And I'm very open and honest, so I never...
	I don't know.
	I never try to hide the fact that I don't know what I'm doing.
	I'm getting pretty old.
	I mean, I'm not old, but just to a standard of I shouldn't be bouncing from place to place because traditionally I should probably have my own spot.
	I should be completely focused and established.
	You've obviously latched onto something.
	You've produced a pretty successful YouTube channel.
	How come and how did you manage that?
	From a young age, I always knew that I wanted to entertain people.
	I just didn't know exactly what I thought was going to be through music.
	I always started playing the guitar and the drums and stuff.
	And when I kind of recognized that that wasn't really what I wanted to pursue because of just the independent thoughts and the stuff that I want to do, the visions that I have, it's very hard to work with people, especially when those other people have their own type of visions and ambitions.
	So when there was something like YouTube, when that became a thing, I started just putting some stuff out there.
	Actually, I honestly thought I was going to Be like a gaming channel.
	When I first started the channel, that was the first thing that I was going to try to do, especially since gamers were doing so well.
	I would love to be a part of that community.
	But when I saw, like I said, free speech being threatened, when I saw the thing that propped up, say in 2014, Gamergate, and then there was little offshoots where a lot of the radical leftists were going after things like metal and saying that metal is sexist and stuff like that, and we need to We need to do something about it.
	And that's when I started just putting out some content and people were starting to listen.
	And it's no secret that a lot of people like to listen to me because they think I'm a breath of fresh air.
	And there's a stigma of black Americans where people are so shocked.
	Oh wow, it's so nice to meet somebody that's not XYZ. You know, it sucks to say that.
	It sucks to say that, but it's just the truth.
	I mean, you know, the black men that I know in my area, or say that I've met, and I've lived in, say, South Central Los Angeles, just smack dab in the middle.
	And it's just unfortunate.
	It's an unfortunate community.
	They're not really interested.
	And like I say, they can really benefit from your program because they're just not interested in anything.
	And a lot of people that I've met, and I've worked a bunch of different jobs, they just...
	They feel like they're doomed already.
	Their destiny has already been set.
	It's a terrible thing for people to think because the world is full of more possibility than people generally realize.
	Here's a couple of things that are interesting in that regard.
	You may or may not know that I've done a lot of work on the psychology of religion.
	One of the things I did was look into the origin of the word sin, and strangely enough, so the word sin means essentially to violate the sacred moral code, something like that, and you can think about that as breaking a rule, but that's not exactly the right way to think about it, because sometimes it's a sin not to break a rule.
	You know, if the rule is unjust or tyrannical or outdated or blind, Then it's up to you to break the damn rule and to suffer the consequences and so to sin means more to go against your own spirit and to violate your own spirit and then to violate your own your own proper mode of being you know to not to be true to yourself and it's actually derived from a Greek word and the word is hamartia and hamartia is an
	archery term and it means to miss the center of the target And so, in my role as a clinical psychologist, I'm always dealing with helping people.
	You might think what I'm doing is curing mental illness, but I don't think that's really what I'm doing.
	What I'm doing is helping people get their lives together.
	And lots of people come to me not because they have mental illness, but because they have very, very complicated lives.
	Their families are fractured, They're under extreme societal pressure and they have economic trouble and maybe they're sick.
	Life is hard on them and they have real problems.
	And what we try to do is to figure out what the target is and then figure out how they can hit it.
	And I can tell you a couple of reasons why people fail.
	One reason is that they don't ever define what constitutes success.
	So they never even aim at the target.
	And my experience has been, if you specify a target intelligently, like you don't want to shoot your arrow at a target that's 50 miles away, that you can't see.
	You're not going to hit it.
	You have to put a target that's pretty close and that's sort of within your skill level.
	But most of the time, if you set up a target properly and you practice, you can hit it.
	And so the idea that people have that they're doomed from the outset, that's true if you believe it.
	And I'm not trying to say that life is equally difficult for everyone and you should just pull up your socks and get at it.
	I'm not saying that because I know full well that that's not true.
	But you can overcome a tremendous amount of opposition.
	You can defeat a very powerful set of adversaries if you're locked onto a goal that you truly value and that you've thought through and articulated.
	Writing that down does really help, as you observed before.
	The psychological literature on that is very clear.
	So I would say, don't make the mistake of assuming that your life is doomed without putting that theory thoroughly to the test.
	The other problem with that idea, and this is something that goes along with nihilism, is that you might say, well, it's pointless and I'm doomed and the world is against me.
	It's like, yeah, the problem is that also gives you an excuse not to take any responsibility.
	And maybe that's the underground reason why you're saying that you're doomed and that everything is stacked against you.
	And that's not to say that there aren't structural inequalities and all of that, because obviously there are.
	Yeah, and that's something that I 100% agree with you.
	I think leaning more towards, I think there's a lot of people that just try to opt out and they don't want to take any responsibility.
	I think there's a bigger influence of that where there are clear-cut examples of people just thriving through the worst of circumstances.
	I made this video called Message to Millennials at New Year's, around New Year's and that got to be very popular and I think I talked about the future authoring program in that video but one of the things I thought about was I thought it would be comical and this was after I came across you I thought it would be comical if I could Run a discount code for the future authoring for black guys.
	But I didn't know how I would do that.
	But what's the demographics of your viewership?
	Do you know?
	Like, who watches you?
	There's a very small amount.
	My demographic normally is, say, a Caucasian male, of course.
	And because of that, there are some...
	Some black dudes that just don't even want to, you know, they want to call me a coon or an Uncle Tom or whatever, and they're saying that I'm catering to the white man and all this.
	Why do they say that, though?
	Because, I mean, why is that something that would be directed against you?
	Because that seems like a...
	Like, it's a curious kind of insult.
	You know, I mean, I understand being insulted, I get insulted, but you have to wonder sometimes why it's that particular kind of insult that gets directed against someone.
	So why do you think that's being, why are you being put down in that particular way?
	I just feel like there's a lot of people that are just being told to think that way.
	I don't think genuinely, because I never really had that issue.
	I really didn't have that issue growing up with, say, when I would be in the black community.
	There were a lot of them, because there were some people that just, say, for example, that maybe grew up in a private school a little bit, and they had a little bit of a different start.
	Maybe they're an empty vessel, and they were just able to just have Like books, like just literature and didn't really grow up on TV and stuff.
	And that's kind of how I got my start.
	And then from there, I just kind of entered the public sphere of school and everything.
	And so most people were pretty cool with me.
	But then as I started to gain a little bit of notoriety, I started to notice that there's quite a few people that...
	And I'm like, where are you getting this thought process from where I'm like a traitor or I'm a coon if I don't...
	If I'm not exactly like you, if I'm not like, say...
	You know, the stereotypical BET black guy that's just only exclusively into hip-hop.
	I love listening to hip-hop, but I also actually like metal a lot more.
	And because of that thing, it's like, oh, you're whitewashed, or you're this.
	And I'm like, why?
	Why are we...
	It seems particularly dopey to think of you as a sellout, because you've made yourself a presence on YouTube.
	It's not like anybody's handed that to you on a silver platter.
	It was just some...
	I mean, that sort of thing is open to anyone.
	And we're in the Wild West frontier days of YouTube.
	And you built yourself a following pretty much of your own accord.
	So I don't see...
	I mean, it's obviously some of it's got to be to do with resentment and jealousy.
	I imagine so.
	But I saw a similar thing happening.
	I thought it was very distressing at that free speech rally that we talked about.
	There was a kid there who now works for Rebel Media, an Ethiopian guy, and he's pretty dark.
	Oh yeah, I've seen him.
	And pretty articulate, you know, and now he's caught himself a good career with Rebel Media, which is pretty funny.
	But when he was speaking at the open mic, because it was an open mic session, The woman who founded Black Lives Matter in Toronto was standing about 12 feet away from him, and she yelled coon at him about a dozen times.
	And I thought, well, she's someone I have who I think is almost utterly contemptible.
	And because her behavior, generally speaking, is beyond reprehensible.
	But I thought that was a remarkable thing for her to be doing.
	Absolutely.
	jaw-droppingly appalling things to do but I was also curious about why that particular insult like what does that mean to her?
	I mean, I wonder that myself.
	I wonder that myself especially because reading up from my understanding of what a coon actually is and what a coon used to be was kind of like the whole shucking and jiving term where you had to turn on, you had to put on a show to entertain the masses or whatever.
	You had to For example, be very stereotypical.
	I see a lot of people in the black community, the ones that are calling people, black people like me, a coon, they're actually the ones that are coons themselves, actually.
	The way that I'm like… Yeah, and it's like, dude, it's so embarrassing to see how… The dissent that I get on my channel, I get a lot of valid criticism from people.
	Sometimes they'll tear me a new A because sometimes I'm just...
	I deserve it.
	Sometimes I deserve it.
	But when it comes to black people, usually the ones that you can visibly see their thumbnails and avatars, I actually feel very disappointed because it's usually just an ad hominem.
	It's usually coon.
	It's usually sellout.
	I can just...
	Do the keyword search and search Koon.
	It's either somebody joking around because I made a video about a year ago or something just called hashtag I am a Koon.
	Just basically embracing it.
	Kind of showing that I don't really buckle.
	I really don't care.
	The ad hominem attacks and just Just petty insults.
	It does not affect me whatsoever.
	So I was supposed to make shirts and everything like that, but I kind of got a little bit behind.
	But yeah, just kind of showing people that, hey, it's whatever.
	Just let that slide off of you.
	And it's all they have.
	And it does kind of break my heart a little bit.
	I feel like, say, I would hope that I would be somewhat of like...
	Of an example of, hey, it's not hopeless.
	Stop talking about systemic racism and saying that.
	Stop being a doomsayer and try to better yourself.
	If you're living in a bad situation, how can you get yourself out of it?
	I always use my mother as an example where she talks about just all the stuff that she went through.
	She went through a lot of stuff.
	And to be able to raise two kids and give us a good start in private school, private elementary, and then I went to public school afterwards.
	But it just gave me a huge advantage to where my mind felt incredibly stimulated to the point where I remember doing fractions and taxes when I was in first grade, dealing with those type of things that were – it was very difficult at the time, but now – Like, very useful to the point where, yeah, I do my own taxes, I don't have any problems with that.
	Like, people are always like, oh, I don't know what to do, I gotta pay somebody some money.
	And I'm like, nah, dude, what?
	You know, I think also the insults, like, there's a kind of challenge that's associated with them, too.
	So, if someone, like, if you're enveloped in a particular worldview and someone comes up who actually challenges that, either by what they say or what they do, the first thing you're gonna do Because you don't want to recalibrate your entire belief system.
	You're going to throw horrible things at them and see if any of them stick.
	And so I guess partly what happens is that...
	I mean, I've been insulted in that way as well because people have called me a bigot and a transphobe.
	And I was protected against that to some degree, I think, because I'd already put 500 hours of videos online.
	And so if I was any of those reprehensible things...
	People probably could have found that out pretty quickly by going through the material that I had put online.
	Because almost every word I've uttered to students in the last five years has been recorded and is publicly accessible.
	So if there was anything in what I was saying or what I believed that was actually It actually deserved that kind of derogatory classification, then it would have been found out very rapidly.
	But it's also the case, I think, that people, when they throw those sorts of things at you, there's a part of them that's hoping that you can withstand it and tell them exactly why they're wrong, just on the off chance that you're the real thing.
	And so, you know, you've got a certain amount of success that you generated yourself, and so people are going to say, well, you sold out.
	And then they're going to sit back and watch and see what you say.
	It's like, well, I said he's sold out.
	Maybe it's true, but maybe he can defend himself too.
	So it's sort of like people will throw the worst that they can at you and see if you can withstand it.
	And that's part of the way they test to see if they actually should pay any attention to you.
	So how come you're able to let the insults, let's say...
	I mean, they must bother you to some degree, but...
	They don't bother you that much and you don't let them stop you.
	And why is that?
	Well, it's – the only thing like that – the only thing that bothers me is – like say the insults when it comes to – especially when it comes to – when it's race-related.
	The only ones that bother me are the ones that like say when it comes from black people in general.
	The ones that I would – because I feel like say my content could help out some black Americans.
	I've made some videos about saying stop.
	Basically, stop just thinking that the world's against you.
	Stop just thinking that the United States is just a systemic racist system in 2017 or whatever.
	And you can't...
	There's just no point in trying.
	Stop telling your children that.
	Give them a boost.
	I would think that they would help me out.
	So that's the only time when they say stuff to me like that.
	Everybody else...
	I've been on the internet for so long that people are just going to talk and say some of the worst things.
	And most times...
	They would never say it to your face.
	They would never—most people.
	Right, right.
	I don't know if you've ever actually been on Tumblr.com.
	I don't know if you've actually logged on there.
	No, I don't know Tumblr at all.
	Yeah.
	I would say that a lot of stuff that you hear nowadays, like when you hear about gendered pronouns… The Zzer and all the weird things that are coming up foot and the other Ken and people just being just mean and just nasty.
	A lot of that stuff I would see that was Tumblr.
	I've never heard of any type of, you know, a hundred different type of pronouns until Tumblr and I don't know, this was like the safe space for them I guess.
	So why do you think Tumblr is like that?
	Why do you think that's focused there?
	I've wondered that myself.
	I have a friend that I respect her greatly, but she's one of those people that changes her name and her pronouns and this and that and had a boyfriend that… He has a beard and stuff, but he's like, call me she.
	And I'm like, okay, sure.
	And I'm trying to figure out where I can't find the route.
	Was there a giant presence, maybe a public figure that maybe started talking about these ideas?
	Because I don't know.
	The only thing, the earliest thing that I could really find, I remember back in 2011, I started seeing a trend happen in Texas.
	Where it was being wolves.
	It was around that Twilight movies.
	The twilights started to come out.
	Maybe it was even younger.
	Because I think the twilights came out a while ago in the movies.
	I started seeing that a bunch of people were starting to dress like wolves.
	They're putting tails on and all these things.
	And I was starting to see stuff like that.
	And maybe it was just the pop culture.
	Things like that were making it socially acceptable.
	And then it started to be discussed on forums and everything.
	And then maybe Tumblr.
	I don't know how it became the ground zero.
	But it seems like that for me.
	And now it's just being translated into academia.
	Okay, so that's interesting.
	Because one of the things I've wondered about with all this identity transformation.
	Includes not only that sort of gender, let's call it play, that you're talking about, but also that other kin universe.
	It looks a lot to me like the sort of fantasy play that's characteristic of kids when they're about ages, say, from about four to about nine, or maybe four to eleven.
	You know, that would be the maximal extent of it.
	And I wonder, to some degree, if what's happening is that because Because I don't think that modern kids get enough chance to engage in fantasy play, like pretend play, like they did 30 or 40 years ago, that maybe that's being pushed aside by mass media, it's being pushed aside by computers and video games, it's being pushed aside by...
	cell phones and it's also less common because children's play is so structured now part because they don't have very many siblings and play dates are set up and kids lives are hyper structured and so kids have to go through that pretend play period and I'm wondering if maybe because we've suppressed that in our society if it's blossoming out in universities when kids get away from their parents and can start to Experiment with their own identity if they're doing that through a...
	Because it looks like pretend play.
	I'm going to pretend to be a boy.
	I'm going to pretend to be a girl.
	I'm going to pretend to be an animal.
	I'm going to pretend to be a werewolf.
	It's fantasy play.
	And there's a lot of objection when people say, well, I'm not going to play your game.
	You can play your game, but you don't have any right to compel me to play your game.
	But it may be that there's a developmental impulse that's being manifest there that didn't get its chance to express itself at the proper stage of development.
	Something like that.
	Because it really is strange.
	It is, and I feel like there definitely is some type of correlation because when I was a kid and when we were going out, we were like – I'm old enough to where we didn't have any type of technology other than, say, the Super Nintendo was like, oh, this is amazing.
	And I would take the bus.
	I don't even think kids can do this anymore.
	Just take public transportation.
	I would be back by sundown.
	I would go to another city.
	Sometimes I would just go ride my bike, and me and my friends would have missions.
	We would do crazy stuff.
	Right, right, right.
	I wish I recorded some of this stuff so I can remember it.
	But my point is that definitely kids don't have anything like that.
	And like you said, with the mass media, with the video games, as much as I love video games, there is so much structure that you can't really branch out and really create.
	You're very limited to what you can do.
	Even with video games where you can create a character and stuff, Sometimes that's as far as it can go, but you're still kind of limited to where you can go.
	You can't fantasize.
	It's why I say I still love reading books because you create your own world in it.
	And then sometimes if somebody's read the same book, you can compare and contrast and be like, How do you see this character?
	Even though sometimes they describe them, you'll still have an imagery of how they look.
	That's a good point because I think what happened in part was that kids engage in pretend play when they're too young to read.
	But then when they start reading fiction, they are still engaging in pretend play because they have to imagine the characters.
	Whereas in movies and in video games, the characters are basically put forth for them.
	And there's utility in that because...
	There can be additional structure, but the problem is that additional structure also stops you from having to use your imagination.
	And it's through your imagination that you experiment with all the different things that you could be.
	And maybe that's just being pushed later into development now, and that's why young people are so outraged when you violate their pretend identity.
	They look like kids playing to me, except that really they're too old to be doing that.
	Yeah, and that's why it's so absurd to me that, say, something like C16, it could even be passed, or that there's even a need for it.
	Because, like you said, it does seem like make-believe and pretend.
	And it's like, how can you take this seriously?
	And what's happening, it also seems like such a major regression, like something that Yeah, right.
	You're trying to hammer down on free speech.
	You can get in trouble by misusing someone's pronouns.
	And then now, recently, M103, the motion, has been brought up.
	And what has been going on with M103? Have you been keeping up with that?
	Oh, yeah.
	Well, one of the things that's happening that's really interesting is that As far as I'm concerned, so I'm going to do a couple of lecture series or a lecture series in the next year and and I'm starting it in May and what I want to do is start at the beginning of the Bible and talk about the psychological significance of all the stories right from the beginning to the end.
	But I also and this is something my Patreon funding is helping me with this and then there's something else that I want to do in parallel which is that I I started talking to a group of moderate Muslims about a week and a half ago.
	Well, and some a couple of months ago.
	Very, very smart people and very committed.
	And they want to put forth, they want to start the process of describing what a reformed and moderate Islam might be.
	And so, and I think that's the right way to go with regards to the tension that exists between the West and the Islamic world or even within Canada.
	There isn't a lot of tension in Canada.
	About anything, really.
	But to the degree that there is tension, what needs to be done between new immigrant communities and the communities that they're integrated into, obviously, is for a dialogue of consensus to be started.
	And hopefully, I'm going to engage in that.
	And that's the proper way to fight Islamophobia.
	But the current government They insisted that this motion, which is not a bill, it's a motion which is an expression of commitment on the part of Parliament to go and study an issue or to make a moral stance on an issue.
	And they described the concern with emergent Islamophobia.
	And the opposition parties in Canada complained about the specification of Islam In the wording of this motion and said, well look, we will all support an anti-prejudice and anti-harassment and anti-discrimination motion.
	Cross religions, no problem.
	But if you use that word, Islamophobia specifically, we're not going to support it.
	And so they offered to the current government The possibility of unanimous consent for the motion, but the originators of the bill wouldn't withdraw the wording, which I thought was absolutely appalling because Islamophobia is a really...
	It's not a good word.
	First of all, it takes a medical term, phobia, and uses it politically, which is really a treacherous and sneaky thing to do.
	And second, it specifies a specific religion when there's no evidence that that religion is being specifically targeted.
	I mean, it might...
	There's no real evidence in Canada that the adherents of that religion are suffering from any more discrimination than the adherents of other minority religions or even the adherents of so-called majority religions.
	So it was a very bad idea.
	And so I think this other approach is better.
	And so I publicly opposed M103 with a certain amount of effect because I'd be talking to the people Who are running for the leadership of the official opposition in Canada, the Conservative Party.
	And I've talked to a number of them about M103, and about also issues of responsibility among young men, because the Conservatives finally have something to sell young people, and they never have.
	If for the first time in the history of Conservatism, during my lifetime anyways, the Conservatives have something to sell to young people, and that's responsibility.
	And so, we've also been talking a lot about that.
	But...
	So there was some opposition to M103, and I think the proper way to progress with that, to reduce the tension between the Islamic world in general, but also Islamic newcomers in Canada and longer-term Canadians, is to engage in a dialogue with moderate people.
	And I hope that that's going to get off the ground.
	We've got the ball rolling and some very impressive people already on board.
	We've got the ball rolling for that, and I hope I'm going to play a role in that.
	So that would be really exciting.
	It would be really fun to do that in parallel with this biblical series.
	Because then I can approach the fundamental stories of Judaism and Christianity at the same time as engaging in a public discussion about the meaning of Islam and the implications of Islamic belief for the broader political culture.
	So that's an exciting opportunity, no doubt about it.
	Yeah, that sounds great, and it sounds like a great way to go about it, too, if you can't do those things simultaneously, especially so there can't be any talk about like, oh, he's just criticizing Islam or whatever, when you also – you're just – you're talking about just religion kind of across the board.
	Yeah, well, I'm trying to understand it.
	Yeah, and I think a lot of people are, too, and I think that's kind of like – What's so frustrating about what's been happening and things like say M103 even existing or say something for quite some time on YouTube that just there are certain words that if you put it in your title, your tags, your video would be demonetized.
	They're saying it's It is an advertiser friendly.
	Sometimes you wouldn't even be saying anything harsh.
	I would just love to have an honest and open dialect about Islam because I think there's a lot of people that don't understand it.
	I think there's a lot of people that are just like, oh, all Muslims are this.
	I've seen quite a few people that are like that.
	I'm like, wow, I think we need to talk about this.
	People don't want to talk about it because people that are full-time, you're not going to make any money off of it.
	It sucks.
	I feel like it's such more of a I put out a video just talking about what happened in London not too long ago.
	I knew I was going to get demonetized, but I'm like, why not?
	I want to just at least put it out there and say, can we talk about this?
	Can we be honest and say that there's definitely some type of issues on both sides?
	There's just a lack of communication and I think what you're going to do is fantastic because it's desperately needed.
	I'm fortunate because last April when I set up my Patreon account, which was way before this political Political issue exploded.
	I did it mostly out of curiosity because, you know, I was making, I would say, fairly low quality videos from a production perspective.
	I was just using an iPad on it on a tripod I Was just using an iPad on a tripod and and I thought well Maybe I could you know by that time I'd had about a million views and I thought wow that's that's a lot man If I wrote a book that sold a million copies, I'd be dancing a jig out on the street.
	So I was really starting to take YouTube seriously, because I thought about it for a while, and I thought, Well, I see what's happening.
	This is like a Gutenberg revolution.
	It's the first time in human history where the spoken word has as much reach as a book and as much permanency.
	And that's a whole new thing, man.
	And it's way faster than a book.
	As you know, you can...
	Well, this video we're making right now.
	We can have this published and in front of an audience, an immense audience, and attract a couple of hundred thousand viewers within a few days.
	It's unparalleled.
	And so I thought, well, I'll set up a Patreon account because that was a new thing too.
	Because I've been really curious about how creative people can monetize what they're doing.
	And it's very difficult.
	And so I was looking into that and I found Patreon and I thought, well, I'll set up a Patreon account and see what happened.
	But I was fortunate because I decided not to use advertiser-generated revenue on YouTube.
	I decided to use Patreon and I didn't know it at the time, but that also made me more or less immune to threats of such things as demonetization.
	Yeah.
	You know, which is a form of...
	It's not exactly a form of censorship.
	It's more like an attempt to turn the...
	The tremendous diversity of music on YouTube into elevator music, right?
	It can't be contentious because then you can't sell advertising on it.
	Well, if it's not contentious and interesting, no one's going to watch it.
	So it's a suicidal move in some sense on the part of the advertisers.
	Because if they sanitize YouTube, then all that's going to happen is another...
	Another free speech video site is going to pop up and people are all going to flock there in no time flat.
	Like it's a long-term suicidal move.
	But there are ways to protect yourself against it.
	And Patreon seems to be an interesting way of doing that.
	How many YouTube videos have you had demonetized?
	Luckily I haven't had too many.
	I've probably had a total of like six.
	And the main ones that have been demonetized were pretty old, and I wasn't really going to generate any money from them anyways.
	However, this month I've had one of them that was one of my better videos, or at least it did better.
	It was one about the attack in London, and that was immediately demonetized, and I was just like, well, okay, fine.
	And then another one, because of the whole ad hysteria with a bunch of the companies pulling out, they started to crack down a little bit harder, and I responded to, there's this company called Mike, and they just still put out a bunch of nonsense.
	A lot of people are starting to pull back a little bit on their social justice warrior ultra-progressive nonsense.
	But they're still pushing on, and they had a video called Things White People Killed in 2016, and it was just a bunch of trends, right?
	Dancing moves and all this stuff, saying that if white people do it, It's cringy.
	That's only true for nerdy white people.
	Right?
	That's really what it comes down to.
	It comes down to, say, just nerdy people in general.
	When you see people dance or do something that just have no rhythm, it's just so cringy.
	You just can't look.
	You get the secondhand embarrassment, right?
	But yeah, they just put out some ridiculous stuff, so I reacted to that, and that video did very well.
	And that got demonetized recently, so I'm like, oh great, so I'm not gonna get anything from that anymore.
	One last thing I want to ask you, because people really wanted to know, what is your opinion I used to work in a pizza restaurant and what I learned was that you actually have a lifetime maximum of pizza ingestion.
	And once you hit that, you can't actually eat any more pizza.
	And so I hit that when I was about 16 because I worked in a pizza restaurant for about four years.
	And so I ate my 10,000th pizza and that was like, oh, that's it, man.
	There's something about the spice.
	I think it might be oregano, that specific spice that I don't like.
	And so even covering it up with pineapple, that would improve it.
	But it still makes it very difficult for me to eat pizza.
	All right.
	Fair enough.
	Fair enough.
	All right.
	All right.
	Sounds good.
	Alright, Dr.
	Peterson, thank you so much for taking the time out of your, I'm sure, your insanely busy schedule to talk to me, man.
	It's been an absolute honor.
	It's a pleasure, man.
	It was real fun.
	And I like your channel, and I wish you the best of luck, truly.
	And I hope you get yourself oriented and knock them dead.
	That'll be good.
	Most definitely, man.
	Thanks again.
	I appreciate it.
	Alright.
	Alright.
	Bye-bye.

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