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Feb. 15, 2019 - Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
01:02:55
Jordan Peterson Threatens Everything of Value In NZ
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Hi everyone.
I'm in Australia and New Zealand off to New Zealand in the next couple of days and I thought I'd bring you up to date with a story that's been breaking there that's of some substantial interest and a certain degree of absurdity.
A group there known as Auckland Peace Action released a press release on Monday 11th of February 2019 stating, quote, Jordan Peterson threatens everything of value in our society, which I had to admit was rather impressive because that's not an easy thing to manage.
Anyways, I'll read you a little bit of it.
What happened after the release was that a journalist, Sean Plunkett, interviewed the author or the spokesperson of this particular press release.
And then we had a chance to talk the next day.
And so what you're going to see in this video is me reading the press release.
Then you're going to see Sean interviewing Iris Krzosiak, I hope I've got that reasonably right, of Auckland Peace Action.
And then you're going to see the full interview that I had with Sean the next day.
So here goes.
Jordan Peterson threatens everything of value in our society.
In the lead-up to Jordan Peterson's visit to New Zealand, we have a duty to condemn his sexist, queer-phobic, racist, and deeply reactionary views, says Iris Krizosiak of Auckland Peace Action.
Jordan Peterson, professor of psychology at the University of Toronto, turned right-wing media celebrity, is in New Zealand to promote his book 12 Rules for Life.
This book, while offering superficially useful life advice to an audience of disaffected white men, promotes a reactionary misogynistic view of the world utterly in opposition to New Zealand values.
While we as a country have many problems, we can be justly proud of our values of gender equality, egalitarianism, and social inclusivity, says Ms.
Krzyczak.
Jordan Peterson is actively trying to undermine these values.
This is distinctly unhelpful.
I won't read you the rest of it.
You can find it at Scoop Politics if you're interested.
And now we'll turn to Sean's interview with Iris and his analysis of her claims.
Iris, your group has come out with a press release yesterday that got some coverage saying Jordan Peterson threatens everything of value in our society.
Why?
Why does telling kids to clean their room up represent the end of civilisation as we know it?
What I would say as such is that telling kids to clean their room is probably not a bad thing.
The issue comes with that of, you know, pretty far from all that Jordan Peterson is doing.
Not really.
That's what his book's about.
That's what he's promoting on his tour.
Isn't it?
I would say not.
If you take a look at some of what's actually said in the book, and many of the media comments he has made elsewhere, It seems quite clear that he has some seriously problematic views.
Name one.
Okay, so let's see.
Let's begin with the kind of...
So his interview with Camille Pallier, wherein he effectively has said that, well, you know, he believes that in discussions with men he knows where he stands more or less because Yeah,
his argument is that men are better at putting barriers around social interaction between each other because there is the implicit and underlying reality that if things get out of control when men have a conversation, there is the possibility of physical violence.
And he says that subconscious check On how far or how, if you like, bitchy a conversation can get is tempered by that knowledge.
I don't see...
Does that very suggestion or idea, which I know a lot of people agree with, does that threaten Western civilisation and the very foundations and everything of value in our society?
Well, I'm not going to speak about...
I won't speak about Western civilisation and, you know, we have a bit...
Whether that concept even makes sense, but if you consider something like, say, I mean, consider basically how that kind of statement is going to be read.
I think it's going to be read by men saying, yeah, we need to think about, you know, the differences, the biological and, I guess, behavioural differences between sexes, and we need to talk about these things honestly and openly if we're going to make progress on some of the issues of gender in our society.
Alright, but on a cultural milieu where, frankly, homosexuals are still getting beaten up, we have ridiculous rates of domestic partner violence, frankly, and for the last few months...
So I just want to check, has Jordan Peterson, to your knowledge, ever beaten his wife or beaten up a homosexual?
No.
Has he ever advocated people beat their wives or beat homosexuals?
I don't believe he has.
No, so that would be a no, right.
Can I please continue?
Yeah.
So, the fact of the matter is that Jordan Peterson has a large platform, there are many people paying attention to him, and if you're making statements in such a situation, it is vitally important that the statements you make cannot be misread in such a way as to promote...
Which is, he's hardly responsible for the misreading of his statements, is he?
I would say that...
Look, everyone has made...
If you do it once, yes.
If you do it repeatedly...
Do what repeatedly?
Talk about things you're interested in in an open and intellectual way.
That's all he does.
Or do you think he...
Maybe, Iris, do you think he should be shut down?
Do you think his ideas are too dangerous and he shouldn't be allowed to speak in New Zealand?
I don't believe he should be shut down.
Hence why we're not doing that.
The issue, however, is that his ideas are rather more problematic than I feel you're getting...
Which ideas?
Which ones specifically?
That you should clean your room?
That you should hold your shoulders back?
That you should take responsibility for your own life?
That people shouldn't be compelled by governments to use particular words in particular circumstances?
Okay.
The one about particular words in particular circumstances.
Yes, I agree that it would be ridiculous to make the government to force, you know, effectively to use the threat of governmental force to do that.
But the way the statements are being read in the media, including by some people...
Yeah, well, he can't be responsible for the stupidity of people reading his statements, can he?
Again, as I'm saying, do you feel that people are never responsible for the effects of the things they say?
Well, yeah, no, not particularly, but I'd also say that it would seem to me, from my observation of the impact that Jordan Peterson has had on people's lives, that it's been overwhelmingly positive for a huge number of people, which is why he's so incredibly popular.
I would point out that you can say the same thing about a lot of fascist movements.
They have a very positive effect on the lives of many young men.
Are you saying that he's a fascist?
No, I'm not saying that he's a specialist.
I am saying that he is exploiting a lot of the same kind of basic...
How is he exploiting anything?
He doesn't compel anyone to go to his talks to look at his stuff on YouTube?
How is that exploiting anyone?
I'm not saying...
I mean exploiting in the terms of he is using the same...
Like, he is using the same basic psychological mechanisms to build his base.
Well, what base?
He's just saying what he thinks and people happen to be interested.
Are you suggesting he's running some campaign to destroy the Western world?
Hardly.
I just think that he is a very irresponsible man who is making...
Well, let's talk about responsibility, shall we, and your group, Auckland Peace Action.
you would like people not to go and see certain films, and you're happy to physically intercede to stop them seeing certain films, and in fact your Wellington branch bought fake bombs to create terror in 2018 at a film festival and stopped people watching a film about Ben-Gurion, right?
Is that right, Iris?
Factually correct, sir.
You're putting a very negative spin on it.
I'm not.
I was just saying some facts, mate.
I mean, that's the thing, though.
So what do you think is a greater threat to our society?
Threatening to plant fake bombs in a movie theatre and telling people they can't go and see a movie because your group doesn't like it, do you think that's a greater threat to our society than Jordan Peterson booking out a hall and saying, pay some money and come and see me if you want?
I mean, I'd say that Jordan Peterson is certainly a greater threat to marginalised groups in society.
I can tell you that I've got...
Like, I can tell you that...
I've never seen him say anything negative about women, trans people or queer people.
I've never seen him be homophobic, transphobic or misogynistic.
And believe me, I've watched a lot of what Jordan Peterson says and does.
I've never once, anywhere, seen him be misogynistic, homophobic or transphobic.
Can you point me to an example where he has been?
Iris?
What in this case do you mean by an example?
An example where he in any way is misogynistic, homophobic or transphobic.
So you do not feel that effectively saying that women are...
So, just to be clear, you don't feel that saying that women wear lipstick to work in order to appear sexually provocative?
He's not saying that, and he's never said that.
What he said, Iris, is if we need to, if we accept, we've got to have some rules.
He understands the biology of men and women, and he says men need to respect women's boundaries, and he is always very, very clear about that.
But he says if we're going to have a desexualised workplace, if we're going to have a set of rules, let's be very clear about what those rules are.
He would argue that makeup, right, that makeup is designed as a sexual display in its pure, you know, in an academic sense.
People put on makeup or have traditionally put on makeup as a sexual display.
And he said, OK, if we're going to have workplaces where sex and any sort of interaction of that nature between the genders is off the agenda, maybe we need to think about make-up in the workplace.
He is not accusing women, he's not slut-shaming, and he's not sitting there saying, women bring it on themselves.
He's just saying we need to be realistic about what the rules and boundaries are.
OK, so a question for you, if you will.
So Jordan Peterson says things which you clearly feel are not problematic.
Well no, millions of people think it's not problematic and millions of people seem to think he's saying stuff that no one's had the balls to say for a while and they're on board with him.
Well saying stuff that no one's had the balls to say is really pretty passe.
Isn't it?
That's what I'd say your movement prides itself on doing.
Yes, but we aren't saying it simply because no one else has the balls to say it.
We say it because we genuinely believe in our political position.
And I'm sure that Jordan Peterson genuinely believes in his.
And actually, to be honest, they seem more mainstream and less of a threat to society than buying fake bombs to scare people out of going to see a movie in New Zealand.
So, just out of curiosity, how do you feel about, like, what kind of effects do you think that, say, I don't know, bombing civilians has on society?
Because that's what we're fundamentally about opposing.
Okay.
Are you saying Jordan Peterson bombs civilians?
No, I'm not.
What I'm saying...
Then why, when we're talking about your press release about Jordan Peterson, would you bring that up?
Well, why do you keep on bringing up the stuff about, you know...
Because it's your group that put out the press release and it's your group that bought fake bombs and said that people shouldn't go and see a movie you didn't like in a free country.
Oh dear Lord.
Well...
Let me put it this way, if you would.
Like, if you're going to...
Look, if you're judging us by the effect of...
Okay, how to phrase this?
Iris, I might just be suggesting that your press release is a little bit over the top.
Are you prepared to admit that on the back of this interview?
No.
Simply because I'm living on a fairly regular basis with the effects that Jordan Peterson's talks are having on his fan base.
We are getting repeated, consistent harassment from, frankly, Jordan Peterson fans.
How do you know they're Jordan Peterson fans?
Because they say so.
So Jordan Peterson is inciting people to hate on you?
Yes.
He is inciting people to hate on you.
Give me an example.
Give me an example.
Okay, so I suppose that...
Okay, so in the wake of a press release, we are getting, frankly, an awful lot of...
Look, we got an email from...
Look, we got an email from, frankly, what appears to be a white nationalist...
Yeah.
...suggesting that we take a look at a whole bunch of, frankly, Nazi videos.
Yeah.
Are they Jordan Peterson Nazi videos?
No.
No, they aren't.
Okay, so what's he got to do with that email from the Nazi...
Well, the fact of the matter is that his fan base are the same fan base that are sending me...
No, they're not.
I'm part of his fan base.
I'm not a Nazi.
I don't...
I'm not suggesting that you are, but I'm...
Well, you're suggesting anyone who does like what he says is a Nazi, and that seems pretty wild.
What I'm suggesting is that he has created a certain subset of his fans, which may not be the same subset as you are a part of.
In fact, I'm pretty sure they aren't.
Yes.
Yeah, okay.
Yeah.
Is behaving in, frankly, quite disgraceful ways.
Then it is the subset of his fans that represent the threat to everything of value in our society, not Jordan Peterson, right?
Right.
So why didn't you say that in your press release and said it was Jordan Peterson who represented the threat to everything of value in our society?
Because Jordan Peterson is calling for his fans to coalesce.
He is encouraging.
No, he's not.
He's just saying what he thinks.
And he's not...
Alright, so just out of curiosity, alright, but where do you draw the line as to responsibility for what you've said, though?
I mean, surely you can't say that he has absolutely no responsibility for the behaviour of people who effectively, you know, the behaviour of people who listen to him, seduously, and take...
Well, I'd be more worried about the consequences of buying a fake bomb to scare someone out of a movie theatre, to be honest, Iris.
And I hate to say that I think most New Zealanders would as well.
Look, I think we can all agree that that action was foolish and that we are not.
And as a result of that, you'll notice that we have not done that again.
Jordan Peterson, on the other hand, is only doubling down on his positions.
Which all seem to be quite reasonable.
Many more resources, a much wider base of support.
Yeah.
Are you going to protest his visits here and try and protest outside his talks?
We've got any number of better things to be doing.
Okay, so you're going to leave him alone?
Or are you going to plant fake bombs in the places he's speaking?
Okay, that's just unfair.
Oh, okay.
Well, I was just judging you on past behaviours.
We've done it once.
I've clearly stated that it was a bad idea and that we don't intend to repeat it.
Okay.
Well, Iris, look, yeah, okay, make a closing comment.
Look, as far as we're concerned, the best thing we can do in order to...
The best thing we can do in order to counteract Peterson is to make people aware of what his views are, what he has said, and how his fan base behaves.
And that's what we're doing.
And all his views are very reasonable and seem to be having a positive effect on the massive number of people who are his fans.
Well, you would say that.
Well, because it's the truth, Iris.
I thank you for your time.
That's Iris Krzyak of Auckland Peace Action.
So that's that.
The Auckland Peace Action Group did release another press release on the 14th stating Auckland Peace Action is issuing a statement to publicly correct the record about a protest action that occurred in Wellington in 2018.
This action occurred at the screening of the film Ben-Gurion at the Dark Edge Film Festival.
Both Auckland Peace Action and our sister organization Peace Action Wellington opposed the showing of this film as it is subject to an international boycott on behalf of Palestinian civil society organizations.
At both Wellington and Auckland screenings, the screenings were disrupted by activists with noisemakers and alarms.
Subsequently, the Doc Edge director alleged that there was a fake bomb at the Wellington screening and this was reported by NewHub.
This was a complete lie.
There was never ever any fake bomb of any sort whatsoever.
NZ police attended both protests and were fully aware that the items in the theaters were noisemakers, as were the theater goers.
The theater was not evacuated and no one was arrested.
So it appears that, at least as far as Auckland Peace Action is concerned, that Sean overstated the case in that lecture.
In any case, the next day I had a chance to talk to him directly, and so now we're going to segue directly into that.
First, let's get the pronouns out of the way.
What would you prefer I called you?
Professor?
Doctor?
Jordan?
Jordan's fine.
Jordan's fine.
I like it that way as well.
Jordan, my first question for you, and the reaction here in New Zealand to the very idea that you're coming here, or that you're fronting on this show today, I've just got to say, and I've watched you for a couple of years, you are one of the most hated people online.
Why do you think it is that people hate you?
I'm hated by a very small minority of very noisy and committed people.
Yeah.
And so they're noisy and committed and so they can make a lot of racket and they are very good at it and often professionally trained to do so.
And they're very casual with their, what would you call it, epithets.
I mean, I was listening to you introduce me and you listed off about 20 terrible things that I might be, many of which were contradictory, but that doesn't seem to make any difference.
Well, it seems hilarious.
Your celebrity gets co-opted from people on all sorts of parts of the political spectrum and extremes of the political spectrum, doesn't it?
Well, I think there's some of that.
I don't know if it gets co-opted too much on the radical left, let's say, although I certainly face the majority of my opposition from the radical left.
But the radical right types are not very fond of me either.
There was a I have a new book written called Dianetics by a rather reprehensible individual named Vox Day, and if you want to find out what the ethno-nationalists think about me, that's a pretty good read.
I wouldn't call it precisely complimentary.
Look, on a personal level, and I'm someone who has fallen foul of the vagaries of Twitter pile-ons, but what's directed at you is at a whole different level, Jordan.
And you've admitted, I know, that you have, well not struggled, but you admit you've had episodes of depression in your life.
I know people who have been horribly affected by the most minor pile-on on social media.
How do you, as an individual, take or channel that hatred to good?
And I imagine it affects your family as well.
Well, part of it is that I have a pretty solid family.
You know, I have lots of people behind me.
Like, my wife is firmly behind me, without hesitation.
My children are behind me, and they're smart and mature, and my parents are behind me, and I have a good set of friends.
And also, generally, I try not to talk about things that I don't know something about, which also helps.
And I'm not impressed with the sorts of Ideological positions that have been put forth, especially by the left-wing radical types in the universities, and I understand what they're doing and why reasonably well, and I feel that whatever vitriol happens to be directed at me is trivial in terms of its danger in comparison to the overwhelming social danger that these ideologies are producing,
and so better to do something about it now than to wait.
Also in a social media world that is dominated by extremism and hatred and vitriol, people I know who have watched you are literally dumbstruck by your ability to remain civil and to engage in debate without getting angry at those who often absolutely lambast you.
I think I've only seen there was a debate you did with Stephen Fry where An American pastor had a go.
And I think I saw some fire there.
I think you were genuinely upset.
But you seem to have a remarkable ability to play the ball, not the man or woman.
Well, that debate, the monk debate that you're talking about, mostly I was upset about the foolishness.
You know, the person I was debating with called me an angry white man.
And it just struck me as so rhetorically foolish and inflammatory and unnecessary, all of those things at the same time.
First of all, he was in Canada and not in the United States.
And those sorts of statements actually don't go over very well in Canada.
And my race had absolutely nothing to do with what we were talking about.
And so it was just The kind of troublemaking statement that does nothing but make things worse.
I'm never happy when I see people behaving in a manner that only makes things worse.
It's a funny thing.
I can't say I exactly felt bad for him, but I thought it was so foolish of him to undermine his own credibility in that manner.
It was just the sort of performance that It removes all patience, you know?
A bad rhetorical statement, an unnecessary racist comment, a rhetorical flourish that had nothing but counterproductive consequences, as you can see by the YouTube commentary, added nothing at all that was productive to the debate, didn't address the issues at hand, was a cheap method of scoring points, a way of playing victim.
I mean, it was altogether A second-rate performance.
And because he had academic pretensions, was a professor, I have a lot less patience for professors and professional journalists than I do for, you know, other people.
Well, because they're supposed to...
Well, that's their profession.
I thought Stephen Fry was brilliant in that debate.
I did too, man.
And he started out saying he didn't agree with a lot of what you said, but he was going to stand next to you and fight your side.
And he also said the world would be a much better place if everyone was less convinced of how right they were.
Yeah, well Stephen Fry is really something.
It was a pleasure to meet him and he's quite the remarkable person.
So that was one of the very good things about that evening.
We're going to take a break, Jordan, and then I want to talk to you about an interview I did yesterday and if that's typical of the stuff that you get.
Yeah, that was quite the interview, man.
We're with Dr Jordan B. Peterson here on Magic Talk.
Back in just a sec.
And we're with Dr Jordan B. Peterson.
Cultural phenomenon and according to Auckland Peace Action, the biggest threat to New Zealand's way of life and civilisation that...
Oh, I don't know.
We've seen since the last earthquake.
They came out earlier this week and threw a lot of labels at Dr Peterson and their spokesman Iris, or spokesperson Iris, came on with me yesterday simply so I could ask them to, well, provide the proof of their accusations.
I didn't think he did that well, or they did that well, Jordan.
Well, it was quite the remarkable interview.
I don't know how many people have watched it, or listened to it, but I suspect quite a few.
And it's no wonder, because it was a real feat of journalistic persistence, I would say, on your part.
You didn't let your interviewee off the hook for a moment, and there wasn't much content there.
There was a lot of exactly the same sort of thing that's It's been happening for the last two years.
It's really quite appalling.
What seems to happen generally in the journalistic sphere, on the negative side for me, is that there's a list of epithets that are It's like all the radical leftists have a list of epithets that are sort of at hand.
Maybe they have them on a little sticky on their computer.
Misogynist, homophobe, Islamophobe, transphobe, bigot, racist.
Then there's often some either Nazi...
Don't forget your cocaine addiction either.
Or there's Jewish shill, which is another one that comes up now and then.
The idea seems to be that if you don't agree with what someone says, that you just lay out the longest possible list of pejoratives that your imagination, your collective imagination can generate, and hope that one of them is sufficiently true in some sense because of something you once said, that it sticks and you're done.
And it's getting downright dull.
I'd say that it seems to me that liberal journalists throughout the Western world have been lining up to try and take you down.
Yeah, well I mean I've had a fair number of journalists who've been supportive of me.
Now whether or not they are on the liberal side, they're certainly not on the radical left side.
Yes, this has been happening pretty much non-stop for two years.
And they're basically out of insults, as far as I can tell, which in some sense disarms them.
But they're actually getting rather dull to read because it's always the same old thing, although the person you interviewed yesterday did have a new twist, which was greatest threat to the civilization of New Zealand, which was really quite impressive as far as pejoratives went.
Alright, so we've dealt with Auckland Peace Action.
I know you're in Australia now.
Has the, if you like, the virulent opposition to you, for whatever reason, is it starting to subside?
And I know there haven't been protesters, I understand, so far in Australia.
There was a few in Adelaide, but above 25, and it wasn't exactly clear what they were protesting.
They seem to be more concerned about homosexual rights, which I don't really know what that has to do with me, but it had to do with whatever they were interested in.
Well, there was a lot of people there, about 5,500 people, but there wasn't a single protester.
And I would say that, yes, overall, the virulence and also the frequency of the hit pieces in the media has declined rather precipitously in the last three or four months.
And I think it's because Well, because it's become dreadfully repetitious and because no smoking pistol of any sort has emerged.
You know, people have gone over virtually everything I've said to students for the last 20 years because almost all of it is recorded and I've scoured my Twitter feed and my Facebook and all the social media platforms that are usable and haven't been able to find anything so far that's of sufficient reprehensibility to take my reputation out.
But the diet's a bit weird, Jordan, come on.
Yeah, well, it's not just a bit weird.
It's very weird.
But, you know, it's not something I... Absolutely.
Let's see.
Alright.
I want to go back two years and in many ways I look at you and if I was going to put you in a fable, you're the guy who said the emperor has no clothes.
The emperor of wokeness, of political correctness, of third wave feminism.
Did you plan two years ago to be where you are now?
A global cultural phenomenon Was it all part of some clever manipulation of modern social media?
Or did you just stand up and say, I'm not going to do this?
Well, I mean, I was writing a book and I was hoping it would be successful, so there was that.
And I had been experimenting quite substantially with YouTube, putting my lectures from the university on YouTube and some lectures that I had done for a small television show and They were developing a certain following, so I had about a million views far before the political controversy hit.
But no, I mean, there's no way of predicting what happened.
It's a completely unpredictable phenomenon.
But I can say that I said what I felt like saying as carefully as I possibly could, and I pretty much had enough of it.
I mean, seriously, I've had enough of it.
I'm not happy with the radical leftists.
I think the postmodern philosophy is what intellectually vapid, nihilistic, malevolent, destructive, arrogant, and narcissistic, impractical as well, all at the same time.
I think that what's happening to the humanities and social sciences is borders on Fraudulently criminal if it hasn't already passed the line.
And I'm absolutely no friend whatsoever of radical leftist utopians.
I feel that there's, after a hundred years of evidence of complete bloody catastrophe on the side of the radical left, it's time for us to wake up and notice that something has gone wrong on that end of the spectrum.
And I don't see any responsibility being taken for that at all.
You know, I've called publicly for the moderate leftist types, whom I have some sympathy for, to draw some lines.
It's like, alright, we know that things can go too far on the left.
When?
Exactly.
Where is it that you go too far?
Now, my sense, it's with the equity doctrine, which I think is not really emotionally powerful, unfortunately.
It doesn't have that kick that's necessary to make something really stick in the memory.
But I think the idea of equality of outcome is dangerous beyond comprehension.
All right.
I want to talk about a few things going on in New Zealand, which is, you know, part of the culture war.
We're part of the global community and we're connected online.
First up, we have a cabinet.
The Labour Party, the largest member or part of our coalition government, it has a quota, a male-female quota, for cabinet posts.
Yeah, Canada too.
Yeah, what do you think of that?
I think there's absolutely no excuse for it.
The radical leftists are always yammering on about biological essentialism, which they associate with something akin to fascism, the idea that there are mutable biological characteristics that define people, and yet they're the first people to insist That if you're going to have a cabinet that is, let's say, both competent and representative, that you have to divide it according to identity categories, and first and foremost, perhaps, the ones of sex.
And to pick your cabinet by genitalia is not an acceptable technical move.
And exactly the same thing happened in Canada, where 25% of our major parties Elected officials were female, but 50% of the cabinet members ended up being female.
And all that means, what that certainly means, is that the most qualified people were not selected because it's statistically impossible For them to have been selected.
It was cheap virtue signaling.
And it's also technically impossible, even from the perspective of the leftists themselves with their intersectionality, because they insist that people have to be judged in relationship to their oppression on multiple dimensions simultaneously.
And I've done some back-of-the-envelope mathematical calculations, and if you have ten dimensions that mark you out, let's say, in terms of the group affiliations that characterize you, then you're the only person like that in the world.
So as you multiply, all you have to do is do the math.
As you multiply the number of groups that have to be given favored status because of their hypothetically oppressed situation, Then you make it increasingly impossible for equality of outcome to even be something that can be practically implemented without a bureaucracy of terrifying proportions.
We also have a Ministry of Women's Affairs in New Zealand, and the Minister of Women's Affairs, or the Minister for Women, as she's known, suggested recently that there were too many white old men on Boards in New Zealand of private and public companies and just suggested that they needed to move aside so there could be more diversity.
Your response to that suggestion?
Well, what's her racial and ethnic background, just out of curiosity?
I think she's born in America, Julianne Genter.
She's a member of our Green Party here.
Is she white?
Yes.
Well, maybe it's time for her to bloody well move aside and let someone who isn't white have her position.
All right.
So I'm taking it you don't agree with Julianne.
Well, there's also, look, they've tried this in Scandinavia where they've put quotas for females on boards.
And part of the idea was that if you did that, that you would increase the rate at which women would move through managerial and administrative status rankings.
And that has had zero success.
The suggestion also is, Jordan, that actually women can somehow up the financial performance of companies.
Yeah, sure.
So you don't believe those stats that recent?
Well, there's no evidence for that.
What elevates the financial productivity of companies is quite clear.
So, trait conscientiousness, which is a marker for integrity and trustworthiness and diligence and dutifulness, is a very good predictor of long-term economic productivity, and so is general cognitive ability.
And that holds across sexes and races.
And the reason for that, and this is the non-racist and non-sexist way of looking at the world, by the way, is that there is far more difference Between individuals within groups than there are between groups.
Because look, the fundamental racist, sexist, ethnocentric proposition is that there are more differences between groups of people than there are within groups of people.
That's essentially the racist doctrine.
And so we need some black people, because, you know, all those black people are the same, and unless we have a voice or two from a black person, then we don't have that set of identity issues represented.
Well, it's just simply not the case, because most of the diversity comes at the level of individual personality and temperament, and the literature on that is crystal clear.
These are pseudo-intellectual claims made by people on the radical left and they're very dangerous because they're easily shifted into the sorts of things that the radical right likes to enjoy, which is, oh, I see, there are immutable differences between the sexes and the races and they're of substantial import and that we need to take them into account when we're What would
you say?
Formulating such things as immigration policy.
So, no, there's no evidence that those claims are correct.
And there's counter evidence for much of it.
For example, in Scandinavia, and this is as close to psychological fact as any facts that exist, is that as you increase equality of opportunity, which means you open the doors for more and more people, and especially, let's say, with regards to sex, And that's had a big effect because, of course, there's far more women in the workforce than there once was.
You increase the degree to which outcomes differ on multiple dimensions.
And that's partly, there's a variety of reasons for that, at least a dozen, and they're all important.
One of which is that women, especially once they hit their 30s, prefer to work part-time.
And that's not bad or wrong.
And it's certainly not an indication of systemic sexism.
So the radical types like to have one explanation.
Everyone isn't exactly the same with regards to outcome.
Therefore, the system is a corrupt patriarchy.
It's like you can learn that in one minute in a propaganda course in university, and then you have an answer for every problem that ever besets you politically for the rest of your life.
And there's no excuse for it.
It's appalling scholarship.
I want to come back to that point.
The other thing proposed bill we have before our parliament is the idea of sex self-identification to make it easier for people to alter their birth certificates if they choose to identify as anything other than the sex they were born as.
Your views on that sort of legislation?
Well, the first thing I would say, it might be useful to really address some important problems.
That would be the first thing.
You're dealing with an absolutely tiny minority of people.
Not that that's completely without import.
But the second thing is, it has to be thought through.
And it's not.
I mean, I don't know if you've been following Oh, we're just having a little hiccup there.
And we're talking to Dr.
Jordan B. Pedersen, who's joining us from Skype from Sydney.
Jordan, we were talking about sex self-identification changes or proposed reforms in New Zealand.
You said, firstly, it's a tiny number of people affected.
And secondly, you say we need to think it through.
In what way?
Well, one of the things that's happened, for example, so really what this is is an attempt to By a certain ideological movement to put forth the insistence that sex is only a sociological construct, that it's only something learned, and so that it can be changed at whim, which is also a strange thing, because if it's learned, it can't really be changed at whim.
And also, if it's learned, it could be unlearned, which is something that the people who are putting this Legislation Forward aren't really thinking through because that opens up the opportunity for people who would like to reform people who would like to change their gender back to, say, normative behavior.
Because if it's learned, it can be unlearned.
But more importantly, sex roles are not only learned.
They're partly learned.
And there's plenty of biological differences between men and women.
And they're And many of them aren't trivial.
Like, men and women are more the same than they are different.
But the differences are quite marked at the extremes.
And so what we're seeing partly as a consequence of this now is the movement of, say, trans women into female sports.
You saw this in Minnesota just the other day, I think it was Minnesota, where a newly transitioned trans woman has been It's shattering the weightlifting records for women's sports in Minnesota.
And indeed, we've had this issue here with a Commonwealth Games competitor who was a former male.
Yes, well, it's absolutely insane.
You know, I mean, first, the fact that it's allowed to begin with is beyond comprehension.
It's a real sign of cultural insanity.
And the second is that psychologically it's almost incomprehensible.
I can't imagine how you could be A man who transformed himself into a woman in all the ways that that's possible and then decided to go compete In a high-level sports arena, with women who've been training their whole lives to hit the peak of their ability, and then to absolutely bloody demolish them, say after a year of work, and then to tout that as some sort of victory for the oppressed.
It's completely what's narcissistic beyond comprehension.
Well, it's a sign of what happens when you don't carefully think things through.
All sorts of unexpected consequences tend to manifest themselves.
And you see the same thing happening now with rapid onset gender dysphoria and the treatment of very young people.
With very powerful hormonal and surgical techniques designed to permanently alter their psychophysiological structure.
And we're going to pay for this in a big way in 15 years when these kids grow up and hit adulthood and start tossing out lawsuits as they certainly will and should.
We're going to look back and wonder just exactly what the hell was wrong with us.
So it's driven by this ideology that's been formulated by people like Judith Butler, who absolutely insist, because they have no biological knowledge whatsoever, that all the differences between men and women are socially constructed, which is absolutely not true.
True, absolutely.
In general terms, Jordan, and we have it in this country and indeed everywhere, we look at the millennial generation.
They get a bit of stick here.
They're called snowflakes.
They seem to get outraged not only on their own behalf but on behalf of others at the drop of a hat.
And they use social media, as elsewhere in the world, to call out the things they find offensive or that hurt their feelings.
Do you think there is a collective generational psychosis occurring because of social media?
I don't know if the millennial generation is any less sane than the baby boomers.
I mean, the baby boomers had plenty of trouble and they caused plenty of grief and misery in the 1960s and experimented, you know, crazily with psychedelic drugs and a wild lifestyle and promiscuous sex and all of those things.
I don't think the millennials are any worse or any better.
I do think that there is a small subset of them who are rather dependent and rather narcissistic and who are being encouraged in both of those by reprehensible adults in positions of authority, primarily in the universities, to make the most of their victimhood feelings and status.
And I do think that the social media platforms also allow for disproportionate effect of social effect of people who have extreme views.
That also in combination with the increasing death of the standard collective media, which is increasingly desperate for attention and so spends more and more attention paying to people who are paying Spends more and more time paying attention to people who have extreme views on the right and the left.
You might be the exception that proves that rule, Jordan, to be honest.
Well, it's possible.
But I mean, I've certainly been represented as an extreme figure, and that's really something that, apart from the fact that I'm I'm adamant in my opposition to the radical leftists, which is rather rare among intellectuals.
Which brings us rather nicely, Jordan, to what I want to talk about.
I asked people to call in yesterday and it was remarkable the variety and number of people who sent me messages and rang in and said, simply reading your book.
We've got quarter an hour, 0800 844 747.
If you'd like to ask a question or send a message or just say something to Jordan, you can ring in now.
0800 844 747.
Jordan, it also seems to me as much as I see all the hatred against you and the controversy around you online, geez, there's a lot of love there and there's a lot of positivity and you seem to be engaging and smiling and with young people.
There's some good stuff happening here, isn't there?
Oh yeah, way more than that.
The vitriolic aspect of it is only a sporadic bother to me, usually in the aftermath of a particularly difficult interview with a journalist.
The tour, I mean, I've been to about 140 cities now around the world, and the average audience size is, well, it's varied between 2,500 and 8,000, with, I would say, an average of about 2,500 to 3,000, and the events are unbelievably positive.
So, most of the time, I'm surrounded by nothing but positive responses, and when I go out on the street now, Wherever I go, you know, in a typical hour, I'll be stopped by six or seven people.
They're usually young men because the media has convinced young women.
Funny, actually.
I was going to say yesterday we had just as many young women and middle-aged women and middle-aged men ringing in.
Well, that's good.
I think that's changed to some degree because of the book.
But all of the interactions that I have with people on the street or in airports or so on, they're all incredibly positive.
People are very polite.
They come up.
They're usually apologetic for interrupting.
They introduce themselves.
They tell me that watching my lectures or listening to the audio or reading the book has changed their life.
They usually tell me a story about what's changed.
They have a better job.
Well, let's do that in real time right now, Jordan.
Say hello to Rachel.
Hello, Rachel.
Kia ora Jordan.
I'm very nervous to be talking to you and I'm going to not be very good at being precise in my speech.
I'm going to keep it very brief and just say thank you is all I wanted to say.
I'm one of the people whose life has been changed immeasurably by your book and your lectures and everything that you stand for has really had a massive positive influence on me so I just wanted to tell you how grateful I am.
So what's changed?
It would take a very long time to get into it, but I have struggled with mental health issues for the majority of my life since puberty.
I'm 30 now.
And I've been through every type of treatment, counseling, therapy, medication, everything you can think of.
And, you know, things have helped me briefly for a little while and got better and got worse again.
But your book, I guess it's the adoption of personal responsibility more than anything else.
And the more responsibility I take on, the more I find I'm able to.
And the more I'm able to get myself out there and put myself in situations I wouldn't have normally had the confidence to.
I'm standing up straighter.
I'm not that great at keeping my room tidy yet, but I'm working on it.
Little things.
Everything just bit by bit.
The more I take on, the better it gets.
Yes, well, that's a good rule.
That's a good psychotherapeutic rule is the more that you take on, Without overloading yourself, you know, because you have to be sensible about it, the more you find that you have abilities that will manifest themselves that had been hidden up to that point because of fear and avoidance.
And so more power to you as far as I'm concerned.
And I'm very glad to hear that what I've been doing has been helpful.
Good on you, Rachel.
Murray, welcome.
Thank you very much for this opportunity.
Doctor, I was staring into the abyss.
And now I'm not.
I move through my life now purposefully.
I consider every action and its reaction.
I treat myself like I'm someone I care for.
Great.
It's been a revelation to me encountering you.
I was in a very, very, very dark place.
And somehow I found you online.
I don't know if it was through...
Dave Rubin, or whether it was Shapiro, or I'm not quite sure how it happened, but I've seen your lectures, I've listened to it, your maps of meaning, your lectures on Genesis, and it's just been a remarkable turnaround in my life and my family's life.
And I just want to say thank you.
Hey man, I'm thrilled to hear it.
So do you have any sense of what in particular did it?
What was it that struck you?
I think it was just the purposeful way that you spoke, and it was just such plain English.
It was, as you've described previously, some rules are sort of clichés, but they hadn't been spoken of in a very long time.
And it was, as the previous caller said, the personal responsibility, the taking care of oneself.
And it just struck such a chord.
It was...
I knew some of the things that you were saying.
I'd heard them before, but I hadn't heard them in a very long time.
My father used to say, stand up straight with your shoulders back, and finally there it was again, but it was being said in a different way.
Yeah, well the thing is, you need to know why, eh?
That's the thing, and that's what I tried to do with my lectures, and partly because I'm a behavioral psychologist.
It's like, we have all these moral rules, And people are told the rules, but they're very seldom given a multi-dimensional explanation of why the rules are necessary.
You know, it's, well, you should do it because that's what people do, or that's because, you know, that's what good people do, or it's your responsibility, and all those things are true.
But an explanation of why it's true and how it's related to the responsibility that Peter
joins us now.
Welcome Peter.
How are you doing there?
Hello, Dr Peterson.
Hello!
How are you doing, Peter?
Very, very well.
Hey, have you, in a moment of self-reflection, had a look back on this amazing and astounding following you've created and wondered where it's going to end up?
Because at the risk of sounding oxymoronic, you're probably the closest thing a secular humanist has to a messiah.
Well, I've thought about that, I wouldn't say precisely in those terms.
I mean, one of the things I did learn from studying Carl Jung years ago was that if you're going to talk about archetypal stories, which I do all the time, that you have to be very careful not to confuse yourself with the archetype.
And so I'm very cognizant of the danger of The kind of popularity that I'm experiencing, and I do mean the danger, because the higher you fly, the faster you can fall, and you have to be very careful to ensure that you're not increasing the probability of that.
I try to make sure that I credit other people with many of the ideas that I've formulated, because I've learned a lot from reading the great clinicians and philosophers of the last, say, 150 years, and from my clinical practice and so on.
And I think of this endeavor not as something that I'm doing, but as something that we're all collectively engaged in, because I know that You know, there's an old idea that every person is a center of the world, and that the weight of the world, for better or worse, weighs upon the shoulders of each person.
And I really believe that's true.
And so if you know that, then it keeps the egotism and the arrogance down, partly out of sheer terror, and it makes it much more effective to deal with people.
Like when I'm lecturing In front of an audience, I'm not lecturing to them, you know?
I'm lecturing with them, talking about problems that we all have, including me, and aims that we all need to develop, including me.
And you have to include yourself, so to speak, among the sinners and the reprehensible types in order to communicate with people properly.
And I do my best to ensure that I'm starkly aware of my shortcomings and faults at every moment I can possibly manage.
And I have family and friends who also help keep what I'm doing in check and to make sure that it's not going sideways in some manner that's, you know, where I'm taking things for granted or becoming arrogant or any of that.
And so far that's worked out well and hopefully it will continue to.
Joe, welcome to the program.
Oh, hi, Joe.
Thanks for talking with me.
Jordan?
Hi, Joe.
How are you doing?
Good, thank you.
So I'm a young academic in New Zealand, and one of the problems, well, one of the obsessions I would say we have in universities is our focus on race and gender.
So I'm, I would call, I have a centrist position, somewhat liberal-minded, but what advice would you give a young academic pushing against what I see as the far-left agenda of the universities?
Well, the first thing I would say is there are a lot more moderate types of your sort than you think.
And so if you're a careful person and you're thinking things through and you have things to object to, you can be sure, virtually sure, that a majority of people agree with you even though they're too cowed, let's say, to speak up.
I would say, get your thoughts in order, you know, so you know what you stand for.
And then I would also say, don't agree with anything that you don't agree with, because all that'll happen, and you're a young academic, all that will happen if you compromise your intellectual soul Increment by increment over the next 10 years is that you will end up alcoholic and bitter, hating your job, despised by your undergraduates, and absolutely sick of your existence.
You've got to keep that really firmly in mind because every time you're called upon to stand forth for something you believe in, it's a test of character and courage, and it's easy to put it off because it's a lot of trouble.
You know, it's a lot of conflict.
And you might think, oh God, do I really have to go through with this?
I've got other things to do.
And if the answer is, well, I better stand up for what I believe in now, because if I keep letting it go, increment by increment, for the next ten years, I'm going to end up in a position that is absolutely dreadful.
You know, you'll be much older than you need to be, and all of the thrill that should be part of teaching young people and doing research and staying on the cutting edge of knowledge, all of that will have been taken away by the ideologues who already know everything and insist that they get to regulate what you think and say.
So, better to have the small fights, one by one.
Va, you are the lucky last of the callers.
Jordan Sputhier?
Yes.
Dr.
Jordan Peterson, you are awesome, man.
I read your book.
I've been following you.
I'm a student of psychology and philosophy myself.
I did a degree and I'm doing my post this year.
And a lot of what you say, you know, there's a wee bit of Nietzsche in there.
And I totally agree because we live in a society where, like for me, I often say what I think and I have to moderate that.
But particularly today in our society, when you do that, you're in way more trouble for offending someone or something.
And I love the fact that you kind of get it out there.
And I wish that, you know, I had that opportunity too, just to get it out and people can just get over it.
One question I was wanting to ask you though, I mean, I'm a Christian, but I studied Marcus Aurelius and I read his book and a few of those books.
Are you into stoicism?
I wouldn't say specifically.
Lots of people who have been studying stoicism have talked to me and suggested that I should be.
The overlap, I think, is that The stoic virtues have been radically underplayed in our society because we have this idea that life is easy and that we should be happy.
Well, first of all, life isn't easy and perhaps we should be happy, but there's lots of times when we're not going to be.
Jordan, I hate to break this up, but we're coming up to the news.
We have got calls stacked up.
I'm hoping to meet you when you come here and I'd like to invite you now, if you get any spare time in your schedule, to come into the studio because literally our boards are full with people who want to talk to you.
I also want to thank you enormously for your time today and for assuring us that your visit will not lead to the downfall of New Zealand's civilisation as we know it.
Well, I hope not.
I hope not because I think you have quite a civilisation and I'd hate to be the Springer of its downfall.
So we'll hope that doesn't happen.
Lovely talking to you, Jordan.
Thank you very much for your time.
So I'll just end this video with a reminder that there are still tickets left to the 12 Rules for Life lecture tour, if you'd like to see it, in New Zealand at the Michael Fowler Centre, Thursday, February 21st.
That's in Wellington.
At the Logan Campbell Centre, Saturday, February 23rd.
That's in Auckland.
Then back to Australia.
ICC Sydney Theatre at Darling Harbour, Tuesday, February 26th in Sydney.
Plenary Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre, Wednesday, February 27th in Melbourne.
And in Brisbane, Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre, Thursday, February 28th.
You can find information about those tickets at jordanbpeterson.com forward slash events.
That's jordanbpeterson.com forward slash events.
Hope to see you there.
Thank you very much.
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