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May 25, 2017 - Louder with Crowder
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#174 ‘BRING POST MODERNISM TO ITS KNEES!’ (Jordan B. Peterson Uncut) | Louder With Crowder
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I will show YouTube where I have made our home while preparing to bring justice.
That mug club will break you.
Isn't that reasonable?
Your precious video platform.
Great for our acceptance.
We will need it.
This is bullshit.
I think it's the most exclusive.
I think it's the most exclusive.
I think it's the most exclusive.
By the way, from yesterday's show, of all the things that we talked about, the comment section was all about Shang Tsung from Mortal Kombat, stealing souls.
That's what got...
We gained, like, a dozen Mug Club subscribers from that one reference.
Okay, this is a special show.
Of course, Not Gay Jared, producing the main news show, as always.
Send your comments on Twitter, Not Gay Jared, me at S. Crowder, at G. Morgan Jr.
We have to do the intro.
This is a special episode.
We've done this before with Patrick Moore, Dr.
Patrick Moore, of course, on the global warming issue, a PhD in ecology.
And now we've had this man on, but people have gotten very mad at us and threatened to unsubscribe if we have not had him back for a full 45 minutes to an hour.
Serious threats.
That's legit.
Yeah, serious threats on the internet.
So you can, by the way, right now there's a discount on his self-authoring program if you type in Crowder, 20% discount at selfauthoring.com.
Highly recommend it.
Professor Jordan Peterson, how are you, sir?
Good.
I think that your people should unsubscribe if you don't talk to me for at least 45 minutes.
Okay, yes.
Well, the thing is we also never want to be too presumptive in taking a...
My!
Who could have been behind the threats?
Yes!
The man behind the curtain.
I thought it was suspicious when every single YouTube commenter made me call him Doctor.
Doctor!
Come on now.
Okay, so Professor Peterson, obviously you were back on Joe Rogan's show and you lit the internet ablaze.
We wanted to go to some questions from Twitter, some of those common questions that we've had.
Let me just kind of get one to start.
First off, I think a lot of people, to set the context, are thrilled that someone like you is out there because there are a lot of commentators or there are a few comedians, very few comedians like myself who are more right of center.
But in the world of academia and people who have actually taken a stand against leftist ideology, I should say, I don't want to label you right wing.
There's lots of people doing that for you.
Yes, because I don't necessarily think of you that way, but you certainly are speaking out against really the ideology of progressivism on campus.
Why haven't you been forced to resign yet?
Because you have so many people saying, gosh, I'm so glad he's out there, but I feel this guy's going to get the Muppet Cain soon.
Well, I think there's a bunch of reasons.
I mean, first of all, The University of Toronto is actually a pretty good place, you know?
I mean, I've been there for 20 years, more than that, and I've been treated very well there, and it's actually all things considered a rather conservative institution.
I mean, there are things going on underneath the surface that's tilting it in some ways towards the social justice end of the spectrum, but that's like it is in the real world, I would say.
It's a pretty noisy minority.
Now, and...
So there's that.
And I have been at least reasonably well regarded at the university.
Like, I'm very popular with the students.
My courses are always very popular.
And I think I'm very careful about what I say, you know.
So I have all this information on YouTube, hundreds of hours of lectures that I've given to students.
And I mean...
People have gone over them, I would say, with the equivalent of a fine-tooth comb and not found any...
Oh, it's a horrible mixed metaphor.
They've gone over it with a fine-tooth comb and haven't found any smoking pistols.
Yeah, they haven't found any smoking sparrows from the coal mine.
People mess up their analysis all the time.
Yeah, I live with a French-Canadian mom.
She does it all the time.
I can disseminate them.
But, I mean, after, like, the Duke scandal, where a professor was forced to resign, you see it all the time in the States.
People, in some cases, who seem very sensible, you know, I just wonder sometimes if that's a concern, obviously, coming from Canada.
I think sometimes people resign.
They're older people.
Sometimes they resign, and I think it's because they just had enough.
It's quite overwhelming to have a lot of media attention, both positive and hostile, directed towards you.
It's quite unsettling.
I have wondered myself, though, why people seem to resign so quickly and to pull back so quickly.
I guess it's partly because it's not that entertaining to be mobbed.
I mean, it's really becoming a concern in Canada too, because we've had some all-out social justice warrior assaults on On some pretty mainstream famous journalists in Canada, famous and not so famous in the last couple of weeks,
and I've spoken to a number of Canadian journalists who are at the top of their profession, I would say, and they're definitely reporting the tendency to self-censor and a concern that if they say the wrong thing, and this last round was about cultural appropriation, that they're going to be targeted by the internet mob, roughly speaking, and And be hung out to dry by their colleagues, for example.
Well, let me touch that because I think a lot of people aren't operating from necessarily the same kind of knowledge base as you are.
Explain for people, you've talked a lot about this kind of classical Marxist theory, which is shapeshifted into shapeshifted.
Now I'm the one with the mixed metaphors.
It's shapeshifted.
Would we say that it's more so shifted into identity politics?
Would we also say classical Marxist theory has shifted into post-modernism?
A lot of people aren't necessarily familiar with these terms, but they're ubiquitous on campus.
Yeah, well, there's a very good book by Stephen R. Hicks that I would recommend.
I believe it's called Explaining Postmodernism.
It's either that or Understanding Postmodernism.
But it's definitely Stephen R. Hicks, and I would recommend that highly to any of your viewers, especially the first chapter, because it explains how that shape-shifting process occurred.
And as far as I can tell...
By the late 60s, early 70s, the idea that the West was going to be overwhelmed by a workers' rebellion and move in a radically left direction, that was dead in the water.
And then, of course, all the horror stories started to emerge in an undeniable fashion about exactly how barbaric both Mao's China and Stalin's USSR, not only Stalin, also Lenin, how barbaric those places really were.
And it became very intellectually...
It's untenable to maintain a pure Marxist attitude in the face of both of those things, with the rapid rise of living standards for the working class people in Europe and in the West in general.
And what happened, as far as I can tell, and this happened mostly in France and under the direction of the postmodernists like Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault, among others, they just did a sleight of hand and they exchanged Yeah.
politics, oppression, and just continued right along with the same devastating, resentful, rigid, one-dimensional ideology that's now become, I would say, paramount, particularly in the humanities, in the administration as well, or often in the particularly in the humanities, in the administration as well, or often in the administration among It's the dominant ideology, and it's really a toxic, horrible ideology.
I'm so glad to hear you say that, because we talked about, you know, before the election, for example, Bernie Sanders.
We just talked about this the other day, where HuffPost said, socialism is cool again.
It's so hot right now.
Yeah, so hot right now.
Thanks, Bernie Sanders.
That was the actual headline.
By the way, bell-bottoms, you know nothing of women's fashion.
You're a horrible not-gay man, Jared.
But if you said socialism with Barack Obama, I was raised in Quebec, basically socialist.
I said, well, you secretly mean the N-word.
It's a racial pejorative.
And then Bernie Sanders said, no, no, it's democratic socialism.
And I was always saying, listen, the two are inextricably tied.
This idea of fiscal, like you're saying, economic authoritarianism to a degree.
You can't remove that from identity politics.
And we had a lot of people during the election cycle who said, well, actually, I really like Bernie on economics, but I don't like that he appeases Black Lives Matter.
Since the election, he's gone full-bore socialism.
Huffington Post doesn't even use democratic socialism anymore.
It's right out there playing in the open.
It's valuable characters.
I think a lot of people have woken up to that.
And so I mentioned that you would say, yeah, that transition occurred when economically it was no longer viable.
It made that transition culturally.
And it seems like recently, since the left is losing the culture, and you're brilliant on this, they try and shoehorn economics back in there.
Yeah, well, and I'm not so sure they're losing.
I mean, I don't believe that the radical leftist types, the professional protesters and so forth, represent a very large proportion of the population, but the degree to which they're organized and effective can't be underestimated.
And I think a large part of that is because...
The intellectuals, let's say, who lead the activist movements have been subsidized both by private forces and also by public forces in the universities for 40 years.
And we've raised generations of youthful activists who've been trained by people who...
Who have the luxury, let's say, of doing nothing but pursuing their radical utopian dreams in their spare time and doing everything they can to push that forward.
And it doesn't take that many people in this society to have a very powerful effect if they're well organized and noisy and effective.
Look at Islamic terrorism.
It's very congruent.
Right, right.
And the majority of people generally also stay silent.
And I think part of the reason I've been left alone as well, and I should highlight this, is that I have received overwhelming public support.
And it's not only from individuals, although that's been a tremendous help.
All the people who wrote to the university and who signed petitions, but also the journalists in Canada swung to my side pretty quickly in November once they started looking into what I was saying and determining that I wasn't merely scaremongering and that I wasn't uninformed, that the reason that I was complaining about or criticizing, let's say...
Some of the legislative moves that Canada was making, I had my facts in order, and I do have my facts in order.
The bill that I was specifically objecting to, Bill C-16, is still in front of the Senate.
That's been interesting, too.
Explain that to the American audience who may not be aware of it.
Now, I've told them for a long time, a lot of people don't, you know, there's no constitution, not the same constitution in Europe, in Canada.
Freedom of speech doesn't exactly exist there.
So that's important, regardless of any other law being put forward, to understand.
And that's why I, listen, I'm always concerned for someone like you.
Comedians being put before human rights tribunals.
But tell the American audience who might not be aware about Bill C-16.
Bill C-16 is a federal bill and it purports to do nothing but add gender identity and gender expression to the list of categories against which she cannot discriminate in Canada.
And it also alters the Canadian Criminal Code to make discrimination and harassment under those grounds, potential grounds for being pursued under the hate speech provisions.
And hate speech provisions are very dangerous in my estimation to begin with.
The problem comes not so much with the precise way that the legislation is worded, but in the policies that have already been developed by places like the Ontario Human Rights Commission within which that legislation will definitely be interpreted.
And the Federal Justice Department actually said as much, although they took the link off their website once that had been made public, which was a reprehensible act.
Really, a scandalous act in my estimation.
It's also a stupid act.
Don't they know what these WikiLeaks people...
Don't they know that people just go in an internet time machine?
It's like when HuffPo issues corrections and then removes the article.
Like, we can go back in time!
Yeah, no, I don't think they knew that.
And, of course, people went back in time very rapidly and did precisely that and rescued it, which was really...
Quick, get your DeLorean!
They're bullshitting again!
Yeah, right, right.
Well, thank God for that.
Thank God that the record is relatively permanent because, you know, that's at least one of the advantages of newspapers is they're not so easy to edit once they're published.
Right.
And the net has that as both an advantage and a disadvantage.
Anyways, I went and spoke in front of the Canadian Senate this week.
I've outlined, along with a lawyer who's come to my aid, I suppose, but also to the aid of Canadians more generally, detailing out the reasons to assume that, why you might assume that my interpretation of this particular legislation is actually accurate rather than merely accurate.
I'm bigoted or transphobic, as I, you know, constantly get referred to.
Even though I've had plenty, believe me, I've had plenty of letters from trans people, probably about one a week so far, who are firmly supporting what I'm doing, because they're not very happy that they've been made the newest poster boy or girl or whatever.
That's the population, actually, of them.
One a week?
That sounds about right.
One a week, that's about half the population.
That's half the transgender population.
That's the thing, there aren't that many transsexual people, and to get letters with that frequency helps me also put forward my claim that the activists who purport to speak for this community, and it's certainly not a community by any stretch of the imagination, because how could it be?
But it's just like a community is a coherent group of people that are in constant communication.
That share an ethos, and the mere fact that you happen to be transsexual doesn't automatically make you identical to all the other transsexuals who happen to be out there.
There's as much variability in that population as there is in any population.
Despite the sharing of fluids, correct.
Yes, precisely.
But, you know, one of the things that was very striking about the Senate hearings was that the fact that they had done a very bad job of sampling the actual population of people they purport to be speaking for was immediately evident.
And oddly enough, and this is how you know the end of time is coming, is that about 300,000 people have watched that Senate And when 300,000 people watch something that happens in the Canadian Senate, you know that the apocalypse is near because that never happens.
Revelation 17.
Yes.
People pay attention to the Canadian Senate.
And I looked, and behold, a pale professor.
And hell followed with him.
And trannies!
I believe it says that somewhere in the back.
So let me ask you this, because I think there is really sort of a through line where you see with radical Islamic terrorism, although I will say this, I don't think, I think we're at the point now where people are willing to say, alright, we don't just have a problem with Islamic terrorism, we have a problem with the ideology of Islam.
Not just people who are terrorists, we're not saying all Muslims are terrorists, but the idea of Sharia law, the idea of the way you can treat women.
And mutilating girls in Detroit.
In Detroit.
This has changed quite a bit.
And you've talked about this, you've talked about how, Strength is the only sort of language that they understand, that they speak.
Now, Dinesh D'Souza has talked about how, you know, certain virtues were not virtues until modern Christendom.
For example, mercy.
It wasn't.
Mercy was considered a weakness.
How do we balance, obviously, as Christians in Western civilization...
Still upholding the values, the Judeo-Christian values, while still effectively, I hate to use the word eradicating, but certainly ridding ourselves of people within our society who want to cause us grave bodily harm.
If you need me to restate the question, I can.
I was trying to fit it all in there.
Yeah, well, that's a hell of a question.
You know, one of the things that I'm doing in Canada, and we'll be doing more of, is I'm going to start a series of dialogues with moderate Muslims in Canada and the U.S., and Or ex-Muslims, but also moderate Muslims.
The first person that I plan to interview is Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and I'm going to talk to her on June 1st.
And then I have a number of other people who are interested in pursuing that dialogue.
I've heard different opinions on Sharia law, for example.
Certainly, Herzi Ali is more of the opinion that the more toxic forms of totalitarian Sharia law are built right into Islam as a structure.
But I've talked to other people, an imam in Winnipeg, for example, who seems to be a reasonable person, who's of the opinion that General democratic laws, like the ones that are characteristic of Canada and the US, can be regarded as Sharia as long as they uphold certain kinds of moral virtues.
So, you know, it's like any religious structure is unbelievably complicated, and people interpret it in a very large number of ways, and what I'm hoping is that there's There's grounds for a real discussion between people who are of the Islamic faith and people in the West so that we can find a way forward that will work out mutually because the alternative just seems to be too catastrophic to really contemplate.
But do we think, on a pragmatic level, that may be where we're headed?
I mean, I'm not talking about moderate Muslims in Canada, but, you know, you have people, you have hundreds of millions of people who believe in death for apostasy or blasphemy.
I mean, it's just, what I talked about yesterday, and you can correct me if you think I'm wrong here, I really am interested in your insight, never have we before had a society that is so advanced technologically, economically, as far as weaponry, like we have with Western civilization, Who have kowtowed and acquiesced to such a regressive society.
I mean, usually it used to be like, oh my gosh, we came up with this new way where we know we can win wars, and you take over everyone else's stuff.
Now the only weapon, it seems, that these terrorists have, as you see after the Manchester bombing, is guilt.
And the social justice warriors sort of post-modernists who appease them, right?
They feel guilty to speak out against Islamic...
That's really the only weapon they have that's effective.
And as you said, I worry on that front, they might be winning more than losing.
I don't really know what to say about that.
I think that the more radical end of the Islamic spectrum is unbelievably good at manipulating the strange social justice warrior affinity for the more radical ends of Islamic thought.
I think they're superb at doing that.
They're superb tacticians.
The question you're asking to some degree is, and I suppose you might even think about this from a Christian perspective, is that what are the limits of mercy and tolerance?
And that's a really complicated question.
Do you tolerate intolerance?
I mean, the radical left would say definitely not, because, of course, they're willing to shut down anyone who they regard as intolerant.
And I don't know the answer to that.
I mean, the answer that I've been putting forward, generally speaking, to the problem of The inevitability of human conflict, generally speaking, is for people to strengthen themselves as individuals, because I think that as a global solution, it's kind of a low-resolution solution, but, you know, strong people make strong families, and strong families make strong communities, and strong communities make a society that's very difficult to undermine or overthrow.
And I think that's been one of the real strengths of the West, because...
It's partly reflected in the fact that we're not authoritarian.
So, for example, if you take out the president, and even maybe if you take out the president and all of the Congress, American democracy would still survive because it's so well distributed across the entire population in every sort of institution and even at a personal level that it's very difficult to eradicate.
Greater than North Korea, for instance, which would probably crumble.
Well, that's exactly the problem.
You know, people say, well, aren't authoritarian dictatorships efficient?
And the answer to that is, well, now and then they're efficient in single directions, but they have a hell of a time with power transitions.
And that's a major problem, whereas in a democracy, you can basically cut off the head of the organism, which we do on a regular basis anyways, almost like practice.
And the whole thing keeps going without any problem at all.
And it's a big deal for that.
But I do think that the fact that that works is partly a consequence of having, well, individuals who are actually citizens and who hold those values in their own psyche, so to speak, and they also act them out.
And they create strong families, you mentioned.
You know, I mean, for a long time they were just sort of poo-pooed when sort of Christian conservatives would say, well, listen, you know, there is an attack on the foundation of society, the family.
And some of them were obviously fear-mongering.
Some of them went too far.
But it certainly does seem, and it seems there's a weird intersect now where the Dawkins fans, sort of the Sam Harris listeners, the Joe Rogan podcast listeners...
The semi-former left-wing atheists have acknowledged there does seem to be an attack on the fundamental fabric of society.
And a big part of that is with the sort of post-modern gender theory.
I don't necessarily know how to...
I don't know all the big words like you, Professor.
But do we think that...
The post-modernists, they've launched an all-out assault on the fundamental elements of Western civilization.
There's no doubt about that.
All you have to do is read their websites, the women's studies websites, for example, and Much of the humanities is devoted to that because they truly regard the West as the equivalent of what the Communists used to call the oppressive bourgeoisie.
The only reason the West is wealthy, it has nothing to do with our structures of government or anything like that.
It's because we've raped the planet and every other civilization and society and stolen all their wealth.
And distribute it to a very small number of people.
And the thing is rotten right to the core.
It's rotten because men dominated.
It's rotten because it's predicated on the idea of logic and the logos, which is a really deep criticism.
And it needs to be Brought to its knees at every level of categorization.
Perception.
I mean, that's why they're so...
That's why the anti-unconscious bias training has become so popular, because you can actually...
That gives you the opportunity, at least in theory, to actually re-educate people out of their actual perceptions, not just their thoughts.
And so there's no reason to underestimate the seriousness of this assault in my...
Now, that doesn't mean that every person who's a university student who's sort of enamored of neo-Marxism and post-modernism is a deadly threat to Western civilization.
They're just annoying.
Well, and they're also fragments.
They're fragments of an idea.
But if you put enough fragments of an idea together, you get the whole idea acting, and that's exactly what's happening now.
And you don't want to underestimate the power of ideas.
Ideas move mountains, they move continents, and this is an idea that has deep roots in the humanities and the universities, and it's extraordinarily toxic.
There isn't anything about it that I can think of that's good.
It's all destructive.
Strong words.
I don't know about you, but when Professor Peterson just said, brought to its knees in every level, I had a mild erection.
Anyone else?
I got a chill, like, on the inside.
We're in this intellectual conversation, all of a sudden.
Sorry, apologies.
Don't forget talking to you.
I do think that, you know, you've talked about this quite a bit, and there are a lot of, obviously, other intellectuals who talk about this.
You said the center of Western civilization.
So now we've just talked about Western civilization versus Marxism.
And I think that's really, not to simplify it, but I think that is kind of the intellectual battle right now.
You can disguise it any way you want.
It's basically Western civilization, which is incompatible with Marxism, whether it's Whether it's cultural Marxism, whether it's post-modernism, feminism, social justice warriorism, identity politics, it all stems from the same thing.
We did a long video on Karl Marx, and actually you, Naki, Jared, you even said, like, it just seems like everything now is being regurgitated, going back to Marx and Lenin.
But you said Western civilization, and I don't want to misquote you, that at the center of it is truth, that that is so fundamentally important.
Explain that.
Spoken truth, and spoken truth specifically, yeah.
And I would say also in honesty.
I mean, In the Christian ethos, there's a tremendous emphasis as well on love, and I think what love is, is the, essentially, is the, it's something that truth is nested inside, and I think to love properly means that you address someone else in their best interests, you know, that what you're trying to do is to work in their best interest, and your best interest at the same time.
And that's how you're guided, and so you're guided towards the good instead of towards destruction.
But the most effective tool to use in that battle, so to speak, is truth, and specifically the spoken truth.
I'm doing a series on the Bible right now, you know, on the psychological significance of the biblical stories.
I did the second lecture last night, and that's been quite interesting.
We've managed to sell out a 500-seat theatre for both lectures, which is pretty bloody remarkable.
And about 200,000 people have watched the first one.
But I'm trying to go back to the dream, in some sense, that underlies Western civilization.
And part of that dream is that what brings proper being into being out of chaos is the spoken truth.
And I believe that that presupposition is at the cornerstone of Western civilization.
And with its tremendous emphasis on the moral obligation of each individual and each citizen to speak the truth, I think that's the paramount virtue.
It's the virtue that's given the power to generate chaos out of order at the beginning of time, essentially.
And whether you believe that as a believer, like as a Christian believer, or whether you analyze that as an idea, I don't think it, in some sense, practically, it's less important.
The practical differences between those two things are less important than you might think because the core issue is whether or not you believe that the world is better served by spoken truth or by manipulating and acting Instrumentally, for your own good.
Well, that's very Christian-like.
For God so loved the world is what we believe.
And to love, like you said, one of the greatest acts of love is to speak truth, is to be honest.
And we actually just talked about that on last night's show.
I mean, to give you an analogy, a lot of people get mad when we're critical of Donald Trump because this is a more right-leaning show.
I say, listen, it comes from the spirit of, I want this guy to do well.
I want the country to do well.
And so it would be unloving.
It would be a disservice of me to him and to the country.
To not be critical where I feel it's necessary and honest.
And it's the same thing in a marriage.
Sometimes you never want to speak it out of malice, but truth is so much more important than sometimes compassion or validation when it's not congruent with truth.
So they're not mutually exclusive, but they aren't always, you know, in tandem.
Well, it's often the case, too, that it isn't compassion, really, that's at stake.
It's the desire to avoid conflict in the moment.
Good point.
And that is not the same as compassion.
Because true compassion has a lengthier time frame.
You know, if you're...
Part of the reason that you discipline children, which of course often hurts their feelings and produces immediate conflict in the environment, is part of the reason that you discipline them.
It should be the whole reason, really, is because you want to stop them from doing things that are impulsively pleasurable in the moment, but that are going to lead them into situations, social situations in particular, in the medium term and the long term that are bad for them.
Like, you don't want your child to be a spoiled brat with toys because then other kids won't play with him or her.
And that's a catastrophe.
Yeah.
And so you want to discipline your children, which requires conflict, which requires speaking the truth about the situation so that their path through life is facilitated over the longest span of time and the largest number of situations.
And you're doing the same thing in a marriage if you care for each other.
Lots of spanking.
We don't need to go into the details of your personal life as far as I'm concerned.
Actually, hold on, hold on, because Nakajan has a question here.
He raised his hand.
Well, I think what you hear so much as the combative answer to that is that there is no such thing as truth.
The leftists will say and liberals will say that truth is whatever you define it to be.
Your truth, live your truth.
Live your truth.
Do you think that's what they say?
But the more I think about it, I don't know that they really believe that.
I don't know that you can really arrive at that conclusion if you're thinking through anything logically.
I think most people say you got a father who's gone off the deep end.
You want to bring him back the truth.
Do you really think someone could argue in that situation that, no, him being drunk and being his family is his truth?
That's good?
I guess, Professor, I think what you're asking is, do you think that the left actually believes that truth is subjective, or do you think they just use it as an out logically?
Yes.
I think they tend to use it whenever it's convenient for their argument.
I mean, I think the radical leftists, as far as I can tell, they regard the idea of coherence, logical coherence, let's say, as part of the oppressive structure that they're trying to fight against.
Right.
So the idea that they can say one thing at one moment and another thing at the other moment is perfectly fine as long as it serves whatever it is they think they're serving.
I mean, part of the criticism of the West is phallogocentric, which is Derrida's term, is that the very notion of logic itself is part of the means by which the West obtained hegemony and men perpetrate their power.
Yeah.
Now, do they actually act that way?
Well, you can't, because if you act incoherently enough, you bump into yourself.
And I think that's a hard thing for the more radical postmodernists to admit, too, because they don't really like the idea that there's a real world.
Now, there is mysteries about the real world.
Its nature is complex beyond our ability to understand.
But that doesn't mean that Any old interpretation will do.
And this is worth talking about momentarily, I think, because I think this is the logical fallacy that lies at the root of the problems with postmodernism, is that the postmodernists are correct when they say that any situation or any text is amenable to an almost unlimited number of interpretations.
So, for example, even when you're looking at something that appears to be as simple as a single room, there's an infinite number of details that you could concentrate on.
Like, the brick wall that's behind you is unbelievably complicated in its structure.
And if you were an artist trying to paint that, Like, with photographic realism, you find out very rapidly that although you might perceive it as brown, there's a very large number of colors in that surface and a tremendous number of textures, and it's just insanely complicated.
There's lots of ways to look at the room and lots of ways to interpret it.
And so the postmodernists have taken that idea and then said, well, if there's an almost unlimited number of ways to look at almost everything, including texts and the world, then there's no right way of looking at it.
Right.
Okay, but that's where the problem starts, as far as I'm concerned, because the first part of that claim is correct, and the second part is incorrect.
And the reason it's incorrect is because Because, well, there's a bunch of reasons, but one of the reasons is that we're constrained by the necessity of surviving and also by the necessity of not suffering unduly, because people don't really like to suffer that much.
And so, when you're interacting...
When you're existing as yourself and when you're interacting with other people, what starts to happen, and the world, what starts to happen is the number of interpretations that are going to serve any useful purpose, including the cessation of pain, start to become restricted very, very rapidly.
So, for example, if you're married, there's a lot of different ways you can plan your future.
But that's limited by the fact that you have to plan it together And so that's a huge limitation because you both have to be.
And then, of course, you're surrounded by each other's family and they have to be in on it.
And then there's laws regulating it.
And then there's the necessity of actually getting enough to eat and maintaining a job and raising children properly.
So all these interpretations are constrained by biological necessity, which, of course, the postmodernists just dispense with because they always have enough to eat.
You're welcome, by the way.
That's exactly right.
You know, if almost all of your fundamental needs are met with a minimum of effort, you can easily pretend that they don't exist.
But that, of course, is complete rubbish.
So you're constrained by the fact that the world will treat you very harshly if you apply a careless set of interpretations to it.
And then you have to interpret it in a way that works for you across time.
Then you have to interpret it in a way that works for the people that you're in constant discussion with.
And it has to be played out repeatedly across time in all sorts of different social circumstances.
And so, you know, you could interpret Hamlet to mean that you should kill yourself and everyone around you.
Well, you know, that's a possible interpretation, but I wouldn't say that it's a particularly productive interpretation.
Or legal.
Yeah, not particularly legal either.
Well, that's it.
There's another confine.
Well, that's it.
We've built in.
Our bodies contain a lot of restrictions on what constitute acceptable interpretations.
I mean, you could say, well, one interpretation of a red hot stove is that you can put your hand on it.
Well, you can.
But if you do put your hand on it, there's going to be the kinds of consequences that generally convince you not to do that a second time.
And the patriarchy wanted it that way.
Well, that's the problem with the social constructionist viewpoint, is that there's this idea that there is no real constraint on anything, because it's all interpretation.
And there's the idea that the social constraints are merely...
Arbitrary.
None of that's true.
Piaget, the developmental psychologist Sean Piaget, did a good job of outlining this when he was talking about children's games.
So, here's a rule for a child's game.
Children have to want to play it.
And it's really, well really, it's a really important constraint, because you know that if you're an unpopular kid, And you go on the playground, the first thing you're going to do is you're going to run roughshod over what the other kids want to do.
You're going to say that it has to be your game and it has to be played your way.
And all that's going to happen is the kids will close ranks against you and you'll be an outcast.
That's what happens.
And so even in the world of the child, you're required to act.
In a manner that makes you, at minimal, an acceptable playmate for other people.
And that's really important.
It's the basis of adult socialization as well.
I mean, look, what we're doing here is, I know it's a serious conversation, but there's a game-like element to it, too.
You know, I mean, you have to want to do it voluntarily.
We can leave it with a bit of humor.
I have to want to do it voluntarily.
You have to have an audience.
You have to be technically proficient enough to manage it.
I mean, there's a lot of constraints.
And the postmodernists never recognize those as real, because they don't really recognize anything as real.
Well, and the problem is they try to put in new constraints, for example, like you're talking about with Bill C-16, on everyone else.
In other words, say, well, we don't believe in these constraints, which happen to be biological, historical, logical, factual.
So we're going to create these constraints basically on you, so that you can't speak in a way that we don't like.
Not good, Jared, you had a question.
Yeah.
How would you combat the argument, though, that progressives would say, well, sometimes progress needs to take place in the face of social or historical constraints.
There are times in history we can see a wake of slavery or things happen in the Middle Eastern cultures that that would be true.
What kind of constraints navigate those situations and kind of dissect and weed out, okay, transgender issues from, say, slavery issues?
That's a good question.
Good question.
I mean, for me, it's never been.
The transgender issue isn't the issue.
You know, it's the side issue.
It's like, I don't.
So with regards to discrimination, let's say, for me, that's a pretty straightforward issue.
You've got to look at the context within...
The first thing I should say about that is that people need to be allowed to discriminate.
And that's something no one ever says.
Discrimination is unbelievably important.
The best example of that, and we're going to end up in a fight about this, I would say, over the next five years, is that people constantly, including the social justice warrior types, reserve the right to discriminate sexually.
And that's why they're so concerned with such things as sexual harassment and sexual assault, because they regard the right to discriminate sexually as a paramount right.
But it's not self-evident from within the confines of their theory why that should be the case.
Like, why should you be allowed to hurt someone's feelings if they want to sleep with you and you don't want to sleep with them?
I mean, what are you going to do?
You're going to base your criteria on health?
Yes.
On looks?
Yes.
On the admirable qualities of the person, usually on race, often on religion, you're going to give all that up?
Yeah.
As in Naked Jared case, it's the utilities.
It's kind of like a sexual potluck.
So, you know, don't come empty-handed.
Sometimes if you don't have any choice...
Don't trust the casserole.
Well, you have to take what comes your way, but I'm sorry.
We're more fortunate than that.
So the first thing is that we can't forget that not only is discrimination necessary, but that it's one of the most basic rights, and it's associated with freedom of association.
And the most tangible example of freedom of association is freedom to choose your sexual partner.
And so the social justice warrior types are going to run afoul of that.
They already are in some sense because the transgender people are complaining that they're not given the same sexual preference as Normandy.
Well, but it goes along with the same logic.
And, you know, in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, this is quite interesting, is that it was rude.
It was a social faux pas to reject anyone's sexual advance and also to have anything like a long-term relationship, because what you were doing was discriminating against everyone else by preferring one partner.
And that is what you're doing.
Like, make no mistake about it.
That's the ultimate in discrimination, is the ability to say no to a sexual partner.
Does this mean polygamy is coming back?
It could make a comeback.
Is that a thing?
Well, to transition, because we were just talking about this sort of in Christian culture, a very common question we got, so a lot of people asked, and I think it's because we have quite a few Christian viewers, listeners, said, do you, because you've talked about, and you've given lectures on Christianity, on sort of the Christ figurehead, I guess more as an archetype, people were saying, do you believe in God or a spiritual entity that In actuality, or do you believe more so in the archetype and the lessons to be green for Christianity?
I'm going to do what I usually do with that question, is I'm going to refer people to what I've been saying.
And if you want an answer to that, I would say that it would be worthwhile to watch the biblical lectures that I'm doing, because I'm trying to answer that question.
It isn't a yes-no question, in my estimation, in any useful sense.
Like, I don't want to weasel out of it.
So I would say that the And this is the approach that I'm taking in these lectures.
The first thing is that I'm going to make as rational, historical, and biological a case possible for the, let's call it the construction and evolution of these religious ideas.
And keep the metaphysical elements out of it, because I think it's cleaner that way.
But having said that, having said that...
I believe there's a significant other.
Just missed a call from Stratford.
Okay, Tammy, will you call them and tell them that I'm going to be a bit late on that call?
What do you mean?
15 minutes.
15 minutes?
Yeah.
All right, I guess we just got a time frame out here, so...
Yeah, I guess we do.
So...
You said that being said after the...
Yeah, okay.
So having said that, having decided to take as rational an approach and as simple as an approach as possible, that's Occam's razor, right?
Don't make your explanations any more complicated than they need to be.
I'm unwilling to dispense with the metaphysical element because there's lots of evidence that people are capable of experiencing revelatory emotions, let's say.
And For example, they're reliably induced by certain kinds of psychedelics.
Right, you talked about that last time, yeah.
Psilocybin mushrooms are the best example of that, I would say.
And it's absolutely reliable, and you can induce those emotions with brain stimulation.
And people who have epilepsy often have religious experiences prior to their epileptic seizures, and that was characteristic of Dostoevsky.
And mystical experiences are reported from all over the world and have been since the beginning of time.
And there's one of the things that I found out about the Christian ideas, for example, is that the deeper you dig into them, the more profound they become.
And so, although I think it's safest And most careful to approach it from as rational a perspective as possible.
I'm unwilling to dispense with the notion that there's a metaphysical element to existence that supersedes our comprehension.
I believe that.
And I've had experiences that have led me to believe that, that I'm not going to discuss.
But it isn't something that you can casually eliminate.
And there's more.
Like, I do believe that one of the things that Christianity really emphasizes, and I think this is true of many well-developed religious traditions, is that there's something that isn't simply material in the way that we understand material about consciousness.
We don't understand consciousness.
And the idea that consciousness is necessary for the world to exist is a perfectly reasonable metaphysical proposition, because it's not Easy to understand or to describe what being would be if there was no one conscious to experience it.
Right.
So, if you look at the...
A simple example, go back to a chemistry.
I had someone, I think, I don't know if it was a theology professor explain it to me, say, we're three-dimensional beings.
Assume God exists in 12 dimensions.
He just said, as three-dimensional beings, we can't fully comprehend it.
We wouldn't be able to explain it.
That was the way I had it explained to me in college.
So I just want to, because I know, you know, Gerald here has studied quite extensively in theology and actually dabbled in teaching some apologetics, specifically as it relates to Islam.
I believe...
I believe that Professor Peterson is kind of saying what I've often said.
I do believe.
I don't hold that back.
I say, yeah, I believe in God.
I believe the Judeo-Christian God Christ to be who he claims to be.
But that's never been my argument.
I try and argue from as much of a factual basis as possible, particularly if you're looking to reach new people.
Right.
I believe that's what he's saying.
But, Gerald, did you have a...
One, I wanted to confirm, is that kind of what you're saying?
And two, I think some of the complexities of the conversations that you have and that we all kind of have can, I think, make some people go kind of like, what the hell did you say?
So boiling it down, I think, is great.
And a lot of times when we talk about those complexities, you're right, you can dive into these religions as much as you want, but there are kind of core doctrines, so to speak, to religions.
That can be fairly simple on the surface and obviously kind of go down beyond that.
So when it comes to those core doctrines, you know, Christians believing in a God, believing in Jesus as his son, that he died, was buried, resurrected for sins, created the relationship again.
Those are the things I think when people ask that question, like, where do you come down on that?
I think the answer they're looking for may be a lot more complex than we have time for.
But just generally speaking, yeah.
Yeah, that seems like something I'm kind of in line with or no, I kind of go this direction.
Yeah, I think we've got a lot of requests for that from people.
And I know you give lectures, but sometimes people need it.
In the last lecture I gave, which was just last night, I started to talk about what I regard as the psychological significance of the idea that at the beginning of time, that God used the Word, which is identified with Christ, to call order...
I was trying to understand and explain what that means.
And the truth of the matter is, is that it's a stunningly sophisticated idea.
And the fact that it's a stunningly sophisticated idea seems to indicate to me that there's something to it.
It's not some easy superstition.
The idea that the fact that John associated Christ with the Word of God at the beginning of time is a kind of conceptual mystery.
It really is a conceptual mystery.
Why did that idea emerge?
Well, it isn't just an arbitrary idea.
It's a very, very deep idea.
And it has to do, at least in part, with the idea that conscious use of language calls forth new types of being.
And we act as if that's true constantly.
We act as if we can shape the world with our speech.
And the presupposition that we can do so, I think, is part of what Allowed people in the West to attribute to every human being some sort of divine equivalence with God, because there's the idea that, you know, that we have a spark of the divine in us.
And our law is predicated on that notion, and all of our customs are predicated on that notion.
And that seems to have something to do with our capacity to use language in a creative and intelligent way to shape the direction of the world.
Yeah.
And so I'm unwilling to just dispense with that idea metaphysically.
I don't know what it means in the total scheme of things, although one thing I have learned from studying mythology, and so that's the deep structure of narrative, is that in most mythological stories that have to do with the nature of being, there's always three elements.
There's the formless chaos from which things emerge.
There's a structure that gives rise to the order that emerges out of that chaos.
And then there's an active principle that that structure uses to do that.
And that's often represented as the father and the son.
And it's always there.
It's always there, and I'm not willing to dispense with that notion, because it looks to me that sentient creatures like us do Face the chaotic possibility of being, that's the future, that we do make decisions about how it is that we're going to extract the world out of that potential, that we do use speech as the means by which that occurs, and that that does determine the direction of the unfolding of reality.
And Not to cut you off, I know you have a timeline on there.
I know where Gerald kind of comes from, I think, specifically is more so theology as it relates to other religions.
And I think you have argued on this show before that the idea of Christ as the person he claimed he was is pretty simple.
And that there's a strong delineation between other developed religions, as you put it.
And it would kind of be, the idea of Christ as compared to other mythologies would kind of be purposeless if it were just another one along the trail.
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, he made claims that have to be dealt with, I think is my point.
And, you know, we've been talking a lot about truth, and I think we've kind of, we've found ourselves a bit afloat in society because we really don't have, like, what is truth, that classical question, you know, and where does it come from?
And if we don't have that mooring of truth that has to come from somewhere, then we kind of float around and everything's okay.
And so you kind of ask yourself, one, well, where does that truth come from?
Is it the Judeo-Christian God?
Is that where that comes from?
And then talking about truth, what Christ claimed when he claimed to be the son of God, you've always heard this, you know, three-part kind of argument.
He's either a liar or lunatic or Lord.
He's a liar because he knew he wasn't and he claimed to be.
He's a lunatic because he wasn't and he didn't know he wasn't, which would be kind of a weird way to exist.
Or he's exactly who he said he was.
And I think he did that on purpose.
C.S. Lewis is great about talking about this and saying, look, he puts a question to every And that's the question that all of us have to answer one way or the other.
It's either the biggest waste of your time in all of history, or it's absolutely true.
And I think those are the questions.
Sorry, I stepped on my dog.
Apologies.
Apologies.
The Hoffer was underneath my desk.
I'm sorry.
I just ruined the moment.
No, no, you're fine.
But I think people would have...
You probably picked the most profound moment in the entire conversation to stomp on your dog.
I know.
I'm sorry.
He's licking my foot again.
But I do.
I understand your question.
So, Professor Peterson, what would you say to that?
You know, if someone kind of, you know, I guess to sort of nutshell that, Christ said, I'm a sword.
He comes to divide.
There is kind of that lineup on one side.
I think that's the question that, you know, we got a lot on Twitter and on YouTube.
People asked.
He didn't leave us an out, basically.
Yeah.
Well, I think it's an open question how much the world arranges itself in a different manner around someone who does everything they can to speak and live the truth.
New Testament.
It's like, how does the full expression of the truth shape the direction of the cosmos?
And one of the things that the New Testament claims is that it produces a radical transformation of the nature of reality.
And that's a claim that I'm unwilling to dispense with.
Now, that doesn't mean I understand it, and I don't understand it.
I also do think that there's things in the New Testament, in the record that we have, that are very, very difficult to...
They're very difficult to understand, and it's difficult to understand why they haven't been edited out.
Like, Christ's statement about being the way, for example, and that no one comes to the Father except through Him, and that He was the truth embodied in flesh.
I mean, those are very strange claims, and they don't sound to me precisely like the ravings of a lunatic.
They're not...
They're of a different order.
That doesn't necessarily mean that someone actually said them.
There's no proof of that in the way that we would normally consider proof, but the stories are such that Merely writing them off as superstitious is not useful.
It doesn't help.
I agree.
And I think that we do have to – I wanted to do this.
Maybe we can do it next time.
Someone did ask Kien and Matern, can you – Professor Peterson, can you do a big five personality analysis of Crowder and share it with the audience?
Maybe we can do that for next time.
We can do it somewhat off air and you can embarrass me.
But I do.
I agree with you there.
I think we're – You can't prove every single word that was said that's written down from the Bible.
It's not necessarily a transcription, but the totality of the historical context, the corroborations, the evidence outside of just the biblical timeline.
At a certain point, I think, like Professor Peterson is saying, you have to determine what you believe the truth to be.
And that is one that not anyone has the answer.
There's a certain element of faith there.
Yeah, and I think historically, as you look at how we judge history books, you're right.
I was just going to say you're right.
I was just going to say it.
There's one other thing to consider, too, with regards to belief.
I mean, belief isn't necessarily allegiance to a set of facts.
It might even be more importantly, in relationship to Christian belief, that it's the decision about how to act.
And there's an idea, and this is, I think, most well-developed in Orthodox Christianity, is that your moral duty is to act out the archetypal pattern of Christ in your own life.
And what that essentially means is that to tell the truth in the manner that...
In a manner that suits and fits you best, your own personal truth, and then pay the price for that in your life and that that's the appropriate way to be.
That's in some sense a different definition of belief, and I think it's a better one, because I don't think that what people say they believe is the best guide to what they believe.
I think the way they act is the best guide to the way they believe.
And so then that would mean that to have faith in Christ, if you considered him the archetypal perfect human being, and perhaps nothing else, but let's just say, I mean, that's enough, right?
That's a pretty good start.
Right.
That your moral duty would be to attempt to duplicate that in the confines of your own life.
And that's the actual basis of your belief.
And that seems to me to be a perfectly reasonable proposition.
And it also doesn't introduce these other ideas that are associated in some sense more with the domain of something like objective fact.
It isn't clear to me that we're exactly in the domain of objective fact.
Although I know that's a mess.
I know it's a mess, but...
No, no, no, it's not.
And I understand.
I hate to, because I know you have to go.
I saw the messes tell you you had 15 minutes left.
And I think that is true.
You know, you see, talk about mimicking the archetype, and that's what we've talked about.
That's why there's, I believe, there's such a problem with Islam, because of Muhammad and the way that he acted is very different.
If everyone acted like Christ, be a little bit weird.
You might be like, hey, the guy's overly friendly.
Muhammad, everyone would be jailed.
And we can talk about that next time you come on.
Do you think you can do the Big Five personality analysis next time and we can share it with the audience?
Well, I can tell you a little bit about your personality.
You're a pretty agreeable person.
You know, you like people and you're friendly.
You're very, very extroverted, right?
You're off the charts extroverted.
You're pretty high in openness.
You may have noticed that.
Extrovert, my suspicions is that your conscientiousness is probably somewhere in the medium range because you wouldn't be a comedian if you were highly conscientious.
It's just not...
To be an entertainer isn't something that someone who's really conscientious can be because the lifestyle is too unstructured.
In terms of negative emotion, I would suspect probably higher than average.
That's neuroticism.
I would suspect probably higher than average.
But certainly off the charts for us.
There you go.
He already put me on the couch.
Okay, well, let's do this.
We'll do it more in depth next time because I'm interested.
Whenever I take these little...
You can take a personality test and we can go through it.
Okay.
That sounds like fun.
And the audience will love to see me embarrassed.
That sounds scary.
20% discount if you enter in Crowder at selfauthoring.com, right?
Yes, that's right.
Yes.
Not.ca.
Not like the rest of those Canadians.
He's going against the grain.
Nope.
Professor Peterson, thank you so much for taking the time, sir.
This has been wonderful, and hopefully people have learned some truth here today.
That is right.
And here's some music playing.
We will see you tomorrow.
For those who are watching, Tommy Loren tomorrow.
Send your questions out there on YouTube, and we'll be talking about Donald Trump's budget proposal regarding education.
That's been really controversial.
See you then!
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