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Feb. 6, 2018 - Louder with Crowder
56:05
‘MOST MEN ARE WIMPS!’ (Jordan Peterson Uncut) | Louder With Crowder
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♪ You're a strange animal, that's what I know
You're a strange animal, I got to follow I'm in your spirit
♪ There we go, glad to have our guest.
This is a long-form interview.
It is. We do this every now and then. It's kind of cheating.
First of 2018. First of 2018.
The reason is because we are going to be at Virginia Tech February 6th.
It's true. So we need to buy some time on the road.
There are only a select few people who are worthy of long-form interviews.
Very, very, it's true.
Spoiler alert. It's not you. That's never me.
So our next guest, he's been making the rounds, and he's probably as viral right now.
He's as hot a ticket as he's ever been.
His book is out, of course, The 12 Rules for Life.
You've been reading it quite a bit. I've been reading it.
I've had to look at the Cliff Notes because I have it in my queue.
Right now I have Eric Metaxas, his book on Martin Luther that I'm finishing, and he'll be on the show too.
But this is, of course, by Dr.
Jordan Peterson. You can also do the self-authoring program.
If you go there, use the promo code CROWDER. You get 25% off because I'm a basket case.
Yeah. So it's helped me.
So if you're as messed up as me, he can be as useful for you.
Of course, he's on the Twitter at Jordan B. Peterson.
Dr. Peterson, thank you for being here, sir.
Thanks for the invitation. Well, no, listen, you knew you were going to get an invitation.
I think you invited yourself, as a matter of fact.
Yeah, well, it's my life's dream to have this interview.
Yes, exactly. Well, come on, we have some firepower, even if they happen to be some people who you might not necessarily want in your fan base.
So, first off, this book, it's been selling like hotcakes, correct?
What's the reaction been, by and large?
And I know there's been viral videos, but the book itself, what kind of feedback have you gotten?
Well, it's hovering between number one and number two on Amazon in Canada, the US, the UK and Australia.
And it's the same on the bestseller lists, the big bestseller lists, like the Wall Street Journal and the London Times and all that.
It's crazy. It's selling like mad.
So for those who haven't really read it, kind of give them, obviously, a bit of a summary.
This stems from what?
What kind of data? Is it, by and large, a big component of, or is, I should say, maybe the self-authoring program a big component of this book?
Well, part of what the book does...
Promote is the idea that you need a vision in life and a strategy, and so that's a good overlap with the self-authoring program.
It doesn't make specific reference to the program, but it, I would say, provides the psychological and philosophical and ethical underpinnings for what we're doing with the self-authoring program.
So the idea basically is that, well, that There's no doubt that life is difficult and that people get betrayed and that hard things are coming down the pipeline for everyone all the time.
But that if you organize your life reasonably and face it courageously and make a plan so that you're not just a leaf in the wind and try to do things that are meaningful, then you can extract out a path of being from all of that that's worthwhile and noble and Helpful and productive and all of those things.
And so the book is a description of how you might do that.
But more importantly, why?
Right. A couple of things out there.
This is one of those issues that I notice a lot with your interviews.
What you just said right now, if I were looking to mince it, I could say that's sexist against men.
Why? Because he talked about organizing your life.
This book effectively is using a trait or teaching people how to best enact a trait that is actually sexist.
Women have, naturally, more than men.
Organizational skills. This is something you talk about.
Now, if I were looking to mince that as a radical leftist when they say, well, that's sexist, that's a byproduct of patriarchy, you extolling the virtues of organizational capabilities could easily be turned as, so you're saying women are better than men because they're more organized?
Here's where you get wrong, because in the book, he also talks about how order is a stem of masculinity and chaos from femininity.
So, he balances it out.
Okay. Explain yourself.
Are you teasing poor Kathy Newman from Channel 4 again?
Well, okay, see, that's what we call a segue.
Okay, before we get to Kathy Newman...
Yeah. I'm refraining here.
Before we get to Kathy Newman, your rise has obviously been meteoric here this last year, which will also be a test of your narcissism.
We'll have to test those levels afterward, because often that gets...
Right, right. Well, I'm trying to keep that...
My existential terror is keeping the old narcissism under control.
Well, we'll test that later on in the program.
But in the States...
By and large, positive feedback.
Same thing it seems in the UK for people not named Kathy Newman.
But Canada still, a lot of people there hate you.
What's interesting to me is this is effectively a self-help book.
I can't remember in my lifetime, I'm sure someone will fact check me here, I'm sure it's happened, but certainly not to this degree, that a self-help book.
HALP book has been met with so much backlash.
Why do you think that is?
Because ultimately, what you are doing, as someone who's gone through the self-authoring program, you are looking to help people.
That's your goal. Well, you know, I took a stand against the radical leftists that started about, it's almost 18 months ago now.
And if you take a stand against the radical leftists, then they immediately try to paint you as a supervillain of the right.
And so that's just continuing in Canada.
Not with everyone. I mean, I have many journalists who are supporting what I'm doing in Canada, but it's definitely polarised.
And like there was an article in Canada's so-called national newspaper, The Globe and Mail, this week, which by the way is failing dismally as it moves forward through time, that really was a hit piece.
And it's an attempt by the people, I would say, on the radical left or people who are just misinformed To tar everyone who dares to stand up to their hypocritical and racist idiocy by making the case that they're associated with far-right thinking, which is just preposterous.
First of all, you don't have to be far-right to dislike the radical left.
You just have to be sensible and reasonable and not fold to the brim with resentment and false, what do you call that, false compassion.
So... The problem is if the radical left admits that someone like me actually happens to be reasonable, then they have to admit that reasonable people can object to what they're doing.
And then if reasonable people can object to it, then there's always the possibility that there's something wrong with it.
Imagine that, something wrong with identity politics and identifying people by race and ethnicity and construing the world as victim and victimizer.
I would reduce that and just say, imagine something being wrong.
Period. Right and wrong.
You know, that's just amazing to me.
And you see that in some interviews with you.
Let me say one thing. Okay, this is where we'll test a little bit of the narcissist in you.
This is obviously the most viral interview I think you've done with Kathy Newman.
Would you say? Yes.
Okay. Yes, definitely.
And it's one where I've seen even leftists, if you look at the feedback, saying, okay, this is an example of someone who I disagree with, but this person is reasonable.
The feedback on the Kathy Newman interview is almost entirely positive.
Would you say that's a, compared with other interviews that were seen as more polarizing, would you say that's a relatively accurate assessment?
Yeah. The only exception would be that there was a flurry of newspaper articles after the interview came out.
evil army of trolls because I seem to apparently have an evil army of five million trolls
Yes, which is a lot of trolls, you know at some point you start wondering if the trolls are just normal people
Yeah, but yes, I would say that the apart from the press and there was a lot
They want people to think you have direct access to Jim Henson's creature shop and you're sending them out.
Yeah, exactly.
Well, and the Guardian claimed, and Channel 4 as well, that they had to bring in the police to do a security analysis.
And you can bring in the police under any circumstances.
It doesn't mean that the threats are credible.
And I don't think they produced any evidence whatsoever that the threats so-called were credible.
But yes, I would say...
Overwhelmingly, the consensus is that Kathy Newman conducted that interview in a highly biased, ideologically rigid, confrontational, and inappropriate manner.
Okay, good. So I just want to make sure that we recap this.
So your most viral interview and certainly the feedback amongst viewers and listeners as positive as we've seen this year.
Let's kind of separate the media from it a little bit because, you know, Kathy Newman is one on her own.
Yeah, right. Yeah, yeah.
So I think a big question here is, you know, why is that?
Why were you so successful with this?
And obviously you're wildly successful.
So, by the way, take this or leave it.
And I am not at all assuming that for people, hold your comments, that I know anything more than Jordan Peterson on any given topic.
He's a doctor. I'm not. Got it.
What I will say is this.
As an intellectual, as kind of an existentialist, and you've talked about this, sometimes you can be almost too smart for your own good.
What I think you did with this interview so well, certainly I would say...
More perfectly than I've seen in any other interview is this form of, I've talked about it, pattern disruption, and sometimes you'll wax on sometimes, which is in a way that's very intelligent, but the viewer may not necessarily directly correlate it to a point.
I think what you did with Kathy Newman that was so effective is you asked a follow-up question, you made her clarify her questions, which showcased them as absurd, and you lasered in on an answer better than I think I've ever seen you do.
Not that you haven't done it well, but you did it with Every question here.
It was almost like a boxer just coming back, making her overreach, and straight down the pipe.
That's what I saw. Would you say maybe that's why?
Did I lose? Oh, there he is.
I think I was fortunate to have handled that interview properly.
Yeah, I was fortunate to have handled that interview properly.
I think what clued me in, I think, very rapidly was when I first sat down with her in front of the cameras before they were running, She was very friendly and engaging and chirpy, and I thought that we were actually going to have a conversation because that's what we were having before the cameras rolled.
But as soon as the cameras went on, it was like she was a completely different person.
And what happened in some sense was that the clinical psychologist in me turned on.
Because that was such a dramatic shift in character, I thought, uh-oh, there's something strange going on here.
And so I got really detached from the interview.
Not completely detached, because it was still a high-pressure situation, I would say.
But I started just to watch what she was doing instead of taking it personally.
And what I realized almost immediately was that the person she was talking to bore virtually no resemblance to me.
And so it was hard to take it personally.
If people come after you with attacks, let's say, or insults, or Or they're after your character.
And they cut close to the bone.
Well, that's one thing.
But if they come at you with all sorts of accusations that really bear no relationship whatsoever to either what you think or what you said, then it's easier to be detached.
And I've also been trying hard to maintain a sense of humor through everything that's happened over the last 18 months.
And that's been difficult.
Partly because I've had very serious health problems and of course that makes having a sense of humor difficult but also because in many situations I had a lot on the line and wasn't sure how it was going to go but my sense of humor has returned and although I don't know if you can tell that in this interview yet but it has see there's a smile it's ironic because usually in this this is one of the few places people going oh Jordan Peterson laughing but I'm just fascinated I wanted to get to this that's right um you seem more relaxed with you yeah there's something wrong yeah you We seem more relaxed in the interview.
I hate to use the word, but we use this a lot in combat sports, more fluid.
You were able to take what she gave you and every time return it back tenfold.
And it's almost like that analogy you're a tiger who kind of has to bleed a little bit before you're in the fight.
I've noticed that when you're with friendly people, there's no time constraint.
You have so much room to you know expand upon an idea sometimes being framed in by someone else who's confrontational
Might bring out the best in you and I think we saw that it was formidable
Yeah, well, so so well And the thing is is that it's a lot easier to have a sense
of humor when you're not feeling three-quarters dead, right?
Yeah, so, you know, my health is back. I'm in pretty good shape again
and so it's a lot easier to be sharp as well and to pay attention to what's going on, but also to to
To have a bit of a lighter touch and I've always struggled with that with the material I deal with because it's so
serious You know, I mean totalitarianism and atrocity is what I've
been studying for 30 years and it doesn't really get any darker than that
but I do know that even despite the fact that that What I study is very dark and and I suppose some of the
things I talk about is very dark too that the humor is just Unbelievably necessary and I think I was able to keep a
lighter touch in that interview and to laugh a little bit especially at the absurdity of it because it just became...
Well, I think the reason that it went viral is because the interview became its own parody.
What should have happened, likely, was that she should have gone after me.
Afterwards, I thought, that was like being mauled by 20 miniature pit bulls.
And I was sure that Channel 4 was going to edit that and cut it up so that I would look like an absolute monster.
And I guess they did that to some degree with regards to what they broadcast and also what they put on their Facebook page.
But they put the whole interview up on YouTube, which I actually think...
You know, you could say, well, more power to them, and fair enough, but I actually think they did that out of straight naivety.
I don't think they had any idea whatsoever what that interview actually looked like to the outside world.
I think they were shell-shocked by the response.
I really believe that. I have some inside information from Channel 4, and I've been following people's reaction to it.
Like, I invited Kathy Newman to do another interview, you know, because I threw a backdoor channel, and I said, look, like, why don't we basically make this right instead of It ending this way because you've taken a lot of flack for this.
Why don't we actually sit down and have a talk and then that'll work out fine.
And she said something like, well, I need to let this die down and rethink it.
But I don't understand what all the fuss is about.
I thought the interview went very well.
It's like, well...
I think whoever's in charge of their YouTube account, probably not a big Kathy Newman fan.
And upload. She doesn't have access to YouTube.
That's fascinating. So she didn't take you up on it.
I mean... You know, yeah, I think there is some naivete there, but it's interesting that they uploaded that entirety.
Well, we had that with Sky News.
Remember that? You were there one time, and there were some producers there who didn't like one of their hosts, but they brought me on, and you could tell that's how I got my gig at Fox News, and that's how I got my spots at CNN. You know, as a young kid, I was just a comedian.
I didn't even have this show back then.
It was just kind of a lamb for the slaughter.
Yeah. I did alright.
You know, it's like they sent me in front of Alan Combs and I did okay and then they kept bringing me back.
I don't think they always necessarily expect it.
And like you said, they're out of touch.
She may have thought that she did really well in that interview.
One thing... I often do, and I think we've talked about this, to prepare for debates, to prepare for conversations, or even just to see kind of where I stack up against great thinkers, and you would be certainly today's sort of great thinker, Mount Rushmore, I would say, is the first time I watch an interview, I'll watch the Kathy Newman portion and pause it before I hear your response, and I respond as though it's in real time.
I'll do this with Bill Maher, I'll do it with, I don't know, Don Lemon, I'll do it with Kathy Newman, just to see how I would respond so it's as close to a live simulation as possible.
One thing that you handled superbly was very different.
I noticed from where I took this, when she said, well, hold on a second, I'm talking about the transgender law in Canada.
She said, why does your freedom of speech trump their right to not be offended?
And I just paused it and my answer was, there is no right to not be offended.
But then he hit play, and yours was actually, I thought, ooh, this might play against him.
I thought it was a little too intellectual, but it actually drew her into a firefight to where you ultimately said, gotcha.
You said, well, think about it. You need to have the right to be offensive because you need to have the right to dig and to offend me.
And that's absolutely something you should be doing.
And you turned it in a personal analogy and telling her, giving her more free reign.
And I think she was caught off guard by that.
That was handled really well. Well, she was because it was so, the thing is, It was so patently obvious by that point that she was doing everything she possibly could to make me uncomfortable.
She knew it. I knew it.
The viewers knew it.
There was no doubt about it.
And it was easy just to point to that and then to say, well, perhaps that's what you should be doing.
At least you certainly have the right to do that.
That offence argument, like we can break that down a little bit because that's worthwhile.
It's like, okay, you don't have the right to say anything that offends someone else.
It hurts their feelings. Okay.
What if you're talking to a thousand people?
You don't have the right to say anything that's going to offend any one of those thousand people, which basically means you do not have the right to say anything at all.
Because in a group of a thousand people, virtually anything you say will be regarded as offensive by at least one person, even if it's merely a consequence of the fact that they're misinterpreting you.
And so really, The right, the absence of the right to offend is absence of the right to speak at all.
And that just seems so self-evident.
All you have to do is think about it.
And if it's not a thousand people, well, what if you're Kathy Newman and you're talking to a million people?
Like, she's offending people nonstop.
And she has to, if she's going to be...
Well, no, seriously. No, I know.
And she doesn't understand it, though.
She thinks, because I think this is important, she sees intent as the ultimate kind of value there.
What trumps the action is the intent.
Her intent isn't to offend, and she ascribes intent to you.
Your intention was to offend.
She even went as far as saying that, you know, to harm transgender people.
I think in her eyes, it's okay for her to speak as long as she's not intending to hurt anyone's feelings.
And people like, you know, your feelings don't matter so much to her.
Well, there's also a misinterpretation of my stance because my stance had very little initially to do with transgender people.
The whole issue of transgender phobia, let's say, is that the backlash from the radical leftists.
What I said was that I would not use words that the government was compelling me to say.
The fact that they happened hypothetically to be about transgender people was just a sideshow in some sense.
Not that their concerns are irrelevant, but that wasn't the point.
If all this was was about transgender pronouns, it would have disappeared, well, a year ago.
It would have disappeared immediately.
That's not the issue at all, and everyone knows it.
The issue really is that there's a culture war going on, and the radical leftists are trying to push an agenda on everyone, and they're doing it quite effectively.
I said that I wasn't going to play.
I said, specifically, that I would not allow the radical leftists to define the linguistic territory.
And that was correct, and it's the right thing to do.
Well, look, if the radical leftists define the linguistic territory, and the game we start playing is identity politics, right?
So it's every group against every other group, In a war against all, and that there's no real communication between the groups possible, and it's victim and victimizer narrative, and that's the way of the world, then one of the things that does instantly is open the door to the identitarian right, who will say, okay, no problem.
You can define the game.
It's identity politics.
I'm white. I'm white and male, let's say, and I'm not going to play to lose.
I'm going to bloody well play to win, because that's what the right-wing identitarians will do.
Right. And that's, well, both of the whole, for me, the response to that is, let's just not play that game.
Right. Where the headline was something about me being an angry white male.
And I thought, I don't really care what you guys say about me.
Like, it bothers me, or it doesn't bother me, or bring it on, or the, what would you say, the controversy is useful?
Like, there's lots of ways of interpreting it.
I'd rather people didn't attack me for things that were untrue, although it's actually kind of a relief.
It's better than to be attacked for things that are true, you know, in some sense.
But I couldn't believe that our national newspaper was so goddamn Dumb, that they would title an article with a racial epithet.
You know, it's like angry white man.
I see. So this is what we're going to do in Canada.
We're going to start having these discussions and we're going to label them with race.
And that's how we're going to make Canada, which is already a very peaceful country, much more peaceful.
That's your solution, you morons.
Well, you know, it's funny because that's what she accuses you of doing.
She goes, you know, you're trying to stir it up a bit.
You're trying to divide people, men and women and trans.
That's what she said about you.
And then they go along with headlines like angry white male.
Again, it's about intent.
They go angry white male or patriarchal male.
Well, it doesn't matter if this offends anybody because I didn't intend to.
So it's okay. Publish.
Print. They don't see that.
They see you as trying to divide and conquer through truth.
And that's what's most concerning to me.
Well, yeah. The thing is that I'm not playing identity politics games.
I'm not going to view the world through the lens of your group identity.
And that means just stepping outside of that game completely.
And that is what I did with 12 Rules for Life.
There's a little bit of political content in it in chapter 11, rule 11, which is don't bother children when they're skateboarding.
It's somewhat of a diatribe against the idea that boys should be socialized like girls, which I think is an appalling, an absolutely appalling idea.
And I also think it's an idea for which there is absolutely no justification in the psychological literature.
So I kind of touch on politics there, but more because politics has invaded a sphere it should stay the hell out of.
But the rest of the book is a book about individual responsibility.
As an antidote, in some sense, to the tragedy and malevolence of life.
Hold on a second. I'm going to interrupt there really quickly.
Do you see what you just said?
Your book is, in and of itself, seen as political, based on what you just said.
You must see this. It's about the power of the individual, which is, of course, you're placing the power of the individual, the influence of the, I guess, sort of the power of the individual over their own destiny, over the importance of the collective.
And that is why leftists will always see it as political.
There's no way out of it. You just have to embrace it because it's about the collective.
Well, I guess the reason that I think it is political, but it's more than political, and that's the case that I make in the book, it's that The idea that the individual should be sovereign is not a political idea.
It's a philosophical idea.
It's actually a theological idea.
It's actually the fundamental theological idea.
And that's actually the level at which this battle has to be fought, because it is in some sense a battle between the idea that the collective is Sovereign versus the idea that the individual is sovereign.
And the great idea of the West, more than any other cultural group, I would say, especially the articulated idea, is that even for the sake of the group, the individual has to be sovereign, because the individual is the force that revitalizes the group when it becomes hidebound and static.
And I think the evidence for that is overwhelming.
I think the West got that right.
Like, we got some things right.
The sovereignty of the individual is the most important one.
The absolute necessity for freedom of expression.
That's another thing we got right.
We got the idea of private property right, conjoined with the notion that you also have responsibility to your property so that you shepherd it and use it properly.
These are not political ideas.
They are, because they find expression in the political realm, but they're rooted in something far deeper than mere opinionated politics, and 12 Rules for Life explains why that is.
And I think the evidence is clear.
From neurobiology, from neuroscience, from evolutionary psychology, from mythology, from comparative literature, and I talk about all that in the book.
It's like from game theory, from economic theory, like the evidence is compiling from multiple disciplines simultaneously, that there is a central ethic that drives productive Well, let's say that helps you be healthy as an individual that drives positive relationships between you and your intimate partner, that sets your family straight, that works good for the community, all of that.
There's an ethic that does all of that, and it's not merely an arbitrary political opinion.
I believe that that's wrong.
That's why the postmodernists are wrong.
Enough of them. They're wrong.
Right. Well, and that's interesting.
One thing I also noticed with your Kathy Newman interview, and the reason I think the left sees you as such a political threat, is it seems as though less and less we have, when people talk about common ground, foundational truths upon which we agree.
For example, you saying men and women are fundamentally different.
They want different things.
There used to be a point where even feminists could say, well, yeah, of course, but we believe that the constraints have set.
And then you go down the path. Now we don't even agree on that.
And you were on Joe Rogan's show the same day actually I was, so he got a lot of flack for that.
They thought it was now becoming a bastard.
They thought it was the coming of the Fourth Reich for them.
Certain foundational truths that, okay, we were talking about, you don't put children on puberty blockers.
Regardless of how you feel about the trans issue.
Insane. Here's something absolutely comical that happened.
In the last two weeks.
So you remember James Damore, the engineer that got fired at Google?
Yes. He wrote a memo saying, poor James, he's an engineer.
And so he went to a diversity seminar.
And the diversity seminar people asked for feedback.
And James Damore is an engineer.
And so he thought, oh, they want feedback.
And because he's a good engineer, he thought, oh, they want intelligent, carefully thought through, thoughtful feedback.
Yeah. So that's what he provided them with.
And then they ignored it completely.
And he thought, well, they wanted feedback.
Why'd they ignore it? So then he posted it on an internal memo board, which people at Google do all the time, to see if he could get some discussion going there.
And then that was leaked.
It wasn't like James Damore planned this.
He was just doing what a non-political engineer would do when someone asked them for feedback.
Someone who might be a little on the spectrum, as many engineers are, yes.
Yeah, well, right. Well, okay.
Maybe engineers are Hope I think we I think we all overlords are
Very there, you know Are we there yes, we're there
Sorry, go ahead. We left with engineers in the spectrum, and I think you had something funny.
I apologize. Okay, well, so the CEO of Google came out and said he wasn't sorry that he fired James Damore.
And then he had a little discussion with the CEO of YouTube.
And She ended up saying that, well, women don't really like the geeky sort of jobs that characterize Silicon Valley.
And I thought, God, how can you do that?
That's exactly what Demore was talking about.
Exactly that.
And, you know, it is the case that the biggest difference, the biggest psychometric difference between men and women is actually in what they're interested in.
And so women tilt towards interest in people...
And men tilt towards interest in things.
And that's most pronounced in the Scandinavian countries where most has been done to level the gender playing field.
And you know, the people I talked to about this, I talked to a New York, I think it was New York Magazine reporter, and he said, well, isn't that pseudoscience?
And I thought, no!
Well, is that among serious scientists, especially the ones that are biologically oriented, this
isn't even debatable.
We settled this back in like 1982.
You know, Steve Pinker wrote a book a while back called The Blank Slate, where he made
a case that people had a biological nature and we weren't just sociocultural creations.
And I read that book and I thought, geez, Steve, I don't know why you wrote this book.
It's like everyone knows this.
It's like that was done in the 1980s.
But I didn't understand at that point that there was this tremendous radical leftist
backlash against the idea that human beings have a biological nature.
There is backlash against biology, period.
The most sexist people alive would have to be biologists.
And it doesn't work in the medical field, ironically dominated by women.
But for example, you know, when you're talking about the gold standard for trials, when you're talking about double-blind placebo-controlled clinical trials, right, the placebo means, okay, we have a controlled group, and often, if you're trying to study a new substance, right, if you're trying to clear medicine with the FDA, you have to compare it to a substance that has predictable biological results, meaning, okay, we're going to use a substance where we know exactly how this affects, let's say, the liver or the kidneys or what the half-life is, and we're going to compare this new substance and its biological results.
So in other words, at some point, you have to determine truthfully what an establishing substance does to the body to know how to use it as a comparison.
We're now saying, well, hold on a second, maybe I don't think that acetaminophen does that in the body.
But it does, though!
You know? That's where we are.
Yeah, well, it's certainly possible, and the postmodernists are doing this, to take science apart right to the core, and to think about it just as another ideology.
And the problem with that is that the postmodernists don't act that way, because they use their cell phones and their...
They're desktop supercomputers, which rely on the objective reality of quantum mechanics, and they swallow that without a second thought.
So they act out their belief that science is something that transcends mere ideology, but they won't allow that entry into their ideological claims.
One of the things I do in 12 Rules for Life, and Newman went after me a little bit about this because she thought she might have Right.
Because anything about psychiatry knows a lobster's thing.
I heard about that years ago and I remember asking my dad, saying, what the hell does
a lobster on an antidepressant look like?
Because it's hilarious the first time you hear about it, but it's well-known in the
psychiatric community.
So, Kathy Newman's just an idiot.
Continue.
Yeah.
Yeah, well, so, you know, there's this idea that the radical leftists put forth.
There's a couple of ideas they put forth, apart from the fact that group identity should be the paramount virtue, that are also just wrong.
So here's one.
Inequality is caused by capitalism.
That's wrong. So here's some evidence.
The same law, the same formulas that govern the distribution of wealth in a society govern the mass of stars The size of cities and the heights of trees in jungles.
Now, you can't blame the latter three on capitalism.
Right. There's something deeper at work.
This proclivity towards unequal distribution of resources is something like a powerful natural law.
And it does threaten the integrity of societies.
And we don't know what to do about it.
But it isn't the fault of capitalism.
No. Okay. Next issue.
The patriarchy.
The hierarchy. So the patriarchal hierarchy is a consequence of capitalism.
Eurocentric, phalagocentric, capitalist domination.
And that's not the real, say, state of nature.
Okay, that's wrong.
There's been hierarchies for 350 million years.
That's why I use the lobsters as an example.
And the mechanisms that we use neurobiologically to govern our emotions and govern our posture and determine our self-esteem and all of that are akin to the mechanisms that lobsters use.
And lobsters have been around since before there were trees.
And so the hierarchy is older than trees.
It's not a sociocultural construct.
It's wrong to say that.
It's wrong to describe inequality as a consequence of capitalism.
It's wrong to assume that people's group identities should be superordinate to their individual identities.
It's wrong That there's an infinite number of valid interpretations of the world.
Those are all postmodern claims.
They're all wrong.
It's done. We're done with this.
One thing, by the way, I should have prefaced this.
You talk about that sort of posture and self-esteem.
The neurochemistry of lobsters is so similar to humans that they've actually administered antidepressant psychiatric medication to lobsters with very similar effects.
It is hysterical the first time you hear about it.
Two things here. Before we get to the lobster thing, because that's going to be the majority of this interview, I'm not going to lie about it.
I just find it hysterical. But you just mentioned that we cannot blame inequality on capitalism.
So I think a big part of it, if you look at whether it's socialism, whether it's communism, whether it's free enterprise, capitalism, right?
These, at a point, were mechanisms designed to help us cope with or help us to best frame in sort of the essence of a human being, right?
We see it as, for example, if you see socialism, the reason socialism exists is because people inherently recognize that inequality exists, not as the byproduct of socialism, but socialism is a designed solution for that.
So I would follow that up with, I hate to be political with it, but this is entirely accurate, okay, we know that regardless of the society, Anywhere throughout history there's been inequality.
Has there been a single system in the history of man that has pulled more people out of poverty than modern westernized free enterprise?
The answer is no. The answer to that is clearly, well, it's not only no, it's so clearly no that it's just, it's almost miraculous.
Like... There have been more people lifted out of poverty in the last 15 years than were lifted out of poverty in the entire history of mankind before that.
Like, not only are people being lifted out of poverty, they're being lifted out at a rate that is actually inconceivable.
We could actually be done with extreme poverty except for that that's caused by cataclysmic events.
We could be done with that in 10 years.
Well, that's why they've shifted to inequality, right?
Because, well, here's a standard, poverty.
But hold on, there's a bigger gap.
Yeah, but let's say the pie was $1 million, and you had 50% of it.
But now the pie is $5 billion, and you have 20% of it.
You're still better off, and that's why they shift the goalposts.
Well, so we could make this argument technical in some sense.
We could say, look, you need a certain number of units of inequality To produce a certain number of units of wealth.
Okay, so no inequality, no wealth.
Bad idea. Everyone starves.
But then there's a limit on the other side, which is if the inequality gets too extreme, even if no one's starving, the society is going to destabilize.
And I think the evidence for that is clear.
So then we have a problem, which is, okay, inequality tends to emerge of its own accord in all sorts of different domains.
So it emerges among sports...
Among athletes, right?
Because if you look at the distribution of athletic prowess, it follows the same Pareto distribution that wealth distribution does.
It happens for recording artists.
It happens for artists.
It happens for authors.
It just happens everywhere.
Okay, so we might say, well, we don't want to let the inequality get so extreme that society starts to destabilize.
So we have to figure out how to mitigate the gap.
But then we could have an intelligent conversation about how to develop multiple strategies to mitigate that gap and see which ones work.
And mere shoveling money to the bottom end of the distribution, like shoveling money to the, what do you call that?
It's the lower class, but it's the lower class people that Theodore Dalrymple write about, the people that are outside the system completely.
If you give a cocaine addict money, If you give an alcohol-addicted cocaine addict money, he'll just die.
It's a really bad solution, right?
Because he'll just go out on a binge and he'll spend all his money and he'll die.
And there's lots of people at the bottom of the heap Whose lives are so absolutely dysregulated that merely providing them with money will not help them.
So it's not the right solution.
Now, and we do have serious problems here too because we're also setting up a situation where most of the people who are on the low end of the inequality distribution also have low cognitive function.
And that's going to be a worse and worse problem as the machines take over our jobs They're going to start taking over the jobs for people who have lower IQs first.
Well, obviously, how could it be any other way?
But that's actually a really big problem, and we don't know how to deal with it.
But we could have an intelligent discussion about that without getting all identity politics about it, you know?
Right. And if the left clued in, which I hope they do, then they'd stop playing identity politics and start standing up for the dispossessed again, which is what they should be doing.
Not to mention the moral reprehensibility of simply stealing from someone to give it to someone else.
It's just wrong.
At a certain point, you have to say, this is theft.
That's not only a financial issue, that's a moral issue.
But it's interesting, like you talked about, we have no problem with it in sports, which, by the way, is also the byproduct of free enterprise if you look at professional sports leagues.
I guess we need to redistribute the Jamaicans' fast twitch muscle fibers.
It's a 100-meter dash.
Let's fine-tune our grafting techniques.
Here's one thing. As a psychologist, do you still practice?
Do you still see basket cases, or do you not have time for that?
It's on this program. Only on this program.
I don't.
I stopped my clinical practice last February.
Because I got swamped.
And one of the things that you can't do as a clinical psychologist is be distracted.
So when I do an hour of therapy with someone, I like to give them 100% of my attention.
Because we're talking about very...
Crucial things, past, present, and future.
And unless I'm concentrating 100% and also have enough additional mental capacity during the week to be thinking about my clients and what they're going through and to be available, then I risk making a mistake.
And so I pulled out of my clinical practice last February, partly because of health concerns, but also partly because my life got too complicated and I haven't picked it back up.
Well, I think that's very noble of you because you don't want to be distracted.
Did he reach out to anyone?
Oh, s***!
I had a suicide letter and I forgot to submit it.
Yeah, it's obviously... Well, exactly.
It's no joke, so you have to really be careful about that.
Yeah, but I just made a joke about it anyway. So let me ask you this.
It was sort of funny, even.
Okay, well, I appreciate it.
You talk about the lobster, shoulders back, you know, and you talk about sort of this, a lot of people would, they'd do well to take on a more combative nature.
In other words, to sort of, you talk about this fight for their territory, earn it.
Courageous. Courageous.
Okay. But it's courageous and vulnerable at the same time.
Yes. Well, that was going to be my follow-up question, because I wonder this in your practice, and as someone who regularly still does counseling, I think everyone should do it to some degree, certainly if you're married.
You have different people come into your practices.
How do you sort of apply this life principle to, let's say, someone who might come in like a beaten puppy, someone who's meek, someone who's slumped over, and recognize the difference?
And how would you coach them versus someone who comes in headstrong, cocky, and is already too combative?
Because it seems like you could be given somebody some arms that some people probably don't need.
Well, a lot of...
So in the first case, someone who's beaten down and been bullied, say, maybe their whole life, a lot of what I do with them is listen, you know, and walk through.
Like, I had a client a while back who had been bullied so badly in high school that she had a psychotic episode.
Yeah. And so she was so broken when she first saw me that it was just beyond belief.
Like, she could barely talk, and she was having visual hallucinations, and it was really, really, really bad.
And I just let her talk for, oh, about three months.
I just listened to what happened to her.
I was fractured in her speech. And we wrote down what happened to her and made it coherent.
And talked about malevolence a lot because the kids who went after her were really doing it with vicious intent.
Like, they were out to take her out.
And they did. And it was an ugly situation.
So a lot of that's listening.
It's like, okay... What happened to you?
Who did it? Why?
Were you making yourself more vulnerable than you needed to because you didn't have the skills to defend yourself or see what was happening or fight back?
All of that. Then to strategize about how you could come up with inappropriate defense against similar things in the future because the purpose of memory isn't to remember.
The purpose of memory is to extract out wisdom from the past so you don't repeat catastrophes in the future.
And so... If you help someone sort through their memories, especially of terrible, like, sustained psychological assault of that sort, then you arm them for the future, and that restores them to health.
And she got much, much better.
She was able to go back to school and all of that, and so thank God for that.
And then, with someone who's, most of the time, Stephen, you don't see the over-confident types in therapy because they're kind of narcissistic and they never come for therapy.
But you do see people now and then who are less sophisticated in their disagreeable attitude than they might be.
And usually what you do with people like that is help them strategize more carefully.
It's like, okay, you want to operate in the world in a combative and competitive manner.
Fine. Let's see if we can turn that into a sophisticated dance instead of a random flailing of fists.
Sure. And so it isn't a matter of inhibiting their aggression.
It's a matter of helping them develop much more sophisticated strategies for...
So maybe someone is fairly combative and explosive and they're mad at their boss because things aren't going the way they should at work and now and then they have a fit or they're resentful and bitter.
Well, both of those are very bad strategies.
It's like, okay, what are you upset about What do you want as a solution?
Can you possibly obtain this in the current workplace?
Or do you have to look for another job?
What's your strategy for moving forward?
And those would be like conversations that probably take about a year.
Yeah. Right? Because it's really complicated to come up with a full life strategy for career development, for example, although it's unbelievably useful.
I mean... It's incredibly useful.
Oh yeah. Most of the time in my consulting practice, because my practice...
We expand the gamut from people who are extraordinarily impaired in almost every way to people who are hyper-competent.
And some of the people who came in for consulting, and so that would be career development and life development planning, you know, we'd triple their income in three years by strategic.
But it was like a sequence of battles.
Put inside a large-scale strategy and now there's going to be an army of people saying open up your private practice
I want to triple my income. Dr. Peterson. You promised you'd make me more money
Well, you know, it's interesting though Do you start off could the premise sort of in your book you
start off with the idea of listen more people would would benefit
From being able to sort of stand in the pocket being able to be courageous
So obviously like we said there are two different kinds of people the second kind of person probably wouldn't seek
counseling Anyway, probably wouldn't be reading this book. But do you
write that this is chapter one?
Do you write it from that point of view because you see that as a more plaguing problem in today's society timidity
lack of?
confidence lack of self-esteem I don't know if it's worse.
No, I don't necessarily think it's worse than it has been.
Although the stats for depression and anxiety among young people are pretty troublesome.
Do you think it would be more prevalent than like the cocky, overconfident type of...
Oh, yeah. Oh, yes. It's definitely more prevalent than that.
Oh, for sure. Like 10 to 1, I would say.
Yeah, yeah. And, you know, the 12 rules for life is a call not so much to be not anxious, but to not let anxiety stop you.
Right. That's the thing.
And there's an explanation of why it might stop you and an explanation of why people become embittered and unhappy and deceitful and resentful and all of that as well.
But yeah, it's very practical.
You were saying maybe people would beat down the doors of my consulting practice to figure out how to triple their income.
And I would say, well, the first thing you want to do is, if that's your goal, first of all, you want to decide if that's actually your goal.
Because if you're going to do that, there's a bunch of other things you can't do.
Right? Because you just can't do everything.
But let's say you want to triple your income.
Okay, well, pick a time frame.
Maybe it's three to five years.
And then figure out what the hell is wrong with you that's stopping you from looking at other opportunities.
Well, you have to get your resume together.
And it can't have holes in it.
And you have to have some education.
You have to be... Able to produce something that's of value to other people.
You have to stop being resentful about competing in the workplace.
You have to be willing to undergo endless interviews.
You have to send out 50 resumes a week for two years and assume that 99% of them will fail.
You have to assume that you'll go to multiple interviews and most of the time you won't get the job.
Like, it's a grueling battle.
Or you have to do a podcast on local radio for years without being paid a dime under this false presumption that someday it might actually have a significant enough viewership and listenership that you could actually make a living to employ 15 people.
It might be a pride-swallowing siege, which I will never fully tell you about for several years.
And it's true. And you know what?
I will tell you this. I'm going through that right now with trying to improve my relationships and my marriage before we have children.
And we could have children. We'd probably be better than most parents.
But I don't want to be that dad who works 16 hours a day and isn't there for my kids.
And because I'm tired, I get frustrated.
And something that was really telling to me, and this is why a lot of...
Yes, barely. But I do.
I find the time. I make the time.
Priorities. That's also in his book.
Dr. Jordan Peterson's book is about making a plan.
I make a plan, and I have back passages to not gay Jared's house.
So one thing with my marriage is, like you said, setting a plan, assessing yourself.
And something that was very telling to me, and a lot of people see it as weakness marriage counseling, I highly recommend it.
Because almost every stereotype about men and women You realize it is true when you're in a marriage, the miscommunications that occur, the way you both read situations.
And our counselor said, listen...
Anger from a man, from a husband to a wife, is almost never productive in a marriage.
He said, usually anger is disguising some other emotion.
It's usually either disguising hurt or fear.
He said, and with your wife, it will be more productive to be vulnerable and remove the cloak of anger with her.
You don't have to do it with everyone, but in the privacy of your marriage, your wife will respond better to vulnerability.
So examine why you're angry.
Usually it's hurt or fear and express that to your wife.
Okay. And that was a breakthrough.
And I don't know if that's the kind of thing that you have to be honest with yourself before you can come to a solution.
Truth is at the center of it.
Well, I talk a fair bit about that in 12 Rules for Life, about resentment.
You have to consult your resentment, and you find you're resentful about something.
Okay, why? Well, there's only two reasons.
The first reason is that you're whiny and useless, and you should shut the hell up and grow up.
Because that's life, and quit being such a twerp.
But, having established that you're not being a twerp, And that something is actually wrong that you need to set right, then you have to figure out exactly what it is that's wrong, and you have to figure out exactly what you would like to make that go away.
Like, one of the best things you can do in your marriage if you're arguing with your spouse is actually tell them what would minimally satisfy you.
Right. It's like, I'm mad at you because you did this.
It's like, okay, fine.
But no, you need something else.
It's like, I think that what's happening here is suboptimal.
And if we did it this way, which would require only a little change, that that would be better.
And let's try that for a week.
And then we can discuss it again.
You know, and so you have to make these things concrete.
You know, like maybe you're having battles about frequency of sexual interactions with your wife, because that's very common, especially once you have kids.
It's like, well, what's your minimal requirement?
Make it so you...
It's like, I want you to be around when I need you.
It's like, oh yeah, Jesus, go away.
You have a boner 24-7.
That's not going to happen. Yeah, same conversations, not K. Jared has with his hand.
The stranger. You sit on it for two minutes, it goes numb.
Makes you feel loved. Everyone needs affection.
See, I just don't want to know these things.
I just don't want to know these things.
Well, one thing I will say though, and often within a marriage, and that's what I think marriage counseling is so important, because now you've added two people.
First off, Don't date someone who hasn't sorted themselves out.
Don't marry someone who is in a constant state of crisis and they could use this book.
Fix yourself first. But then you realize, like we're talking about with anger in a marriage, it's usually not actually stemming from your spouse.
Because you married them, generally speaking, because you love them.
Often frustration is coming from these outside circumstances, which you tend to channel in to the person you spend the most amount of time with.
For example... Yeah, well, you often don't know, eh?
Right. Because you go to work, and you get upset, and then you're all irritable.
And you don't really even know why, because maybe 10 stupid things happened that day that you haven't fully thought through.
And then you come home, and your wife says something that rubs you the wrong way, and bang, you're irritable as hell.
And then you have a little discussion.
You think, well, I think I'm mad at you for saying this thing.
And then you think it through, and you think, oh, well, wait a minute.
These 10 things happened at work.
Oh yeah, that's a reflection of a deeper problem at work that I don't even really want to think about.
And a lot of discussions between husbands and wives...
Hold on a second.
Damn this Canadian internet. I think he's still there.
Husbands and wives. We're left off on husbands and wives.
We're leaving on husbands and wives.
I think he's there. I can see his good-looking mug, but I can't...
Now we're still here.
Husbands and wives, apologies.
They've come for you and your internet.
Yeah. Well, a lot of discussions between husbands and wives that are combative are actually discussions about what the problem is rather than what the solution is.
This is something that husbands really don't understand well about listening to their wives.
Husbands want to cut right to the chase and solve the problem, but the wives are trying to figure out, well, wait a minute.
What's the problem? Maybe it's this, maybe it's that.
There has to be a fair bit of wandering in the conversation to even specify what the problem is.
Once you know what the problem is, it's actually not that hard to solve it usually, but it's definitely hard to identify the problem.
Yeah, and as you talked about with some of your female patients before, often with wives, simply listening and not providing a solution is the solution, is validation to emotions, which isn't something that computes with a lot of men.
Usually you're saying this, this, this, and this, and you want to hear, well, maybe this is how...
Ah, that's the ticket!
And you go off and you carry a solution.
But often women are saying something because they want you to listen.
They go... Oh, that's good.
I feel better now. These are things that you can only know if you examine yourself.
Well, so one of the things that happens when, if you listen to someone who has problems, this is what they do, is they think, okay, I'm upset, and here's 20 things that might be a problem.
And then if you listen to them go through it, it's kind of painful, especially if you live with them, because you think you might be at the core of all 20 of those problems, and maybe you are.
But if you can be patient and let the person lay out all 20 problems, then the next thing they'll do is they'll think, oh, wait a minute, 18 of those aren't relevant.
Here's the one that's important, but they can't get to the important one before wandering through all the potential ones.
And so sitting back and waiting, it's like you only let the person lay all their cards on the table before they can pick up the one that's relevant.
Right. And that takes patience.
And it's really important.
Yeah. And if you want to piss off your wife in a hurry, have her list 20 problems bothering her and say 18 of those aren't relevant.
And watch her.
That'd be like James Damore.
Well, you wanted me to give you feedback.
She's supposed to be the one that decides that 18 of them aren't relevant.
Yes, exactly. Wise words.
The book is 12 Rules for Life.
It's selling like hotcakes on Amazon.
I know we almost just scratched the surface of chapter one, chapter two.
We'll have to have you back soon. And of course, the self-authoring program, the promo code is CROWDER. Where's the website for the self-authoring program, Dr.
Peterson? It's selfauthoring.com.
Yeah, and there's also the Understand Myself program, understandmyself.com, that takes about 15 minutes to fill out.
It'll give you a very detailed description of your personality.
You probably won't like it.
That's many people.
Yeah, listen, but the good thing is if you are actually examining yourself, and this is why I think you're seen as this crazy right-winger.
This is a self-help book.
And so is a self-authoring based on truth.
That's why we did the personality test here on air.
People can go to the archives and see us do that on air.
It's not the secret.
That would be sort of the antithesis to this.
The secret was just what you want and it'll come to you.
This is based on honest assessment of yourself.
Reality as it is, as you wish it to be. Reality as it is.
Your shortcomings, your attributes, and how to correct yourself.
I think everyone would do well to read it.
Dr. Peterson, thank you so much, sir.
And I hope that this meteoric rise continues.
Just don't become a narcissistic prick.
I'll do my best, man.
I've got people keeping my feet on the ground.
All right. It's certainly not Canada, though.
Just don't let the United States get to your head.
We will be back. We'll be at Virginia Tech tomorrow and Dr.
Peterson back soon. Thank you so much, sir.
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