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May 9, 2024 - On Brand

02:48:03

OB #55 - Jordan Peterson, UNO Reverse

Russell went on Jordan Peterson's show, and the resulting conversation was surprisingly tense, and unsurprisingly galaxy-brained. High drama, low stakes. N.B. there were technical issues meaning Lauren's video may be choppy for those watching. Support us on Patreon! - patreon.com/OnBrand Buy a magnet! - getsomerealactualgold

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	This is propaganda live.
	I only suggest how to take him out of the boat.
	Extraordinary cultural moment.
	Already iconic.
	Already iconic.
	We love you.
	You're welcome here.
	Where did this guy come from?
	It looks like he's been doing it for ages.
	He's very confident.
	Plainly, and this is a matter now of fact and record, I'm right wing.
	I feel that Christ may have had a better vision.
	Is this misinformation or is Vivek Ramaswamy in the lavatory?
	That's sort of like a poem.
	Is this Eminem?
	Man, if we didn't come together in that stream.
	I'm assuming it was just the Pete.
	Now these are the kind of conversations I think that the legacy media can no longer compete with.
	Win win win win win win win This is On Brand, a podcast where we discuss the ideas and antics of one Russell Brand.
	I'm Al Worth and each week I go through an episode of Brand Show with my co-host Lauren B. That's me!
	I'm the host that doesn't know what we're getting into, but it's usually pretty bad.
	It's almost invariably bad, which is why we do the good thing before the bad thing.
	Lauren, what is your good thing before the bad thing this week?
	Uh, similar to last week.
	Uh, my good thing is the, well, it's, um, it's, it's going well, but also, uh, difficult.
	I think there's been some difficulties, but overall, I think it's really important that, um, the college occupations and the protests that are happening with college students across the nation is spreading and, um, All over Chicago, things are kind of finally starting to get a little hairy.
	It is what it is.
	And we knew that that was going to happen.
	So it's really inspiring and incredible and the students are doing something really important.
	I think that we should all support in any way that we can.
	I've been trying to do that.
	Show up if you can.
	Find bail funds if you can.
	There's probably an encampment close to you.
	If you're in America, there's probably an encampment close to you at some point.
	Somewhere.
	So check it out, see if you can help, see if you can support.
	It is so impressive how these 19, 20, 21 year olds are handling themselves.
	That's honestly, it's so inspiring to me.
	The DePaul encampment, I know for sure, because they've been posting, they post their schedule every day.
	So they're like, Prayer, art build, drum circle.
	These are the events that they're scheduling and they're doing, and included in that is they were doing three morning, afternoon, evening de-escalation trainings.
	At DePaul, for sure.
	So they are extremely disciplined.
	They are so like they're they're disciplined on message.
	They are disciplined on how they are attacking this thing.
	And I think it's really, really cool.
	And.
	That's, it's super inspiring, and it's really important.
	And what's going on in RAFA right now, we all need to be paying attention, and we all need to be as active as we possibly can be.
	Because this is wild.
	Because we should be doing the same thing for our tax dollars, what they're doing for their tuition.
	And I think it's outrageous to know that these These universities will still be calling these students for decades to come to get alumni donations, and they'll still be begging them for money.
	They're not asking for anything.
	They're asking for a disclosure and divestment.
	They're not asking for the world.
	It's very simple.
	It's just, what are you doing with all the money that I'm giving you?
	It's really...
	It's shocking to see the military and political response to, I mean, and just because we expect it doesn't mean that it isn't shocking every time you see.
	And it's fucking disappointing and ugly to see how these adults are behaving.
	For sure.
	And so, yeah, anyway, it's it's It's been rad for me to see, and you know, whatever you would do in this situation is what you're doing right now.
	So that's my really good thing, and it'll probably stay that way for a while, I'd imagine.
	What's your good thing?
	Fair, yeah, that's great.
	My good thing is much more banal, but I have been, this week when I've had a moment to chill, re-watching some of The Sopranos, and I have a controversial hot take of The Century, which is a good show.
	I've been enjoying that, but it did occur to me Yeah, good.
	Thank you.
	Yeah, it did occur to me that, you know, when I was watching kind of a little bit of the first
	season, like it came out in 1999, which, you know, I'm watching a show that is 25 years old,
	you know, which, and I realize, you know, functionally, that is exactly the same as
	in the year 2000, watching a show from 1975. But it feels so different.
	Those two things feel so different because, you know, the kind of the leaps in technology have in some ways slowed down, you know, between those kind of those quarter decades.
	And so, like, it doesn't feel like it's the same amount of time, but it is!
	And I felt old.
	So there we are.
	It's almost like the quote-unquote leaps in technology kind of took one big jump and then all the other leaps aren't actually leaps, it's just repackaging the same bullshit over and over.
	Maybe that's even what you're talking about.
	There's a degree of that, I think.
	But also, you know, like, are my parents like my, you know, you heard from the olds when we were young, is that it felt like yesterday.
	So I think maybe that's just part of aging, like all of the family living like the living rooms I was crawling around on and was little in.
	Looked a lot more like 75 TV than 1995 or 99 TV for, you know, it takes a while.
	So I think that's something that somebody said, like all the nostalgia about the 80s is a very specific Saved by the Bell kind of Look when it was actually very brown.
	It was a brown decade as and yeah, I think remember it differently.
	So that probably is part of it too.
	It's just what's happening.
	It's like you're getting older and you're watching TV and you have memories of things looking like that.
	Yeah yeah I think that there's definitely definitely a huge aging component there and I did feel it but nonetheless still a good show so that's good at least.
	So yeah and I'd like to ask if if you're listening and you do enjoy the show please leave us a five star review wherever you're listening and please also do share us with your friends loved ones or anyone you think might enjoy what it is we're doing here it would be greatly appreciated and goes to great lengths in helping us continue the show.
	And if anyone wants to support us financially in what we do, become an Awakening Wonder, join the Invisible Hand, or donate on an elevated tier, head to patreon.com slash OnBrand and you will have our eternal gratitude.
	It is this which allows us to be editorially independent and ad-free.
	As a patron, you will also get a shout-out on the show and access to our patron-only show OffBrand, where we discuss anything but Russell Brand.
	And this week I took a deep dive into Michael Schellenberger's book, San Francisco, Why Progressives Ruin Cities, and, oh boy, is it bad news.
	Turns out Schellenberger is something of a racist dictator-in-waiting.
	So that was fun.
	So yeah, head to patreon.com slash onbrand to check that out.
	And please note that while you can easily listen to our audio version anywhere you can find podcasts, you can also watch us on YouTube, or if you're listening to Spotify app, the video should come up there too.
	So this week, Well, we have something just a little bit different.
	I do try to keep an eye on right-wing media spaces where Russell is likely to end up making a guest appearance, and just such a guest appearance has occurred this last week.
	I'm not going to make you guess who it is because it could be literally anyone, so I'll let the host introduce Russell.
	And almost immediately off the bat, I've got to say the vibe does feel a little bit weird.
	So good to see you, Russell.
	Thanks for agreeing to talk to me today.
	It's a great joy to be in your company.
	Thank you for having me.
	So I want to run some ideas by you, and I want you to tell me how they echo for you personally and also philosophically.
	Yeah, this is how normal humans interact, I'm sure.
	So yeah, we have Jordan Peterson, everybody.
	That's who we're tackling, because Russell appeared as a guest on Peterson's show this last week.
	We sure do man oh man his fits his fits dog are something else the blazer he's wearing that he being Jordan Peterson is wearing is it looks like I don't think those are Illuminated manuscript designs.
	They look biblical.
	It's weird, like, no, it's, I mean, they're, they're, they look like, they look a little illuminated manuscript-y, but the layout is weird.
	Yeah, so he has like little... I mean, they are, I'm sure, like some kind of biblical, but they look like an illuminated manuscript, like a medieval kind of illuminated manuscript image, but they look a little more refined, quote unquote, which means that they were like vectored from art history books, or like maybe like coloring book?
	Like, Yeah, maybe.
	And it's not just the blazer either.
	It's a full suit.
	The trousers are doing the same thing as well.
	Really?
	Yeah, it's a whole thing.
	It'll zoom out on him in a minute.
	But yeah, it's an interesting choice.
	It's definitely a choice.
	So yeah, it is appropriate that we'll be dealing with him this week again, so shortly after Russell got baptized and may, question mark, be Catholic now.
	It's not confirmed which denomination he is, but Roman Catholic seems to be the conventional wisdom, especially as his wife is Catholic and he's doing lots of Catholic things like praying with rosary beads and whatnot.
	And obviously, Jordan Peterson is Catholic.
	In fact, these two men have a lot in common, both being rich, misogynistic, alt-right, middle-aged white men who are also Christian zealots and have both had problems with substance abuse.
	And of course, they both talk for a living, talk too much, one could argue, in the very same media spaces.
	And normally, they do get on like a house on fire, but I will say there are a couple of surprising moments of tension in this interview.
	So that's fun.
	Ooh, fun!
	Yay!
	Now, I do need to say, up top of this one, if you thought the incoherent ramblings were bad when Jordan Peterson came on Stay Free, Russell going on his show appears to be much, much worse.
	And I will put Jordan Peterson at fault for that format, actually.
	I'm pretty sure that's on him.
	Accordingly, a number of the clips that I'm going to play today are going to be a little bit longer than usual because it just takes that long for these people to get to the point that they're trying to make.
	Hey!
	Yeah, cool.
	Cool, cool, cool.
	Yeah, it's dope.
	It's dope.
	So we're pretty used to a long bramble from Russell, and we'll be starting out with Jordan Peterson's equivalent in just a second.
	But I will say, this entire hour and a half, for the most part, feels very little like an interview.
	It feels much more like Russell and Jordan sending increasingly long voice notes back and forth, and we've been invited to spectate.
	That's what's happening.
	For an hour and a half.
	That's an RSVP I would abstain from.
	Let me just say that.
	Yeah, I would politely decline.
	I will not be attending.
	A lot of people, however, disagree and have watched the video.
	It's very popular for some inexplicable reason.
	So, first up in the intro to the show, the opening salvo, we have Jordan Peterson having some very deep thoughts, TM, about the collective unconscious.
	So, I think I've figured out what the collective unconscious is.
	Finally!
	Well, I've been thinking about these large language models a lot, and about what they do.
	He did it, everybody!
	Because they can obviously mimic human thought at the verbal level quite spectacularly.
	Now, of course, the woke ideologues have done everything they could to muck them up.
	spectacularly right from the beginning, and we're going to pay a big price for that.
	But there's still something there that's very, very telling about how we think.
	So, let me lay out the idea, and you tell me what you think about it.
	So, what these models do is map the statistical relationship between between, you might say, markers, and so imagine that you can tell the difference between a word like, imagine a word B-I-N-T, which isn't a word, but it's kind of a plausible non-word, and it's a plausible non-word because the statistical relationship between the letters mimics
	The likely statistical relationship between letters in a real English word.
	So it's much more of a word than Q-N-Z-T.
	What?!
	Okay, so now there are statistical regularities between letters that enable us to identify words.
	And then there are statistical regularities between words in phrases that make sense.
	And then there are statistical regularities between phrases in sentences and sentences in relationship to one another.
	And then, say, within paragraphs, and then paragraphs in relationship to one another.
	And the large language models are trained to map all that.
	So, what that implies, obviously, is something like, Any given idea is statistically likely to exist in relationship to a certain set of other ideas and not
	And not distal ideas.
	And so, if I throw an idea at you, I'm also throwing a network of associated co-ideas at you at the same time.
	And then out farther in the penumbra are even more distantly associated ideas.
	And more creative people are going to be able to leap from the center to the distal ideas.
	We already know that from studying creativity.
	Yeah, that's why I have medication for that.
	So, the large language models map The statistical association between sets of ideas.
	That's a good way of thinking about it.
	What?!
	You can imagine the same thing happens with images.
	So, if you bring to mind the image of a witch, you're much more likely to bring to mind the image of a cauldron and a black cat, for example, and maybe a spider, maybe a pumpkin.
	So, the collective unconscious would be, take a given culture, the collective unconscious would be the statistical association between ideas insofar as that culture has represented the ideas.
	And that's mappable mathematically.
	And so, a symbol would be something like a set of statistically associated concepts.
	Right?
	Especially image-laden concepts in particular with regards to symbol.
	So, it's a weight.
	What the collective unconscious seems to be is the system of weights between concepts through which we see the world.
	So, and that makes it a real thing.
	It makes symbols real because a symbol is a network of ideas with a core idea at the center.
	So, Yes.
	How beautiful.
	Shady!
	Ooh, that was a reed!
	Was that a reed?
	That was a reed.
	Okay.
	Okay, girl.
	Am I going to be rooting for Russell Reed?
	Fuck it.
	Ooh, shade.
	Yeah, I like that response.
	I'm going to put that one in the back pocket.
	Anytime someone is rambling at me about something I don't care about, I'm going to say, yes, how beautiful, before getting immediately back to what I want to talk about.
	I may have already said that.
	I may have already been like, gorgeous.
	Gorgeous, I'm more prone to.
	I definitely have said, what a beautiful mind you have, is a thing I have said before I know that.
	You are good at thinking.
	That's a lie!
	That's not true!
	This is crazy!
	This is Nightmare Blunt Rotation, right?
	What the kids are saying?
	I'm baffled by the decision to have this be the opening four minutes of your show as well.
	No shit!
	What is happening?
	What are we talking about?
	Also, all those things are wrong.
	That's not true.
	That's just a guy in the playground of his own mind making shit up.
	So, the very concept of collective unconscious was coined by Jung, right, who Peterson and Russell as well fucking love.
	The general idea of collective unconscious being that there is a distinction between the personal unconscious, a la Freud, which can be full of sexual and repressed imagery, etc., and is uniquely your own, and the collective unconsciousness, which encompasses the soul of humanity as a whole, right, the stuff that drives and haunts us as a species.
	According to Jordan Peterson, that soul consists of word association games.
	Mathematical!
	That you can statistically math out.
	But it's like not even numerology, which is also... I mean...
	People like- People like- People like backgammon.
	You know what I mean?
	Like, people like chess.
	People like backgammon.
	They always have.
	People like go.
	Like this- I get it.
	I get why.
	Why- Like, I get why he gets to think these things as a person in the world.
	Who on earth- Why?
	Why for?
	Tell me.
	That anyone has to listen to it.
	Just- Some thoughts are for the inside.
	I don't know why or how this is- Okay.
	Yeah, so how this man spends four minutes using the most exhausting language possible to explain this is quite frankly beyond me, but yet some people like it.
	Personally, I'm always acutely aware that the way to kind of demonstrate knowledge of a subject is to be able to describe it simply and concisely.
	And if we were to view the last clip and indeed most of his career through exclusively that lens, Jordan Peterson appears to be full of shit.
	That has been my experience.
	I can attest to that as an anecdotal attention payer.
	Wow.
	Okay.
	All right.
	But what the fuck is he talking about?
	Okay, we'll find out.
	I'm here for it.
	When he's talking about large language models, what he means is the thing that powers several AI models, right?
	Or even more basic things like the auto-suggested words feature in your phone when you're typing a text.
	Those being opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of sophistication of large language models.
	But still, it's one of those that runs ChatGPT.
	So that's kind of what he's trying to discuss in a very abstract kind of sense.
	And doing a pretty poor job of it in my opinion, but there we go.
	Also, as you picked up, bint is a word.
	Bint is a word that at this point has been rendered into old school British slang, but it's in the dictionary.
	It's a derogatory term for female human.
	However, and I distinctly recall having this conversation with my granddad many years ago He was telling me it didn't used to be derogatory and in his day You just used to be able to say things like oh, that's my bint over there, and that was apparently normal and fine How the women of the day felt about it.
	I don't know but according to him it wasn't particularly Yeah, nobody asked.
	Right.
	Nonetheless, just in that, you know, I've entirely off the cuff destroyed Jordan Peterson's insistence that bint isn't a word, which isn't particularly interesting of itself, but it does tell us something about the standard to which Jordan Peterson holds the things that come out of his mouth.
	Um, he said he'd been thinking about this stuff a lot, and this interview was likely in the works for quite some time, and given that he came out the gate with that example, had it prepared, I dare say he'd had plenty of time to consider and maybe look up the validity of the thing he was gonna say before he said it.
	But the man is either too arrogant or doesn't give a shit, maybe a bit of both, uh, and so I'm easily able to make him look the fool.
	Now, again, in of itself, this example is fairly inconsequential and pretty meaningless, but unfortunately it is emblematic of almost the entirety of Jordan Peterson's work.
	With every sentence of pseudo-intellectual nonsense that tumbles out of his mouth, there are ten academics who have to correct him.
	But of course, they don't have millions of viewers, Jordan Peterson does.
	Yeah, his lie has already made it around the world.
	Like, with his pants on and everything, his lies are already, I mean, okay.
	Now- 100%.
	The laziness.
	The laziness is like, beyond.
	It's incredible.
	Yeah.
	I'm so like, so here's where I'm coming from.
	And I know I'll be coming from this stance and I just want to speak it into existence so that everybody knows.
	I'm going to reference a previous moment, you know, like whenever I posted that video of how I made Mike's birthday shirts, like all the pins that I put in the top shirt to meld with the bottom shirt.
	I just, I just did this for another friend.
	I got to that this weekend and reminded of, Other people witnessing the process, it just makes their eyes get big.
	It's like, oh, this is a lot of work.
	I'm like, yeah, yeah, sewing's hard.
	And it's like carpentry, but everything slides around all the time.
	So it's a challenge.
	And all those pins, That I have to put in one shirt on the correct surface, and then I have to pay attention to the, like, I have all these steps that I've worked out, but you have to put, like, just because I have the expertise doesn't mean I don't still have to put all the pins in.
	There's a lot of, like, with expertise and with experience, there's a lot of, like, corners you can cut.
	But I still have to do the things that need to get done, and I'm going to do them, No matter what.
	Because I'm not here to waste my time or anybody else's time.
	I'm not here to sew a piece of trash to throw away later.
	So I'm thinking about myself and how seriously I take putting 30 pins in a- at least.
	I have never counted.
	I'm not gonna do that.
	It's a lot.
	The thing he said is like, I can't believe how many pins you put in that shirt!
	You weren't kidding!
	The person putting all the pins in the shirt.
	And that's how I approach everything.
	That's how I approach learning.
	That's how I approach information.
	That's how I approach definitely doing my level best speaking extemporaneously and talking off the cuff on this show.
	I try as hard as I possibly can.
	To be accurate, definitely be truthful.
	So that's my work ethic, is shocking looking, and I'm so livid at this fucking dipshit that just doesn't have a bone in his body that wants to do work, or is intellectually curious in any way.
	It's fucking insulting!
	And I'm- that's where- so I'm already there.
	Like- Well, it just looks like shit!
	Yeah, it is very insulting and like, you know, if you don't put the pins in the shirt falls
	apart or whatever, right?
	Well it just looks like shit!
	It looks like shit!
	Much like your pizza's arguments!
	And that's absolutely an apt analogy for what he's doing.
	He's not doing the prep work, he's too busy talking to do any of the work.
	And then he uses this background noise of bullshit and unpreparedness to propagate Misogynistic, anti-LGBTQ+, and generally shitty ideas to an audience who are ill-equipped to check up on what he's saying.
	And consequently, there are now millions of people who will believe without question things like that bint is not a word, or that trans people don't exist and should be treated with disdain.
	You know, these are the kinds of things that he will just Yeah, but that's the thing.
	Looking up bent is about two pins.
	You know what I mean?
	That's a corner.
	That's where I'm at.
	You gotta do all of it.
	Yes, it's tedious, but that's what it takes to do something right.
	Is to look shit up before you speak into a goddamn mic.
	Not to your friends.
	Not at the post office.
	To be recorded.
	To an audience.
	People pay for this content.
	Yeah.
	People spend money on this, and somebody's also modeling a pattern of behavior that is teaching other people, let's make majority men, that they get to be intellectually lazy, dopey idiots too, and it's fine.
	In fact, it's encouraged and rewarded.
	What are we doing?
	Pretty much.
	Yeah, nothing good, and I will say in terms of money, like, I mean, money was definitely exchanged for this interview because this one specifically is being done in conjunction with Daily Wire Plus.
	So I know, like, there's money floating around for this, and this is what the guy shows up with.
	Okay, but wait, so Russell gets paid to be a little bitchy, which I'm here for.
	That I'm like- I think he does, yeah.
	Okay.
	Listen, it's small victories.
	I have to take solace where I can, and I will take it in that.
	That's the only way I can rely on Russell to be as bitchy.
	Yeah, there are a couple of good moments from Russell in this interview, actually.
	He definitely does not come off as the worst of the two, which is something.
	Anyway, we're going to skip ahead.
	This is all subjective.
	We're talking about, in the context of this particular interview, there's winners and losers.
	And that's notwithstanding the information or the trouble that they're making overall, right?
	I need that to be crystal clear.
	Yeah, the broader lens is a very different perspective, but in this very narrow view, then yes, Russell comes out ahead in some ways.
	Anyway, we're going to skip ahead quite a bit because they spend a full five minutes discussing birds being scared of silhouettes and presenting that as an important discussion, and then the next ten minutes after that... Are they ornithologists?
	...talking about sacrifice.
	It was the hawk-goose example.
	No, sure, but like... There's subjects that actual people study that are real!
	Yeah, yeah, they are.
	Linguistics are real.
	Language models are real.
	numerology has a place for, again, people like backgammon, but like, they're just, they just hear a word
	and they just have no, like, there's no instinct to even find out if there's something,
	like, I'm listening to fucking nonfiction books at 125, Like, to get through it and to learn as much as I can, and these fucking dipshits are just playing make-em-ups.
	It's what Alex Jones does with headlines, except it's knowledge.
	It's incredible.
	Like, oh my god.
	Okay.
	All right.
	Okay.
	Pretty much.
	I kind of love that you're already at this point and we are on the second clip.
	Because this is going to get way the fuck worse.
	I'm saying it up top, and then I'll just be like, yeah.
	Because this is going to keep happening.
	That's what I'm saying.
	I'm doing my thesis statement.
	You know what I mean?
	I'm putting my hypothesis out there, and then I'm here for the ride.
	I'm going to strap in.
	Jesus Christ.
	Yeah, so after the bird talk and the silhouettes, they spend the next 10 minutes after that talking about sacrifice and that was a fucking snooze.
	So we'll get to a more interesting section here where Russell gets a bit more animated talking about Christianity.
	I read Acts again recently in some easy, accessible, almost slang version of it.
	In fact, a man who shares your surname, Eugene Peterson's book, The Message, and what I was struck by in this version of Acts was the vivacity, the lividness and vitality of the book, and how the sense of urgency of Christianity, that it You know, think of the critiques that are often slung in your direction.
	Conservatism, it stayed.
	This is a very sort of, and admittedly it's 2,000 years old, but a very sort of a vibrant call to arms.
	An urgent sense that, oh my God, we're living in an atrophying and dying ideology.
	We must become alive with Christ.
	We must change the world.
	And even the accounts that are given in there are accounts of people jailed and on trial.
	Even though it is literally biblical, it's very distinct from the Old Testament with its locusts and its deserts and its tribes and its manor.
	Now it sort of feels overtly and literally political.
	So what I'm saying is, is that somehow, between these two sets of books, and I don't know how arbitrary that taxonomy is, even Jordan, obviously it must be an area of your expertise by now, having watched the incredible content you've generated around it, has there been a significant reversal of charge?
	And what is that charge?
	How are we endowed with that charge now?
	At the point when you have Richard Dawkins saying, I am culturally Christian.
	Well, are people starting to recognize that this is not just a remnant ideology.
	This is a living thing that has been discarded.
	I listened to that Bishop Barron who you had on your show the other day, talking about ethereal angels.
	And I thought, yes, the religion that I'm interested in is not a precursor and parallel to psychotherapy.
	It is a precursor and parallel to quantum physics, helping me to understand, what do you mean when you say
	self?
	Who is this self?
	What do you mean when you say reality?
	When you say reality, what are you talking about?
	And is it possible that reality is something that we conjure, here, as vessels and conduits of the divine, if we have the capacity to somehow, in the moment through practice, disavow the strong gravitational, literally, pull of the material and the unconscious ethos with which we are continually inculcated by the insidious, nihilistic, Or be it glistening culture that attempts to make us all devotees of this new banality.
	Sleep is the foundation for our mental and physical health.
	Okay, so the ad pivots in Jordan Peterson's channel are just kind of jammed in there.
	It's frequent, a little bit jarring, a little bit annoying, but it does make for amusing timing in many cases.
	Oh, it's easier.
	Right.
	Russell wants a religion of metaphysics, not psychotherapy.
	And I think by this stage we can all probably agree which would actually benefit him more as a person, but nonetheless he wants to be asking the big questions of self instead of going to therapy.
	Fine.
	I'd think there are probably better places to look for those discussions.
	Some pretty prominent philosophers going back and forth on the subject.
	Like therapy!
	Or therapy!
	Like fucking therapy!
	Yeah, that's a place where you can talk about that as therapy.
	Yeah, rather than a dogmatic prescriptive religion, but do what you do, I guess.
	You do you, hon.
	Even within the dogmatic, like there's thousands of years.
	Sure, it's interesting.
	The book that he's referencing, so I used to see it all the time, but I don't remember anything about it because I didn't care.
	Man oh man like yeah, he's referencing the most boring ways to think about it because there there's been a lot of You know ink spilled yeah over the centuries By also religious thinkers and because yeah, that was kind of how the you know proto university system like kind of research system worked So yeah, and no they just want to play around in their own little backyard pools in their mind, which is What kids do ALICE It's a little bit like that.
	And, you know, I mean, they're fundamentally very wealthy individuals, so they're allowed to regress to that kind of mental state, because, you know, they can do whatever they want.
	Also, both Russell and Jordan Peterson make a big deal out of Dawkins saying that he's culturally Christian, as though the famous atheist communicator has been caught out as acknowledging some kind of religiosity.
	But anytime Dawkins says he's culturally Christian, what will immediately follow is an Islamophobic rant about just how terrible Muslims are, without applying that same lens to Christianity. Dawkins is
	not saying, "Well, I am a bit Christian, really." He's saying, "Wow, I really do hate this religion
	made up predominantly of brown people.
	Look, aren't they barbaric compared to the Christian white?"
	He's an old xenophobic, racist, dog-whistling, ardently transphobic jackass who
	still happens to be an atheist.
	It's not some big dunk, you know? Yeah. Well, I mean, as far as like literally...
	So what really frustrates me, and I know why he does it, is Russell touches on ideas that
	are interesting that are out of his depth. So I know why he kind of speeds past him.
	Yeah, let's talk about the political conversations in the New Testament,
	because also to say that the Old Testament isn't political is just...
	Not true, like at all.
	There's like pages and pages and pages upon pages of literal how you run your society, how you run your village shit, which is politics, and it's politics in general.
	Yeah.
	Because, not to say, I mean...
	All of the books like Corinthians and Galatians and all that kind of stuff, those are letters from Paul to those individual churches.
	And you can get, if you want, I guess, you can get Paul's perspective, not Jesus, not God, Or whatever amalgamation decided was Paul, right?
	By the Catholics, also.
	And they document it all, which is very convenient.
	Yeah, there is a lot of political discussion because those individual places in time had a political kind of situation so that understanding the context I don't know that they're that applicable.
	I think that depends on the situation because, you know, like Martin Luther King's letters from a Birmingham jail, that's a letter from a guy and is best understood in context.
	So if your context that you want to apply it to looks similar or has some kind of resonance, Sure, letters from guys about politics and their situation certainly can be, but without context, you're just having word salad to make it say whatever you want to say.
	And there's plenty of rules they don't give a flying shit fuck about.
	So let's... we need specificity, and I don't think I'm gonna see it.
	I don't think I'm gonna find it.
	It seems unlikely, and it's funny because Jordan Peterson does later get into some of the political aspects in the Old Testament, so that is actually quite a funny little parallel.
	I'm sure.
	I'm sure.
	But yeah, absolutely it's political.
	I can understand why Russell would think that the New Testament is possibly more relevant politically than the Old One.
	I can see that, but to say that the Old Testament isn't political is just plainly false on its face.
	And you do kind of have to wonder how close his reading of that is, and you know, the book that he referenced is a kind of retelling of the Bible using modern language.
	It sure is!
	It sure is!
	I do wonder how much of that he will have been able to glean from the modern retelling, but hey, that's for another day.
	He might have a really, like, a Galatean situation, you know?
	It might really resonate with him.
	He might be in a very Corinthian, like, you know, social, socio-political space.
	We never know!
	So what's really important to take away from this clip is is what Russell is saying is we need to leave hedonism and secular life behind and embrace the spirituality of religion, particularly Christianity.
	Now Jordan Peterson uses this as something of a jumping-off point for one of his familiar talking points through a Bible story, but not before we get a biblical concept over explained to us.
	Well, when Moses disappears to be given the Ten Commandments, he leaves his political arm behind, right?
	Aaron.
	So, there's two forces that lead the lost across the desert.
	There's the prophetic and the political, and Aaron is the political, and in that part of the story, the prophetic disappears.
	Political falls under the sway of something like the immediacy of hedonism.
	So, the Israelites immediately turned to worship of the golden calf.
	And it's something like money.
	So, a calf is obviously... A calf is in the class of livestock.
	It's a baby cow.
	Livestock is bodies at hand to consume.
	It's a form of wealth, obviously.
	And golden calf is the first level representation of that abstractly, you might say.
	It's halfway to money, a golden calf, but it's still materialistic.
	Now- What?
	Thank you, Captain Obvious.
	Your input is much appreciated.
	But it's just like, it is, but, no, and.
	It is a symbol, like, also, why is it a symbol of wealth, bud?
	That people need to eat and live?
	Is that why?
	Is that why, like, pagan traditions had very specific deities because of their needs in their societies?
	No, no, we couldn't have possibly understood that the golden calf represents, you know, money and wealth, you know, without his labored explanation of the material existence of money itself.
	Good Lord!
	Ah, exceptionally dumb.
	But now we go from the amusing to the horrific in a pretty quick turn.
	When the Israelites start to worship the golden calf and become materialistic, they become concerned with immediate hedonistic self-gratification.
	And it isn't only that they're worshipping the golden calf, they're dancing around naked, drunk, It's a pride parade.
	And I'm dead serious about that.
	I'm dead serious about that.
	The political descends into a pride parade as soon as the prophetic disappears.
	Well, why?
	Well, because everyone falls under the sway of the dominion of their immature instincts.
	You know, when someone says, I want what I want right now, What they're failing to understand is that they've come to a conclusion about what constitutes I. And the I that they're allowing to be constituted is actually the dominion of their instincts.
	They're reverting to a form of... They're reverting to the same sort of behavior that characterizes Abraham before his adventure takes place.
	It's mere hedonic, immediate gratification.
	Now you might say, if you were progressive, it's like, well, what's wrong with that?
	And the answer is, well, why don't you put 42-year-olds out in the forest and see how long they last?
	And the answer is not very long.
	And the reason for that is because there's nothing in that realm of instinctual self-gratification that's going to be able to propagate itself communally over any reasonable amount of time.
	So, I would think the reason would be more down to two-year-olds being ill-equipped to survive on their own almost anywhere, let alone in a forest, even if there are 40 of them.
	I thought he said, oh, four two-year-olds.
	I thought he said 42-year-olds.
	42-year-olds, right?
	This confused me as well.
	I'm like, does he just mean that, you know, 42-year-olds cannot survive in the forest?
	43-year-olds can.
	The show's called Alone.
	It happens all the time.
	Two-year-olds.
	Two-year-old children.
	Yes, yes.
	Sorry guys, that's not a show I watch.
	I apologize for my misunderstanding.
	I misheard.
	No, I wouldn't watch that show either.
	Boy, oh boy.
	Anyway, yeah, do you remember there being pride parades in the Bible?
	Because I couldn't remember the pride parades, but apparently they're there.
	Bitch!
	He is thinking of the movie.
	First of all, he's not thinking of the Ten Commandments story.
	He's thinking of the movie.
	And the movie is, that parade is dope.
	Like, and there's a lot of gay icons in the movie The Ten Commandments.
	Moses, Moses, Moses, where my two Wong Fu heads at?
	So, sure.
	And he's thinking of the movie.
	It didn't immediately happen.
	The whole, the parable or whatever, the parallel being drawn is that when God is, the representative of God is not in front of them or the presence of God is not with them, then the Israelites panic And revert to paganism, which, by the way, multicultural societies kind of did all the fucking time, is borrow from each other's religions, and also God smiting, not cool or nice, mean God, so we still have mean God.
	Because they thought God had abandoned them, and they wanted to be able to not starve and to feed their children, so they did the thing that is supposed to- that works for a lot of other of their, you know, like, neighbors.
	Which is very natural to do, and it's a faith parable, where God's like, nope, you guys fucked up.
	You should've stayed believing in me, even if I don't text you back.
	That's the story.
	Yeah, yeah, pretty much.
	This guy, and guess what, guys?
	Guess what, listeners?
	How am I more prepared than him?
	How am I more prepared?
	Oh, well, we know.
	Okay, that's absurd.
	Yeah, we definitely know the answer.
	For real.
	Calling it a Pride Parade, he's thinking of the movie.
	I promise you that.
	I promise.
	Yeah, yeah, I did wonder that.
	To make it abundantly clear as well, what Jordan Peterson just did was claim that Those who would attend a Pride parade, the LGBTQ plus community, are under the sway of the dominion of their instincts.
	That we are reverted to the same sort of mentality as a two-year-old who cares only for immediate gratification.
	That we are mere hedonic immediate gratification is what he said there.
	I want what I want right now.
	That's all we are.
	And extrapolating from his views, we just want to suck and fuck all the live long day and that's that.
	Nothing more, nothing less.
	And progressives apparently think that's great, according to Peterson.
	So all in a one and a half minute clip, we've been infantilised, demonised and belittled, as well as anyone who would dare to support the LGBTQ plus community.
	And it's all dressed up in pseudo-intellectual biblical mystique, as though to lend these ideas the credence of being in any way intelligent, when in actual fact all you have here is plain, boring, vanilla-flavoured bigotry dressed in an expensive suit.
	Which, if you want to go to the Bible, fine.
	Different part.
	It's because it's not consistent, so you can find whatever you want, I guess.
	Okay.
	Pretty much there is that as well.
	This is embarrassing.
	Jordan Peetson is, of course, not done talking about this.
	I mean, that's why we have communal organization, why we make those sacrifices, is because as you mature, you start to understand that Mere whim or mere desire, first of all, is a pretty narrow definition of who you are, especially because it changes moment to moment, just like gender, apparently.
	Right?
	It's the shape-shifting... It's actually...
	It's actually an a prior decision about what to worship, like if you're a pagan, for example, and you're polytheistic, for example, all that it means is that it doesn't mean you worship nothing, it means that you You identify yourself with your instinctual desires.
	You define I as whatever desire rules at the moment.
	That's just a kind of possession and it's an immature possession.
	And it can't work because there's nothing in it that's productive.
	It's all mouth and need and no action and sacrifice.
	And so, there's something wrong about it.
	Fundamentally wrong about it.
	Something fundamental.
	That's Peter.
	That's the land of Peter Pan, right?
	The boy who won't grow up, who thinks that maturity is nothing but power and corruption.
	That's represented by Captain Hook.
	All right, don't go fucking ruining Peter Pan for me.
	This guy already ruined Pinocchio from the last time we had to deal with him.
	Don't ruin Peter Pan for me as well.
	What would he do without Disney Plus?
	What would he do?
	Like he'd have no material because that's his research.
	I mean, that's, it's so hard for me to listen to anything he's saying because he doesn't understand.
	Even if you want to have a philosophical, if you want to wax poetic and think about the allegories from the Bible, which genuinely can be interesting.
	As part of the human experience.
	And since the book has had such a fucking massive impact on our culture and humanity, yeah, there's a lot of things to talk about.
	And he's just, he's just talking about baby movies.
	Like, I mean... Yeah, and using it, weaponizing it against... I'm not coming for Hook, by the way, or any, like, I'm saying, like, it's just, it's, you know, kids movies, family movies, Disney Plus.
	Oh, yeah, for sure.
	For sure.
	Absolutely.
	That's exactly what he's doing.
	So trans people, gay people, the entire LGBTQ plus community, according to Jordan Peterson, we are slaves to our whims and mere desires and we need to grow up.
	We're immature.
	We're fundamentally wrong.
	We don't sacrifice enough, apparently.
	Now, what he's talking about there is, of course, the only real distinction between a good portion of the LGBTQ community and the cishets of the world, and that's producing biological children.
	So it's, hey you gay people, you don't sacrifice enough because you don't shit out kids like the straights do.
	And that is of course completely ignoring the plenty of bi, pan, trans people who do have biological kids, the plenty of gay people who have surrogates or go for artificial insemination of some variation, the absolute legion of the LGBTQ plus community who choose to adopt children who need a fucking home.
	Which, you know, is a Herculean effort serving the public good with the huge personal sacrifice of parenthood alongside it and zero biological reward of carrying on your lineage or whatever.
	And this chucklehead has the balls to talk to us about sacrifice.
	Also, not wishing to get too much on my soapbox here, though it may be too late, but What fucking sacrifices Mr. Cishet White Man Who Talks For A Living had to make?
	Like, you know nothing, Jordan Peterson, of the sacrifices LGBTQ plus people have to make in their lives just to be themselves.
	The price is paid both internally and in society for being who we are.
	Don't talk to me about sacrifice because many of us have paid in blood to be standing here today and we work within our communities with the hope of the next generation having to suffer at least a little bit less.
	Does he talk about parenthood?
	Like moving forward?
	Like is that does that come up later?
	Is that not really?
	Okay.
	Okay.
	So I mean, All right, because even the way that these types of, like, the way that the, like, kind of fundamentalist Christian view is a sacrifice is like, well, you, like, the, the, the, their woke version of acceptance is, oh, well, you're born gay, but just don't do any gay stuff.
	And that's like your sacrifice.
	I don't even know if he's talking about parent.
	I don't know.
	The thing is, is like the notion that he would have a concrete thought in his head is like giving him a lot of credit.
	I mean, that's like that's that's I don't know that he's even considering.
	But also, like, I mean, I don't know what the rest of the conversation was.
	That's what I was asking.
	Like what else brought up he brought up, because I just.
	I mean, because he just doesn't want people to be who they are and they're the acceptable like you are making a sacrifice that is you are it's a sacrosanct kind of like oh well then you can still get into heaven if you just don't do the stuff if you just like have just have the feelings we don't do the stuff that's what conversion therapy is all about that's like and it's so Fucking, like, that to me is like, that's the immediate message that he's supporting, is like, is the attitude that drives conversion therapy, which is sadistic.
	Punish- it's torture.
	Absolutely.
	Torturing teenagers.
	Hey, hey, gay people, have you tried not being gay?
	Oh, well, thanks Jordan, you fixed it.
	I appreciate it.
	You son of a bitch.
	Alright, so next, Peterson gives the progressives some amount of credit, apparently.
	Now, to give the progressives their due, to give the left its due, of course that patriarchal structure that is predicated on sacrifice can become corrupted, co-opted, gigantic, right?
	Lumbering, blind, willfully blind.
	It degenerates in the direction of power, always.
	This is a good rule of thumb.
	You can think about this in the confines of your marriage or even your relationship with yourself.
	Right?
	When the proper integrating spirit isn't at hand and operative, then the relationship degenerates in the direction of power.
	You start to use compulsion.
	You start to use force.
	You know, you exchange angry words with your wife and you attempt to force her to adopt the point of view that you think is appropriate.
	But the fact that that happens continually does not indicate that that's the basis of the relationship.
	Right?
	Is power the basis of the relationship?
	Well, the progressives obviously say yes.
	They say there's nothing other than power.
	That's what the bloody postmodernists concluded in the 1970s.
	And if it's not power, what is it?
	Well, it's the spirit of voluntary self-sacrifice.
	That's the antithesis of power.
	That's clearly the antithesis of power.
	Uh, no, no it isn't.
	Sorry, this seems like a simple rebuttal, but self-sacrifice is not the antithesis of power.
	Pretty obviously because you can both have and maintain power whilst making voluntary self-sacrificial acts.
	As to what the true antithesis of power is, I don't know.
	I'm not a philosopher like Peterson here is pretending to be, but some suggestions are, you know, absence of power or weakness, maybe even rejection of power, I don't know.
	Oh, well, in The Devil's Chessboard, very interestingly, I think it was Alan Dulles' girlfriend was going to... Oh, was it Freud?
	Or actually got to go to one of them old heads for her psychoanalysis.
	I don't want to give credit to Freud for saying... I don't remember if it was Freud or Young, I'm sorry.
	We talked about it a lot at home.
	Yeah, he must have gotten something right.
	In talking about her relationship with this architect of the CIA, which, to be a fly on the wall in that room, something that was really interesting is like, that Because the thing is, there is no direct parallel opposite.
	That's the point.
	That's a thought experiment to think about what can counteract the insidiousness of power.
	Because we usually say love and hate, right?
	Thin line between love and hate.
	And so what she brought back from a session and was documented in this book is the opposite of love is power.
	Which is, I feel like I've said it before, yeah, it's like wildly interesting and kind of makes sense.
	Because he said that patriarchal structure, like patriarchy is founded on sacrifice?
	From who?
	From who?
	He will speak more about this later.
	Oh, I bet I'm not going to like it.
	OK, all right.
	Yeah, that's a foundational thinking for him, at least at the moment.
	Yeah, the concept of what the antithesis of power is is fascinating, very complex, and almost certainly not just self-sacrifice.
	I did it, everybody.
	OK, we can go home now.
	Yeah.
	It's not Colors on the Color Wheel.
	It's a very complex concept.
	And if he wants to talk about it, great, but like, words mean stuff.
	Talk about it honestly and actually, I don't know, do the work.
	So anyway, when Jordan Peterson says postmodernists, right, because he lumped us in there with them, it can mean a number of things.
	Are we from the 70s?
	Apparently.
	He's hiding his disdain for the LGBTQ plus community or progressives of the world.
	But if we're to attach actual philosophical examples to his rantings, then he's talking mostly about Derrida, Foucault and Lacan, according to him.
	Now Foucault is particularly the one suggesting grand theories are all attempts to grab for power.
	Importantly, however, Peterson is completely misreading Foucault here.
	He's suggesting that the postmodernists and us lefty progressives believe that there is only power and that's all everything is made up of.
	Uh, Peterson is also equating power to force in that example, physical or otherwise, in the argument between the husband and the wife.
	So in his weird conception of it, postmodernists believe that everything is made up of force, essentially.
	Um, you know, we're in fucking Star Wars land.
	Foucault didn't believe that, of course.
	He wrote a lot about power, specifically, yes, landing on power being everywhere, but his definition of power was, at its root, knowledge.
	Knowledge is power, right?
	But those two things, knowledge and power, have a bi-directional relationship, and one can affect the other.
	He also goes to great pains to separate force and violence from power, and points out that power, in his use of the word, can be both a positive and a negative, depending how it's taken into action.
	And I will say, Foucault's positions were not unifying across the entire of postmodernism, so lumping everyone in with Foucault may be ill-advised.
	Regardless, Foucault saying power is everywhere is not the same as him saying force and violence are everywhere and that's what makes up everything.
	It's a critical misreading of his work that Jordan Peterson is engaging in here.
	I'll tell you why he's misread that in just a moment.
	There's definitely, definitely a component.
	I'm not going to get too into the weeds on this, but postmodernism itself is largely defined by questioning the importance of power relationships, personalization, discourse in the construction of truth and worldviews, right?
	So most Postmodernists deny that an objective reality exists, and that there are objective moral values.
	So instead, dealing with the subjective.
	Postmodernists are also very famous for being inherently critical of meta-narratives, of sweeping generalizations, grand narratives, right?
	Grand stories.
	Postmodernist philosophers in general argue that truth is always contingent on historical and social context, rather than being absolute and universal, and that truth is
	always partial and at issue rather than being complete and certain.
	So for instance, they would be skeptical of the Bible, saying it is the complete and universal truth.
	A crucial point here as well is that postmodernists really can run the gamut in terms of their political beliefs,
	from the far left like Foucault, to religious conservatives like James K.A. Smith.
	Smith.
	A lot of them do have socialist leanings, like particularly the OGs of the movement, but a huge amount of that is a product of the post-war world that they were living in.
	That was the predominant kind of idea at the time.
	Yeah, so the philosophies themselves really can run the spectrum of political thought.
	Boy, context sure does matter, don't it?
	Really fucking does.
	And you know what?
	That's what the postmodernists said.
	Context is really important.
	Now, where Peterson comes in is his consistent use of the phrase throughout his career, postmodern neo-Marxism.
	Something he insists is the prevailing philosophy in the West, especially in universities, to the detriment of society at large.
	Now, There's a problem with the term postmodern neo-Marxism, in that postmodernism is definitionally critical of grand narratives or grand general theories, and Marxism is itself a grand general theory.
	Right, so, postmodernists and Marxists have historically spent a good amount of time arguing with one another, so it doesn't particularly make sense for them to suddenly be working together in some unified philosophy.
	So, how does Peterson marry the two?
	Is he almost completely ignorant of both philosophies?
	Well, when it comes to post-modernism, he has said himself the definitive book is Explaining Postmodernism, Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault by Stephen Hicks.
	The book itself is both short and somewhat controversial in philosophy circles, largely because of its uncharitable and sometimes unfounded views on postmodernist philosophies.
	This is where Peterson got his misreading of Foucault.
	Accordingly, you can walk away from reading that book with a perspective that postmodernists don't believe in anything because everything is subjective, nothing is real, there is no morality, and not only that, uh, quote from the book, uh, postmodern themes in ethics and politics are characterized by an identification with and sympathy for the groups perceived to be oppressed in the conflicts and a willingness to enter their fray on their behalf, unquote.
	And from there, you can see how Peterson ties his barely competent reading of a skewed overview of postmodernism to Marxism.
	Not actual Marxism, mind you, but cultural Marxism, which I covered at length back in the Rogan Rhetoric and Cultural Marxism episode, but I'll recap it briefly again.
	It's essentially the idea that a bunch of Jews got together in the early 20th century and formed a concerted, academic and intellectual effort to undermine Christian
	values or traditional values via the use of identity politics
	to get Americans and the West to embrace immigrants, embrace their sexuality, shed the shackles of Christian
	conservatism, and clump to the left wing.
	"Sounds dope."
	[deep breath]
	Yeah! And all of a sudden, the marrying of these two completely disparate ideas makes much more sense,
	because he has entirely bastardised the meaning of both of them and shoved them together to form his very own stupid
	term.
	sigh Okay, okay, okay.
	To make him listenable, what I'm hearing is that postmodernists, it sounds smarter to a dumb person or an ill-informed person.
	I'm sorry I'm using the word dumb.
	There's some dumb people because they insist on being dumb, and there's some people that just don't know and can be taken advantage of, and that's what he genuinely relies on way more than someone just being dumb.
	Being uninformed and being able to take up that space, because he sounds smart to an ill-informed person.
	So, postmodernist.
	In my mind, that's just a fancier word for progressive, to me.
	For him.
	Because that's basically what he's saying.
	He's using a word that sounds smarter.
	Pretty much. Because what you just explained and made very clear that he doesn't
	understand postmodernism as a philosophy. So then giving him any amount of credit that he
	understands that is wrong because he doesn't know it or care to.
	Yeah. Okay.
	Pretty much. Pretty much.
	much.
	There's an inherent misreading, and even in that misreading he will cherry pick the most extreme things he can think of to describe postmodernism.
	And it's just It's very, very wrong.
	And all this from a claim that the bloody postmodernists and progressives, we all believe that everything is made up of force.
	He does not have a clue what he's talking about.
	And I am pleased to say that there are dozens, possibly hundreds, of academic articles written by philosophers and philosophy professors tearing Peterson's ignorance to shreds.
	It sucks that they had to do that.
	It really sucks.
	It sucks that they've had to do it, yeah, and it's apparently done very little to dissuade the confidence with which he likes to make his grand claims, because, you know, money and arrogance, I guess.
	This is all just so much kind of like filigree, you know, like so much decoration and wheel spinning to avoid Any like, like, because he's throwing around the word power and talking about giving himself a reason to be mad at his wife all the time.
	Because that's what that's all I hear is I fucking hate my wife.
	Thank you, Rodney Dangerfield.
	At least we know he was making a joke.
	I think that Jordan Peterson says exactly what he thinks all the time, which is frightening.
	I think, honestly, he is an open faucet for his inner experience, which is its own fascinating kind of moment.
	A progressive idea, in essence, is the honest acknowledgement of power imbalances and how to try to rectify those power imbalances as much as possible.
	It's just an honest analysis and discussion of where power balances are systemic.
	Yeah, and that's important with postmodernism because that is a lot of the work that they did.
	That is a good chunk of it.
	And in Jordan Peterson's conception of things, if you even start to examine the relationships of power between things, that makes you a Marxist.
	He will write you off immediately down that line.
	I'm like, well, I think someone might be on the side of power.
	That's what I'm thinking in the back of my mind.
	Classic philosopher move to write someone off immediately when they say something that you don't like.
	Classic.
	Philosophy 101.
	Yeah, pretty much.
	You are absolutely correct as well that there's a lot of...
	There's a lot of dancing around, you know, we're dancing around all of these kind of high and mighty fucking problems, you know, these philosophical, metaphysical ideas or whatever else, without ever actually dealing with the reality.
	And that's what Jordan Peterson does.
	He distracts in all this high and mighty bullshit without ever actually being able to confront and look at the real systems of power that exist in front of him.
	Every creative, every artist knows how to put a lot of frills and zhuzh and extra sauce on shit you fucked up.
	Oh yeah.
	We're all very familiar.
	That's my sister in this regard.
	That's my sister.
	But that means that you work harder and you don't make that mistake next time because it's efficient to work it the fuck out.
	A hundred percent.
	You go to frills, I'll go to, like, steeping things in reverb so you can't hear the mistakes.
	You know, there are musical equivalents as well.
	It's a universal thing.
	I figured that was true.
	Uh-huh.
	Yeah.
	Yup.
	Alright, so we're going to move on to the capstone of Jordan Peterson's bigoted and philosophically inaccurate tirade.
	We're going to finish it with a little bit of shitting on Protestantism.
	And then you mentioned, I'll just add one thing, because you mentioned this call that you saw in Acts, which is Christ's insistence that those He leaves behind will do works greater than His.
	This is also where I see the insipid element of Protestantism in particular, although not only Protestantism, that says, well, all you have to do is say, Lord, Lord, and you'll be saved, right?
	All you have to do is claim belief in the Christ who's already redeemed us and then, you know, now you're in the kingdom of heaven.
	And that isn't what the biblical text indicates.
	It indicates that those who are left in the aftermath of the resurrection will be called upon to do greater things than Christ himself, which is a hell of a call given the nature of his sacrifice, right?
	This is no joke.
	And what we're called upon to do is to participate in that process.
	Right, fully.
	Or else.
	Like, and seriously or else.
	And I can feel, everybody can feel that nipping at the edges.
	Including people like Richard Dawkins.
	Oh, so we've all been called upon to do greater things than Christ himself, and that's why Dawkins says he's culturally Christian, not because he doesn't like brown people who are different to him.
	Good to know.
	And always good to take a swipe at the Protestants.
	Do you know what you don't see enough of these days?
	There are just not enough civil wars over Catholicism and Protestantism anymore, you know?
	There's just not enough of those.
	It's good to see Geordie Pete's trying to rally a comeback, you know?
	Oh man, that went so well.
	That went so well all the other times.
	Dope.
	Cool.
	Great plan.
	Yeah, okay.
	Okay.
	So that marks the end of Jordan Peterson's little rant.
	And what comes next from Russell did genuinely somewhat surprise me.
	I may say that when you reach immediately for pride as your example of hedonism, you do yourself no favours in my humble opinion, sir, because you could just as easily use an example of hedonism and indulgence that doesn't have such overt and explicit connotations when it comes to a particular expression of human sexuality.
	That's just one point, let me go on for ages, if you don't mind.
	Now... This is honest!
	You know what?
	Yeah, I'm gonna give credit where it's due and say well done for Russell for pushing back on the bigotry there, and to do so on Jordan Peterson's home turf, right?
	Could have been more strongly worded, but hey, I'll take what I can get in this kind of space.
	Of course, it is completely undercut by Russell constantly platforming and championing quite literally the biggest transphobes and bigots in the business on his show, raising the profile of them and their ideas.
	He's been on quite the Candace Owens tip lately, for instance.
	And one could also cynically view his defending the LGBTQ plus community as protecting his brand in this space and maintaining the illusion of being a lefty who's come over to the right.
	So there is that.
	Nonetheless, it is refreshing to see at least a modicum of pushback to the bullshit.
	That is something.
	Okay, yeah.
	I mean, I feel like we've talked about this a lot already.
	Yeah, and this is just another example.
	I am very interested to see how he, because I don't, I don't know, I don't think that, I just genuinely don't think that Russell doesn't like gay people.
	And he probably finds this kind of thing distasteful.
	Well, I think this is probably the hardest pill to swallow, I think.
	Not necessarily trans people, but gay people.
	I mean, honestly, I don't know.
	I think that this is one of those things that you show Pasto, Time Machine Russell, Modern Russell, and be like, what the fuck?
	And I think he's probably, I don't know, the man has a lot of like ideals or values and obviously he's being a cynical, you know, kind of like bad faith actor.
	I'm not saying that any of that is not true, but he's trying to find a way to get on board with this talking point and it's not working.
	Because it's an especially, like on its face, gross and insidious talking point.
	Culturally, y'all don't have the same kind of venom for gay people.
	Now the TERF thing, that's UK homegrown, I feel.
	At least that's how it strikes me, so I'm not making a blanket statement necessarily.
	I think he has like a, you know, kind of a 90s groovy view, like where everything was like legal and fine.
	I think the next few clips will probably lend credence to your view here.
	So let's take a look.
	So we've spent 10 minutes on Jordan Peterson talking, and now it comes to Russell talking for 10 minutes.
	Like I said, it's these two sending voice notes back and forth.
	So let's hear a bit of what he has to say, and I'm going to skip into the middle portion.
	There is a tension in this for me, in the maintenance of the necessary innocence that Christ himself insists we must find.
	And it seems that when you said, for a moment, and I'd love your take on this as well as everything that I'm saying, that the self is amorphous.
	The self is an event.
	It is not in stasis.
	The self will be discovered and will evolve in relationship.
	Then, indeed, we do lend some credence to those who say these two categories of maleness and femaleness, or man and woman, do not suit me.
	Now, no doubt these ideas, like all ideas, Race, distinction, nationality, commerce have been lent further charge by, I would say, powerful sets that seek to govern and control consciousness itself, that see that as the ultimate terrain, that require, for the perpetuation of their control, the continual flinging of rocks into that pool to prevent something glorious coalescing there, some new unity.
	What I would offer is this, that surely the synthesis that we're requiring out of this thesis antithesis war that we're plainly still in, is the ability to acknowledge that there must be some kind of fluidity, there must be some kind of freedom, there must be some kind of acceptance that tradition cannot become a rod To steer, control or prod others.
	That our religious faith, that our spirituality, that our morality and our ethics must be for the marshalling of our own instincts and designs and desire for power.
	Now this is interesting.
	So we do have Russell essentially defending the trans community, albeit from a libertarian kind of bent, and then it does kind of switch over to, hey, leave them alone, we should just focus on our own thing and seek our own kind of power for what we want to do, which is all well and good until whatever it is you want to do is hateful and bigoted like Jordan Peterson.
	But yeah, I think that supports more of your perspective here.
	What I do find funny about this is Russell essentially firing off post-modernist ideas, you know, that there is no objective self, that everything is fluid.
	Um, you know, right before he says, uh, right before he says, well, you know, these powerful elites are using the issues of race and gender and whatever to exert control over everyone.
	Um, so he's not denying the existence of the individuals or saying we should be hated, um, and specifically that we shouldn't be prodded with a, prodded with tradition and whatever else.
	But he is saying that issues of gender and race, etc., are being used to divide and control us, and that is inherently a bad thing.
	So the statement is still harmful, just probably in a less intentional way, I would say.
	I might be being generous there.
	It also does insinuate a conspiracy, you know, that people are doing this, that there is an overarching control that is almost inevitably anti-Semitic at its end point, because who's in control always comes back to Soros, etc, etc.
	So there is also that.
	Well, I don't think you're being less generous.
	Like, I don't know.
	I don't think it's about generosity.
	I think that what I'm saying is, I'm not saying he's a better person because of it.
	He's using all of his values and his performance of his values to make himself more important and wealthy on the internet.
	I'm not saying he's, but I think that trying to, I'm, So I don't think you're being generous.
	Just because someone doesn't... Someone being ignorant of their position or the implications or ramifications of what they say and do, I don't think that you're giving... If it's not a conscious choice, I don't think it's more generous.
	And I think he is trying to fit his... I genuinely think this is probably the war on queerness Is the, is probably the thing that sticks, like it's the fly in the ointment for him that he's trying to reconcile and I wonder if he's trying to be a more magnanimous, you know, stochastic terrorist that looks nicer for the, you know, our modern propagandist for the future.
	Um, because, I mean, I genuinely, like, I think that on some level, like, he does believe what he says.
	They all do.
	For whatever, maybe not Steve Bannon, but everybody else.
	Um, I, I, you know, I think that he's trying to fit His, like, this is something that is too, I think it's so ugly that even, and also, like, even rich people see it.
	So it's something that even, like, is too ugly for him to ignore.
	And so he's trying to fit his current status into, like, this to me is the square peg round hole.
	Like, this is the side, this is the piece of the puzzle that's not gonna fit because he can rationalize everything else.
	So this is the part that he can't rationalize.
	And I wonder if he's trying to make himself into a different thing and if that will in any way cause a rift or if he'll just capitulate.
	I'm interested to see where this goes.
	Yeah!
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	And when it comes to the generosity thing, I obviously can't concretely say whether the harmful thing that he just said is out of ignorance or malice.
	It's impossible to ascribe.
	But I think I will land mostly on the side of ignorance at this point, like you.
	Obviously, remains to be seen, but people will have different perspectives on that, and it's impossible for us to fully, truly know.
	But yeah, I'm landing with you on this.
	Well, I think as far as your analysis goes, I don't think it's about a generosity thing, you know?
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	And also maybe that's my perspective, is that I feel very kind of detached, so I can look at these parts and I don't necessarily ascribe generosity, a value judgment to it.
	It's just like, no, that's just what he's doing.
	Because that's what he's doing.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	That's what he's doing.
	Cool.
	So now we get the final nail in Russell's rebuttal here.
	And you're right, and I always love it, Jordan, when you return it to how are you behaving in your marriage?
	How are you behaving in yourself?
	I was thinking about how do I behave in my marriage with my wife?
	How often do I tend towards power, inirritability, leaning arrogantly into whatever sets of abilities I'll claim for myself in desperation?
	And God knows I spend significant time there.
	But because both you and I tend to, as you laid out earlier in our conversation, move from the micro to the macro, to march gladly out to the penumbra to see what might be found there, it leaves us with a kind of, one, a duty to demonstrate in our conduct that quality of joy and open-heartedness, that quality of good faith, and I feel that perhaps the next Marker of our progression might be when we can say, well, what is it that is of value in these ideas that are emerging out of post-structuralism?
	This willingness to cast out even nature.
	Even the body I'm born in isn't me.
	Nature itself isn't real.
	To hell with the sun.
	To hell with Jesus.
	To hell even with my own chromosomes.
	Neither the crucifix or the why.
	or of value in the final analysis.
	And because I've lived there a while, because I've lived continually in indulgence,
	because I have been so many times humbled and my humbling continues yet,
	what it leaves me with is that there is something, obviously,
	obviously there is something in what you have brought into our culture
	that people were looking for and needed and I value it and I appreciate it.
	That's why I apologize when I'm late, you know.
	Tidy your room, man!
	Arrive on time!
	Stand up straight!
	You know, like... But there is also something that I am... Before, I was an Ouroboros, consuming my own self, and now I am more porous, looking for ways to be open to solution.
	And, you know, and I feel there is something we have to deliver.
	I think that there is something that we have to deliver, and I think the time, the fissures and fractures are emerging now.
	The possibility exists now for even, say, your most vehement and vocal detractors to recognise in you what you have brought to the conversation that is true, and for us to recognise what they have been saying that is accurate, that is correct, That is worthy of being heard.
	And I would say that sort of if you just casually, maybe out of habit, use pride as the example, that, you know, instead of the many heterosexual and normative ways that people are equally indulgent and sort of lost and adrift, and I know those worlds because I've lived there, then I think that we're not affording ourselves a pathway through this that would be beneficial.
	As your business grows, the workloads become overwhelming.
	Fucking ads.
	Doesn't half detract from the point if you're actually able to track what these two are saying.
	So the crux of what he was getting at there was, hey, let's acknowledge the good points of the left.
	Let them acknowledge the good points of you and the alt-right and what we each all bring to the table.
	Let's stop being hateful dicks and maybe we can together find a way forward.
	That seemed to be the general gist of what he was getting at, if you remove the strange rapping portion, that is.
	I did enjoy him doing a Jordan Peterson slash Kermit the Frog impression in front of Jordan Peterson.
	That was, that was quite fun.
	Bitchy.
	Can't always hide it.
	Yeah.
	Especially if it's, if you're like an entertainer person and it's like in your instinct.
	I see it on like comedian like podcasts all the time and it's really adorable.
	Or just funny people talking, it's like they imitate each other.
	It feels like a little bit of friendly affection, or at least I know that we do that.
	It's a friendly affection that might not land because Jordan Peterson strikes me as the most fragile Fabergé of a man that's ever lived.
	Yeah, you're not wrong.
	I mean, he laughed at the impression, but otherwise looked generally pretty pissed off whenever the camera lingered on him.
	I guess.
	I can't tell with his face.
	He's got OVF.
	He's got a bad case of OVF.
	Yeah, well, that's the thing, is like, what they're missing Is, as far as the work goes, like, which the left is very, like, has simple understandings of, like, that's why we say kill the cop in your head.
	This is why we say decolonize your mind.
	It's the, like, taking power structures to task and starting with you, and then, like, you can extrapolate these, like, basic tenets in your life.
	to also apply them to institutions.
	Those ideas do scale up.
	Now, this like, I hate my wife, fucking, it's like, ugh, take my wife, please,
	you know, notions that they're talking about, is like, what, it's just amazing that Russell said,
	oh, Jordan Peterson, you filled a void in the culture needed you.
	Yeah, clean your room is the new meditate for world peace.
	It's the, well, you have to take care of yourself first, and then you can maybe make change anywhere else.
	Not the actual revolutionary framework of kill the cop in your head to colonize your mind and then also use those things that you've learned to participate in the community and in the world around you.
	That's like, yeah, he's another oversimplified fucking self-help pseudo-intellectual like condescending smug fucking white man.
	That's not new.
	He's just another one.
	We've had a lot.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, I completely agree.
	And, you know, the cliched self-help bullshit is far and away the least harmful of the things that Jordan Peterson has to say.
	Yeah.
	And stale is an old fucking shoe.
	Like, yeah, it's stale.
	Stale bread.
	Absolutely.
	So let's take a look at Jordan Peterson's immediate response to Russell here.
	Oh yeah.
	Okay, so I'm going to... You asked really, I think, two fundamental questions there.
	One had to do with the nature of authority and force, and the other had to do with fluidity.
	Oh yeah, there was a third one, which is what did the postmodernists bring to the table?
	Let's start with that.
	Well, here's one thing they got right.
	We see the world through a story.
	That's true.
	That's revolutionary, that truth.
	And I think the science now points extremely strongly in that direction.
	The AI systems are trained in accordance with that notion.
	All the great psychologists perception that I've studied and talked to have concluded the same thing.
	We see the world through a story.
	The description of the structure that we see the world through is a story.
	And we have to weight our perceptions.
	That goes back to that collective unconscious idea that we started with, is that we see, the literal things we see, our perceptions themselves are a function of that waiting process.
	They're a consequence of a narrative process, and so the postmodernists got that right.
	And that's why we have a culture war, in part, because we're trying to work something out that's very deep.
	We see the world through a story.
	We see the world through a story.
	I love that he's presenting this as some kind of big revelatory idea, you know, that, hey guys, you know, we see the world through a story, everybody.
	Did you know that?
	This is weird, to be honest.
	And again, I'm not an expert in postmodernism by any stretch of the imagination, but I cannot imagine any of their principal views being reduced to, we see the world through a story.
	No.
	What they appeared to spend a lot of time discussing was how grand general theories and grand stories are a problem
	Um that these stories are an issue and specifically they added a lens to not just the story itself
	but how the tory the how the story is told and the importance of of the
	How the tory is told?
	How the story is told and the importance of the narrative and context surrounding the story.
	There was a lot of critical analysis of that.
	Not just, we see the world through stories everyone!
	Again, Jordan Peterson knows fuck all about postmodernism, so little that I am somehow able to school him on it, and my best credits from philosophy are from fucking high school and from being friends with doctors in philosophy who I would mostly just get high and play music with.
	Credentialed, I am not, right?
	Yeah, no one's arguing that.
	Like, that's the thing, this is like, yeah, he's, I mean, Yeah, you're right.
	Groundbreaking.
	Florals for spring.
	Life is a story.
	No, no, no.
	Because the thing is, he doesn't just not know about postmodernism.
	He doesn't know anything about history.
	Studies are proving that.
	Do you mean cave paintings?
	This notion has been around for quite some time.
	Every indigenous culture is like an oral tradition.
	It's literally within, like, yeah, water is wet, the sky is blue most of the time.
	Like, sometimes it's orange, sometimes it's purple.
	Like, dog, what are we doing?
	What are we doing?
	The science is really on board with that.
	Okay.
	All right.
	Let's see what other dumb shit he finds.
	Yeah, we've got a little more postmodernist talk now.
	Is the story one of power and tyranny?
	Well, the answer to that is, to a large degree, unfortunately, but not fundamentally.
	And that's where the postmodern lefties go so terribly wrong, because they're My insistence is that the world is a battleground of power, and there isn't a more dangerous conclusion that you can possibly draw than that.
	Now, you still have to give the devil his due, so I'm going to consider briefly the story of Moses.
	Fuck off.
	No, we're not going to briefly consider the story of Moses.
	Jordan Peterson, because we are skipping that shit.
	Briefly, lie.
	That's a lie.
	That's a lie.
	Yeah, I'm hoping by now that my explanation of postmodernism has been sufficient for everyone to know that he was talking absolute bollocks in that clip.
	But yeah, also the much more dangerous idea is not examining power structures at all, which is what he appears to be a fan of.
	Literally the opposite of what he said.
	Literally the opposite of what he said and like that's just you the it's amazing how far well you have to keep jam your head so far in the sand to not see like I'm sorry man like We have so much knowledge and information at our disposal.
	The level of, like, jammed head in sandedness that you have to believe to not be critical of, like, power structures and how they affect you and the world around you, like... It's so... That is absolutely the most insidious narrative.
	What an asshole!
	This... Yeah.
	Okay, cool.
	Let's see what other dumb shit he says.
	I can't argue with that.
	Yeah, and speaking of him being an asshole, we're going to skip ahead a little bit to Jordan Peterson extolling the virtues of the patriarchy.
	I bet.
	And so what's the rule there?
	The rule is, to the patriarch, let's say, the rule is, do not use force when you could use invitation.
	Don't fall prey to that temptation.
	Now, the left looks at the patriarchy and says, nothing but force.
	It's like, wait a minute, guys.
	Nothing but.
	That's a bit too extreme a claim.
	You mean nothing but?
	It's like, okay, why the hell are your lights on?
	No look around you.
	You think all of that's a consequence of force?
	Do you think that's all of that productivity?
	All of that life more abundant?
	All of that material wealth?
	You think that's a consequence of nothing but force?
	You think your marriage is nothing but force?
	You think your family is nothing but force?
	You think your community, your friends, all business relationships, that's nothing but power, is it?
	And why am I supposed to believe that you're not saying that just to justify your own use of power?
	Because that's how the radicals operate, as far as I can tell.
	It's like, well, the world's just a battleground of power.
	And the only thing important is, who has the rod?
	And that's a big problem, because no, that's not a solution.
	And there's a lot of self-service in the claim that power rules.
	It's very, very, very dangerous.
	I'm sorry, does power not rule?
	Like, is there something other than power, be it financial or knowledge-based or political, that's deciding how humanity operates on this planet?
	Ah, but again, he's equating power with force, so he's presenting the strawman argument that somehow the left believes there is only force in the world, and that we are going to use said force to inflict our will upon everybody.
	I literally wrote that exact thing.
	Nothing but power dash straw man.
	I wrote it here.
	Yep, 100%.
	What a dipshit.
	Yeah, it's incredibly dumb and a complete misrepresentation of both progressive ideologies and postmodern philosophy.
	And also literally no one is saying the things that Jordan Peterson is arguing against.
	He is shadow boxing here.
	He's winning a fight against an imaginary opponent.
	That's all he's doing.
	And still coming out like a loser, but there we are.
	That's funny that you say shadowbarking.
	I'm sorry.
	Go ahead.
	Go ahead.
	Whatever you're going to say.
	That's yeah.
	No, no, I was, I was, I was, I was just going to say his, his thing about like, Oh, it is forced because is that how your lights are on?
	I'm like, well, I mean, we're actually talking about power and his power, how my lights are on.
	Yes, it is.
	Yes, it is.
	That's exactly how my lights are on.
	Wordplay joke.
	Good job.
	I'm laughing.
	Um, yeah, so the thing is, it's hilarious that he's like, saying that shadowboxing because if he had to box for real, he'd lose.
	And I don't mean that in like being tough for fun way.
	What I'm saying is like he's always going to defend the patriarchy because without the patriarchy and that he's telling on himself here in this specific way.
	And this is this is his rationalization of why he likes and gets to protect which he is.
	He knows very well like where his bread is buttered.
	So he's protecting the patriarchy because he knows that without the patriarchal thumb on the scale, he would not be anywhere.
	He'd be useless and he'd have nothing.
	That'd be justice.
	As if he had to fend for himself on his merits and had no capitalistic thumb or no patriarchal thumb on the scale and not even understanding or acknowledging, which smart for him, this is a business move, not to acknowledge all of the privilege.
	That he is like the generational privilege that he and his stupid jacket, which I saw black pants.
	So there's black pants.
	It doesn't go all the way down, which now I'm kind of mad.
	If you're going to do it, fucking do it.
	If you want to dress up like a giato, you know, like a, Mural.
	Fucking do it, goddammit.
	It's not like you don't have the money.
	Yeah.
	Right.
	So he's rationalizing the patriarchy because it works for him.
	His vision of the world is so insultingly myopic.
	It's incredible.
	And as a pattern seeker like myself, Who I think I've proven that I'm like kind of good at at this point, because a lot of, at least on this show, I feel like my track record is pretty great.
	I'm particularly fucking insulted and peeved and annoyed by someone that is so head up own ass myopic that like, why would you want to listen to?
	It just it's such a bad like behavior.
	Example to give people.
	Yeah, yeah.
	And again, he's presenting this as something fucking new or revolutionary that he's saying, but this is just repackaging the same fucking misogynistic bullshit that's been advanced for literal millennia.
	These are not new arguments.
	Yeah, totally.
	Oh, God.
	Anyway, so next he decides to bring the Bible into his concepts of power and sacrifice because, of course, Now, if it isn't power, what is it?
	Well, it's the antithesis of power.
	You know, when Christ is... the third temptation that's offered to Christ when he's in the desert and he encounters Satan is the temptation of power.
	And so we can, which he refuses, and so we can derive from that the idea that the pattern of Christ's life is the antithesis of power.
	And what you see in that life is the constant refusal to use force.
	No matter what, right?
	And the Roman soldiers make fun of him.
	They say, well, if you're the son of God, you know, why don't you come off the cross and lay the landscape to waste?
	Which is, at least in principle, within the purview of possibility.
	And the answer is, well, you're not allowed, in the final analysis, you're not allowed to use force, no matter what.
	Right?
	Invitation.
	Logos.
	Not force.
	What?
	And that seems to be tangled into this idea of voluntary self-sacrifice as the antithesis of power.
	Right.
	Now, I'm no biblical scholar, but then again, neither is Jordan Peterson, so we're pretty much on an even keel here.
	So let's start with a quote from Matthew 21.12.
	Then Jesus went into the temple of God, and drove out all those who bought and sold in the temple, and overturned the tables of the moneychangers and the seats of those who sold doves.
	And he said to them, It is written, My house shall be called a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of thieves.
	Sounds to me a little bit forceful.
	Driving people out and flipping tables, you know, and also he's using force in service of his power in this example because the man is wandering around saying, I'm the son of God, as though that is somehow supposed to be a lack of power in Peterson's conception of things.
	Like, he literally had people following him around the desert and was, you know, powerful enough to warrant Pontius Pilate executing him on the cross because he got too powerful and Caiaphas was like, this dude's gotta fucking go.
	So, again, Jesus, immensely powerful figure, you know, who according to myths engaged in self-sacrifice, right?
	But he wasn't the antithesis of power and neither is the act of self-sacrifice.
	This man is stupid and keeps saying stupid things, Lauren.
	Well, it's it's I mean, yeah, it's this like kind of like it's such a surface level reading because like, even if you fought like if you follow the story, yeah, it's he's the most powerful.
	He's the son of God and also God at the same time.
	Also God.
	That's the 10 of the 1 to 10.
	It's the apex of power.
	And he knew if he didn't do what he was supposed to, if he fought back or whatever, that Jordan Peterson is claiming to, you know, like, smote those who put him on the cross, which also, by the way, saying they're all damned to hell sounds forceful to me.
	But like, if he didn't do all the stuff the way he did it, then he wouldn't have completed the spell.
	Cause it's magic.
	Like he had to do all the steps or else the spell wouldn't work.
	It's a recipe and he had to do it.
	So that's actually executing his like full on most powerful state.
	And what really does fucking grind my gears about Jordan Peterson and people like this is they equate peace with calmness or placidity or politeness or, you know, like kind of being civility.
	Those two things are very fucking different.
	And we're hearing it from our government.
	We're hearing it across the board.
	What a peaceful occupation, a peaceful protest is being completely like misapprehended because that's peace.
	And this is like, you know, Malcolm X made a, made a lot of hay and a lot of other I'm like Kwame Ture, like a lot of people talked about like how the concept of peace...
	Peace at all costs, right?
	Like Pax Romana is that kind of idea of like being peaceful on the surface and being calm, being placid.
	That is not peace.
	That's very, very different.
	And that's a tool of oppression, is to conceive of peace as looking okay on the top.
	That's oppression.
	That's specifically wielded.
	That is, it's like the tools of power he is sucking the dick of in his own conception of saying that power is what, oh my God, it's really, man, how do you spend this much time thanking and not come up with anything?
	Unless it's just reactionary and rationalization.
	That's all it is.
	I can only think that all Jordan Peterson can ever taste is boot.
	So maybe that's why he's on an all-meat diet.
	It's like, well, what difference does it make?
	I'm gonna just keep tasting boot anyway.
	So his arguments are dumb enough for me to be very genuinely grateful for us to get back to Russell leading a bramble, where he starts to make a relatively decent point about slavery.
	Clearly when you describe the benefits, if not glory, the practical application and operation of culture and the legacy of the patriarchy of Western civilization, the institution's flawed but yet functioning, it's Clearly reductive to say that that is nought but force.
	I suppose yet they may say the benefits are inadvertent consequences only afforded in the same way, just to use an example off the top of my head, that the eventual end of slavery ultimately delivers a workforce that gives you the idea of
	progress, but still allows establishment interests to operate quite
	comfortably once the...
	Well, I don't think there's any reason to dispute the reality of the claim that the fundamental landscape...
	Well, I think the fundamental landscape is good and evil, but right on top of that is tyranny and slavery.
	Fuck me. So, Russell was making a not too terrible point that the benefits of the patriarchy,
	which Jordan Peterson was touting, are a side effect of the patriarchal system or an afterthought.
	An unintended consequence of men holding all the power is that they must sometimes do powerful things.
	And he takes it a step further with the slavery example, saying, look, even this positive thing, the abolition of slavery, is predicated on slavery itself being a patriarchal institution, and the patriarchy continues to benefit from that system, because when it really comes down to it, slavery has less been abolished than it has been shuffled around to extortionately low wages.
	And he doesn't mention a prison population, but also very much fucking that.
	I was going to say, yeah, that's illegal.
	That's like, never stops.
	It was abolition of kettle slavery.
	Yes, exactly.
	We moved it, is what we did.
	So the patriarchy still benefits from that.
	So that's the argument that Russell is presenting here, albeit in his usual brambly way.
	And on that point, I'm willing to give him props.
	He then gets interrupted by Jordan Peterson wanting to talk about the abstract concept of slavery rather than the very literal system of it that Russell was talking about.
	Yeah!
	Because God forbid we analyse power, we need to look at it in the fucking galaxy!
	Well, that's what we need to do.
	Well, you gotta move them goalposts!
	He wants the goalposts to be more different, so he's gotta move them!
	Because that's not gonna help his argument if he actually has to, like, reckon with the reality of, like, the implications of what he's saying.
	Yeah!
	Yeah, pretty much.
	It's instinctive, in a way.
	Yeah, yeah.
	It's like, well, let's just have this conversation in space and then I'm safe there.
	I don't have to be confronted.
	It's how he can still be a reactionary victim, is he has to generalize the idea of like, well, if you think about it, we're all slaves.
	Yeah.
	Well, funny you should say that.
	Yeah, now I mentioned Russell's rebuttals would come back to bite him and it happens in this next clip and I want you to listen to this and tell me who you think Jordan Peterson is talking about in his comments.
	Is the slave tyranny dimension or the slave tyrant dichotomy played out in the capitalist landscape?
	Well, obviously!
	Like, obviously, I don't see that there needs to be a dispute about that.
	As an entry player in the capitalist world, you play out the slave-tyrant dichotomy.
	And you might say, well, that means the slaves should overthrow the tyrants, right?
	But that doesn't address the fundamental problem.
	The problem is, think about it this way.
	How the hell do you stop being a slave?
	Well, a slave to what?
	Well, we could start, you know, you already described this to some degree.
	How about you stop being a slave to your own goddamn whims?
	Right?
	Like, exactly how is this battle to free yourself from slavery to be undertaken?
	Well, we're going to restructure the entire economic system.
	It's like, oh, you are.
	You're going to do that, are you?
	You're going to do that.
	You can't even make your bed.
	You're the prisoner of your own whim.
	You're a slave to your own desires.
	There's nothing to you.
	If you did manage the revolution, the monsters you release would take you out so fast that you wouldn't have time to think and it wouldn't be pleasant.
	And we've seen that time and time again.
	Well, so Jordan is taking a big old shit on this imaginary figure who wants a revolution and to overthrow the current system.
	And boy, if I were Russell, I would not be feeling too good about now.
	No shit.
	No shit.
	Well, but it's always somebody else.
	That's the thing with these people.
	It's always somebody else.
	And he wants to have this kind of abstract concept, but that's exactly what I mean.
	You can't even make your bed.
	What makes you think that you can affect any amount of change?
	Disenfranchisement and a lack of autonomy, which genuinely is a concept from religion, at least the Abrahamic religions.
	It's like, well, you're a sinner and you're inherently imperfect, so you can never You can never be that good.
	You're always, like, you can't control your own, every single thought you have.
	So you're inherently, like, flawed.
	Because genuinely, you think about the, like, the construct of sinning.
	So you better not do anything.
	Because you can, especially, like, generational, like, a generational curse, this is a fundamental Christian idea, is that even if you are perfect your whole life, you never do anything wrong.
	There's plenty of passages in the Bible, Old and New Testament, where you are still on the hook for things that your ancestors did.
	So you can never say, well, I'm actually kind of doing all right.
	Maybe I'm doing okay.
	You constantly have to atone.
	You are always wrong.
	Lean not on your own understanding.
	That is like knowledge and Knowledge is vilified.
	Faith is the only important element.
	And that means that whoever tells you what faith means, you just blindly follow it.
	And if I can't even clean my room, why I can't do anything else?
	Yeah, oh, for sure.
	It's so fucking disempowering.
	Definitely can't fight against capitalism.
	So he goes to this... So he shits on Russell, and this is...
	This is immediately after shitting on Russell already for bringing up slavery within capitalism.
	Like, duh, of course the slave-tyrant dichotomy is played out in a capitalist landscape, you dumbass.
	And it's like, well, that's not what Russell was saying, but I mean, okay.
	And then Jordan Peterson goes to saying, well, if you try to overthrow capitalism, you'll be completely fucked, so you'd better stick with it, because otherwise you'll unleash the monsters who will take you out.
	This is the problem.
	Again, revolutionary thinker, this one.
	Revolutionary thinker, defending capitalism.
	I've never heard that one before.
	And patriarchy, yeah.
	So that's the thing, is like he's, this is the problem when you're like, oh, I totally agree, but then you spend, you know, like you, you, you're like, oh yeah, it's, of course, duh, it's bad.
	But then you, you spend all your energy, you put all your effort into Arguing with yourself, if that's what you really think, then maybe consider that's not what you think!
	That's not how you feel!
	If that's the only thing that, like, if you're like, oh yeah, duh, of course, slavery, but then undermining Because you're saying, I agree, and then it sounds like you're just undermining your own point, but you're not.
	You're too much of a pussy to actually argue with somebody on their own merits and give them an opportunity to defend it.
	You're saying, well, obviously you're right, but spends two minutes arguing.
	That is a manipulation tactic so that, no, he can't argue back.
	Because, oh, I agree, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, actually not at all.
	And just because you don't say, I actually don't agree, doesn't mean that you actually, like, it doesn't mean that you agree.
	You don't know what agreeing means.
	You don't know what agreeing means.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Oh God, it's just impossible.
	No shit!
	We're gonna skip through most of the rest of Jordan Peterson's next 10 minutes of commentary because... I feel like we've gotten a lot.
	Yeah, it gets real dumb.
	And we're gonna get to a part where Russell has some feelings on his wife and baby boy.
	You're going to be a conduit for the spirit of For the benevolent spirit of your ancestors.
	That's a perfectly reasonable way of thinking about it.
	You're going to let the spirit of the Father pour through you and occupy you.
	And that's a form of worship and subordination.
	It's not power.
	I love it.
	I love that.
	Often in my wife, we have a young son as you know, and I see flashes of the archetype.
	Love it.
	I see how she is governed by what I suppose Richard Dawkins would call natural processes, but I see beyond that, I see the light that shines.
	I see behind the behaviour, behind the biology.
	I feel the resonance That she is redolent with the spirit of the ancestors.
	That she is not just their mother, but she is the mother.
	How could any woman sacrifice so much?
	How could any woman continue to provide so unquestioningly and so diligently?
	That's what we have to do to survive under the oppression of a patriarchal structure.
	She's not glowing with the light of the Lord, she's doing the job she has to fucking do.
	And it is more empowering to say, I'm doing this on purpose because I like it, rather than acknowledging that I am a slave to my husband and I do all the free fucking labor.
	Especially within Catholicism.
	No shit!
	That's a big part of that.
	It's just like, alright buddy, you get awestruck by your wife and child.
	That is lovely, but also it's completely normal and written into your biology.
	Those feelings that you're having are hormones doing their thing to make sure that you love and protect the kid.
	It's a wonderful thing, but evidence of a higher power it is not.
	Like, it may feel powerful and spiritual and beyond scientific explanation, but it isn't.
	And I can say, like, I do get it.
	I absolutely got that same feeling after my daughter was born.
	It was a potent dose of feeling more protective over that tiny human life than anything I'd ever felt before, which, to me, made it very obvious that it was biology doing its thing because it had a kid, you know?
	It's like, oh, I'm feeling this new thing.
	Like, my body is telling me, in every possible way, to protect this creature.
	Well, if he's hanging out with people that think the world is 6,000 years old, then, like, he's not gonna get that kind of commiseration or understanding of biology.
	Yeah.
	He might not go to that place.
	This is the issue, and this is what is still happening, is that putting women...
	Feminism is about equality.
	First, foremost, first, last, everything.
	Not being lower, not being higher.
	Because putting someone on a pedestal, this exact description of what is this like glowing kind of, you know, this glowing acknowledgement of like, oh, she's magic.
	I could never do that.
	Yeah, you fucking could.
	You just don't want to.
	So she has to do it.
	And it's love.
	It's basic.
	Yeah, you're right.
	It's a biological imperative.
	And it's, um... That is the excuse.
	That is also all this fucking tradwife, tradcath shit that is...
	saturating the internet right now is turning these, like this,
	this like marital enslavement, this like this free labor that you married,
	you know, like, 'cause they did the same thing with slaves.
	It's this, you know, you're fulfilling your divine duty.
	And it's all just bullshit stereotypes.
	So boys can do this instead of work.
	[BLANK_AUDIO]
	They can pontificate.
	They can make garbage to sell to other people.
	Yeah, I saw a thing just yesterday.
	It was Lauren Southerns, you know, come out of her thing, and she went through a trad wife thing and had a terrible time.
	And I'm like, well... Yeah, no shit.
	Yeah.
	That's what I would expect as well.
	And not to say that it is just men.
	That's the thing.
	The patriarchy doesn't care about your gender in that regard as long as you You fill your role.
	That's the misunderstanding of patriarchy and the misunderstanding of feminism.
	It's so crazy.
	This is Phyllis Schlafly shit.
	These women, and listen, I bet their casseroles are awesome, but they're still following in the footsteps of John Bircher-ass fucking Phyllis Schlafly shit.
	About the sacred nature of, like, yeah, divine feminine, sacred nature, that has nothing to do with the patriarchy.
	Unless you use it as a cudgel!
	Ah!
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	So, from here, Russell starts to ask the bigger questions about parenthood and ancestry before he is once again interrupted.
	What is it that I am to revive?
	How is it that I will continue to incline towards this ancestral greatness?
	What is the duty and how might the power of Logos impact reality differently than force?
	And it's extraordinary.
	Okay, so let me ask you, let me ask you that specifically.
	Like, you're quite the wizard of words.
	Now, and so you have that as a gift.
	Now, you've detailed out your subjugation to the land of whim, let's say, and now you have this podcast, you have a public presence.
	You've been vouchsafed that.
	This is your podcast.
	I'm in your podcast right now.
	This is your podcast.
	Now man, now we're going somewhere.
	When it becomes an absolute amorphous podcast where the father and son don't even know because the spirit is so abundant and all immersive that we don't even know who's Moses, who's the Pharaoh, who's Jesus, who's the serpent.
	Now we're getting somewhere baby.
	Well, so it seems to me, it's all of our podcast, Russell.
	Fuck off!
	Fuck all the way off!
	It's the podcast who's getting paid!
	You dumb dick!
	It's all our podcast.
	What a fucking absolute, like, blowhard.
	Good night.
	Yeah.
	I've got to say, Jordan Peterson, like, joking, it gives me the same vibes as Tucker Carlson laughing.
	Like, I just feel really weirded out any time that it happens.
	It's like a cartoon predator making a bad joke in a Disney movie before trying to eat you, you know?
	That's how it feels to me.
	I'm like, oh, don't do that.
	Well, it's also just like, yeah, that's how these conversations, if they were going to be in any way productive or in good faith, that's how they would go is like, Russell says a thing and then, oh, I have something to say.
	Oh, okay.
	That's a conversation.
	That's not just two dudes wanking it and we all have to watch.
	Which, it's not bad, it's just a separate type of content.
	That's all I'm saying.
	Yes, yes, absolutely.
	Truth in advertising.
	Call it what it is.
	You want to watch a wank sesh?
	Label it as such.
	You might actually get new viewers, you never know.
	You never know.
	Believe in yourself, Byrne Peterson.
	Jordan Peterson Russell brand wank sesh.
	I mean, it would get clicks.
	It would get clicks.
	It'd win Twitter that day, that's for sure.
	Yep, alright.
	Okay.
	Yep.
	Alright, we're going to skip ahead to the end of the- I almost had a good conversation.
	That's so fucked up.
	Almost!
	So close.
	We're going to skip ahead to the end of Peterson's little bit, because he spends a good chunk of time talking about using words and how to use words.
	And finally, we'll get to him- Last person I'm going to lecture to about that, thank you.
	That's the last person.
	Bottom of the list.
	I know.
	You're fired.
	We'll finally get to him essentially asking Russell, what is it you're trying to achieve with your show?
	That's what he's driving at.
	Oh, I'd like to know as well.
	If you use your words properly, I mean, first of all, do you?
	If you do, why?
	When you do, what happens?
	How do you know when you deviate from that?
	And what do you think your responsibility is in that regard?
	Thank you.
	The prayer of Jabez, I think in Chronicles 2, Oh that you would bless me indeed and enlarge my territory, that your hand would be with me, that you would keep me from evil.
	I feel that with words, I'm trying to generate community.
	I'm trying to use language to create common unity to instantiate and realize an inherent and already existing connection and that we live individually and collectively in a super state of potentiality.
	That he has no hands but ours.
	That we are here to formulate his kingdom.
	That, as we have already referenced, that we are his apostles.
	That this is our duty.
	Okay, so he's trying to generate community, or common unity, thanks for that, Russell, to realize a connection that we live in a super state of potentiality, that we are here to formulate his kingdom, capital H on that one, and that it is our duty.
	How do you think he's doing?
	Because given the amount of hate-filled alt-right views espoused on his show, I'm not feeling great about the old common unity thing being put into place by Team Stay Free, you know?
	Well, but his conception of common unity is, oh yeah, no, you're allowed to do whatever you want.
	But if I don't agree over there, you have your camp.
	That's true.
	That's his conception.
	That's the flaw in his conception of unity and equality and all that stuff is over there.
	You can do what you want over there.
	Everybody that agrees with me can be over here.
	And we can respectfully not interfere with each other, which is fucked up.
	It's fucked up and it's also bad for society and bad for people.
	Your brain atrophies without being exposed to other cultures and other ideas.
	The amalgamation of many different experiences and perspectives together is what creates strength.
	And he fundamentally is racist?
	It's more than racist.
	Xenophobic?
	It's a potpourri.
	It's a lot of things, yeah.
	Yeah, it's a potpourri of isolationism.
	Isolationism is almost too nice a word because the implications are vast and myriad.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	And when you really drill down into the idea that he's trying to set up a community to formulate his kingdom, which is our duty, it does sound a little bit like a cult.
	No particular updates on the move to Bali, unfortunately.
	That seems to be on the back burner for now.
	I'm a little annoyed, honestly.
	Yeah, I'm annoyed that didn't come back up because he was really gunning for it.
	Well, that's the thing.
	The thing that we have to rely on the most, that's like the only solace that we as the left or people that see this stochastic terrorism as a problem, is that the only thing we have to rely on is their fucking laziness and ineptitude.
	That's the only thing we can rely on is how motherfucking lazy they are.
	But if they hire people that aren't lazy, then we're fucked.
	They got enough money to hire people that aren't lazy?
	That's when there's a problem.
	That's when you have a legal team that can protect your image for 20 years.
	Yeah.
	That's the issue.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	Absolutely.
	Now, from here, Jordan Peterson asks a pretty crucial question and does a bit of... Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
	He asked another question from the last clip.
	He asked five questions.
	He did.
	He did.
	And didn't care about the answers fitting the questions.
	No.
	I just need to point that out as like, stop.
	If you don't give a shit about the answer, why are you asking?
	Why are you asking?
	And if it's a device, sure.
	Why ask five questions?
	So I'm interested to see if he cares about the answer to this.
	That's what I'm saying.
	It's like, if you don't care about the answer, Then maybe your question is not specific enough.
	Let's see how he cares about this.
	Well, I will say this one is much more direct, and it does have a little bit of calling Russell out built into it.
	Okay.
	So in your life at the moment, It looks to me like you've taken a Christian tilt.
	Like, what the hell do you make of that?
	And how do you know that that's just not another form of self-aggrandizing falsehood?
	Well, you know, just when you think you've thrown the devil out... There he is again!
	All dressed up!
	But somewhere to go.
	Oh boy.
	Boom goes the dynamite.
	Game day, ba-ka-ka-boom!
	Okay, okay, okay, I want to hear the answer, I want to hear the answer, I want to hear the answer.
	Hey, Russell, how do we know that you becoming a Christian isn't just another line of bullshit?
	Yeah, I enjoyed that.
	And that clearly cut close to the bone for Russell because that was not a joyous laugh, that was an oh shit laugh.
	That's what that was.
	I mean, the stakes are still so incredibly low, because they know they can say whatever.
	And no one, everyone will forget, like men in black style, their brains are wiped for the next day.
	Like, yeah, okay.
	Yeah, yeah.
	I will say there has been plenty of commentary online about Russell getting baptized and everything else, but you know, he has been on this Christianity Tip since roughly 2016, as we've previously covered in the Primer slash Primer and the Dawkins episode.
	So it's not exactly a new thing in his life by this point, and I do think Russell really does believe in Christianity, but I do also enjoy the skepticism of Peterson's question.
	Oh, and before I forget, by the way, when the audio gets all echoey and weird, when there's crosstalk between the two of them, it doesn't normally occur on Jordan Peterson's interviews, and it's happening in this case entirely because Russell refuses to wear headphones or an earpiece when he interviews people, when he talks to people.
	So you get his mic picking up the audio from the call.
	Just get cute headphones.
	Your hair is fine, girl.
	I know, right?
	I know.
	I think in all of our time covering him, which is coming up on a year now, he's worn headphones all at once.
	It's fun.
	Anyway, so next we... Oh, wait, wait, wait.
	Does he answer the question?
	Um, not any, not in any kind of, uh, reasonable, reasonably interesting kind of way.
	He's just like, well, you know.
	He said about a lot of his content.
	Okay.
	So just kind of like, does he, he, so he weasels out of it?
	Is that what you're saying?
	He just kind of wriggles?
	Yeah, kind of, kind of like he acknowledges, you know, like, oh, the devil is everywhere, you know, but but yeah, but mostly he just it's it's a fairly it's a fairly banal answer.
	Then we are, however, moving into relevant territory because because next what comes up is is 12 step programs.
	And quite naturally, Russell sees our chief critiques of the program as as being a positive thing.
	And what is offered and one thing I feel as you know from our previous conversations that I have at least a kind of experiential authority to speak about while not representative authority is the impact of the 12 steps on the psyche of an addict and its analysis in the ultimately, that what addiction represents is a spiritual
	problem, is a spiritual quandary, and even embedded in the idioms like "get off my face", "lose
	myself", "get smashed"
	is the idea that what the actual impulse is, and indeed think how significant the word
	craving is within addiction, is a move towards a pulling, some force, some source, some calling,
	some clarion call, some harbinger, awaiting some personal rapture.
	The problem is of course living as we do in the context that ultimately offers you as the end goal through materialist and rational analysis that you might become just this type of a person in this type of a society.
	Something important is lost and those things are explicit in the texts that undergird 12-step practice and philosophy. It is plain
	that they are talking primarily about, and I've said to you before but I'll say again, that Jung
	was a key influence on the founders of that movement along, curiously, along with first century
	Christianity. That what they are not saying, you know, give up drinking, give up drugs.
	They are saying, give up self.
	Give up self.
	Give up self.
	There are phrases like, abandon yourself to God completely.
	Like, after they get past the law, it's not going very well, is it?
	All this drinking and drug use.
	And even indicated in the earliest literature for these groups is the idea that there will be behavioral expressions, that there will be sexual behaviors, there will be promiscuity, etc.
	God alone and and if you maybe even just take that as one thread and consider what the 70 years since this piece of folk philosophy was all good in the world of pornography something that was once of course available but somewhat abstract and now is normalized immersive immediately available it's It seems that the environment is encroaching and this reminds me of something sort of important I want to say of course anyone that explores it is the reason the prodigal son is important is because like if someone goes if someone's telling you you don't want to be doing any of that and it seems that it's born in prurience
	And an inability to attract mates.
	Well, what's the value of that testimony?
	But someone that's come back from there and says, well, give it a try.
	But it didn't work very well for me.
	It is, I think, is a more powerful testimony to deliver.
	At least it seems to me that certainly that is a testimony that has affected me more.
	He is on one.
	Okay, so I will agree with him that the arguments of someone who has experienced something negative in life are much more powerful than those just warning against the thing with no basis of experience.
	But ultimately, when it comes to fun stuff like sex and drugs, words usually aren't going to cut it.
	I don't think most Christians are particularly dissuaded from having premarital sex, for instance, despite how often they're told not to.
	The pornography thing was just like, where society is declining.
	That's what that line seemed to be, and I'm like, okay.
	As to the broader point, Russell just kind of perfectly encapsulated the issues that I take with 12-step programs in that they're Fundamentally intertwined with Christianity and less giving up drugs but more giving yourself up to God.
	I would of course never wish to dissuade anyone from seeking help and assistance from one of these things because any port in a storm will do and ultimately 12-step programs can be very diverse and some can even be run in relatively secular ways, it's just most are not.
	And so it's something to have to be wary of, even when getting that help, which is a lot.
	And the practice of foisting religion upon those in crisis, to me, is inherently predatory.
	And there are broader problems when 12-step programs can be court-mandated, for instance, which we've discussed before, because that amounts to at least a degree of legally enforced religious indoctrination, especially in those programs that decide to emphasize rather than minimize the Christianity inherent in the program.
	My position is that religion should be taken out of it entirely, because ultimately it's a fucking health thing.
	But Russell disagrees.
	He thinks it's absolutely wonderful, of course.
	Him having gone through- Well, and honestly, that's valid.
	And I feel like because I'm a lot more familiar with the terminology and the language, there's a lot of things that he'll say that you're like, oh, yikes.
	And I'm like, oh yeah, no, that's a Tuesday.
	Whatever.
	Yeah, because I definitely agree that, you know, when it's when it is legally mandated and it crosses the line between church and state, that's the problem.
	But to the self, it's your ego, like you, you like ego death, like understanding how your ego has formed patterns that do not serve you, that do not benefit you and actively harm you.
	That I think That is however path you get up the mountain to get out of a hole.
	Yeah, that's fucking important.
	My main complaint, specifically in the context of this show and with him, is that he charges 500 fucking dollars for shit you can get for free.
	That like, AA is everywhere.
	At least in America.
	That's my experience.
	And I think that that's, that's, that's, it's not everywhere.
	Like, yeah, I'm sure nobody fucking at me in Antarctica or whatever, even though they probably have something.
	Uh, like, you know, like that's, it's, that's bullshit.
	Um, yeah, he's charging fucking $500 and he's, he is preying on a vulnerable population who listened to him because I think that he can speak from experience, I think, but also, Maybe not giving up all the addictive things he's addicted to as much as I think he's not so honest about that, which that's the kind of stuff that's coming out after the documentary, especially because people have vested interest and kind of like whistleblowing on his behaviors.
	But yeah, that like...
	It's not it's not our environment becoming increasingly addictive and having increasingly like having more and more exposure to addictive you know substances of any kind as far as the pornography and everything like he's not gonna get it because that's capitalism it makes money like if those addictions didn't make people a lot of money if our social media was not you know like playing on our Our brain chemistry in a basic way that is addictive, then yeah, we wouldn't have these issues.
	Or at least they would look very different and be a lot more manageable.
	The fact that they're lucrative, the fact that it's lucrative to exploit an addictive personality, an addictive drive that we all have, that has an evolutionary component, it's money.
	It's money, baby.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
	And speaking of money, don't forget about the book he did as well, Repackaging the Twelve Steps.
	And ironically, at that point, essentially removing a lot of the religious stuff.
	Yeah, you're right.
	That's not $500.
	The $500 is the ceiling, but that's the most insulting.
	That's fucked up.
	It's also less likely to work.
	The number one thing that works about AA is community.
	And that means you've got to show up, and you have to have a person, you have to have people.
	That's the element that has been proven to be the most effective, which we kind of have always known this, like, duh, is the community aspect.
	And if you try to do it on your own without community, this is not enough, and you're less likely to have success.
	Yeah, yeah, and we as a show have heard from many people who have been in these programs who have had Russell's book foisted upon them, you know, and they're not happy about it for the most part when they get in touch with us anyway.
	You know, it is interesting.
	I get the feeling he would do less rewriting of the steps these days.
	I think he's far more Far more on board with the original philosophies, shall we say, underpinning everything.
	Oh dear.
	Now, we get to the final portion of the interview that's been doing the rounds on the internet.
	This clip that I'm about to play has been used to suggest Russell is so baffling and full of shit that he confuses even Jordan Peterson.
	For my money, Someone in the subreddit made the point that Russell is sounding more and more like a revival pastor, and for me, this clip really does take it to that kind of place.
	But what is difficult to avoid, I feel, Jordan, is the sense that not only is there this, you know, and it's something you touched upon earlier, you said, no it's not only force, you know, and I sort of offered you that perhaps the benevolence that this force has issued, but could be, and this is of course reductive, an inadvertent side effect And please be aware that I am apprised of the fact that the forms of tyranny that are emerging now, apparently in opposition to these old school, not to be repeated, let's face it, militaristic, demagogic, populist, strongman forms of tyranny that we're being continually warned of, are far more terrifying.
	The Kafkaesque, bureaucratic, Banalised!
	Invisible!
	Dreadful!
	We're here to help!
	I'm afraid your inquiry can't be heard.
	This is diabolical!
	Huxley's tale terrifies me even more than Orwell's, although plainly we're in some amalgam with beautiful gilding from Kafka in the sort of unknowable quality.
	Where is the judge?
	What is the trial?
	Who's doing all this stuff?
	And it seems to me that there must be, even if we are to say it's about power, even if we are asking, is it an internal struggle?
	Is it my power over my instincts and the expression of those instincts in conjunction with culture that I might call self over time?
	There seems to be some other agent.
	There does indeed seem to be a serpent.
	There do indeed appear to be fallen angels.
	There do indeed appear to be ulterior forces at work.
	For I am struck that when I was an emblem of this culture in my hedonism, I was gloried and made much of.
	And when I say there is something else, we must move towards God.
	This is when the culture comes alive.
	This is when the spotlight shines.
	This is when the knock at the door comes.
	This is when forces are marshalled.
	It seems to me that something, someone must have been telling lies about Joseph Kaye.
	Joseph Kay being the protagonist of The Trial by Kafka, who was arrested for unspecified crimes and then unable to make any sense of his trial, right?
	Boy oh boy.
	I was expecting someone to yell Amen at some point towards the end there, you know?
	Oh, see, that's the thing, is when you've heard revivals, I'm like, he's fine.
	This isn't nearly as fun as they are.
	He's not pink, he's not spitting, he's not sweating, he's not going Shamala Hamala.
	Girl, he's got a long way to go.
	I mean, but like, I don't know.
	And I'm not saying that whoever pointed that out is wrong.
	I just think that my particular perspective is...
	My experiential perspective is maybe just different.
	I think that my gauge is different because he's been, you know, he can get on a tear and feel kind of, you know, excitable and enthusiastic.
	I think that maybe what that person was, or at least what my perspective is for that person, what they picked up on is the I keep wanting to say use his words, but like the uncreativity of coercive control, it's really like there's only a few ways you have to do it.
	That's why all cults have to like...
	Cults after a while kind of get samey, because there's a very specific way to operate, and it's not that creative.
	And the wheel doesn't need to be reinvented.
	It's kind of the same old song and dance.
	And in that way, absolutely accurate that that observation is made that he sounds that way.
	Yeah, I completely agree.
	I just can't wait till he's, like, he needs to be dabbing his forehead.
	Like, he's not repeating the fun stuff yet.
	See, there is, of course, an element of cultural difference, right?
	You know, because by British standards, if he was preaching, he'd be a fucking rock star, just even without all the celebrity.
	If he was doing this in the UK, everyone, their minds would be blown, right?
	I see.
	Y'all ain't as tacky as us!
	We tacky.
	We're messy.
	We're tacky.
	And I think there's more of a commitment.
	We're far too self-conscious as a people, I think.
	We would be too self-conscious on that stage to go quite to the same level as some of these guys in the US do, you know?
	That and also I think y'all judge the holy motherfucking shit out of each other in a way that we can't, aren't even capable, like the Maggie Smith of, BOO!
	My dog!
	Like that's, BOO!
	How dare you!
	You know, there's like a, there is a kind of decorum.
	You know?
	I feel like Downton Abbey really drove that point home of what fucking nasty pigs Americans are, and like, I'm not arguing.
	Oink, oink!
	You know?
	That's, yeah, I get it.
	I am one, I live here, I know.
	I will say, out of context of the conversation, that clip does make barely fucking any sense at all.
	It really doesn't?
	Yeah, and of course it's getting passed around out of context, so everyone's like, what the fuck is this?
	Justifiably.
	But in context, right, so he's of course saying that even apparent benevolence like the abolishing of slavery can be a byproduct of tyranny when the system itself is tyrannical, He then pivots to the new tyranny, as he's putting it, being one born of good intentions used to oppress the populace, like he was saying with all the racial and LGBTQ plus issues earlier on, which according to him leads to vague Kafka-esque systems of being judged without courts or laws.
	And I mean, really, when you look at it in the final analysis, he's just mad he got caught being a sexual predator and that there have been even the tiniest number of consequences for it.
	That's what he's complaining about and even then like other than being demonetized from YouTube and losing like a couple like he lost his agent or whatever like he's only actually benefited from the allegations.
	His audience and reach have gone way the fuck up since September and he's bigger than ever because of the allegations against him.
	You know I had to I had to explain this to my dad the other day.
	He was checking in on what I was up to and he said something to the effect of, oh, I'd have thought that podcast, you know, would have maybe come to a close by now after everything came out about Russell, about him being essentially evil and all that.
	And I was like, oh, you sweet summer child.
	No, no, no, no.
	This son of a bitch is like an evil Obi-Wan Kenobi.
	When you strike him down, he only comes back more powerful and has the strongest tendency to fail upwards that I've ever seen in my life.
	Well, it's the scope.
	It's the availability and the scope of it.
	That didn't happen to Jared from Subway.
	That didn't happen to R. Kelly.
	That's the thing.
	Plenty of other, like didn't happen to R. Kelly.
	Like that's the thing is like, there's, if you capture the American imagination
	with your activities, oh.
	Mmm.
	Oh, the sky's the limit, baby.
	Sky's the limit, baby.
	Absolutely, I'm wondering if we're going to start seeing a pivot from Drake anytime soon.
	Hot fire.
	Yipe stripes.
	Anyway, there are ulterior forces at work.
	There's a serpent, there are fallen angels, and we must all move towards God to marshal our forces and defend against them.
	Jolly good.
	We've got one more clip here from the interview, so let's have it.
	Alright sir, look, I'm going to close on that.
	We'll obviously continue this conversation.
	How could it ever end?
	Yeah, yeah, the accurate statement here that like the self owns are are thick and coming thick and fast.
	How could it ever end?
	Oh, there's such a strange dynamic between these two.
	Honestly, I really well, it's just the self awareness, like the the the execution of self awareness and it's usurpation.
	Like it's it's like a net, you know, it's a it's a the bizarro.
	Like, you can just say it.
	It doesn't matter.
	You can just say it.
	And you think you're saying it when you're like, oh man.
	Okay.
	All right.
	Yep.
	So the interview doesn't quite end there.
	There's another few minutes.
	It's Jordan Peterson asking about Russell's son and also giving him a book recommendation of Machea Eliade's The Sacred and the Profane, The Nature of Religion, which is about how despite contemporary people believing that the world is entirely profane or secular, despite secular people believing that, they still at times find themselves connected unconsciously to the memory of something sacred.
	So it's a book saying, hey, people are religious even if they don't think they are, which marries perfectly into the ideologies of both of these men.
	Yeah, I guess in one way, yeah.
	And I'm sure how it's presented if Jordan Peterson is presenting it, then it's like, I mean, because I'm a person that... Yeah, go ahead.
	Go ahead.
	No, I was going to say, he just says it's a punchy as hell book.
	That's his thing.
	It's lethal.
	It's short and it's lethal.
	Yeah.
	And I think it's supposed to tie into like what I was saying about Dawkins and all of that, you know, being culturally Christian and all of that stuff.
	Short books.
	Short book.
	Short book.
	Okay.
	Well, but no, I mean, like that's, the thing is, is like, I could come from the exact same perspective as a person who is way into and very interested in religion.
	It came from religious art and art history and then religion in general.
	It's very, very compelling and fascinating as a story.
	To understand the world is through a story.
	Fucking stupid.
	But like, you know what I mean?
	Like that kind of, like, yeah, that concept is talked about a lot.
	There's a lot of like, Neurological and cultural, like, tendencies toward ritual, sometimes very similar rituals across many different cultures because of just kind of the way that we're built and the way that we're made and the way our brains, you know, the way that humans work and the way that human community works.
	Um, and when you don't have, I guess, maybe, you know, like ritual or like, I'd say it's more of a propensity for like, um, community activities and ritual.
	It activates a part of the brain, you know, that like that, that, you know, that's that, that's entirely valid.
	But if you are coming from a religion is fundamental, um, so we shouldn't think about it and just do it.
	That's a problem.
	That's not.
	Yeah, yeah, I think there are responsible and interesting ways, interesting things to talk about there, you know, responsibly, but yeah, that's absolutely not what this guy's doing.
	Right, that's the whole thing, and I've got to say, like, watching the entire hour and a half, more than once, because to understand these people, Takes a second.
	Never have I seen two people use so many words to say so little.
	To explain the most basic of concepts in the most elaborate and labored way possible.
	It is honestly exhausting.
	And it comes off as intelligent because they use big and sometimes foreign words like logos.
	For any close analysis, both of these guys know remarkably little about the subject matter they're discussing, and yet both will rattle off entire miniature essays with gleeful abandon.
	Well, it's still something they practice.
	You practice what you can.
	Yeah, well, they do in that way.
	No, they don't.
	They practice like they play, not what you preach, because no, they don't.
	But they don't know what they preach anyway, so fucking whatever.
	Yeah, I mean, what you described is like, I don't know, this is the most, this is what I show up for every week, is to watch two morons pontificate about shit they don't understand.
	It's a relief whenever someone is a bad-faith actor with ulterior motives.
	That's, like, better?
	I mean, I love whenever they step on each other's toes, though.
	That's hilarious to me, because it's very, like... And just let's think about, let's think about the Roseanne interaction and how different that smelled.
	You know?
	Has a different flavor.
	Very.
	Very.
	Yeah.
	It's, um, yeah, it is interesting that, like, there was quite a bit of tension in this interview between these two guys.
	More than usual.
	And it's, yeah, it's curious.
	It's curious.
	I mean, it's... but also, like, you know, we have to think about it from, like, the stakes of the tension are so fucking low.
	So low.
	That's the thing, because, like, at the end of the day, they're still showing up and cross-pollinating for each other, and that's the point.
	I just... this is, like, I don't know.
	And for the Daily Wire Plus.
	Yeah, you know, it's... Right, right, right.
	It's interesting for us because we do this show, you know, and through that kind of lens.
	But yeah, the actual stakes of it, none of it's going to fucking matter.
	No, absolutely not.
	And it's not like there's going to be some big rift between these two, you know?
	It's just not going to happen.
	I mean, those things do, like, that's the thing, is the eventuality, because they're all, like, they're, they're all, you know, capitalistic creatures at the end of the day, and if something isn't going right, they're going to pitch a fucking fit, and we've seen it before.
	You know, like, Ben Shapiro took such a long time to get Candace Owens out.
	Like, you know what I mean?
	Like, they do come to, like, these people, because, like, because it's impossible for them to get along, They're reactionary.
	They're like contrarian reactionaries.
	They don't have a moral compass.
	It's their bank account is their compass.
	If that starts being interfered with, or if something is finally a bridge too far, which the bridge is so far, then that's when they'll start with Crowder.
	The amount of money he has for his b-b-b-bunkers.
	And that's, that's like, that's the thing is fucking with the bag is what makes them upset.
	And that's the problem.
	That's when the friction happens.
	And I think that there's, I think there's a cycle to it.
	And I think it'll happen to Russell eventually.
	I'm interested to see how, like the position that he puts himself in to Have consequences in this info sphere because they're all fighting for the top.
	So.
	And is he going to win?
	I think that he's setting himself up to win.
	I think that the broadest possible representation.
	I mean, I think that like genuinely at least what's happening here.
	The things that are polling the worst for the dogmatic, you know, kind of like, alt-right, like, really extreme Republicans is the queer, you know, like, you know, like, Drag Queen Story Hour, like, kind of, you know, like, protests.
	Like, it's the stuff, it's, it's...
	It's the Westboro Baptist Church stuff that they've normalized.
	That's the shit that makes people really... And abortion.
	Those are the things that make people really... Just turn people off.
	Because it's a fucking ugly way to behave.
	And I think that if he can... I feel like that will be a friction point.
	That he may be able to achieve, like he may be able to actually integrate that into his message.
	And you can't tell me that he's not trying to win.
	Because this is also a race, this is a horse race.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	I mean, I didn't think my money would be on Russell.
	And again, we're talking from a capitalist perspective because I'm not, I don't want him to win.
	But he might.
	I'm interested to see how he'll spin it.
	I'm interested.
	It is, yeah, it is interesting.
	It's easy to forget, because in many ways Russell can be very idiotic, but in many ways he's also very savvy and very clever, and I think this is one of the ways in which he's very savvy.
	Um, you know, and yeah, it may very well position him ahead of the pack long term.
	It's gonna be interesting, and because of the tension, I am now actually interested in the next time these two have a discussion.
	Probably nothing will happen, but, you know, I'm at least slightly curious.
	You know?
	Well, I think as far as, like, the podcast...
	We're interested to see Russell's journey and feel that it is important to document because it could turn into something, it could get even worse!
	It can go all kinds of directions and and he he is he is very much a rising star still at this point um you know he's um he's starting to really get up there um you know um so it it yeah yeah all kind of bets are off as to where he's gonna go.
	Yeah and you know what I would not have um as a person who has been you know watching this At least the religious kind of usurpation, the Christian right, you know, like the religious right.
	I've been watching that my whether either by choice or not, um, my entire life and
	I never would have guessed TradCath.
	I never would have guessed traditional Catholicism.
	I never would have guessed that Tradcath was the way that they were going to go.
	And I bet you that a lot of fundamentalist Christians don't either.
	That's a very, because that is still a rift.
	It's still a complication.
	And I wonder if they are going to kind of Join forces, you know what I mean?
	Like, if they're going to overlook their differences.
	So we started that show, Shogun, on Hulu or something.
	Oh, yeah, it's on Disney as well.
	Yeah, it's tight.
	It's cool.
	I think it's on FX.
	So that's wherever FXs are played.
	Right.
	But yeah, and we've only got a couple episodes in and watching.
	So the watching A Protestant British person insists on the enemy of a Portuguese Catholic and explaining
	And there's certainly other entertainment and real life events that explain this and examine it, and it's also entertaining, but just like watching Japanese people that have their own drama, they have their own literal castle intrigue going on.
	Oh yeah.
	And they're like, wait, but they're both Christian?
	But they hate each other?
	Whatever.
	Fine.
	Like it's very that.
	It's like the girls, the girlies are fighting.
	Okay.
	Oh, that's great.
	That show is very much on my list.
	Yeah, it's an interesting question as to whether there will be more unification of the different kind of sects.
	I don't know, because yeah, a lot of people seem to be going Catholic at the moment.
	Candace Owens, obviously, she's gone Treadcath.
	And let's not forget, Who planted these seeds, at least in the most visible way that I could see, is Nick Fuentes and the Groipers.
	He was like TradCath, TradCath, TradCath.
	That's part of his being.
	That's a driving force of his content and his perspective.
	Let's not forget the The poison tree that came from.
	I mean, that's not... Yeah, that's a worrying thought.
	There's plenty of Catholic.
	Wearing the collar, black shirt, swinging the smoky thing.
	Catholic.
	Beautiful gowns, right?
	That's not where this is coming from.
	This is its own kind of... It's its own thing.
	So I don't see it appealing to Catholics.
	I see it as a conversion.
	It's kind of like Christian Zionism, where it's like, we don't like all Jews.
	Christian Zionism basically sees Jews as pets that they will ultimately sacrifice to bring the end times.
	They don't like Jews.
	They want to use them as a tool for the apocalypse.
	So they're supporting the amount of money that is coming from the Christian Zionists.
	People don't even know.
	That's the thing.
	A lot of regular folks in church are like, oh yeah, no, I can choose a school, and supporting Israel is cool.
	They don't see the differences and the parallels.
	They don't have the nuanced kind of understanding of, like, the parablem.
	And I think that we need to, like, I'm not going off vibes, because honestly, if I was going off vibes, it seemed like a really small...
	Movement of people but the money that is traveling to a Zionist project from the fundamentalist Christian American sects are like that speaking volumes to me and a lot of people are finally reporting on it like it's finally kind of coming to the surface so you're not talking about like Ouch my knees.
	I got a kneel a bunch of times on Sunday and whatever, you know, like, like kids bored in church is not the person that they're appealing to.
	It's a very different kind of angle.
	And so yeah, that has happened.
	There is a lot of historical precedent for this exact type of kind of branding opportunity.
	Yeah, it feels it feels much more activist in nature.
	Let's put it that way.
	Yeah.
	And not not in a positive way.
	And like not that Catholic, like really not like not not super Catholic necessarily.
	You know, like, I don't know.
	But I mean, I don't know.
	I feel like I want to look into it more, too, just because it's been so, like, weird and I don't have a full grasp of, like, the movement as a whole.
	I just kind of see where it pops up.
	Yeah, yeah, it does feel strange.
	It's going to be interesting to keep track of, that's for sure.
	Interesting to see where this goes, for better or for worse.
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