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March 1, 2021 - Rubin Report - Dave Rubin

01:56:34

An Emotional Return & 12 More Rules for Life | Jordan Peterson | POLITICS | Rubin Report

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dave rubin

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jordan b peterson

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jordan b peterson ▲ ● ▼		So that chapter is hard on me.
		It's sort of traumatic to read it because I struggle with it.
		Because I'm in pain most of the time.
		But I know that it's not helpful to be resentful.
		It's better to be grateful.
unidentified		(upbeat music)
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		I'm Dave Rubin and joining me today is a clinical psychologist, a lecturer, an author,
		and perhaps most importantly, a man who truly changed my life for the better,
		Dr. Jordan Peterson.
		Welcome back to The Rubin Report.
jordan b peterson ▲ ● ▼		It's really good to see you, Dave.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Gosh, well, we connected for about a minute before we started this officially, and you said, boy, it's been about two years.
		We've texted a little bit.
		It's been a crazy two years.
		It goes without saying.
		So before I get into any of the meat of this, and I wanna talk obviously about the new book and everything else, I think what's on everyone's mind more than anything is how are you?
		Just how are ya?
jordan b peterson ▲ ● ▼		Well, I'm at home and I'm working about a third of the time, I would say.
		I'm working hard on my podcasts and YouTube discussions and I can manage about two hours of work a day and so I'm not in the hospital.
		I'm sharp again, reasonably sharp again, trying to write again, planning a new book.
		We'll see how that goes.
		It's nice to be back.
		It's nice to be doing these discussions.
		I've talked to lots of interesting people over the last couple of months.
		Douglas Murray, Ayaan Hirzi Ali, Gad Saad, Ian.
		Oh, I'm going to forget his last name, McGilchrist.
		He wrote The Master and His Emissary.
		So I'm working a bit, and I have this new book coming out, as you mentioned, and that's coming out on the 2nd of March.
		So that's interesting and exciting and stressful, all of those things.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
jordan b peterson ▲ ● ▼		I hope it's well-received.
		I can't evaluate it.
		You know, I'm too close to it to evaluate it.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		Well, I have no doubt that there will be plenty of people evaluating it.
		And you've already sort of dove back into dealing with the media.
		So all that stuff is kind of coming.
		But, you know, you know, obviously over the last two years, so much has happened and it feels like we're in a different world and everything else.
		And, you know, so many people, they ask me about you.
		They asked me about our time together and the tour and everything else.
		And truly, for me, when people ask me about, or just when I think back to that year, I mean, we did about 120 stops in almost 20 countries.
		You did a bunch more that I couldn't attend even after that.
		It feels like a dream to me.
		Like that year, it was so intense and wonderful and magical and sometimes stressful, sometimes tiring, whatever it was, but it was just, in the summation, it was just wonderful.
		What do you think back on mostly about that?
jordan b peterson ▲ ● ▼		Well, it seems like a dream to me, too.
		You know, the last two years have been mostly hospitals for one reason or another, and I suppose it's partly dreamlike because of the vast contrast between 2018 and then 2019 and 2020.
		I mean, that tour was an amazing experience.
		It was so positive.
		You know, apart from the odd press blast, which were islands of negativity in a sea of what was positive, it was really something to travel from city to city.
		To talk to all those people and yeah it was an amazing experience and I'd certainly like to do it again if I could gather myself together.
		I know Tammy too had a really, she thought it was a great adventure and I thought You know, we worked well together, you and I. It was nice to have some levity associated with all the seriousness.
		That's a good combination if you can pull it off.
		It was so nice to see all those people who were trying to put their lives together, you know, and such a remarkable range of people.
		I don't want to use the word diverse because it's been completely poisoned, of course, but there are every sort of person in our audiences and They'd all come together for positive reasons as far as I could tell.
		It sure felt that way.
		It was so nice to meet people too.
		They were always so friendly and welcoming.
		Yeah.
		You know what you say?
		I've been so fortunate in the response that I've received from people who've watched my YouTube videos or listened to the podcast or read the book.
		It's really sustained me, kept me going.
		It was great.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		It was.
jordan b peterson ▲ ● ▼		It was a ridiculous experience.
jordan b peterson ▲ ● ▼		It was unbelievable.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		That's it.
jordan b peterson ▲ ● ▼		It was unbelievable.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		It was a ridiculous experience.
		Do you, people ask me this too, and I actually don't have a good answer for this, but beyond just the occasional hit piece, And the strange things, the New York Times enforced monogamy thing, and the rest of that.
		Was there anything negative?
		I mean, there was some emotional stuff that was happening, and obviously you found out that Tammy was ill, and thank God she's better now, and you were having some- She says hello, by the way.
		Oh, please, send her my love.
		Mine and David's, please do.
		But beyond some of that, The hit piece stuff and some of the health stuff that you started to deal with and that Tammy was dealing with.
		Do you remember anything that was negative?
		I truly don't.
		It was like every day that we went somewhere, it was more love, more people putting their lives together and the stories, just the incredible stories that we heard everywhere.
jordan b peterson ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, well, and you know, we did the meet and greets afterwards.
		And I also really liked that, you know, I only had 10 to 15 seconds with each person or couple or family, whatever it was, but that was all extremely positive too.
		So no, I mean, I've tried to figure out why I've become so ill.
		There's a variety of reasons.
		Some of it's associated with this familial proclivity for depression, no doubt, but I don't believe that it was a consequence of, certainly not of that tour.
		I mean, and I've always liked my whole life.
		Since I was 25, I've gone flat out.
		I like that.
		I like to live like that, you know, to work 15 or 16 hours a day flat out.
		And I mean, I did learn how to do that, I thought, and be able to sustain it.
		And so, no, my health wasn't 100% on that tour.
		That was probably a prodroma for everything that happened later, but I really don't think it had anything to do with the tour.
		Now, all the controversy that's swirled around me, that's a different thing.
		That has been extremely stressful, and I don't really know how to calibrate that.
		You know, I watch people on Twitter, and if they say something and 20 people mob them, that's usually enough to really set them back on their heels.
		And generally, people apologize and, well, make things worse often by doing that.
		But it doesn't take many people to go after you before it has a real pronounced emotional effect and you know that happened a lot and it was somewhat I can't really understand it exactly why it happened so much and I'm sure that had some effect on me because when it happens now it certainly wallops me you know
		We had a run-in with the London Times, the Sunday Times, a while back, and it was unbelievably stressful two weeks because of that.
		Because you never know, of course, how the public is going to respond either.
		And so far, as I said, I've been so fortunate in people's response to me.
		I thought, well, maybe I've gone to the well of public sympathy one time too many this time, you know.
		And it was undoubtedly a mistake, perhaps, oh Christ, I don't know, to have talked to the Sunday Times.
		But I thought I had to talk about what happened to me to someone.
		And we thought, well, they're hypothetically Stayed and reliable, you know, and it's it's hurtful to me to see these institutions become corrupted You know that I certainly take no pleasure in seeing that It's it's appalling in fact to watch these these once great institutions deteriorate into tabloid style journalism and and deceit
		So, but no, the tour was great, Dave, I thought.
		Jesus!
		I mean, it's complicated because it also, my life got so disrupted, you know, because I was a professor and I had my clinical practice and my writing and a business that I ran as well.
		And now I'm not a professor at the moment.
		I'm on leave still and I don't have my clinical practice.
		I'm still, I'm adrift to some degree because of that, you know, because that was so much of my life.
		And then, of course, the tour filled that up.
		And then, well, there's a prolonged bout of illness shared, you know, my wife and then me.
		I'm just starting to come to terms with whatever my new life looks like.
		I think about going back to the university, but I'm not sure I can do it.
		And that's very dis, what would you say?
		I don't know how to think about the fact that maybe I can't do it.
		I'm certainly not happy about it.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		It's appalling.
jordan b peterson ▲ ● ▼		Do you mean because of the physical rigors or just because you're... Yeah, yeah.
		I don't think I'm reliable enough to take on that responsibility.
		I don't know for sure, but...
		But I'm still very ill.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		I mean, I don't even know how to ask this, but I mean, is there anything else you want to address with any of that stuff?
		I actually don't want to belabor the point, but if there's anything that you want to get off your chest, I know- Well, we'll see how it goes.
jordan b peterson ▲ ● ▼		No, I don't, I don't think so.
		I mean- If it comes up while we talk, that's fine, but no, I'm so bored of it.
		It's so dull and appalling that we'd better talk about virtually anything else.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		All right, well, fear not, I got a couple of things.
jordan b peterson ▲ ● ▼		There is one thing, I guess there is one thing I should address, Dave, really.
		Well, you know, I've been an advocate for people to put their lives together, and of course my life has fallen apart, and so you might ask yourself, Are you aware of the irony of that?
		And the answer to that is, well, absolutely.
		You know, it's shameful.
		I feel that frequently.
		And then so you might say, and people tweet this out fairly regularly, you know, who am I to give advice?
		And I suppose that's a perfectly relevant question.
		I guess I've always thought, and I said this too in the lectures during the tour, that I don't really think that what I'm doing is giving advice, or if I am, I'm also giving it to me.
		You know, it's not like I believe that I have all the answers.
		I have answers that I've found useful while attempting to move ahead.
		And with this new book, I can show you this.
		That's what it looks like.
		The black counterpart to the white book, the previous book.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		How today?
jordan b peterson ▲ ● ▼		You know, I wrote a lot of it while I was extremely ill.
		And there were some advantages to that, I think, in that I only kept That material that I felt was reliable under duress.
		Now, I think probably, perhaps my creativity was somewhat compromised and so that may have impacted the book negatively, but It made for more severe editing.
		For example, the last chapter is, uh, be grateful in spite of your suffering.
		And certainly maintaining that gratitude is something I've struggled with.
		I think anybody who's in pain chronically struggles with resentment, but I know that resentment poisons and I think that form of courage.
		And so, I stand by what I've written.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		You know, it's funny, I would hear some version of that.
		Oh, you know, people would ask me when they would ask about you, and they would say, oh, well, he was telling people to get their lives together, and here, look what happened to him.
		And my answer was always the same with people, which is, well, first off, he never professed to be Jesus.
		He never professed to be perfect.
		You actually, and this is one of the things that I think really helped me throughout the tour, you would often address if you were struggling with something.
		You know, you, from what I saw, virtually every night, gave a different lecture every night, and if you were frustrated by something on a given day, you would address it that night if something happened with the media, or something was happening personally.
		And I think people, they see us in these boxes, or people that write books or whatever it is, and they think that we're supposed to be perfect all the time, probably in your case, certainly more than mine, and it's just not something that I ever saw you say about yourself.
jordan b peterson ▲ ● ▼		Well, luckily, luckily, and I'm really stunned by this.
		You know, I thought the other day I'm going to make an announcement about the book on Tuesday.
		I think that's March 2nd.
		And I thought, well, what do I want to say about it?
		And what I really wanted to say when I thought about it, I thought really what I want to do is thank people.
		Because, you know, this criticism has come up and I think it's a valid criticism.
		It's like, who the hell is he to talk about getting his getting people's act together?
		I mean, everyone gets ill and, you know, Everyone has periods of their life where things are going worse than they might normally go.
		But people have been, on the whole, unbelievably patient with me.
		And so I'm not sure why that is.
		I mean, of course, I'm not sure why any of this is.
		Another thing I struggle with is just trying to understand what the hell's going on, generally speaking, and why I've become such a target for attention.
		You know, both negative and positive.
		Mostly, mostly positive, thank God.
		I don't know how I could tolerate it otherwise.
		So I still really don't understand it.
		You know, I've been thinking recently, I was reading some material this week that's anti-racist math curricula.
		You know, and it claims, for example, that getting the right answer Insisting that there's a right answer in mathematics is a sign of white supremacy culture.
		And that this isn't some fringe publication like the L.A.
		County of Education has put its name behind.
		It's funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and I do think that the Gates Foundation does some good work.
		I've been thinking about that again more and I think that we're In a war on competence, it's something like that, or certainly in a war on the idea of competence.
		That's why people are criticizing the idea of meritocracy.
		But I don't think that it's just a criticism of the idea of meritocracy.
		I think it's an assault on the idea of merit.
		Well, we can get back to that.
		But I don't think I've come up with a clearer formulation than that, and for some reason I'm tangled up in that.
		I suppose because I believe that merit exists.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		So do you see a direct through line to sort of what put you on the map in the larger sense, meaning Bill C-16 in Canada?
		And you started talking about that and you didn't want the government to enforce or restrict your ability to speak freely.
		People pegged you as somehow anti-trans or something like that, but you didn't want them to be able to just tell you what pronouns you could or could not use.
		Do you see a through line from that And that's sort of when I first heard about you, this is now four or five years ago, to where we're at in terms of the assault on STEM?
jordan b peterson ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		There's some kind of through line.
		It eludes me that the totality of the motive for the culture wars eludes me, but I do think Assault on the idea of competence it's it's it's a replay of the Cain and Abel story you know bitter attacks on it's it's it's motivated by some resentment some deep resentment and it's easy to be resentment resentful about competence the thing is though there's lots of different forms of competence and
		You can allow a society to exist where there's hierarchies of competence, as long as there's many of them.
		And then people can thrive according to their own ability.
		And that's good, as far as I can tell.
		Everyone should be able to capitalize on their strengths.
		And strengths are always relative.
		And relative strength is merit.
		The assault on merit leaves everyone bereft.
		You know, if people have relative strengths, which they do, and if there is such a thing as strength, which should be something like relative ability to make a contribution in a given domain, that's what you trade on.
		That's what you capitalize on.
		That's what you have to offer the world.
		An assault on merit is an assault on everyone's strength, because where you're relatively strong is where you're relatively meritorious.
		And there's a hard drive to tear that down.
		And it's driven by resentment.
		And I'm tangled up in it somehow.
		Well, so many people are tangled up in it.
		I mean, the whole political situation seems radically unstable.
		Far more so than two years ago, I would say.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		You know, an awful lot of people would say to me over the last two years, as the politics got crazier and crazier, man, if Jordan was around, he'd be fixing some of this stuff.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		That's an unbelievable burden, and yet I believe it to be true, that I think when your voice wasn't there, there was suddenly this hole that none of us could fill, and a lot of people who I think were sort of veering towards order, I think oddly veered towards chaos.
jordan b peterson ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's very frustrating not to be able to participate fully.
		You know, I have a very difficult time coming to terms with it.
		I'm doing what I can.
		And I don't think this is over by any stretch of the imagination.
		I really think that the tide that swept through the humanities and the social sciences is going to sweep through the STEM fields and with far worse repercussions.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Well, you can feel it coming.
		I mean, you just mentioned math.
		Two plus two no longer equals four.
		I mean, if we've lost that, what do we got?
jordan b peterson ▲ ● ▼		And the document itself is a very strange document.
		I don't understand it.
		I don't understand it.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		So I want to ask you just one or two more things, sort of relative to our past and everything we did, and then I want to focus on the future and I want to focus on the new book.
		But two of the things that you really moved me on, and I wrote about it in my book, both of them, well one of them was The core, the idea of having something to believe in beyond just logic and reason.
		And this became, you know, you had several debates with Sam Harris while in the midst of our tour.
		I mean, you left to go do these incredible debates, but you completely moved me on this one.
		I definitely came from the Sam Harris or the Steven Pinker or the Jonathan Haidt school of logic and reason are enough to organize societies.
		And that's sort of what humans have.
		And after a hundred plus shows with you, hearing it over and over again, you moved me on that, truly moved me on that.
jordan b peterson ▲ ● ▼		And I wonder if you think- What's the consequence of that being for you?
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Well, A, I would say that it's given me order in the sense that I can't control everything.
		Not only can I not control everything, but I think, this may sound a little strange, I think I have more respect for the past than I had before.
		Where I thought I could sort of figure everything out and figure out, you know, certainly what was best for me and everyone about me and all those things.
		I still believe that, but there's a context to it.
		I guess that's what it is more than anything.
		It gave me a context and a link to my ancestors who I don't think I'm necessarily so much better than.
		You know, I think part of the problem now is that everyone seems to think, oh, everyone who came before you was racist or backwards or unevolved.
		And that the stories, I mean, look, you did all the biblical lectures, which I watched separately, and, you know, why did you always talk about Pinocchio and Wish Upon a Star?
		That there is something else that sits beneath our rationale.
		And without that, the rational mind is sort of lost.
		And you really moved me on that.
jordan b peterson ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, and I certainly haven't stopped believing that that's true.
		We live inside, in some sense, we live inside a story.
		We live inside the hero myth, for better or worse.
		And that doesn't mean it's true, because maybe the human race isn't correct, you know, in some final sense.
		But for better or worse, that's still our story.
		To forge a path into the unknown, to face the darkness, to gather what's valuable, and to disseminate it among among our compatriots.
		That's us when we're functioning properly.
		And if the more you do that, the more meaningful your life is.
		And that seems not to be a trivial matter.
		In fact, it's the absolute opposite of trivial.
		And I don't know what the metaphysical significance of that is.
		And that's the final question.
		The religious types.
		I talked to Jonathan Paggio, an Orthodox icon carver.
		I've talked to him quite a few times.
		He's a very devout Orthodox Christian.
		Very, very intelligent man.
		We've discussed the potential metaphysical significance of the hero myth.
		You know, how does it tie into the ultimate nature of reality?
		And I don't have an answer for that.
		You know, the Christians believe that the hero myth, so to speak, was manifest in its totality in the figure of Christ.
		And that's their explanation for how the narrative world and the empirical world touch.
		And our whole culture, much of our culture is predicated on that idea.
		And it's a deep idea.
		And it's not like I know how to cope with the paradoxes that it produces.
		You know, I read recently, for example, many people will know this, that according to current Catholic doctrine, the theory of evolution is entirely acceptable.
		I have no idea how to integrate that with classic Christianity.
		The time frames are so radically different.
		But I also don't think that the empirical types have, the people that you mentioned,
		this is the constant discussion I had with Sam, they haven't come to terms with the fact that
		we see the world through a structure of value and we can't get outside of that.
		So is that why… To look at something.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Is that why, you know, during the, you said to me from the day we started the tour, and you said it to me on almost any given night, you know, you didn't want to know the questions that I was going to ask, you would always say nothing's off limits, and you would, well actually what you would usually say to me is have fun, or have fun tonight, something like that.
		But I knew that the only question that I sensed, and I probably only asked you once or twice once I realized it, the only question that I sensed you didn't wanna do because it would take up too much time, sort of was this.
		Because when we would do the Q&A, and we did it by an app so people in the audience could vote on them, there would often be the, okay, so do you believe in God?
		What does that mean?
		And it's sort of what you're talking about here.
		Once you whittle it all down, I mean, we could do this for the next six hours, if not the rest of our lives.
jordan b peterson ▲ ● ▼		Well, you know, I've said a lot about that.
		I wouldn't say that my thinking has really progressed.
		I mean, beyond what I had thought about before, I try to conduct myself as if God exists.
		I try to conduct myself as if being is good.
		That's faith, I suppose.
		And I think to some degree, that's also a kind of courage.
		I mean, I'm not claiming that my faith is entirely courageous because I waver.
		Of course, and I've especially wavered, I would say, in the last two years, given everything that's happened, all the catastrophe that's rained down upon my family and I. But I still believe that you become corrupted if you become resentful about existence.
		You have to act as if existence is good, and that the truth is good.
		And because otherwise things get worse.
		And so there's a limit, you know, there's limits past which no one can see.
		And the questions that we're discussing are at the limit.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, well, that's it right there.
		The answer is not clean.
		And I think everyone, or so many of us, seem to want the clean answer on that.
		Like when you had those debates with Sam, like, oh, that's the answer, that's the winner, that's the knockout blow.
		And I think you're acknowledging an uncomfortable truth, yeah.
jordan b peterson ▲ ● ▼		A friend of mine the other day, he was raised a communist in Poland and was an atheist.
		He went after his family one year for celebrating Christmas because it was logically inconsistent with their beliefs, which it was.
		But what he told me when we walked was that he came to realize at one point that all that meant was that they would lose Christmas.
		Yeah, it was logically inconsistent, but what are you going to replace this with?
		It's clearly the case that you need beliefs to organize your actions.
		And then I see what happens when we don't turn to more traditional forms of belief is we turn to forms of belief that are far more dangerous.
		Or at least that lurks as a possibility.
		I also don't think it's that easy for people to defend, like the rationalists, for example.
		They're not doing a great job of defending the culture.
		Like, it doesn't sell well.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		No, they're doing a horrible job, I would say.
		I would say they're doing almost no job.
		That wokeism is, in many ways, the end of the purely rational and the purely secular order ends with what we're seeing now, in some ways, I think.
jordan b peterson ▲ ● ▼		Let's hope not, but it doesn't seem to be losing its momentum.
		I don't think.
		I mean, it's so hard to get an accurate take on the movement of the culture.
		It still seems to me that the education systems are being corrupted.
		from top to bottom.
		You know, the University of Kansas closed its humanities department a week ago.
		Well, that's partly because people aren't enrolling in the humanities anymore.
		So maybe that's, you know, maybe the market in some sense will correct some of this, but it's proving very difficult for defenders of enlightenment values to put up an effective fight against this assault on the idea of competence.
		There's nothing solid enough there for some reason.
		And well, and so here we are.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		That's it.
		I mean, so that's what belief sits upon.
		All right, well, you know what?
jordan b peterson ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, go ahead, go ahead.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Well, let's dive into the book because actually so many of the things that we're talking about now are sort of part and parcel to all of the chapters here.
		So chapter one, and what I really liked about this also is the way you organized it.
		The new topics, because one of the questions we would get often in the Q&A that you would get is, oh, was there a 13th rule that you couldn't get in the book?
		And you actually mentioned this in the book, that you had, you had what, about 46 other, was it 46?
		I had 42.
		42, you had 42.
jordan b peterson ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, the same as Douglas Adams' answer to the universe, life, the universe, and everything, 42 rules.
		Which was actually a coincidence, but I thought it was comical in the aftermath.
		There's 42 rules, so now I've written essays on 24 of them.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		When you got to 42, how long did you give it before you said, okay, 42's enough?
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Because I know you, you're pretty methodical.
jordan b peterson ▲ ● ▼		I just did it in an afternoon, the original list of rules.
		I was playing on Quora.
		I wrote about 40 answers for Quora, something like that, and I really haven't partaken in that forum for a long time now.
		I was investigating it and some kid had asked, what do you need to know in order to lead a good life?
		Or what's most important to know?
		Something like that.
		And I thought, well, I'll, you know, take a crack at answering this.
		And I made this list of 42 rules and it got very popular on Quora.
		Much more popular.
		Typical Pareto distribution, like that one answer got more views than all of my other answers put together.
		And so I thought that was kind of interesting.
		You know, I had touched something for some reason.
		And out of that, when I was asked by an agent who contacted me, Sally Harding, of Cook Agency, she asked me if I was interested in writing something more popular, and I knew that those rules had found an audience, so that seemed to me to be a place to dive in.
		So anyways, I've only written about 24 of them.
		You know, in the two books, I have them both here, you can see how they're Yeah, it's beautiful.
		One's white and the other's black.
		They make a match set.
		You can read each of them independently.
		And one concentrates, the first one, An Antidote to Chaos, 12 Rules for Life, An Antidote to Chaos, does concentrate on the consequences of excess uncertainty.
		And the second book concentrates more on an excess of order.
		Both of those are fundamental existential dangers as far as I'm concerned.
		In this universe of value, in the world of value, there are two major domains.
		And one domain is the domain of order.
		And you can technically define it.
		The domain of order is where you find yourself when what you're doing produces the results you want.
		And that's a really tight formulation because it gives you a particular idea of what a place in time is.
		The place in time you occupy is At any given moment is the place and time that's defined by your current goal.
		And you have a map of value that guides you through the actions that are necessary in that domain.
		And if the result is what you want, which brings motivation and emotion into the picture, then, well, you get what you need or want, but you also validate your theory of existence.
		Because it's good enough to produce the results that you desire.
		And given that you're fallible and that you don't know everything, You have to use proximal truths.
		It's pragmatic.
		It's a form of philosophical pragmatism.
		If you make a bridge and it stands up, then you know how to make a bridge.
		Why?
		Because the bridge stood up.
		Now maybe you overbuilt it.
		You could have built it more elegantly.
		It's sufficiently true so that the bridge functions.
		And we're like that.
		We're like engineers.
		We're cobbling together solutions all the time.
		And as long as those solutions work, we assume that we're right.
		Well, that's the domain of order.
		The domain of chaos emerges when you lay out a plan into action and something other than what you wanted emerges.
		And sometimes that can be a catastrophe, an absolute catastrophe.
		And your brain, our psychophysiology is actually adapted to those two domains.
		When something unexpected happens, all sorts of emotions and motivations break loose.
		Fight and flight among them.
		Anger among them.
		It gets disinhibited because when you don't know what's happening, You have to prepare for everything.
		So you get anxious, and then you hyper-prepare, which is extremely stressful.
		And so the domain of chaos is extremely stressful.
		In small doses, it's exhilarating.
		And that's because, well, when you're where you don't know what's happening, you have the opportunity to learn and to expand your map.
		And so there's always an interplay between the domain of chaos and the domain of order, but they can each pathologize.
		The pathologies of uncertainty are more associated with anxiety and nihilism and depression, and whereas the pathologies of order are more totalitarian.
		And then I would say as well, the liberals, liberal types, the more left-leaning types, are quite sensitive to pathologies of order.
		They don't like them.
		That's the patriarchy.
		The patriarchy is the pathology of order.
		And it's symbolically masculine, something I've been, you know, taken to task for claiming.
		But the patriarchy itself, the idea of the patriarchy itself, is a symbol.
		The patriarchy is a symbol.
	That's why it has such power.
	And it's a symbol that refers to the domain of order.
	Now, the domain of order is protective as well as oppressive, but when it degenerates, it becomes oppressive.
	And I would say it degenerates when it's based on power rather than competence, but it can be based on competence.
	You know, the Marxist critics and the politically correct types, they insist that every element of the patriarchy is only a consequence of the imposition of order, forceful imposition of order.
	It's all power.
	Well, no.
	No, it's not.
	When it degenerates, that's true.
	And you can tell that because the thing is the domain of order will be upheld by those who inhabit it if it's functional.
	If you have to use force, that's already an indication that it's become pathological, because people aren't playing voluntarily.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		So would you say we're in a degenerative cycle right now, that the cycle seems more degenerative than, say, a building cycle?
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Or you think that that's just the play that's always going on and you have to figure out your role in it?
jordan b peterson ▲ ● ▼		Well, I think the play is always going on.
		And I don't think, like the antidote to chaos isn't order, and the antidote to order isn't chaos.
		The antidote to both is the balancing of them, the active balancing of them.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		And that's where you find me.
		You used to do this a lot.
		You would say the balance, the struggle between liberal and conservative.
		So people see me doing this all the time.
		I always credit, well, Jordan was talking about, he was talking about this.
		So you think that's it?
jordan b peterson ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's really important.
		It's really important to understand that that the antidote to chaos in the final analysis
		can't just be order because order itself can degenerate.
		And so I believe that the antidote is active engagement with the world,
		honest active engagement with the world.
		Truth, and I think it's also truth motivated by love, which is a motif that runs through this second book in particular.
		Love is the desire for all things to flourish.
		You know, Christ says that you should love your enemies.
		What does that mean?
		And it's really worth thinking about.
		You shouldn't wish your enemies harm.
		What I mean by that is that it would be better for everyone if they would conduct themselves so that they would flourish.
		You know, and that doesn't mean you shouldn't defend yourself.
		It doesn't mean that that soldiers aren't necessary or the police.
		It doesn't mean any of that.
		It's not a weak needs statement.
		It means that if you're if you have your if you have your.
		If you have yourself pointed in the right direction.
		You don't wish an excess of harm on On the world, you want it to flourish.
		That's love.
		So you aren't yourself that way.
		And I do believe that that requires a certain courage because the world is so flawed and so painful.
		There's so much suffering in it.
		It's very difficult to fall in love with it.
		You keep getting bounced off.
		You think this is so terrible that maybe it shouldn't even be, but that takes you down a very bad road.
		So it's love first, and then truth serves that.
		And I do think that's the motif that runs through the Old and New Testaments, the combination of those two things.
		Love is the desire that being flourish.
		And I do believe that truth serves that.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		So... No, please finish your thought.
jordan b peterson ▲ ● ▼		Well, I also think that people find meaning in that.
		And you can, everyone can answer this for themselves.
		It's like you have to watch and you have to see where it is that you find the meaning that sustains your life.
		And I would say it's certainly not been my experience that people find that in deceit or hatred.
		I mean, they may be tempted by that.
		They may have the reasons for it, but everyone is ashamed of that and wishes it could be otherwise, even if they don't know what to do about that.
		that. So, well, so this book, the first chapter is "Do not casually denigrate social institutions
		or creative achievement."
		And I picked that quite carefully because, again, the liberal types are more likely to criticize social institutions.
		You don't want to do that casually because they structure things and protect you in a way that you are likely not even aware of.
		And the conservative always says, look, be careful when you change something because you're changing a bunch of things and you don't know what's going to happen.
		So be careful.
		But social institutions can become corrupt even just as a consequence of aging.
		And so they have to be updated.
		So they can't stay static.
		But that doesn't mean you shouldn't respect them.
		And then creative achievements on the other side.
		And conservatives, for example, they have a harder time with Open people, creative people.
		You know, the best personality predictor of liberalism is high openness, which is a creativity dimension.
		Well, it's easy to dismiss art, for example, especially if it doesn't exactly speak to you.
		But it's through artistic endeavors, through creative achievement, that the process of update occurs.
		And so, Regardless of your political temperament, you need to see these forces.
		You need to see the value in these forces and have some respect for them.
		I think what happens if you get educated, hopefully, is that you get educated beyond the confines of your temperament.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		So that's why I thought the ordering, it's so interesting that you said you intentionally, of course you intentionally did it, but that, so do not carelessly denigrate social institutions or creative achievements.
		So that's chapter one.
		And I thought it was interesting because, you know, one of the things that I've been talking about for the last couple of years, but especially in the last year, and our friend Ben Shapiro wrote a whole book about it, is the disintegration of so many of our institutions.
		And that I think the great debate right now is can some of these institutions survive or do we need all new institutions?
		Now, I know you're talking about social institutions, not just academic institutions or, you know, we're talking about cultural institutions.
		What do you feel in that argument?
		Whether can some things just be left to disintegrate and we rebuild or do we constantly end up in a destruction and a rebirth?
		Because right now we're watching so many institutions just crumble.
jordan b peterson ▲ ● ▼		Well, I tend to start local when I'm thinking.
		Because it simplifies things.
		Well, the first institution is the sovereign individual.
		We don't wanna let that crumble.
		And the more that you're able to live in a relationship with truth, I would say the better job you're doing of protecting your integrity as a sovereign individual, start with that.
		It would be a shame to lose the family.
		People derive a tremendous amount of the meaning of their life from their family and those intense relationships.
		I don't think we can get beyond that.
		I think you have to knit your family together to the best of your ability.
		And I know that people often have terribly fractured families, but we don't have a good substitute for that.
		You need to exist in relationship to your culture.
		You need a job or a career or something like that.
		We need political institutions.
		I think part of the problem, of course, is that everything is changing so rapidly that it's very difficult to say what should be kept and what shouldn't be.
		And we're not in control of it to some degree as well.
		I mean, there's an all-out assault on the integrity of cultural structures, but there's also a technological assault on everything.
		And so, what do you do in a situation like that?
		Well, I think, my sense is you revert to the individual.
		How much of this- We try to make better people.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		How much of this do you think has to do with the speed?
		Because actually I remember on sort of the last maybe quarter of the tour, one of the things that you talked about a lot was how the internet was changing us, how the speed of information was changing us, how you as a random person, no matter where you are in the world, you might be able to send out a tweet or create a meme that could change the world.
		Like that.
		So how much do you think the speed is all part of this in ways that were literally unimaginable three decades ago?
jordan b peterson ▲ ● ▼		I think it's a tremendous part of it.
		We don't know what to do with any of the new technologies that we've produced.
		And by the time we adapt to them, they'll have transformed into something completely different.
		So, you know, my kids are in their late twenties and they're more a part of the internet generation than I am.
		They're being supplanted in their knowledge by younger people already.
		They can both feel it.
		It's changing unbelievably quickly.
		So that puts a tremendous amount of stress on everyone.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		When you talk about the creative achievement part of this, one of the things I've been thinking about lately is that I don't remember the last time I heard a new musician that I really loved or saw a piece of art that was new that I really loved.
		It seems so rare because of what's happened with cancel culture that the people that should be showing us things are not showing them.
		What do we do about that?
		How do we make the artists brave again?
		How do we make the people who will give us the creative achievement, how do we make them see that star again?
jordan b peterson ▲ ● ▼		Well, you do whatever you can by example.
		That's the best you've got.
		So hopefully you try to bring integrity to your endeavors.
		And hopefully that has a salutary effect.
		You don't have a better option than that.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		So chapter two is imagine who you could be and then aim single-mindedly at that.
		And for me, after being on tour with you, I think that's something that got into me through osmosis, that I would be on stage and even though everyone was there for you, I thought, hey, I'm part of this somehow.
		This thing, somehow I became part of this.
		And then once I realized, That when the PA announcer said my name, that those people knew me, I thought, I'm me, I'm the guy they're talking about, like I'm doing something.
		And then, just that, it helped my aim.
		It helped my aim.
		And I wonder how many people just don't, they don't know how to aim because they have no experience like that.
		Something like that.
jordan b peterson ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's part of what tradition is supposed to teach you by presenting you with examples of great people of the past.
		The lesson is not supposed to be exactly bow down and worship these people.
		It's be like them.
		Be like them.
		And you could be.
		And I mean, that's really the goal of the humanities, when it's the humanities.
		If it's not, if that's the goal, then students will study the humanities.
		As soon as that ceases to be the goal, then there's nothing of value there.
		I mean, great literature tells you It tells you the great story of good and evil.
		Always.
		It's good and evil against a background of chaos and order.
		Always.
		And the evil characters are there to be bad examples and the good characters are there to be good examples.
		Or you see the interplay of those forces within a single person.
		And it's a reminder of who you could be.
		And you can find out who you should be.
		It's actually, and this is something quite mysterious, I believe, and part of the proof, let's say, that we exist in a world of value.
		Your conscience tells you who you should be.
		Now, that doesn't mean necessarily that it's infallible, but people wrestle with their conscience.
		You know, there isn't anyone, I've never met anyone who is, you know, I'm not.
		Narcissists accepted, let's say.
		People are generally tormented by their conscience and the reason for that is that they're not They're deviating from the path that is their destiny.
		And if you don't think that, well, then what do you think?
		What do you think that conscience is?
		I mean, I've asked my classes repeatedly, do you have a little voice in your head that tells you when you've done something wrong, or you're about to, or a feeling?
		And they all immediately agree with that.
		No one finds that a foreign concept.
		And so, If you don't know who you could be, your conscience will remind you when you deviate, and then you can start to attend to that.
		Think, well look, I'm actually ashamed when I do this.
		I should stop.
		Unless I want to be ashamed all the time, it looks like I should stop.
		And then maybe you stop doing that, and then your conscience objects to something else, and maybe you stop doing that.
		And as that happens, you start to develop a vision of who you could be.
		And the chapter indicates, it looks at symbolic representations.
		It's an examination of a certain symbolic representation of the ideal.
		And so it's my attempt to assess tradition for what it can tell us
		about what the ideal human being might be like.
		And the ideal human being is the person who forthrightly upholds the traditions of the culture
		and forges away into the unknown.
		We went through that.
		And pulls new information in and rebuilds himself and the world.
		And that's who you could be.
		And now the difficulty comes in figuring out how to do that within the confines of your own life.
		So in some sense, that's how to bring the divine to earth.
		There's this divine pattern, but it's It's general.
		See, this is one of the mysterious things about Christianity that's so remarkable about it, is that there's the Christ that's eternal, the Word of God, say, so that's a representation of something absolutely transcendent, but it's married to the particulars of one particular time and space.
		Obviously, critics of Christianity regard that as one of its major flaws.
		You know, that there's this idea of God who is a carpenter in some out-of-the-way place in some out-of-the-way time.
		But you're someone in an out-of-the-way place at a particular time and place.
		And for you, what that means is that for you to Make contact with the highest of values.
		You have to bring that down to your particulars and figure out how you do that.
		It's going to be a way that no one else does it because you're the only one that's you.
		But you can aim at something, aim at something.
		The point of the chapter is that you aim at something and that will shape you as you move towards it.
		And then your aim will change.
		You'll move.
		But that doesn't matter.
		It gets you going.
		And you'll be molded across time more and more into the person you could be.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Can you talk about that just from a personal perspective as someone that I've seen do it?
		I mean, that's what I saw you do every night.
		You would take your intellectual Curiosity to the end of where it would go.
		Sometimes you would get off stage and say to me, oh, you know, I took that as far as I could tonight.
		And then the next night, you would go a little bit further with it, or a little bit further, and I knew, there were moments, because we did so many shows, I knew when you were a little past where you would wanna go, and then I could see you come back.
		But can you talk about what that was like for you, in terms of your life, how you felt, how time felt, how the relationship with the audience felt?
		When you're doing it right.
		Because I feel like people don't know that.
		When you're doing it right, what does it feel like?
jordan b peterson ▲ ● ▼		Well, to begin with, and this happened when I was in graduate school, I had a lot of bad habits.
		I smoked like a pack of cigarettes a day, and I drank a lot.
		I came from this little town in Northern Alberta, and like many little towns, especially in Northern Canada, alcohol overuse is de rigueur, you know?
		And so, I noticed when I was in my early 20s that the only time I really regretted what I had done was when I was drinking.
		Now, it was also interfering with me writing because I couldn't concentrate well enough if I was hungover, but I also couldn't really concentrate.
		I couldn't I couldn't tolerate the emotional strain of what I was writing about when I was hungover.
		It was too, I couldn't handle being on the edge because I destabilized my nervous system.
		In any case, I stopped drinking.
		And the reason for that was, well, I decided I didn't want to be ashamed of what I was doing anymore.
		It seemed, I thought, well, maybe I could not do things that were shameful and then see what my life was like.
		So that was sort of on the negative end, the constraint end.
		I think people get, on the more positive end, people get deeply involved in what they're doing
		if they're in the right place in the right time.
		So I would say you can tell this is the idea of heaven on earth to some degree.
		When time stops, when you're not aware of the duration of time, when you're so engaged with what you're doing that you're not aware of the duration of time, then you've got the forces of chaos and order balanced properly.
		You're not stultified and bored.
		That's an excess of order.
		Everything's too predictable.
		You're not overwhelmed.
		It's like you're playing tennis at the peak of your game.
		That's partly what people experience when they're great athletes, when they play.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		The zone, yeah.
jordan b peterson ▲ ● ▼		And they're always stretching themselves to their limit.
		You can tell that if you watch a gymnast, for example, who has a brilliant performance.
		They've stretched themselves beyond their domain of competence during the performance.
		And that's what makes everybody leap to their feet.
		That's the incarnation-given embodiment right there in front of you for some moments.
		And everyone cheers that on.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Do you think it's weird how it becomes a fleeting moment in a way?
		Like, I know, I know what you're saying is true.
		When I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing and I'm on my game and my thoughts are right and straight, time just moves.
		And then I go, whoa, a month passed.
		A month passed, and I was good that whole time, and I did write that whole time, and I was happier, and my relationship with David or whoever else is better in that time, but that it becomes fleeting, and that suddenly you could have a great month, and then suddenly something happens, chaos returns.
		It's that we almost forget that moment.
		You can't hold it.
jordan b peterson ▲ ● ▼		Well, it requires a lot of, it requires even to some degree, some good fortune to maintain.
		I certainly haven't been able to do that while I was ill.
		You know, and time... One of the consequences of my illness, whatever it was or is, was time dilation.
		Like, days lasted weeks, it seemed like.
		Minutes lasted hours.
		And I mean that literally.
		And that was terrible.
		The weight of time.
		It's the weight of brute mortality.
		It's the weight of self-consciousness.
		And you escape that immersed properly.
		So...
		And that second chapter is a pretty practical chapter.
		It's like, well, if you're not who you want to be, then think about how you could be better.
		Take a chance, aim at that, work at it, and see what happens.
		So, and that's a disciplinary routine, I would say.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		It takes you out of your current order.
		I think that's also, it's a perfect segue to chapter three, which is do not hide unwanted things in the fog, which seems to me, we live in a constant state of distraction now.
		You've mentioned Twitter a couple of times.
		Is Twitter bringing any of us happiness or is it keeping us all in a constant state of fog?
		Any, you know, the overload and the endless obsession with politics, that all seems like a fog to me.
		You know, I do my August off the grid and I do that to get out of the fog.
jordan b peterson ▲ ● ▼		So what was so key?
		Distraction is definitely fog and you'll distract yourself.
		I think you distract yourself mostly when your conscience is bothering you.
		Because you don't want to face what it is in your life that is uncomfortable.
		That chapter is, again, quite practical.
		It's a reminder to pay attention often to negative emotion.
		Resentment and that sort of thing, because it can tell you... Well, resentment is very useful.
		Maybe your partner is talking to someone and they're a little bit more animated than you'd like and you get jealous and that jealousy is associated with a whole set of insecurities.
		Or maybe they're flirting and they shouldn't be.
		It's not that easy to determine, and maybe you'll have a big fight about that, but you could just as well pretend that didn't happen.
		You know, the emotion comes up.
		I'm jealous.
		I'm resentful.
		It's associated with experiences like that in the past.
		The psychoanalysts would have called that a complex.
		You could notice that.
		You could think, well, should I be jealous?
		Is there something wrong with me?
		Or is there something wrong with my partner?
		Or is there something wrong with the relationship?
		And you have to Untangle that and who knows what you'll have to untangle to get that straight.
		Or you can bear the jealousy and see what'll happen in the relationship.
		Or maybe it'll disintegrate because your partner is flirting and you ignore that.
		It's not like you repress it exactly.
		And this chapter is an attempt to distinguish repression from this hiding in the fog.
		It's that you get a hint that something's wrong.
		And then you have to unpack that hint to pull the information out.
		You know, so maybe your partner is flirting and they shouldn't be.
		And so then you have to find out why they're dissatisfied with the relationship or what's tempting them or what is crooked in their soul at the moment or what they're dissatisfied about.
		terrible journey of exploration and discovery.
		You know, that's always presented as something that's positive.
		It's often not at all.
		It's so hard.
		It's like doing surgery on a separating wound.
		And it's no wonder people avoid it.
		But it's not helpful, you know, because all it does is leave that,
		those things grow and multiply in the dark.
		And if you ignore them, they just cascade.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		And so it's better.
		Do you think that's just self-protection for most people?
		That most people, they see it, they know that truth behind them, whether it's about their partner or whatever it might be, but they just, it's just self-protection.
		Like, oh, I just gotta keep moving on as things are.
		That we're just creatures of habit.
jordan b peterson ▲ ● ▼		Well, sometimes it's that, and it especially gets to be that if it's accumulated for a long time.
		Because if you wouldn't deal with it when it was a kitten, you're not going to deal with it when it's a full grown lion.
		And so, but I think mostly it's something else I return to in the book is it's deceit, resentment, and arrogance.
		I already know what I need to know.
		That's arrogance.
		Deceit is, I don't have to pay attention to that.
		And resentment is, well, things can go to hell and so can he or she.
		You know, and that's a pretty dark triad.
		And you don't want the spirit that embodies that to take over your life.
		That's for sure.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		So... That gets us to four then.
		I think you got the order right on these because chapter four is, notice that opportunity lurks where responsibility has been abdicated.
		Now, I think we're seeing an awful lot of that these days.
jordan b peterson ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's a nice inversion, eh?
		Because people are often resentful if they see that responsibility has been abdicated.
		Why isn't that person doing their job?
		It's like, well, hey man, step in!
		At your workplace, in your family, you know, and you think, well, I don't I shouldn't have to do that extra work.
		Well, you shouldn't be a slave.
		You shouldn't allow yourself to be tyrannized.
		But if something bugs you because the responsibility is going unfulfilled, there's a great opportunity for you.
		And this is something I don't think we teach young people well.
		And one of the things you may remember this that was so striking about the tour was that I made a case fairly consistently that most people find the meaning that sustains them through the vicissitudes of life, not in happiness, but in responsibility.
		And that would bring everyone to a halt.
		It would always make the whole theatre silent.
		It's like, oh, I never thought of that connection.
		Because maybe you want to avoid responsibility, and you can understand why.
		You can understand why.
		You hide from it.
		Like Abraham.
		One of the biblical stories, Abraham, he stays in his father's tent till he's like 80.
		And then God gets fed up and tells him to get the hell out and grow up.
		And everything that he encounters is catastrophic.
		He encounters tyranny.
		The Egyptians conspire to steal his wife.
		He encounters starvation and war.
		That is what you encounter if you go out in the world and you think, who the hell wants that?
		I don't want the responsibility.
		It's like, well, yes, you do, as it turns out.
		There's nothing better than responsibility.
		Now, you know, I say that with some caution.
		I think that it's hard to say.
		The responsibility.
		I've been overwhelmed by my apparent responsibility.
		But I think it's also kept me alive.
		And I mean that literally.
		And so.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Wait, can you go a little deeper with that?
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		I mean, when you were at your darkest moments in the last two years, whatever that might be, was it the feeling of the-?
jordan b peterson ▲ ● ▼		Well, there's been many times in the last year where it would have been much easier for me just to be dead.
		That's constant.
		So, but, no.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		But is it but no because of something in you, or is it but no because of the people that you would have abdicated that responsibility to the people?
		Or is that ultimately the same thing?
		Yeah.
jordan b peterson ▲ ● ▼		Well, I do think the two aren't easily distinguishable, but it's definitely that.
		It's definitely that.
		You know?
		And it's, One of the chapters, the last chapter, is be grateful in spite of your suffering.
		You know?
		You need a meaning to sustain you through suffering.
		And it is the case that you find that in responsibility.
		Well, and so it's good advice for anyone who's at work.
		You're resentful about this and that.
		Because people aren't pulling their weight.
unidentified		Pull it!
jordan b peterson ▲ ● ▼		See what happens.
		You become indispensable.
		Instantly.
		You'll know everything.
		And maybe that job won't be for you, or maybe that relationship won't be for you, but you'll take your hard-acquired wisdom and go elsewhere and flourish there.
		So, you know, this kid stopped me.
		I think I wrote about this in this book.
		A kid stopped me in a restaurant one day when I was walking in and he said, and he had an undergraduate degree and he was working as a waiter in a chain steak place.
		And he stopped me and he said, you know, about six months ago, I was watching one of your lectures and I decided to stop being resentful about my job.
		And he was resentful because he had a university degree and he's working as a waiter.
		You know, and look, I don't have anything against waiters.
		It's like a waiter can make your evening, you know, hooray.
		He said, well, I decided I'd start trying at my job, like really trying as if it was worthwhile.
		He said he got three promotions in six months, like he's just rocketing up the power hierarchy.
		Well, it's not power, it's competence, if it's well run, you know, and places are full of opportunity.
		That doesn't mean social structures aren't sometimes corrupt, but you can discover that too.
		If you start to take responsibility and that goes sideways, you're not being credited with that, well then that's an indication that you need to restructure the situation.
		Something's corrupt about it.
		Or if you can't do that, you should go somewhere else where that is valued.
		It's a sign that things aren't right.
		If you bring your best to the table and that isn't appreciated, there's something wrong with the table.
		Now, that doesn't mean that there's something wrong with tables always and everywhere, but it is the case, you know, and this is something we should all get straight.
		When we think about hierarchies, it's an axiom of the left that hierarchies are predicated on power.
		It's like, no!
		Only when they're corrupt.
		Well, they're always corrupt.
		Well, yes, that means all hierarchies are contaminated with power.
		Well, that isn't the essence of the hierarchy.
		The essence of the hierarchy is distinction of value.
		And you need the distinction of value because you can't tell what to do otherwise.
		You have to do the first things first.
		That's a hierarchy of value.
		That's not power, unless you're being compelled.
		And then it's corrupt, and you should resist it.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Do you, I'm reminded of, I don't think I've thought of this probably in two years, but do you remember we were in one of the Scandinavian countries, I think maybe we were leaving Sweden, and we were sitting in the first row of the plane, and do you remember the guy was a young black man, sort of ran onto the plane, he was wearing a yellow vest,
		he was a worker working the bridge or something, and he came up to you and he said,
		I'm not supposed to be on the plane right now, I'm not supposed to say anything,
		but you helped me turn my life around, I got this job because of you.
		And what I remember more than anything else is he had this huge smile on his face.
		But it wasn't because you told him to go out there and be happy.
		It was because you told him to go out there and fix some stuff.
		And I think that's exactly what you're talking about right now.
jordan b peterson ▲ ● ▼		Those experiences are so life sustaining.
		meaning.
		It's so remarkable to have that happen, and that's something I've been immensely privileged to constantly experience, although there's also something about it that's extremely painful.
		The magnitude of that joy is sort of proportional to the obstacles it had to overcome while it was attempting to manifest itself.
		You know, and one of the things I'm sure you saw on the tour, and I don't know how this affected you, was the depth of hunger for encouragement that exists everywhere, as far as I can tell.
		And everyone wants to be appreciated when they bring their best to the table.
		That's why the assault, the current assault on merit is so unbelievably brutal, because it will deny everyone the right to be appreciated for being their best.
		And, well, you might ask, well, when does the best become your enemy?
		And that's easy.
		It's when you flee from it.
		Because the best then tortures and torments you.
		It's your conscience or the judge.
		And it's easy to see that as a tyrant.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		I know that this one was definitely in Sweden for our first show in Sweden.
		I went to H&M to get a hat because it was a windy day and I'm standing in line and there's a young guy standing in front of me and he tell, I know I told you this way back when, but he told the The cashier, he said, I'm buying my first suit.
		This is my first suit.
		I'm going to see Jordan Peterson tonight.
		And then the cashier said, I'm going to see Jordan Peterson tonight.
		And then I tapped the kid on the shoulder that he saw me.
		Oh my God, it's you.
		And then that night at the show, I made a point of calling him out.
		I can't remember his name, but he told me his name.
		And I said, and somewhere here is Sven.
		And he was at H&M and he's in his first suit tonight.
		And the entire audience stood up and applauded.
		And he was just a kid.
		He was a kid.
		This is magical.
		This is truly magical.
jordan b peterson ▲ ● ▼		Yes, well, it was such fun to see people dressing up for that.
jordan b peterson ▲ ● ▼		People don't dress up for anything anymore, and it's too bad.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Well, now nobody dresses up for anything.
		No one goes anywhere.
		But actually, let's just talk- Well, there is that.
		Let's just talk about that for a moment.
		Just that.
		I mean, beyond all of the misinformation about what they would say about the audience, you know, it's 90% straight white men.
		It was usually 60, 40, maybe male to female, but there were trans people there.
		There were black people and gay people and all of that stuff.
		It's not even worth going into.
		But you always, I thought, were sort of fascinated by that concept that people were dressing up to go there.
		That adds some extra meaning to you, I think.
jordan b peterson ▲ ● ▼		Well, it was just fun to see that.
		You know, I had bought these suits.
		I spent an inordinate amount of money on the suits that I wore for that tour.
		But I thought I was going to bring my A-game to the degree that that was possible.
		And that meant to pay attention to every detail that I could pay attention to.
		And it helped.
		I liked the suits.
		I'm happy about the fact that I did that.
		Made that sacrifice or took that dare.
		And it was great to see people put on their best self.
		Even just to try it out.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		And they did it, and they did it.
jordan b peterson ▲ ● ▼		And it was a little game that everyone was playing, you know?
		And it was lovely.
		It was so lovely to see that.
		And they look good, man.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		They look good.
		They did.
		They look damn good.
		You look great.
		Well, number five, then.
		This seems obvious, but I think a lot of people don't fully get it.
		Do not do what you hate.
jordan b peterson ▲ ● ▼		Well, we've talked about that a little bit already, but that's a process of self-realization.
		It's like, well, maybe, I think it's quite common if people are promiscuous that they have post-coital regret.
		Now, I don't imagine that everyone feels that to the same degree, and maybe there are people who don't feel it at all.
		You should probably watch out for those people, I would say, but perhaps not.
		If that regret stays with you, perhaps you should examine what you're doing.
		And I use that example specifically because obviously sex is immensely engaging.
		And so it's tremendously tempting.
		But if the consequence of that is the emergence of a state of existence that you hate, well, maybe you shouldn't do it.
		And it doesn't mean, well, if you're, you know, It doesn't mean quit your job because it's hard.
		It means watch and see.
		And if you hate something that you do, if it makes you feel small and weak and sick, sickened and contemptible, stop doing it.
		That's your morality speaking to you.
		And this is why, again, why it seems to me there's many reasons that morality It isn't merely something that we create.
		It has its existence because when we violate our own moral presuppositions, we make ourselves pay for it.
		Why?
		Why don't we just let ourselves off the hook?
		If there's nothing real there, why bother with all of that?
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		You know, one of the things that I think about a lot, and you know I was going through this during the tour, but you know, I was dealing with alopecia areata and I had lost huge chunks of my hair and there was a night we were in Denmark where I had this powder that I would put on to cover the spots and I accidentally, I left my toiletry bag in Sweden, I think, and I had to run to the place and I had to, I basically, they didn't have powder, I had to like literally put marker on my head to hide it.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		I don't even know that I had told you about it at that point.
jordan b peterson ▲ ● ▼		No, not at that point.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I don't think I had told you, and finally... You would have been off the tour with me.
		Yeah, exactly.
		Well, actually, when I finally did tell you about it, and that's also one of those weird things.
		Why would I have not told you about it?
		We all hold these weird things.
		I don't know.
jordan b peterson ▲ ● ▼		Well, you were embarrassed, and you know, that's not surprising.
jordan b peterson ▲ ● ▼		We're very sensitive when things Mar our appearance.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Well, then I finally told you about it and you told me that you actually had struggled with it when you were younger as well.
		But the reason I mention that is now that I've conquered it, it's all mine now, which is great.
		I do think that at some level, you know, I thought it had only to do with the amount of hate that I was getting online and that caused a lot of stress.
		But I do think at some level it also was Being out of state, either with my moral compass or my conscience, or some of the other things that you're talking about here.
jordan b peterson ▲ ● ▼		Well, being out of sync.
		There's no doubt that being out of sync is psychophysiologically stressful.
		You know, if you're torturing yourself with your conscience, if you're at odds with yourself, you're gonna experience that in negative emotion, like anger, for example, or sadness.
		Those are intense, Physically, they're highly demanding states.
		They'll do you in.
		So it's certainly the case that a bad conscience can make you ill in all sorts of ways, leave you open to the invasion of pathogens because your immune system is suppressed, or as a direct psychophysiological consequence of too much Too much physiological activity.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		You must have thought about that for yourself during some of your health situations over the last two years.
jordan b peterson ▲ ● ▼		Yes, definitely.
		Like I said, I still really don't understand what's happened to me.
		It's associated with some immunological problem, which did manifest itself at one point when I was young in alopecia, which is an autoimmune disorder.
		Other symptoms of autoimmune disorder, I don't know, and I certainly ask myself to what degree I'm out of sync with myself, but I haven't been able to sort it out.
		I have the odd period of time where my symptoms disappear, the pain disappears, then I'm fine.
		As soon as the pain and the anxiety disappear, I seem to get my feet right away.
		Anyways, it's a bottomless mystery, as far as I can tell.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I think a lot of people would find that really interesting, though, that when the pain, the physical pain disappears, that psychologically you feel right now.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Because a lot of people just have unearned pain from whatever physical thing they're going through, but that can sort of break the mental part of this, or really hamper the mental part of this.
jordan b peterson ▲ ● ▼		Yes, definitely.
jordan b peterson ▲ ● ▼		If you break your back in a car accident, you're gonna be in pain regardless of your state of moral readiness, let's say.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Right.
		Chapter six, abandon ideology.
		I think we could all use a little bit of this right now.
jordan b peterson ▲ ● ▼		Well, that chapter is really an injunction to allow yourself to think in more complex terms.
		It's useful to reduce a complex phenomena to its simpler elements, but it's not useful to reduce it To the point of absurdity.
		And so you can explain hierarchical function using power.
		You can explain human dynamics using sex.
		Freud did that.
		Marx did it with economics, let's say.
		You can boil down human motivation to a single dimension and then you can make a compelling story about why that's everything.
		But it isn't everything.
		Most things are multivariate, and a good example of that is the wage gap between men and women.
		There's lots of reasons for that.
		Many, not one.
		And it's much more satisfying in some sense if it's one, partly because then you can identify the enemy, and you cannot be the enemy, and then you can be good.
		Oversimplification is satisfying, you often don't have to test out your theories in the real world to see if they work, and it can give you an unearned sense of moral superiority.
		And so that's what that chapter's about.
		It's like, you know, it's an injunction to allow yourself to think complexly.
		What's the cause of poverty, for example?
		Well, systemic corruption is one cause, but it's one cause.
		Well, there's alcoholism, there's drug abuse, there's variation in intelligence, there's variation in conscientiousness, there's bad luck, there's socio-economic context, there's education, there's endless Contributors.
		And it's because poverty is not one thing.
		It's many things.
		And you use it as a placeholder in conversation, but you shouldn't confuse that placeholder with a homogenous category.
		And ideology does that.
		And it's a sign of unsophisticated thinking.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Do you sense that that's why sort of the woke ideology or the Marxist ideology that you were talking about for so long, why it specifically is so dangerous?
		Because there is no play, there is no ability to analyze something in a different way?
		Where generally- That's certainly- Yeah.
jordan b peterson ▲ ● ▼		Any ideology, if you really wanna solve problems, oversimplified solutions just get in the way.
unidentified		Yeah.
jordan b peterson ▲ ● ▼		And so then you end up focusing on anti-racism in mathematics teaching.
jordan b peterson ▲ ● ▼		And that's not helpful in all likelihood, or if it's helpful, it's helpful in a small way.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Chapter seven is work as hard as you possibly can at at least one thing and see what happens.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		I know this one worked for me.
jordan b peterson ▲ ● ▼		Well, if chapter 2 was Imagine Who You Could Be, this chapter 7 is, it brings it down to earth.
		If you don't know who you should be, pick something.
		Pick something.
		Pick something that would be an accomplishment.
		Even do it somewhat arbitrarily.
		Because, you know, maybe you have too many choices.
		You don't know what you're interested in.
		Start somewhere.
		Aim at something.
		Do it.
		Maybe it's a six-month certificate at something.
		Maybe it's an online course.
		Whatever.
		Pick something.
		Work hard at it.
		See what happens.
		What'll happen is, well, you'll get more disciplined.
		as a consequence of the work, and so that'll make you a somewhat different person.
		But also as you work on it, you'll figure out in more detail why it's for you or why
		it's not.
		And then when you make the next decision, you'll be more informed.
		That's how a self-correcting cybernetic system works, essentially.
		You establish a name and you move towards it.
		As you move towards it, you gather information.
		That may shift your aim, but you have to move towards the aim.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		So in essence, even if you don't accomplish what you set out to do, the lessons along the way, that is the higher lesson at some level.
jordan b peterson ▲ ● ▼		Yes, well, let's say you should try to accomplish it, but let's say you get halfway through it and you think, I really know this isn't for me.
		Then you might say, well, how do you know you're not just copping out?
		And I would say, well, you can set up a check against that by swearing when you start something that you won't switch it except for something more difficult.
		And then, because, you know, everybody has that tendency to rationalize their procrastination, and that's a good way of protecting yourself against that.
		It's like, I can quit this, but I have to have a better plan that's more difficult, and I can jump into that.
		And this is also associated with something like The necessary minimum of respect for tradition, if you pick a goal, it'll be a goal that's a social institution of some sort, virtually, with virtual certainty, because it has to be valuable to other people to be valuable, generally speaking.
		You don't want to be so cynical that you stop yourself from pursuing anything because nothing's worthwhile.
		That's not helpful.
		And everyone knows that.
		And you might say, well, I can't get out of that cynicism.
		And I would say, well, Jumping out of the cynicism may be very difficult.
		Try just doing something local.
		Just pick something.
		You know, if you don't have a relationship, make a dating profile.
		You don't even have to put it online.
		But at least you have the profile.
		You're taking a step in that direction.
		You know, and I've often thought there's these seven things that people have to get approximately right.
		You know, we went through some of them.
		You need an intimate relationship, family, Job or career.
		You have to take care of yourself mentally and physically.
		Your health.
		You have to regulate your drug and alcohol use.
		You have to use your time productively outside of work.
		There's one other I often mention, I can't remember now.
		It's an arbitrary list in some sense, but if you don't have a list, it's a good one.
		And maybe you can pick one of those things and work on them.
		And if you have all of those things, your life is likely to be better.
		You know, maybe you're a true radical and you have to live in a way that isn't traditional and you don't need any of that.
		Highly improbable that that's true.
		And God only knows how you're going to find your own way.
		But until you know that for certain, It's not such a bad idea to adopt an apprenticeship in at least one of these areas.
		And you know, the purpose of being an apprentice isn't so that you're a slave, it's so that you become capable of your masterpiece, of transcending the discipline.
		So the idea is, look, there's lots of disciplinary strategies, there's lots of games you could play.
		And so you can fall into a moral relativism, say, well, all games are equal.
		It's like, well, no.
		But even if that's true, the fact that you need a game, that isn't relative.
		That's true.
		You need a game.
		Pick a game.
		Which game?
		Any one is better than none.
		Play it hard.
		See what happens.
		You'll change as a consequence of the pursuit.
		And I think you have to be in very dire straits before that won't work. You can be in straits that are so dire
		that you can't move forward. But generally, you're somewhere that you could improve in some manner.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Is just getting people to believe that, is that harder than actually doing it in some ways?
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		That we seem to be, there's so many young people that just feel so lost that just getting them, just convincing them to do it is in some ways more important than doing it.
jordan b peterson ▲ ● ▼		Well, I don't think you can convince them exactly, but you can ask them.
		It's like, okay, well think about your life.
		And I do think I addressed this directly in that chapter.
		Remember sometime you accomplished something difficult.
		Well, was that a good, was that good or not?
		And generally, the human experience, as far as I can tell, is that when you've accomplished something difficult, you regard that as worthwhile.
		So okay, so look, so then you say, and this is a therapeutic technique in some sense, because you don't try to convince people, you get them to look at their own experience.
		It's like, well, it turns out that in your life, when you've done something that stretched you beyond where you were, so that was difficult, that you regarded that as worthwhile.
		Okay, so let's assume that that's true, and that that can be duplicated.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Chapter eight, I think I've done a good job at this, but I have to mostly give the credit to David on this one.
		Try to make one room in your home as beautiful as possible.
		See something around you.
jordan b peterson ▲ ● ▼		I think that might be my favorite chapter.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Well, you've got some interesting artistic taste.
jordan b peterson ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, yeah, I suppose.
		That's a chapter about the value of beauty as a marker for the transcendent.
		And it's great, you want to establish a relationship with things that sustain you, truth, the great verities, truth, beauty.
		Beauty is difficult to define, but it's an invitation to the transcendent, essentially.
		Because beauty speaks of the ideal, and it impacts you beyond thought.
		It's visceral beauty.
		That's an indication of the power of the ideal.
		And if you try to establish a relationship with beauty, and so to do that, you can make one corner of your room beautiful, if you can.
		You start to play with the idea of beauty.
		You start to learn to discriminate between what's beautiful and what isn't.
		And then you invite that into your life.
		And that's a terrifying thing, to some degree.
		Because beauty is very powerful, partly because it reminds you of who you aren't.
		But it's amazingly worthwhile.
		And it's sort of the next step beyond cleaning up your room.
		You know, make it orderly, but then the next step is make it beautiful.
		And beauty is a higher value than order.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		Do you sense that Most people, maybe because of the speed that we talked about before, are not putting a primacy on this.
		You know, we see a lot of people now on Skype and Zoom and everything else, and you see a lot of people sitting in, you know, some pretty awful looking rooms and terrible drapes and stuff all over the place.
		So it is a connection to, you know, clean up your room in effect.
jordan b peterson ▲ ● ▼		Well, it is.
		It's that.
		But, well, it's not easy and it's very intimidating.
		You know, there's a story in there about color on walls, paint.
		My house now is much different than it was a few years ago, but it was 32 colors at one point.
		And people are very afraid of color.
		They'll paint their house beige because They don't want their taste to be on display, because then it's subject to judgment.
		And often that's wise, because generally speaking, taste is very hard to develop.
		I bought paintings on eBay for a long time, for a decade, and the ratio of terrible paintings to good paintings is unimaginably high.
		It's like a thousand to one.
		Maybe it's even higher than that.
		Almost everything is dreck.
		And if you're a beginning artist, the probability that you're going to produce something spectacularly ugly is virtually 100%.
		And by doing that, you demonstrate the appalling nature of your relationship to taste and beauty.
		And that's very intimidating for people.
		That's partly why it's so difficult for artists to make their way, because if you're an established artist, you have a name, and then people can buy your art because of the name, and then that validates the art.
		If you're a new artist, people have to rely on their own taste, and then their own taste is on display, and that's terrifying.
		And I'm not being cynical about that.
		I understand perfectly well why it's terrifying.
		But to establish a relationship with beauty is to dare something.
		It's to dare establishing a relationship with the divine.
		If you're atheistic, let's say, but you're hungering for meaning, or maybe even if you're religious and you're hungering for meaning, you can find it by establishing a relationship with beauty.
		And you know, I think people understand this.
		I think music speaks it most clearly to people.
		Even people who have terrible drapes, let's say, likely have a genre of music they love that they find beautiful, that speaks to them in the way that beauty speaks.
		And music, it's so democratic.
		That's one of the things that's so wonderful about music is that virtually everyone is affected profoundly by music.
		And that's a good example of The importance of beauty and the reality that emerges when you establish a relationship with it.
		I do believe that music is one of the things that literally keeps people alive.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		You know, I'm reminded of many of the halls that we were in, the theaters that we were in, they would have pianos down there, and sometimes I would get to the theater, you know, an hour early, and I'd hear someone playing the piano, and I quickly realized after the first or second time that it was you, and you were usually, you were usually playing off your head, right?
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		I mean, these were just sounds that you had in you, right?
jordan b peterson ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, well, I'm kind of a... I really only know three piano pieces.
		They're all Beethoven sonatas.
		They're way beyond my ability to play, and I've tried to play them for like 30 years, and I can't play them now, because I haven't played them for two years.
		But I got to the point where I could play them badly, you know?
		But I could actually play them.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		But I couldn't play anything else.
		You're being humble, Peterson.
		Come on, you were pretty good.
jordan b peterson ▲ ● ▼		Well, the improvisation that you heard, I know some chords, not very many, and I can improvise within my limited domain of chord knowledge.
		And that's quite fun, but it really is a narrow domain.
		And I've dreamt of expanding it, but I've never, I haven't, and probably won't.
		I'm so sensitive to sound now that I can't play the piano, which is really, I couldn't listen to music for months.
		It was a terrible loss.
unidentified		Wow.
jordan b peterson ▲ ● ▼		Terrible loss.
		It was too jarring.
		That association with the beauty went, it was like the river dried up.
		The chapter's full of poetry, not mine.
		And so it's an aesthetic essay.
		It's supposed to be beautiful, the essay.
		I mean, I'm hoping that there's some beauty in all of the book.
		I always read my sentences out loud to see if they have a rhythm.
		And that's the poetic element of writing, so people who are out there who want to write, that's something to pay attention to.
		Read your sentences out loud and see if they have a rhythm.
		I'm fortunate, I suppose to say.
		Do you know who Akira The Don is?
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Of course.
		No, he's amazing.
		The synthwave stuff with you and a couple of the other guys we know, it's incredible, incredible.
jordan b peterson ▲ ● ▼		I get such a kick out of that.
		And it seems that my spontaneous speech has a rhythm and he's been able to capitalize on that.
		And, you know, I watch that all the time out of the corner of my eye because it's such a strange phenomenon to be set to music like that.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		But anyways, How important do you think is the creation part of it?
		So, you know, some people can create incredible sonatas and incredible paintings.
		Some people can just depreciate them.
		Do you think it's important that the creation part is part of what everyone does or no?
jordan b peterson ▲ ● ▼		I think it depends on who you are.
		I mean, look, openness, this personality dimension that we mentioned, creativity, essentially, lots of, very few people are, Profoundly creative, just like very few people are profoundly extroverted or profoundly agreeable, compassionate.
		There's variation and I've noticed this in my clinical practice because I've had very open people, they're probably drawn to me, but I've also had people in my practice who weren't open at all.
		And for them, Creativity isn't very important.
		It isn't where they draw their nourishment.
		Now, that doesn't mean they couldn't establish some relationship with beauty.
		And I suspect that for some people, that's a better pathway than for others.
		For open people, aesthetic beauty is bread and butter.
		It's not optional.
		And that may even extend to the creating aspect.
		They have to create.
		That's who they are.
		You know, just like an extrovert has to go to social occasions.
		That's who they are.
		That's their niche.
		So... But I think that beauty is... If you can establish a relationship with it, so much the better for you.
		And I suppose for everyone else, too.
		Because then things become more beautiful.
		It would be wonderful if we paid more attention to that.
		Because so much of what we create... It's one of the things I'm so stunned... That stuns me, going to Europe.
		Because so much of the old European cities, they're so beautiful that they stop your heart.
		And you just can't say that about most modern cities.
		That's gone.
		Or most modern landscapes.
		It's utilitarian and efficient, but it's by no means beautiful.
		And it's a catastrophic loss.
		You think of the economic value of the beauty that's in Europe.
		And that the tourists that flock there, and the millions, the tens of millions, to immerse themselves in that beauty, even not knowing why they're doing it.
		It's their communion with the divine.
		It really is.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		I mean, just to walk around Oxford, which I think we did two shows in, and then I went for the speech at the Union there, it's extraordinary.
		It's actually mind-blowing.
		You cannot believe that people put this together.
jordan b peterson ▲ ● ▼		Yes, exactly, exactly.
		Well, and then that tells you something about people, doesn't it?
		Look at what we can do.
		Look at what we can manage.
		And that's such a gift to be immersed in that and to participate in that.
unidentified		And so that's Chapter 7.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		So that's actually Chapter 8 and Chapter 9.
		I thought this one was really interesting because this, I think, maybe came up more consistently in the Q&A than anything else.
		If old memories still upset you, write them down carefully and completely.
		There was a lot of questions related to this sort of thing where people would say, okay, Jordan, I've followed the 12 rules and I'm not an alcoholic anymore, I'm off drugs, I've healed this relationship, I got a better job, some version of all of that.
		But what they would often say, and I think I've talked to you about this sometimes with myself, I still felt guilt about things from the past, even though my life had, Move past them.
		And you would always say, well, you should do the self-authoring program, which I did do, but that in essence is what you're saying here, I think as well.
jordan b peterson ▲ ● ▼		Well, if something still has emotional resonance, so it's plaguing you, it's possessing you, you can't let go of it.
		It's your baggage.
		You don't wanna think about it.
		Now, this is, look, if you're in the midst of a catastrophe, dwelling on the catastrophe is not necessarily a good idea.
		I'm talking about, We could use as a rule of thumb things that happened more than two years ago.
		That would be safe.
		Because otherwise maybe they're still going on and you're immersed in them and you can't make sense of them.
		And dwelling on them just makes the catastrophe worse.
		Old memories, things you know you should be over.
		If they're still emotionally resonant, especially if the emotion is negative, anger, fear, hatred, resentment, something like that, then there's information locked up in that that you haven't unpacked.
		And what that means, see, because you build yourself out of the information that you encounter in the world, What that means is that part of you is still stuck.
		It's as if part of you is still stuck in that experience.
		Or it's as if there's territory that you traversed that you haven't mapped.
		And so you might fall into the same hole again.
		And your emotions are indicating that.
		They're saying there's danger here.
		There's danger here.
		There's unprocessed danger here.
		Attend to it.
		Well, you don't want to.
		And no wonder.
		You have to dig into it.
		And then you have to map it.
		Your map is effective when you've rearranged your perceptions or your behavior so that that event is unlikely to occur again in the future.
		That's really the purpose of your memory is you remember things so you don't make the same stupid mistakes again.
		That's the pragmatic utility of memory.
		And so you see this to some degree in psychotherapy.
		The Freudians, in particular, emphasized past trauma.
		And you can emphasize that far too much.
		It's not as if a therapeutic process should be necessarily obsessive concern with your childhood.
		But if you're still plagued by memories, you can't let them go.
		They're not mapped.
		It's an indication that you have not fully mined the...
		You have not fully benefited from what you've been offered.
		There's wisdom laying there.
		And so you can do that by writing.
		This happened.
		This is what I remember.
		This is how it makes me feel.
		Well, why did it happen?
		What could have I done differently?
		What's the significance now?
		Am I misinterpreting this?
		There's a lot of clinical stories that I modified because for, you know, concern for my client's privacy.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
jordan b peterson ▲ ● ▼		but I kept the stories intact.
		You reconfigure your personality by dealing with what you have not yet dealt with.
		And then it stops interfering with your present.
		So, you know, it might be that you view your current, the person you have a current relationship with, through eyes that have been affected by a multitude of relationship failures.
		And so you're projecting assumptions onto this person.
		And because you've been hurt, And you have to untangle all of that before you can get beyond that.
		And so you catch up with yourself that way.
		So that's an injunction to do that, to clean up your past.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		And if you don't, it leads to a lot of the other stuff that you've been talking about here.
		Number 10, well, it sort of works off the relationship part that you just mentioned.
		Plan and work diligently to maintain the romance In your relationship.
		You know, one of the things that I consistently saw on the tour is that you and Tammy really love each other, and there was a lot of struggles there, obviously with her health at first, but it was just obvious the way you behaved towards each other.
		You know, after every single show, I'd usually go into the green room with you, we'd do a little download of, you know, what happened, and then immediately when Tammy would walk in, you'd say the same thing every night.
		How was it tonight?
		And you meant it, like you wanted to know, she's the most important person in your life, and you wanted to know what she thought of what you just did.
		And that was important.
jordan b peterson ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, and we're still together, despite, I feel bad for her, unfortunately, having to live with me at the current time.
		It's very difficult.
		And she's certainly been through her own hell.
		Um, but has come out of it intact.
		So this chapter, romance is like beauty.
		It's a grace.
		It's a gift.
		And people, and you have to, you have to, but you have to work at it.
		Like it's a gift.
		Sometimes you fall romantically in love with someone and, and there'll be the romantic adventures that go along with that.
		It's only a gift for a short time.
		After that, it has to be something that you strive to attain.
		You know, and even in the initial phases of a relationship, you strive, you put your best foot forward.
		If you're trying to impress the person, you could say, well, that's being false, but well, maybe it's allowing who you are to shine through briefly.
		If you're not a complete psychopath and manipulative, You put some effort into it, and then you think, well, I've fallen in love with this person, that should just continue.
		It's like, that isn't how it works.
		You have to, just like if you want your room to be beautiful, you have to buy paintings and art and furniture that's functional and beautiful, and you have to work at it, you have to attend to it.
		Romance is the same thing.
		It's vital, but it's delicate.
		It's a form of play.
		And play in children, if any other motivational state emerges in a child's psyche, they'll stop playing.
		Hunger, thirst, they're tired, they're hot, they're cold, they're lonesome.
		All of that will disrupt play, even though play is vital.
		And romance is the adult form of play and the conditions have to be set up for it.
		And so when I was doing my clinical work, I would say to my clients, well, set at least one evening a week aside for a romantic adventure and then figure out what that's going to look like.
		What would you like?
		Well, then you have to ask yourself, well, what is it that I would like?
		What do I need?
		And then that's often real difficult because you won't even admit it.
		You want to keep it in the fog.
		You know, you don't want to have the fight with your partner.
		You don't want to have the discussion with your partner.
		You don't want to light candles.
		You feel foolish.
		You don't want to put on some clothes that are semi-attractive because you're embarrassed about your body or whatever it might be.
		This is all extremely difficult.
		But... But...
		you can get better and better at it and maybe it can be more than hell do it once a month to begin with and and do it badly allow your partner to be crabby and not you know fully immersed in it till you get good at it you might have to do it 40 times before you're even vaguely good at it like anything else that's complex but you might as well you might as well do it and then then maybe You can keep the mystery of your partner alive to some degree and you won't be so tempted to find your romantic adventure elsewhere.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		You know, it's funny, this may not be the exact example you're going for here, but I know, and you got to spend some time with David as well, but like, if I, we've been together for 10 years, if I can make him laugh still, which I try to do every day, and I'm usually pretty good at it, it's like, to me, that's like the greatest thing.
		Like, wow, after 10 years, this guy still thinks I'm funny.
		Like, he knows all my tricks, and he still thinks I'm funny.
		That's pretty good right there.
jordan b peterson ▲ ● ▼		Absolutely.
		Well, that's a form of play too, you know?
		Tammy and I put a lot of effort into that and it definitely paid off and we put ourselves on the line.
		She's quite confident physically, much more so than I was, probably much more so than I still am, and that was very helpful to me.
		And it's another situation where you can imagine you could have the perfect romantic evening.
		Well, you could maybe.
		It's not going to be easy to get to perfect, that's for sure, but you could get to a reasonable approximation of it.
		And why not?
		You don't have anything better to do than that.
		So that's that chapter.
		It's very practical.
		The book is like the first book, I thought.
		You know, I try to discuss things at the highest level of abstraction, even religious level of abstraction, but it's all very practical.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		It's unbelievably practical, actually, and I think that's the secret.
		Two more.
		So chapter 11 is, do not allow yourself to become resentful, deceitful, or arrogant.
		So there's sort of been a through line through a lot of the other chapters that have fit this.
		But it ain't easy, even when you know you shouldn't.
jordan b peterson ▲ ● ▼		That chapter, I try to deal forthrightly with the domain of human problems, and that's the mythological landscape.
		There's utter chaos when everything falls apart, and that's symbolized often by the dragon of chaos.
		Unbelievably ancient symbol.
		And it's a symbol of everything that conspires against us.
		It's a symbol of malevolence and evil, of predation.
		And it's also a symbol of possibility.
		And it's complicated.
		And so I won't go into it.
		But dragons hoard treasure, you know?
		And that's enough said.
		And everyone knows that, even though it doesn't... It's a paradox.
		It's not logical.
		It's a paradox.
		It's the coming together of opposites.
		So there's that, there's the utter chaos of existence.
		Then there's the natural world conspiring to do you in at every level constantly.
		And that can be cancer, which is life gone astray.
		It can be All the horrors of the eating and the digestion and the reproduction and the whole horrid mess that's biology and that we're subjected to and then the beneficiaries of.
		And then there's culture, which is crushing you constantly to be a cog in a functional wheel.
		And then there's your own black heart.
		And all of those things can twist you against life.
		And no wonder that makes you resentful, and no wonder, it's no wonder.
		It's a miracle that you can avoid that, but there's nothing about it that's helpful.
		You become arrogant, you can't learn.
		You become resentful, you make everything worse.
		You become deceitful, you corrupt being itself.
		It's so tempting.
		And so I outline why, it's like, look, here's what we face.
		It's bleak, it's bleak, but it's not only bleak, we all die.
		We have to deal with self-conscious finitude, and the knowledge of suffering, and the knowledge of injustice, and tyranny, all of that, and human evil.
unidentified		But... But, that's it.
jordan b peterson ▲ ● ▼		There's nothing good down those pathways.
		Resentment in particular.
		I think resentment is unbelievably useful.
		And so for practical purposes, for everyone who's listening, if you're resentful about something, well, first of all, you should notice I'm resentful.
		And that's kind of humiliating because no one's proud of being resentful.
		It's a shameful emotion.
		So then why are you resentful?
		Well, there's only two reasons as far as I've been able to tell.
		One is that you're allowing yourself to be taken advantage of or you're being taken advantage of.
		Sometimes you're not allowing yourself.
		Sometimes you're a child being abused by their uncle.
		You're not allowing yourself.
		You can't do anything about it.
		You're resentful because you're being taken advantage of or because you're immature.
		It's one of those two things.
		Figure out which it is.
		And then take the steps necessary to address it.
		Living a life without resentment is a great goal.
		You watch people drop their resentment.
		They get younger.
		They get visibly younger when they drop it.
		It's amazing to see that.
		I saw that in my clinical clients all the time.
		They'd be resentful about something.
		Their face would harden.
		They'd get old.
		And then they'd let it go, and sometimes that was accompanied by tears.
		And, you know, you have to let it go lots.
		Just once won't do it.
		But they'd let it go, and then they'd be calm, and their face would be unlined for at least for a while.
		They'd sort of return to a childlike state of trust, or they would reattain that.
		That's a better way of thinking about it.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, and then you can be happy for people around you, which was one of the rules in the first book.
		And I remember, I'm sure you remember this, when we were in Oslo and I walked into the room and I said, Jordan, I just got a call.
		I got a book deal.
		And you were sitting in a swivel chair, and you slapped your hands together, you spun around in the chair, you got up, you had a huge smile on your face, you hugged me, Tammy got up, she had a huge smile, David came in, everybody hugged, and it was like, you were genuinely, it was one, I mention a couple times in the book when I saw you live up to the rules, but it was like, you were genuinely happy.
		There wasn't resentment, like, oh, now this guy got something, it was, This is great.
jordan b peterson ▲ ● ▼		Well, God, wouldn't it be lovely to be able to enjoy someone else's happiness?
		It's like happiness is precious and rare.
		And why deny yourself that?
		If it's from someone else, thank God they get a break from their catastrophe of their life.
		And wouldn't it be wonderful if that was happening all the time?
		You closed yourself off so badly being resentful because everyone else's good fortune is equated to your misery.
		How terrible!
		And that's part of the pathology of this insistence that our culture is nothing but a tyranny.
		If that's the case, then anyone who attains anything within it is only a tyrant.
		And that makes everyone's accomplishments an imposition and theft from everyone else.
		How awful!
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Well, you've been setting it right for a long time, and I guess that brings us perfectly to chapter 12, which is be grateful in spite of your suffering.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		And I think you probably know a little something about it.
jordan b peterson ▲ ● ▼		That's courage.
		That's courage to be grateful, to remind yourself.
		You know, I say grace with my wife every night, and I need to do that.
		I actually think in some ways it's the best part of my day, strangely enough.
		Although that's not saying much.
		It's very useful to remind myself to be grateful.
		And the worse your situation, the more important that is, paradoxically.
		Because you can have a terrible situation and then also be ungrateful, be resentful.
		And then it's worse.
		It's much worse.
		So it's courage.
		What do I have to be grateful for?
		And to maintain that.
		That's better for everyone else.
		So... That chapter's hard on me.
		It's sort of traumatic to read it.
		Because I struggle with it.
		Because I'm in pain most of the time.
		But I know that it's...
		It's not helpful to be resentful.
		It's better to be grateful.
		And you can do that without being naive.
		It's an act of will.
		Or it's at least something to practice.
		So that's the book.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Jordan, I I love you, man.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		You helped me turn my life around because of the things that you were courageous enough to put out in the world, and I'm honored and humbled that I was like this much of the adventure of the last couple years, and I'm beyond thrilled.
jordan b peterson ▲ ● ▼		We had such a good time.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		We did, man, we did.
		It was just, it was just, that's why it feels like a dream, because it was just, there wasn't, you know, John, our tour manager, used to always joke, he'd go, this is the most boring tour I've ever been on.
		Nobody's wrecking hotel rooms, and nobody's beating anybody up.
		Our running joke was that the worst thing that happened on the entire tour was we were in Calgary, and I accidentally said that we were in Edmonton, which they were not happy about.
		No, you were in Toronto.
		Was I in Toronto?
jordan b peterson ▲ ● ▼		Even worse.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Oh, right, those two are at least Western Canada.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, yeah, yeah.
unidentified		Yeah, yeah, yeah.
jordan b peterson ▲ ● ▼		You committed a cardinal sin for a Canadian.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		But truly, Jordan, it's just so good to talk to you again and I can't wait to see you in person and I'm thrilled that you're back.
jordan b peterson ▲ ● ▼		Wouldn't that be nice?
		When we're out of this COVID hell and hopefully everything returns to normal.
		Everything we had when everything was normal.
		I walked down Queen Street in Toronto, kind of a trendy area populated by galleries and restaurants and little independent shops, you know, what people have poured their heart into.
		And they're all shuttered.
		Every fourth business is shuttered.
		And you see the dreams that people and effort that people poured into these businesses.
		It's so it's heart wrenching to see that all taken away.
		I'm amazed that people I'm amazed at how well people have done with this.
		I can't believe that things haven't fallen apart more than they have.
		I don't know how people are managing, but maybe we'll get lucky and these vaccines will work and we'll get what we had back and maybe we'll be wise enough to appreciate it a bit more.
		That would be good.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Wouldn't that be something if we could only be appreciative of what we had a year ago today before it all kind of fell apart?
jordan b peterson ▲ ● ▼		That would be something, all right.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Jordan, welcome back.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Welcome back.
jordan b peterson ▲ ● ▼		Good talking to you.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		I hope we can continue on this adventure together, and it's good to see you smile, and I'm thrilled you're back.
		So thank you, and obviously the link to the book is down there and all that good stuff.
		And please send our love to Tammy and the whole family.
		If you'd like to see more honest and insightful conversations with Jordan Peterson himself, check out our Jordan Peterson playlist, which includes every interview I've ever done with him.
		And if you want to watch full interviews on a variety of topics, watch our full episode playlist.
		Both are right over here.

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