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Nov. 8, 2022 - Stay Free - Russel Brand
01:07:06
Jordan Peterson (Identity & Compassion)

Russell chats to clinical psychologist and author, Dr. Jordan Peterson about the reasons for his Twitter ban and his thoughts around the gender debate.Join the Stay Free AF Community  https://russellbrand.locals.com/Come to COMMUNITY festival 2023 - https://www.russellbrand.com/community-2023/NEW MERCH! https://stuff.russellbrand.com/Find out more about Jordan Peterson - https://www.jordanbpeterson.com/ 

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Hello and welcome to Subcutaneous.
We make a new episode of Subcutaneous.
Every week we have conversations with guests such as Eckhart Tolle, Joe Dispenza, Brené Brown and Tony Robbins.
Today the guest is Jordan Peterson.
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So lovely to see you.
It's good to see you, man.
It's very beautiful to be in your company, Jordan.
I'm so glad you're here.
We have a small audience of a couple of hundred, I guess.
Is it a couple of hundred?
Oh, we have a small audience of 600 people that are members to varying degrees watching this conversation now.
The things that I wanted to start with, given Elon Musk's recent takeover of Twitter, is whether or not that would change your position on the platform.
How you feel about Elon Musk's power, Elon Musk's role on Twitter, whether he is a distinct and discrete category of billionaire, how is he different, how is he the same, and how will Elon Musk's position at Twitter alter your position on Twitter?
Well, that remains to be seen.
I'm still banned, so that hasn't changed.
I mean, he's suggested that he might reinstate Trump.
Whether or not that means he'd reinstate me is a matter of question.
It isn't obvious to me that the people who run the social media networks know exactly how to regulate them with any degree of Utility.
I was talking to a psychologist this week, Jean Twenge.
She's going to do a podcast with me.
We recorded it.
She wrote a book on, a couple of books on Narcissism and on the IGN, you know, the new generation of kids who've grown up with the net.
And we talked a fair bit about pathological behavior online.
And we could start by talking about that a little bit.
You know, I've probably read a hundred thousand comments online or maybe more, and I've tried to read them with a psychologist's eye.
And there are some things going on online that are, I think, that actually pose a threat to the integrity of the culture itself.
And so the biggest problem that I can see is that the large online platforms allow anonymous troll demons to rampage through society with no cost to themselves.
And I can identify these people quite accurately now.
This will make a number of the people who are watching and listening uncomfortable because they'll be in the list of people who do this sort of thing.
So the first thing is they have an anonymous name.
The second thing is the anonymous name usually has something psychologically significant about it in a very negative direction.
So it's self-denigrating, or it's demonic, or it's otherwise offensive, and purposefully so.
And then the people who are utter cowards, in my estimation, and I talked to Twangi about this too, likely to be narcissists and Machiavellians.
Resentful people sitting in their basement at home, dwelling on their misery and doing everything they can to spew toxicity out into the world.
The thing is, alone in their bedrooms, what would you say, cowering in their anonymity, they're just isolated people who aren't causing any trouble.
But as soon as they multiply themselves millions of times using this incredible, powerful computer technology, they're not even human anymore.
They're like, in my estimation, they're literally a demonic force.
And I mean that in a technical sense, right?
You and I aren't exactly you and I in this conversation because we're amplified hundreds of times or thousands of times or hundreds of thousands of times.
And so we're not just human, we're androids in some sense operating in a virtual space.
And these online trolls have that power because they have access to an audience that they would never gather by their own merits.
And they are saying things that are derisive and Inflammatory and that would absolutely 100% get them punched if they ever said it in public and so what's happened imagine that there's a hierarchy of unconstrained people and There's a variety of people who are very unconstrained But in normal social discourse would be able to keep themselves under control Because of the controls that are there in normal social discourse you lift those controls and they just go they just go off
And so that's what we're seeing online.
And so, I don't know if the... and that has to be stopped.
I think the large tech companies should be required to put in know-your-customer laws.
They should ban anonymous accounts, but in this way.
Imagine that you have a section for comments where it's real human beings that are verified, and you have another section underneath that's for anonymous troll demons.
And if you want to go visit their hell, And see what their resentful minds are spewing into the public landscape, then you can.
Otherwise, you stick to the real human beings.
And I don't know if Musk and the other people who are running the big social media networks understand the pathology that's associated with this online commentary well enough to control it.
So we'll see.
Well, it's a newly emergent phenomenon.
So it's difficult to acquire knowledge.
And I note that at the beginning you said you're observing it and have observed, you reckon, a hundred thousand comments.
So you're accumulating a database, I suppose, as you have done in your work in clinical psychology, psychiatry up to now.
With your characterization of these individuals, or at least the expression of this tendency through these Individuals as potentially demonic you mentioned a few things how they're in an ordinary and anthropologically sound Space there would be regulatory measures.
There would be the threat of violence There would be other less extreme social controls that perhaps amount to a similar thing or at least on a comparable scale like that the fear of judgment the fear of rejection these kind of sort of the basic palette of Sociological tools and judgments would be available to us now What I would like to draw your attention to, still sort of within the broad rubric of looking at Musk's acquisition of Twitter and how that may play out and how it may affect you personally, is that in your somewhat pejorative characterisation, which I understand as a public figure myself, who's the recipient of attacking comments and the kind of attention that you describe,
But when you said, you know, that there's sort of people in basements and so we characterize them as sort of somewhat wan, unpleasant, weak individuals.
How do we now, Jordan, compare that to Olivia Wilde's recent, I would say, cruel comments about you as like king of the incels or whatever it was that Olivia Wilde said, and your response, that the voiceless ought have a voice.
And in fact, I'd like to use this as a potential aperture, sir, if I may, to bring about what I consider to be the heart of our communication.
As I'm speaking for myself, I consider myself to be a man of God, a flawed man of God at that.
Deeply, deeply fallible.
I, when I'm trying to prioritize my, prioritize the the the order by which I want to live, the how I want to define myself and define my interactions, I consider compassion and kindness to be paramount.
I don't want to be pushed around, I don't want to be weak, I don't want to not speak up for what I believe in.
But when we find it like, but in our I know that there are people that criticize you anonymously and like, get off on it.
And that there are people that criticize you publicly, you know, and get off on it.
What I want to bring out, what I want to bring our attention to is, I was myself struck with like, you know, I think the tweet that you were banned for was sort of like, commenting on Elliot Page.
And I know that you're fascinated by Christ, certainly not from a simplistic Christian perspective, but from a sort of a Jungian archetypal and personal perspective.
You have a great love of Christ.
And to use that oldest of Christian adages, what would Christ do?
How might we imagine that Christ would handle the idea of Elliot Page and Elliot Page's identity?
These emergent ideas around gender identity.
How do we prioritise compassion, kindness, love?
And can't this basic palette of principles prevent us from getting into conflict around these ideas?
Well, it isn't obvious to me that love can be reduced to compassion at all, because there for a variety of reasons.
First of all, I think love is a multidimensional virtue and there's many other virtues than compassion.
And compassion also has a devouring element.
So and the devouring element manifests itself, I would say, in resentment, passive aggressive behavior and the facilitation of dependency.
And so that would be the Oedipal Triangle in some sense.
And so imagine that... think about it this way, Russell.
Imagine that the purest expression of compassion is the love of a mother for a true infant.
And we could really think about that as true compassion, 100% compassion.
And the reason for that is that if you have an infant from birth to, say, six months old, nothing the infant does is ever to be questioned.
The proper response to the infant is, whatever the cause of their distress, you immediately prioritize its reduction.
But then as the child starts to develop, and as soon as it becomes capable of its own voluntary movement, as soon as it becomes ambulatory, its nervous system starts to change, of course.
But then there are other elements that have to be introduced into the relationship to make it a relationship of proper love.
And some of that's judgment, which is often considered an Antithetical to compassion and some of its encouragement and encouragement has a fair bit of judgment in it because When you're encouraging someone you're not exactly being compassionate for who they are You're doing what you can to facilitate who they could be and what you're doing constantly when you're encouraging someone is Prioritizing who they could be over who they are and that's an element of judgment now You talked about the union take on this now Jung talked a lot about
The juxtaposition of the Book of Revelation with the rest of the biblical corpus, particularly the Gospels, the New Testament.
And he thought the psychological reason why the Book of Revelation was included was that the Christ that was portrayed in the narrative of the Gospels erred too far on the side of compassion.
And the necessity of judgment had to be brought in to balance out the divine image.
And so the Christ in Revelation is the man with the flaming sword, essentially.
And he's the one who separates the wheat from the chaff and who renders final judgment.
And that judgment, you might say, if you're not thinking about it precisely from the religious perspective, is your own ability to decide which parts of you should go And then the question is, are you compassionate for who you are, or are you compassionate for who you could be?
And the second is just as important, or maybe more important.
Well, if I... Please, Jo, you can put that down.
But if we... There's a few things, obviously.
It's a lot of things.
It's you.
So there's a lot to consider.
One, a mother's love.
To be able to transpose this idea of unquestioning, unqueering compassion to a whole population.
That seems like a pretty Christ-like idea.
Certainly seems like an idea that's sort of encompassed in the symbol of the Virgin.
Limitless, unbounded compassion.
How do we tally that with the idea of judgment or perhaps Discernment and the significance of discernment and the ability to know to be able to navigate these apparently binary spaces between good and evil, these liminal spaces.
But Jordan, when it becomes like the idea that the Christ's evident compassion in the Gospels required a balancing shadow or at least as a Balancing component.
I understand.
Otherwise, we have sort of this sort of boundless love in a bounded space.
You know, like, you know, we are in the world, but not of it.
But we are in the world.
So we do need to discern.
We do need to recognize the boundary of the body.
We do need to have judgment.
And when that's applied to the self, I can see the requirement for this judgement.
The great success you've had in, you know, clean your room, stand up straight, these kind of edicts offered to young men or young people who require discipline, I can see the success of that.
But Jordan, I feel that when it becomes an Outward strike of, like, this person should not have done this thing.
This is the impact of these actions will have on the culture.
This will lead to this kind of denigration.
This will lead to decisions that are, in my view, palpably wrong.
I feel that this is where we have to redress an imbalance around compassion.
I don't think we're talking about some fanged vagina, damned matriarch, devouring compassion when it comes to a culture where people are Let me tell you how I feel and then you can hit me up with all sorts of Jordan Peters and stuff.
identity. And when I say unusual, I mean literally that.
Because, let me tell you how I feel and then you can hit me up with all sorts of Jordan Peters
and stuff. I feel that Elliot Page should be able to do whatever Elliot Page wants to do
and that my only role is to say I recognise that I don't understand and why would I
understand?
There are less obvious things that you could never understand about me.
They're less evident and obvious.
For me, the basic principle of kindness and compassion is going to be my guide when dealing with Elliot Page and when posting something about Elliot Page.
Not even just for, like, maybe there's some cowardice in what I'm saying.
I don't want to incur the wrath of, in my view, pretty bloody persecutory online space.
But I do have, of course, the idea of What do I want Elliot Page to feel?
Happy.
Accepted.
That's what I want Elliot Page to feel.
And if there are aspects of that I don't understand, then I'm willing to take the hit.
Yeah, well, I mean, we could approach that in two ways.
So, first of all, when you think about your behaviour on your YouTube channel, you're spending a lot of time in public criticism, eh?
And going after large corporations, going after those who are engaged in fascist collusion, and I think rightly so.
I want to talk to you a little bit about economics at some point during this conversation, if you're inclined to do that, but I think that you're an extremely useful voice in that regard, and you're a critical voice, and you know, you're a critical comedic voice, which is a good kind of Critical voice and not exactly compassionate, right?
Because you're also using creativity on the humor side to make your point and you're doing it in a playful way.
And I think that playful criticism is the hallmark of the master critic.
And I think the joker and the jester in that regard are master critics.
But that's not compassion, right?
That's a different virtue, that creative comedy.
And often it's very, very pointed.
So I want to point out that you do act as a social critic in many, many ways.
And you do leave it with comedy.
And I think that's Extraordinarily appropriate.
It's part of what's given you such a broad voice and that criticism is absolutely necessary.
Now let's speak about Elliot Page more specifically.
So the first thing I'd like to bring up is the fact that in the UK the Tavistock Clinic was recently closed and that was the biggest clinic doing gender transformation surgery that operated in the UK.
In the English-speaking or in the British, in the British world.
Now, 1,000 of the 19,000 kids who have been surgically mutilated by the Tavistock Clinic have now launched a lawsuit for medical malpractice.
And when Elliot Page went online and showed off his or her new chest, she or he got 1.7 million Instagram likes.
And my sense is that she or he enticed somewhere between one and a thousand very, very confused, neurotic, depressed, anxious, uncertain juvenile females to sterilize or surgically alter themselves.
And so that's the border.
So then the question is, OK, compassion.
Well, you know, I think Ellen Elliot Page stepped over the line from victim to perpetrator.
So I knew perfectly well when the candidate introduced this gender pronoun bill back in 2016, I told the Canadian Senate, you people do not know what you're doing.
You're mucking about with a fundamental perceptual category, the category of sex.
And you're going to confuse thousands of young people and produce a psychogenic epidemic.
And that's exactly what happened, and I knew that was going to happen, because I knew the literature on psychogenic epidemics.
They're almost always suffered by adolescent females.
The Freudians used to call it hysteria, and of course that's regarded as a sexist term now, but it doesn't matter, because when girls hit puberty, their negative emotion spikes, and they develop bodily image problems, because neurotic And that would be negative emotional experience for women
is extremely tightly tied to body image.
And so if you're a girl who is undergoing the hormonal changes that are going to elevate your negative emotion,
which is what happens at puberty, you're going to be focused on body image.
And if you're an unpopular girl and you're awkward socially, the probability that you're going to think something's
wrong with your body is almost 100% if you're female.
And none of the people who were engaged in this so-called compassion for those who have gender dysphoria
I had any idea about any of this.
And so I don't regret what happened with Ellen Page.
I think that what she did publicly was reprehensible.
I want to know why this makes you... I don't want to know because I can see what makes you angry about it.
It's your analysis and it's your opinion that it's a powerful influencer and it's going to lead people to make decisions that are going to be detrimental to their lives.
But the evident and palpable anger I feel If I may be so bold, sir, diminishes your position because now anger is in the conversation.
And you might think that this whole cultural debate or war or whatever the hell it is, is being conducted on the frequency of anger.
And I feel that my role, and I would not assume to tell you what emotional resources to draw from in your discourse.
But what I'm telling you as a person that I think you offer a great deal that is valuable and necessary.
But I feel that Beyond the value and necessity of honesty, authenticity, and information that is underwritten by data and experience, I feel that it creates more opposition to approach a matter like this in the manner that you have done.
Because I feel like I put myself in a room with Elliot Page, and I feel like, how do I want to feel when I am in that room?
And how do I want to approach this?
I've got young kids, I've got a 4-year-old and a 5-year-old that are going to be growing up with these cultural influences.
How am I going to handle those conversations when even when playing a game of charades with them I see every time that one of them doesn't win how much it affects them and I've got to explain to them winning and losing and the complexity of social relationships.
What I'm saying is, if we love Christ, if we love God, if we love good, what are we going to anchor ourselves to ultimately, Jordan, navigating this space?
Are we going to be participants in creating more and more ossified and oppositional camps or are we going to create cartilage between us so that we can move between the room that Jordan Peterson is in and the room that Elliot Page is in and say, look, I believe in love and I know I know it's complicated and I know we're going to disagree and I know in a minute we're going to get into economics and centralised power and what I believe is politically pertinent to our conversation.
But I feel sometimes when I talk to you, I think you're beautiful and full of love.
I really believe in that.
And then when I sort of hear people being dismissive of you, it upsets me.
It upsets me.
And I see how you arm them.
I feel that you arm them by, in their language, deadnaming Elliot Page.
And I feel like, why would you do that?
It isn't necessary.
It isn't necessary.
Of course, the statistics you've cited about the Tavistock Clinic appear to speak for themselves.
Is there a way that we can handle this that would be more akin to how we might imagine Christ would handle it?
Otherwise, what's the point of Christianity?
What's the point of Christianity if we're not going to embody Christ in our behavior?
Well, I guess the question is... Look, everybody who's operating in the online space that we're operating is trying to get the tone right, right?
And you do that in part by paying attention to the audience and you You do that by trying to see how people are responding, and not in a way that's pandering, but in a way that's open and attentive.
You know, when I was down in Miami recently, I did a seminar on Exodus with a bunch of biblical scholars, and we spent hours arguing about my behavior, let's say, on Twitter and so forth, especially with regard to anger.
And it's a very difficult thing to get right.
When I'm reading articles I've written that are very critical, let's say, of the globalist utopians, exactly the sorts of people that you're going after, by the way, it's very difficult not to have I mean, I look at what's happening on the UK front with these globalist utopian energy policies and I see that poor people across Europe and certainly in the rest of the world are going to pay a vicious price in the upcoming months.
You know, the World Bank has estimated that 220 million people have been pushed to the edge of starvation already, and that's just getting going.
And so the question you're asking is, well, when is anger appropriate?
When is it not appropriate?
When is it only inflammatory?
That's a really hard question to answer, you know, to get that balance between judgment and Encouraging acceptance, right?
I mean, it's the same thing you struggle with constantly as a father.
Let's say when you're trying to Socialize your children properly because you know You can't let your children get away with things that will make them deeply unpopular and despised socially, right?
You have to stop that And it's not obvious that there's no role for anger in that because one of the things that anger does signify is that a vital social norm has been transgressed against and that that can't happen because it's dangerous.
Now, the problem is, I suppose part of the problem is we don't know exactly how emotions scale in an online environment, right?
And definitely I found that even when I'm delivering very cutting material, as I just wrote an article for The Telegraph on the upcoming privation that Europe is going to be facing and the rest of the world in the winter.
And I tried to read it as calmly as I possibly could, even though it's extremely cutting.
And the calm delivery seems to alienate fewer people and bring people in more, um, more generally than an angry delivery without any shift in semantic content.
And so I would say it's something like the right principle is probably something like minimal necessary force in your personal interactions and minimal necessary emotion in your online behavior.
But it's hard to know exactly what that means.
And it's not as if I think I've done it perfectly.
I mean, you know, you you move like this towards that central line that that hopefully is moving uphill.
But it's also very difficult not to be upset.
I'm very upset, for example, about the the transgender issue.
I mean, I think it's I think what's happened is absolutely appalling.
I think it's monstrous.
And I don't believe that there's one shred of evidence that all this so-called tolerance for gender confusion has resulted in any positive good whatsoever.
I don't think so.
I think it's done nothing but harm.
And I think it's based on an intense confusion about what constitutes identity.
Sir, it does appear to be a bewildering issue and it does appear to be creating conflagration and conflict.
The difference between a conversation that might spur ire that has as its object Multinational organizations energy giants and and may have as its victims the impoverished people of the world Enduring a cost-of-living crisis and one where there are more evidently individual human beings given that it's about individual identity That's the nature of this topic and there is so much that is confusing about it and it feels like something but for me has to be whilst I
I admire, in many ways, your willingness to speak openly and explicitly.
I feel sometimes that it is inflammatory, that the debate becomes inflammatory.
And as we transition to speaking about the type of subjects that I concentrate on in my online work and videos, I feel that The reason I feel more comfortable when criticizing, for example, Emmanuel Macron or Justin Trudeau or now Rishi Sunak, is because I feel like I can see that they are using the language of compassion, they are posturing, they are trying to appeal to social ideas around tolerance, while actually
Actually behaving in a tyrannical manner and operating at the service of powerful interests for me this is for me I can see a bullseye very clearly there and I can see this is I can attack and the energy of comedy can be very aggressive and it can be malicious but even when I'm talking about say Justin Trudeau or Rishi Sunak or Joe Biden I try to remember child of God and Human being what is my objective my objective is to awaken as many people as possible to try to create to try to create conversations where people have vastly differing views can connect with one another in a consensual space and the way that I do one of the ways that I'm interested in doing that Jordan is by identifying what is the problem really and if we start to look at the crisis that you've just defined that you've just outlined
That this winter, millions of people in the country I live in, and presumably millions of people throughout the world, are going to be suffering because of inequity.
They're going to be suffering because of corruption.
They're going to be suffering because of dishonesty.
And the only way to end this suffering is if these people are somehow able to find a way to come together.
Come together.
There are certain areas of opposition that are going to have to be put to one side for now.
In order that we can focus on what I consider to be the absolute priorities.
Where is power?
Where is power?
And now it's becoming more and more bloody literal.
It's not even metaphorical anymore because we're talking about energy.
We're talking about the ability to turn on a light and to heat a home.
And it's clear to me, it's becoming clear to me, that that power is able to circumnavigate ordinary democratic process because There are edicts delivered from, you know, whether it's the WB or the IMF or the WEF or the WHO or unelected national bodies, ordinary people are unable to intervene in the relationships between the state and the corporate world.
We've talked a little bit about decentralisation and now I wonder if we can, and in a sense there is an easy elision, in this time of conflict around culture, How can people come together to oppose real power, real corrupt power at the level of the state and the corporation, to make them accountable and to create new models and systems?
Well, I think that one of the things that's happened is that people, ordinary people, let's say, have not fulfilled their civic responsibility in the proper manner.
So I think what's happening, Russell, is that we're transforming our society into A literal Tower of Babel.
And so, a Tower of Babel is an abstract enterprise designed to replace God, to reach to the heavens, to become totalitarian.
And its fundamental nature is the aggregation of power and responsibility at the top, and the atomization of the citizenry.
And that happens when the citizens abandon their intermediary responsibilities.
And so, In this seminar on Exodus that I just conducted, we talked about the principle of subsidiarity.
Now, this is what happens in Exodus, and it's very much worth delving into briefly, if we can do that.
So, Moses leads these slaves out of Israel.
And everyone in the modern world thinks that's a hell of a good idea because you shouldn't be a slave and you shouldn't be a tyrant.
And so we can think of that as a self-evident axioms.
In some sense, you should be free.
So you have to remove yourself from the tyranny of your own imagination and you have to remove yourself from the tyranny of state actors.
But the problem is when you remove yourself from tyranny is you don't get to the promised land.
You go to the desert.
And that's because everything falls apart around you when you drop your tyrannical presuppositions.
And so then you're lost and aimless and fractionated.
And so that's the situation that confronts Moses when he leads his people into the desert.
They're not free.
They're now they're in the desert.
They're just wandering aimlessly.
And that's the position we're in right now.
Now, what happens is that because the Israelites have no tradition of freedom and no internal order, they start fighting amongst themselves.
And that's also what happens in the Tower of Babel.
When people are too fractionated, they become unable to communicate and they all start speaking a different language.
And that's certainly happening at the moment.
And so Moses sets himself up as judge to adjudicate all the conflicts that the Israelites find themselves embroiled in in the desert.
And so now he's sitting from dawn until midnight every day, doing nothing but listening to people fighting.
And he does this for years.
And then his father-in-law comes along.
He's a Midianite priest.
So he's the archetype of the ethical outsider, a very common kind of character in the Old and New Testaments, like the Good Samaritan.
And Jethro comes to Moses and he says, look, man, you got to stop doing this.
And Moses says, why, essentially?
And Jethro says, look, there's two reasons.
First of all, you're wearing yourself to a frazzle.
Nobody can take on that much responsibility and live.
And second, you're denying the Israelites their destiny and you're and basically you're setting yourself up as an alternative Pharaoh in the desert by taking all the responsibility onto yourself.
And so then he says, well, they decide, well, what should we do as an alternative?
So this is the question is what's the alternative to tyranny and slavery?
And Jethro tells Moses, divide the Israelites into groups of 10 and have each of the 10 nominate a leader.
And then group the leaders together and have them nominate a leader and make an intermediary hierarchy up to tens of thousands.
And then allow them to adjudicate their own disputes at the most local level possible.
And any disputes that can't be intermediated at those local levels that eventually trickle up to you, you can decide.
And so this is a hierarchy of responsibility as an alternative to slavery and tyranny.
And it's also the model for the It's the model for the for the later establishment of religious institutions.
And so what do people have to do?
They have to find a mate.
They have to get married.
They have to have a family.
They have to engage in civic activity.
They have to sit on their school boards.
They have to run for local office.
They have to join a business organization.
They have to join a political party.
Because imagine this, every bit of social responsibility you abdicate will be vacuumed up by a narcissistic tyrant.
That's what will happen.
That's what will happen.
Those people are just waiting for that responsibility to be transferred into their power.
Brilliant!
What an incredible piece of analysis.
Now, I've got questions, Jordan.
There's a shark.
Desert pharaoh.
Wow.
What an amazing phrase.
What an amazing phrase.
Now, In this anarcho-syndicalist utopia where there is confederacy and consensus around some universal inverted commas principles but autonomy wherever possible smallest viable social models where we're all
We're civically engaged in our communities, where we're running our workplaces, we're running our schools, we're running our communities, we're preventing corporate tyrants, unelected pharaohs, you know, in whatever guise, of whatever hue, entering these spaces and narcissistically hoovering up power.
In this model, I believe it might be possible to have a tribe that has extraordinarily particular views on gender and on sexuality and on bodily autonomy.
And another tribe that has, for the sake of brevity, very traditional ideas on what a man is, on what a woman is, and how children ought be raised.
And neither of those two tribes need to come Into a conflict with one another, as long as there are certain universally agreed principles around the autonomy and group authority of those particular tribes.
Would that, it's firstly a beautiful piece of analysis on Exodus, and because, you know, if it don't matter now, it don't matter at all, is basically my action.
If you can't apply it to right now, then what is its application?
And for this, as I've heard you describe it beautifully many times, for this library of books to have succeeded, they must have some deep archetypal power that continues to play out.
And in the analysis you just gave us, I see how it plays out.
Now, how do we map that onto soothing and solving the cultural war that you have found yourself continually at the forefront of?
Look, as far as I'm concerned, and I said this right when I opposed the initial Canadian legislation, I don't have an issue with a wide range of opinions, let's say, about how people should conduct themselves in their private and their creative lives.
And I know that a plethora of alternatives is desirable, partly because the environment shifts and turns and you never know what's going to be useful.
I also know that there are In some sense, as many different so-called gender identities as there are individuals, although I think it's conceptualized extremely, in an extremely unsophisticated manner, and I put a lot of the responsibility for that at the feet of dim-witted academics, particularly on the radical left, because they just don't understand what they're talking about.
So, you know, people's temperament varies in five dimensions, and some of those temperamental dimensions are linked fairly tightly to Well, are linked, let's say, moderately tightly to biological sex.
And so, women tend to be more agreeable, and they tend to be higher in negative emotion.
Those are the biggest two differences between men and women temperamentally.
They also tend to be interested in people versus things.
And so, there's a powerful biological undercurrent to that.
But by the same token, there's no shortage of men who have an average feminine temperament, and there's no shortage of women who have an average masculine temperament.
It depends on where you put the cutoffs, obviously.
You could easily say that it's 10% on each side.
Humans vary widely in their temperamental proclivity, and some of that's biological, genetic, even though it's not linked directly to sex, and some of it's a consequence of socialization.
So you could say, with some real truth, that there are 7 billion different gender identities.
But that doesn't mean that there's 7 billion different forms of sexual identity.
And the problem I have with the sexual identity issue is that I don't think there is a more fundamental cognitive category and a perceptual category than the distinction between man and woman.
And that's primarily because if you fail to make that distinction properly, you don't reproduce, to get cold and scientific about it.
That sexual differentiation emerged hundreds of millions of years ago.
It might be more fundamental, that perceptual category, than up and down.
It might be more fundamental than night and day or darkness and light.
It's certainly in the same domain of depth.
Now, I just read an interesting scientific paper that one of my friends sent me on genetic mutation.
And there is this idea that mutation is random.
But this paper disputed that.
So imagine that there's a hierarchy of genes that code for a given organism.
And some of those genes are really, really old, and they code for vital elements of that species' survival.
If there's a mutation at that level, in all probability, the organism will die.
Those bloody genes do not mutate.
They repair themselves.
And so it turns out there's a hierarchy of genetic mutation, so that you're allowed to play around on the fringes, but not at the core.
Now, I'll tell you something else I learned in this Exodus seminar.
So there's a rule, there was a rule among the Hebrews that if, imagine five farmers have adjoining fields, and there's some dispute about the boundaries, because of course there would be, unless you marked about exactly on the ground, Right at the edges, it isn't obvious whether it's category A or category B. And so you could call that the fringe.
And the fringe is multiplicitous.
Now, the ancient Hebrews had a rule, was that the poor and the dispossessed were allowed to glean on the fringes.
And so there's an idea that a cognitive category has to have a center, and it has to have a fringe, and both are necessary.
And the fringe has to be there because the categories overlap, and because there's doubt and confusion, but the center has to be there, because otherwise everything becomes fringe.
And if everything becomes fringe, it's chaotic.
And so, I do believe that there should be discussion about the fringe.
I do believe that people should be allowed and encouraged to exist on the fringe if that's their natural habitat.
And that's generally the natural habitat, by the way, of creative people.
But I do not believe that it should be mandatory for the fringe to be center.
And so when the government says, you have to use pronouns of a certain type, that's compulsion.
I think, no, the fringe is trying to occupy the centre.
And all that's going to do is destroy the centre.
Beautiful, beautiful.
Now, though, it seems to me that we have to recognise that of all the things we're discussing here, some things seem fundamentally important, at least to me.
We must find ways of allowing communities to have as much self-regulatory power as possible, and in order to do that we're going to have to accept that there are aesthetics and flavours and customs and manners and means that are highly, highly diverse.
And the only principles that we might lean into are things, to return to an earlier comment I made, like kindness, like compassion.
I'm not throwing discernment out of the window, but I'm trying to
recognize where that discernment might be better be reserved for myself. To your most recent point,
how am I being Christ-like? How am I?
It is better generally reserved to yourself.
And may I say, sir, that with regard to this sort of what seems to be forming the center of our
conversation currently, can we focus this propensity for judgment and this requirement
for accountability towards where I regard real power to be residing?
Where is power actually?
Who is determining outcomes?
Who is acquiring land?
Who is acquiring resources?
Who is pushing an agenda for surveillance and the capture of data?
And for me, this Cultural issue whilst I recognise that from from your Jungian perspective that for in the matter of polarity in the matter of absolute taxonomy is significant.
It seems to me of more immediate importance that we say who how are Pfizer able to like redact countless pages?
How is the CIA able to infiltrate Twitter and Facebook and determine their policies?
How are the Democrat Party and Justin Trudeau able to pose as socially tolerant while ultimately
legislating and regulating on behalf of transnational corporations?
This is the trans issue that I want to see addressed.
These are the people and institutions that I want to see in the crosshairs because this is what I think will meaningfully affect the lives of as many people as possible, will impact poverty, will create opportunity for collaboration and collusion.
Can we attack these institutions that are not being subject to the level of scrutiny that you're applying in Issue A to Issue B?
This is why I like talking to you.
I think the work you're doing on the anti-fascist front, you're like the only Antifa person I've ever met that I really I think it's doing a credible job in some real sense, because the definition of fascism is to bind together.
Fascist means to bind together.
And what's happening, and what you object to constantly, is collusion of the powerful at the highest level.
Background collusion of the powerful at the highest level.
And that is your area of expertise.
Your area of focus I would say my area of focus is more something approximating the integrity of individual identity I make forays into the political realm, but only Unwillingly in some real sense.
I'm much more concerned with what?
Stabilizes people and gives them hope individually and a huge part of that is conceptualization of identity so like So the trans issue is actually extremely relevant here, because it's predicated on the idea that you have the right to impose your subjective sense of your identity on other people.
And I don't believe that's true, psychologically or socially.
And the reason for that, imagine it this way, Russell, part of what we're doing right now, obviously, along with everyone who's listening, is negotiating our identities, right?
You have some questions about what you're doing, You have some questions about what I'm doing, and vice versa.
And we're trying to hammer that out.
And as we hammer that out, little bits of us, you and me both, are dying and coming back to life in a new form.
And that's because we're allowing our identities to be shaped by social discourse.
And you can't have an identity that's subjectively defined.
It's not possible.
That's what a two-year-old wants.
you're doing when you're engaged with your intimate partner, what you're doing when you're engaged with
your family members, and then in the broader civic community, is exchanging information and allowing
parts of yourself to die, to that tyrannical parts of yourself to die, to go into a micro desert,
and to try to reformulate yourself in a better manner. And this idea that identity is subjectively
defined is antithetical to that concept, and it's wrong.
And so it's a primary concern of mine, because I know it makes people miserable and lost.
I know but you're getting pulled into some very painful arguments and I would say like it was only you know 50 years ago 100 years ago you have these titles doctor professor now may they may not have been mandated and I would say that I don't want to be told what to do at all on any subject you should see how I drive you should see how I park But if someone wants to be spoken to, if someone says to me, this is how I want you to refer to me, you got it.
You tell me to call you Professor Jordan Peterson, no problem.
You say to me, I like to be called they, her, no problem.
I'll do it because kindness.
I've already got that covered.
So first of all, generally speaking, that's what I would do.
Now, I wouldn't invariably do it because I'm not going to address someone in a manner that I don't think is good for them.
But I only objected.
You can't make that judgment.
Yes, you can.
You can, Russell.
I don't think you should.
Yeah, but you do it all the time when you're a clinician.
And I do it very judiciously.
And most of the time, because I am fundamentally, despite myself, in many ways, a very compassionate person, I'm very willing to do precisely that.
But that wasn't the issue for me.
The issue was that it became mandatory.
And that was the first time in the history of the English common law that the manner in which you had to craft your own conversation had been, what would you call it, crafted by mandatory edict by a government agent.
Now there was exceptions on the commercial side, so if you were selling cigarettes there was a certain way you had to talk about them.
It was never the case in an English common law country, and the Americans specifically prohibited this mandatory use of subjective identity terms.
For me, that was a line in the sand.
It's like, you do not get to say what I'm going to say.
But I think that line in the sand is very particular to your position because I think people would say that authority and power have been imposing conditions in more diffuse ways for a lot longer, that there are places where you are deferential, that when you're speaking to a police officer you speak in a particular way, if you come from a particular community You're presumed to, you are going to be perjured.
You're considered to be in a different caste.
They may not have been instantiated by law because they didn't need to be instantiated by law because they were understood to be true.
And you know, I don't, you know, I'm white male, et cetera.
So I'm like, you know, not banging a drum for this or condemn, you know, particularly working class white male people.
But what I am saying is that it appears that I reckon, I feel that generally speaking, centre-left liberal democracies are using this stuff nefariously.
I don't think they care about the feelings of trans people.
I don't think they care.
I care.
Yeah, I don't think so either.
I care.
I care, and I care about white working class people, black working class people, brown people
from across the all class spectra.
And what I feel like is that in order to not engulf ourselves in a sort of a semantic pyre,
we ought refocus our attention on the real giants, the oligarchs, the tyrants,
whether they're bureatic or personal, that are using, that are narcissistically
hoovering up the power while we're fucking around with like language.
This is also partly the danger of elevating compassion to the ultimate virtue, because you also enable
the narcissists of compassion to garner power to themselves by claiming a compassion they don't have.
And I've really seen this make itself manifest, I would say, in most recent months on the left.
Because what I've watched happen, especially in Europe, is that if you If you look at how the, especially the green leftists, have reacted, if their option is starve the poor to save the planet, they'll starve the poor.
And so that makes me wonder, well is your goal to save the planet, which by the way is a very difficult thing to do, or is your goal to starve the poor?
Because you're not saving the bloody planet, and you're definitely starving the poor.
I would say to some degree that's where our viewpoints dovetail, and I think it's why we can talk.
Like I said, I'm a big fan of the fact that you're going after the fascist collusionists, and I think it's absolutely necessary.
It isn't obvious to me that the destabilization of identity Is a less significant problem than the collusion of the fascist overlords.
I think they're the same thing, Russell, because if you destabilize the identity of local individuals so they're confused and aimless, it's a hell of a lot easier to hoover up all the power You need slaves to be a tyrant.
And maybe I'm more concerned about individuals on the slave level, and you're more concerned with delineating the nature of the tyranny, and that's perfectly fine.
But I think they're the same problem.
Because if people, if individuals have a cogent sense of identity, and that sense of identity is nested inside functional social organizations in this hierarchical manner we discussed, they're a hell of a lot harder to push around.
I understand.
But your pivotal and initiatory conflict, the matter that brought you into this space, was your, I don't want to be told what to do.
And I think a lot of people feel like, I don't want to be told what to do.
I don't want to be told what to do by 10,000 years of post-agricultural history.
I don't want to be told what to do.
You know, like, I suppose, who is your God?
Is biology your God?
Is evolution your God?
Is Christiana, is it a Christian God?
And, like, if by your definition we are talking about a peripheral issue, then I feel that God, won't this God that we love take care of this?
You know, is WB Yates right?
Can the centre not hold?
Who is slouching towards us?
Because if there is an absolute God, if there is an absolute God, I think by behaving in accordance with our own principles, the rectitude will come to the forefront.
Righteousness will triumph.
And I feel that like, so that I feel like, you know, if you're saying that where your role is, is you want people to have stable identities, you believe in personal autonomy, People, you shouldn't be told what to do.
They shouldn't be told what to do.
This I feel like, for me, I feel like actually there's so much agreement.
It feels like I can see a place.
You know, you don't want some centralised order telling you what to do.
You don't want some centralised order telling you what to say.
If people want to live one way, you know, in what are regarded as the extremes, although I would you know, query the framing, then allow them as long as
they're not hurting other people.
And there seem to be some pretty basic principles around the way we raise young and all those
kind of things that I don't feel like there's that many people would dispute.
So yeah, I guess what I'm saying Jordan is that I feel like, I don't feel that you should
be lost to this culture war and I don't think that any of us should be.
I feel that we should find ways of forming truces and agreement that are about the empowerment of individuals and the rights of individuals to be whoever they are.
And I recognise what you're saying about, you know, the subjective can't be bureaucratised or, you know, instantiated externally.
Also, I don't want to be on this carousel forever because we've got a lot of audience questions.
Look, you and I are both stumbling along trying to find our proper voice and our proper audience and we're paying attention to the way people are reacting to us and that seems to be going pretty well.
It's not like either of us can sit here and decide a priori how it is that we should act or what we should say, right?
We're trying to figure it out as we go along and we're going to make mistakes publicly while we're doing that as we stumble forward.
But, and I think that's fine.
I mean, for me, like I said, the line in the sand was, I'm not letting anybody tell me what I have to say.
They're not going to use compulsion in law.
I don't care what your bloody reasons are.
And the fact that you're saying, not you specifically, but you're saying, well, you have to act this way because I'm so compassionate, I'm going to force you.
It's like, Yeah, you're so compassionate, you're gonna force me, eh?
That's your bloody argument, is it?
I agree with you, but I think by the same... I know you do, I know you do.
By the same argument, Elliot Page... Okay, cool.
By this very same argument.
Can we do some of the... No, no, it's not cool, because she was in a position of influence.
And you're in a position of influence.
I know, I know.
But I'm also not encouraging kids to sterilize themselves.
But you are encouraging people to believe so.
Like not everyone has your faculties, but a lot of people can mimic your rhetoric.
Whoa.
Well, so so and fair enough, you know, and it's not it's not easy to engage in discussion of issues like this without inflaming without simultaneously inflaming the background cultural war.
You know, and it's a difficult line to tread, as you know well, and so no doubt there's errors made on as we move towards attempting to do that.
So as I mentioned to you at the beginning of this, there's some people watching along and one of the things we offer to our community members here at Stay Free AF, that stands for Stay Free As Fuck, edgy hey Jordan, is the right to ask you questions live.
Subi runs our social media and Subi will be relaying some of those questions.
Dr. Peterson, this is Subi.
Subi, Jordan, work out your own language.
So Subi, would you pass on those questions for us?
Yes, so we've got a couple for you, so I'll get started.
Vastishi asks, are you able to move beyond the left and right of politics?
By you, do you mean me, or is it possible for someone to do that?
I reckon someone.
A human.
Well, you do that every time you have a conversation across political lines, right?
And the left generally speaks for the creative and the fringe, and the right speaks for the center and stability.
And we have to all mediate between those two things, because sometimes the center needs to be adjusted, and sometimes the fringe needs to stay in the fringe.
And when that's necessary isn't obvious, and that's why we have to talk and think.
If you could only reside in the left, or you could only reside in the right, and that was a 100% solution, we wouldn't have to think or talk.
It's a constant dialogue, and that's why politics is the art of dialogue, fundamentally.
Not only can you move beyond left and right, if you don't, we're doomed.
Ultimately, Jordan Peterson said that it says there's a sort of a polarity and we sort of exist within the tension of this polarity of this ongoing negotiation.
Is there another question?
Well, we also we also want to do that, Russell, because one of the things this is something that's really cool to to realize and understand is when you're engaged in a meaningful discussion, one that's one that's compelling and that makes time disappear.
You are, in fact, balanced on that edge of polarity, and you're updating yourself optimally, and that's why you feel engaged.
Your own nervous system is telling you you're allowing just exactly the right amount of death and rebirth to occur to keep you current, updated, and healthy.
And so, yes, you live on the edge.
You live on the edge of order and chaos, and in some sense, that's analogous to the edge between left and right.
Yeah, Alex asks, how do you help someone heal when their unconscious and harmful habits are used as self soothing methods?
Yeah, well, that's a universal question, too, because we all take what you call respite in our in our terrible habits.
Look, the most effective thing you can do to help someone change is to.
Is to listen to them and encourage them, and there's no universal There's no universal pathway to doing that, except that you can learn to listen.
And the reason listening works, as the Freudians originally discovered in some clinical sense, is that there isn't any difference between talking honestly and thinking.
And there isn't any difference between thinking and generating new variants of yourself and testing them out.
And so most people think by talking.
And so if they don't have anyone to listen to them, they can't think.
And then if they can't think and don't think because they're not talking and being listened to, then they get outdated and trapped in their own tyrannical presuppositions.
And so Listening is unbelievably useful.
And so that's a good place to start.
And you can tell if you're listening, because if you listen to someone, first of all, they'll talk to you, and they'll be interesting.
Because everyone is interesting if you listen to them hard enough.
And second, you can tell them back what they've said, to see if they agree with your formulation.
And if they do, then they know you're listening, and you know you've got it right, and that's extremely helpful to people.
We're going to do one more question, Soobs, and then we'll wrap stuff up.
Ritak would like to ask you if you acknowledge the existence of the devil
Well the the right answer to that is you should acknowledge the existence of the devil in your own heart
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And you can watch that.
Like I can see, for example, when I'm reading online comments, let's say, I can feel the upswelling of a tremendous rage.
And I watch the fantasies that go along with that.
And they're extremely destructive.
And I'm not saying that because I'm trying to draw moral attention to myself.
I see that as an indication of the degree to which we're close to conflict In the social arena.
I know it's terrible, but I can see it working inside me.
And I think in the final analysis, you know, René Girard believed that the great sociologist and psychologist believed that everybody needs a place to put Satan in some real sense.
And why is that?
It's because we all have to contend with the reality of evil.
And so then the question is, well, where is evil located?
And the answer is, well, it's pretty widely distributed.
And then the issue is, well, do you go after the evil that you see around you, or do you go after the evil that's in your own heart?
And the problem with going after the evil that you see around you is, while you're not a transcendent judge, and you might be wrong, it's a pretty good idea to start with yourself.
It's a lot safer.
It does a lot less harm.
It's much better for you.
And then maybe if you can do that, then your eye for what constitutes genuine evil in the world gets sharper and sharper.
But basically, and this is a Christian conception in some real sense, is that the most fundamental and devious locale of that which is evil is internal.
And that's a hell of a thing to contend with, because it means that the possibility for hell is within.
But I think that's right.
Where I live is where I feel continually that this tension is within me, Jordan.
That I'm continually identifying my own sin.
I continually see what is the motivational force that I'm listening to.
Avarice.
The need for power.
And again, biological forces.
Status.
Sex.
You know, and as you say, the propensity and potential for conflict.
I find that in my own negotiation with myself, you know, that for me is at the forefront continually.
I struggle to find time to judge other people, but I find it.
I find it in my videos.
I make time.
Yeah, well, you're basically doing, when you're doing that, you're doing an inquiry into the gods that you worship.
Or that control you that's perfectly reasonable way of thinking about it because you can be run by envy you can be run by rage you can be run by lust you can be run by the desire for public acclaim and those are all transcendent forces and in some real sense the reason they're properly Contemplated as deities is because they're they're active forces that guide your perceptions and your actions They're not statements of facts their beings their personalities in some real sense And because you and you know this because imagine you're you're you're feeling resentful or envious.
Well, what does that mean feeling?
well, it means you're viewing the world from the standpoint of domination by resentment and you're allowing that to guide your actions and so it's a personality and And we see the world through personalities and many different factors vie to take control of our personalities.
When you're looking at the highest good, let's say you're trying to contemplate the highest good in some sense, and this is Russell, why I think it shouldn't be reduced to compassion, is that What you're trying to do is to provide, you're trying to bring all those underlying motivational forces, that polytheistic structure, into a higher unity of deity.
And the question there is, well, what's the ultimate God?
And it's not the prohibition of envy, it's not the prohibition of lust or anger, any of those, because those things are useful in their place.
It's the integration of that polytheistic domain into a single overarching unity.
And then you might say, well, what's the nature of that unity?
And I would say, well, the whole religious enterprise is about determining the nature of that transcendent unity.
I'm so glad that you alluded to the unitary nature, because initially at the beginning of our conversation, Jordan, I said love.
And you said that, like, you know, we all assume that compassion is the primary component of love.
And I don't assume that because love is duty.
Love is sacrifice.
And I think this idea of, they say in drama that if you want to convey love, the only way in drama is through sacrifice.
All else on the page or on the screen appears as affection.
Until the hero is willing to lose something of their selves, Then you cannot dramatise it.
And the reason I like this metaphoric system is because dramatisation is about action.
You need to be able to observe it.
Is it real?
It's not contemplative or reflective or theoretical.
This is it.
This is what love So, in a sense, the compassion for me is only valuable in the assumption of a unitary undergirding.
That there is a non-separateness.
This is why compassion.
This is why love.
Because love is the felt experience of unity.
Love is the felt experience of God's oneness.
That there is no separation.
So that conflict is antithetical to a deep, deep truth.
And I know we have to live with discernment, and I know we have to live with order, and I know that there are a few people that I would feel more confident entering into a conversation about the relationship between order and chaos with than you, because I know this is right where you live.
I know this is right where you live.
JP, I've got to jump, man, because it's school time.
I really want to have a conversation about the 12 steps And the principles of them with you at some point.
And I know there's loads of stuff we're planning, man.
There's loads of stuff we're planning and we'll have to get it done.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, a continuing conversation, Russell.
It's a useful thing, you know, because we do come at these issues from an interestingly different perspective, although I would say in some, hopefully, aiming for something common, right? And hopefully for
something good.
Yes.
As much as that's possible. And it's useful to hammer out the distinctions,
because that's where you change and transform.
Like, you know, when we are not satisfied with the order, we must have a negotiation with chaos.
We must have a negotiation with chaos.
And I feel like I live in this negotiation sometimes, man.
Alright, people are telling me I've got to wrap up.
Thank you so much for your expertise and for your time and for the immense suffering that I know you incur to be who you are.
It's really good to talk to you, Russell, and thank you to everybody who's watching and listening.
And yeah, keep it up, everyone.
I'm going to be texting you.
In fact, I've already texted you before.
I'll be I'll reach out.
All right.
I got some things I want to talk to you about, too.
So good, good, good, good talking to you, man.
And good luck with your continued endeavors.
Thank you, sir.
You too.
Thanks.
To listen and watch the full conversation, join us on Stay Free AF, where you can join us exclusively and put your questions via Subi to our guest.
If you have any questions for me, you can email me at hello at russellbrand.com.
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