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Oct. 30, 2023 - Stay Free - Russel Brand
01:26:33
Jordan Peterson on Andrew Tate, Spirituality & The Dangerous Descent into Despair - Stay Free #235
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So, I'm going to go ahead and start the video.
So, I'm going to start the video.
In this video, you're going to see the future.
Hello there, you Awakening Wonders!
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Of course, there's more from Jordan Peterson.
We're getting really deep now.
This part of the conversation is magnificent.
This is Jordan Peterson as you've never seen him before.
Almost in a free-flowing state where he talks about when he trained as a clinical psychologist, he went right from the micro to the macro.
Techniques that will help individuals, but what is the archetypical information that informs it?
This is why I think he's become such an important public commentator.
And such a threat.
In a way, Jordan Peterson tells you how much the culture has changed.
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Now, let's get into this conversation with Jordan Peterson.
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Let's get into it.
Now when you talk about the hedonic as a transcendent and mobilizing force, I'm reminded of Blake's famous edict, you know, it's the road of excess that leads to the palace of wisdom.
Perhaps because in some kind of my cup runneth over type way, in true ecstasy you might burst the bounds of the self and discover the transcendent through ecstasy.
Although personally I've discovered that's a dangerous route to ecstasy.
Yeah, but you discover, but you discover something else there too, Russell.
You know, one of the things Nietzsche pointed out very wisely was that most morality was convention and cowardice, right?
And so I always see this when, when people go after, well, you've been in this, in this, in this, in this ballpark recently, but I remember Tiger Woods, you know, and people pillorying him for his affairs.
And I look at a situation like that and I think, To all the men in particular who were, you know, decrying Wood's immorality, which I don't approve of, by the way, and that's not my point, is like, look, buddy, if the Swedish bikini team was waiting for you in a bus when you were done your golf game, you'd be in there like a mad dog.
And so don't be playing any, you know, moral games because you're so useless, no woman will look at you.
No woman will touch me, and therefore I'm celibate and moral.
It's like, no you're not.
You're just contemptible and useless.
And you would fold at the first offered temptation.
And for the women who are moralizing in an equivalent manner, it's like, you're so sure you wouldn't throw yourself at the feet of the first stellar celebrity that happened to wander into your line of vision.
A, because Just because that hasn't happened to you because you are desirable enough or brave enough to make it happen doesn't mean you wouldn't be susceptible to that temptation.
Now, you know, Blake said wisdom through excess and some of that can be the ecstasy of the extreme.
That was part of the attractiveness of the hippie culture.
But it's also the case that if you Do throw yourself into the palace of pleasure, let's say, and allow your hedonistic excesses to make themselves manifest.
You can also start to understand exactly how abusive and psychopathic you can become in that pursuit.
And that's a form of transcendent realization, too.
And maybe there's a new way of coming.
Like, I don't know if you can understand the human proclivity for evil until you've been in a situation where your own ability to manipulate and act in a, what would you call, instrumental, radically
instrumental manner, actually had free reign. Because otherwise your potential for corruption
is hidden from you by your inadequacy. Yeah, exactly.
By the constraints, you neither know your potential for good, neither do you know your
potential for evil, because you have been, as you said earlier, molecularized by a culture
that wants you atomized and discharged and passive and functioning merely as a consumer,
thinking the thoughts of their yesterday, saying the words of their yesterday, free
from their original thoughts.
Free from your original and indigenous condition.
No longer an actor in your own life, merely an agent in their lives, reading their script.
When you were talking about the spirit of communism being some unfolding entity that can replicate itself, I thought of some other synonyms that might be applicable, like virus and like fractalism.
As if impacted within the individual is the potential for the whole that it can self-replicate.
That there is a sort of berserk wisdom that can be unleashed in the world.
And I suppose when Dawkins came up with the phrase meme to be an ideological mirror for Gene, it was this that he was referring to.
I was struck as well by something you were saying, and I'll remember it as I explain my point.
C.S.
Lewis talks in one of his advocacy pieces for Christianity of the atheist and rationalist Scientists in their laboratory studying some faraway nebulae, determining from his lab on Earth that this far-flung cosmological destination will obey the rules of their rationalism, like which again, Jordan, when we were talking about good and evil and indeed reality earlier, we touched
touched upon the idea for how can we even discern an essential reality that is not subject
to our sensory limitations and indeed our sensory paradigm.
C.S. Lewis says that when they come up with the idea that there can be no God, they
are making this assessment based on the rationalism granted to them as a result of the
processes of evolution that began 13.8 billion years ago with that sub-molecular
explosion from which all the rules of reality unfold leading to biological life eventually, leading to
the conscious ascent of mankind and ultimately the rationalism with which they make that
verdict.
There is no God.
How could we trust ever a conclusion derived from a set of processes that by their own arbitration is meaningless?
I see you've got some thoughts.
Well, look, one of the things that the prophet Elijah establishes, Elijah is the prophet that appears with Christ when he's transfigured along with Moses.
And so in the Christian tradition, as well as the Jewish tradition, Elijah is held up as one of the two most Important prophets, right?
Okay, so why Elijah?
Well, Elijah defeats the God of nature, Baal, and also is the first person to posit that whatever God is, is identical with the still small voice within.
That's actually a phrase from the book of Elijah, right?
Right, so he identifies God within with conscience.
Okay, now, well, think about why the materialists abandoned God.
Well, the first mistake they made was assuming that God would be found in nature.
Well, the Jews dispensed with that idea like 3,000 years ago.
If you're going to look in nature, you're not going to find God because that's not where he is.
Right?
And then the other thing that happens if you're a scientist is that you define what's real as what's objective.
Well, if God has an aspect of the subjective, then, of course, none of your scientific Investigations are going to reveal God because you made God not part of the game in the initial formulation of the rules.
And you can't say, well, the rules forbid us to discover God, and lo, we've not discovered God.
It's like, well, you excluded him to begin with.
Now, I would say, and this is why I actually believe I'm going to be speaking with Dawkins publicly at some point in the relatively near future, and I'm looking forward to that because There is a rigor in the exclusion of God that's actually part of rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar's, and unto God what is God's.
Like, we shouldn't be confusing God with what isn't God.
And one of the things the scientists have done, the Enlightenment types have done, is certainly help us figure out where God isn't.
And that careful, delineated, reductionistic thought has also massively expanded our technological ability and brought with it the possibility of a kind of abundance that was undreamed of before that.
Now, I don't think that can last.
Or maintain itself without its own destruction in the absence of an overarching ethos within which it's embedded.
But you don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
But the reductionist materialists who say there's no God in the reductive materialist world, it's like, well, yeah, what's your point?
You've already forbidden the evidence that would convince you from even existing.
You're looking in the wrong places.
Like I look, I think, well, what's compelling existence for the transcendent unity of all things, let's say.
Maybe we can use that as a working definition of God.
Well, the alternative is a dreadful plurality.
We already walked through that.
What can you identify that unity with?
Well, love's not a bad first-pass approximation.
Is it a relationship?
Well, you have a relationship with your conscience, that pesky, mysterious little thing.
Your interest compels and calls to you, like the burning bush called to Moses.
That's the same sort of notion.
Part of the reason that, you know, and Jung said this, part of the reason that modern man can't find God is because Well, he's looking in the wrong places, that's for sure.
But Jung also said that, you know, modern people wouldn't look low enough.
Maybe you discover God in the radical realization of your own insufficiency and sinfulness.
You know, that's a classic idea.
And I also think that's true.
Yeah.
I think that is the case, you know.
I became convinced of the religious substrate of existence, mostly from studying evil, not from studying good.
Huh.
Yeah, and also in despair.
In Bethlehem, the king will come, not in the palaces of your life or in the opulence of your life, but when you're down among the animals in the manger.
This is where the king will be born.
This is where the chosen one will be found.
Oh man, I've got so many questions.
Yeah, the lowly, the lowly, the lowly.
I want to say that at the beginning of this I was talking about the daring to pose the current Middle Eastern conflict as potentially a symbolic event and perhaps as a precursor to that consistent and profound Old Testament idea, the messianic event, and if indeed Christianity offers anything new, as you said, it's the literal embodiment of that prophecy found notably in Isaiah, but I'm
sure elsewhere I know this is your turf. So what I would say is that when
we are, and also another thing I wanted to touch upon there, that when you
were talking about the technological ascent, progressivism and the age of
abundance, you've talked about that potentially being housed within a rubric that
included a component of the divine and the unknowable, and the
potential inclusion of the subjective. Interesting to note of course that when
these explorations and investigations are conducted they always
buttress and buttress hard against consciousness itself, whether it's
within the double slit area or indeed just trying to determine what subjectivity
might actually be.
And this idea, indeed, of The symbolic itself, being the interface between the psyche and the material, touches upon a Jungian idea that I know is important, I imagine is important to you, certainly it seems important to me, vital at this time, that synchronicity ultimately becomes the observed lack of distinction, the porousness between the inner and outer worlds.
that if indeed there will be a symbolic end time, a rapture, an apocalypse, an Armageddon,
the thing that it feels sometimes that I've been personally facing and perhaps we're globally
being confronted with right now live on your TV sets, is it possible that we are sort of
experiencing some aperture, some birth, some, you know, almost in a WB Yeats, potentially
in a WB Yeats way, you know, like slouching towards Bethlehem, this dreadful thing, or
could it be, and is part of our shared goal here to discuss the potential of a return
of Christ that might not be personal, and God knows I don't know what the Christians
mean by it, but a kind of an awakening within us all that acknowledges that what we have
to recognize is that there is an overarching ideology around technology, progressivism,
materialism and individualism, and that ideology is unitive, darkly unitive, it is a shadow
force.
It is Satan.
It is the idea that the end point of this is one central authority, one central ideology, denial of nature, denial of God, the hedonic and pleasure as a substitute for divine connection, and that only the ultimate sacrifice The denial of the ego, the ultimate sacrifice, the denial of the self, the small self, is the only key, the only vessel, the only branch that we can offer to some potentially forgiving God.
Are we at this point now?
So, William James, who was the father of modern psychology, and wrote a very interesting book on religious experience, varieties of religious experience, claimed, and this is partly what he was looking for, that human beings needed the moral equivalent of war.
And you actually see that reflected in certain streams of Islamic thought that call for the jihad that's an internal jihad rather than an external war.
Now, I would say that Jung proclaimed that any state of inner contradiction that wasn't played out And faced psychologically would be made manifest in the world as fate, right?
Which means that those things that you choose to ignore will rise up and hit you in the face.
Well, that's what's happening as we descend into this war.
This war is a false adventure, right?
It's an externalization of the apocalypse.
That's a good way of thinking about it.
And it's something that should occur within.
And if that war occurs within, it doesn't have to occur in the world.
First of all, war becomes a non-attractive option.
You know, we don't understand that the call to war is extremely exciting to people who lack sufficient adventure in their life.
If you look at the history of mobilization attempts, let's say at the beginning of the First World War, In the UK, say, men were lining up enthusiastically to go fight in this glorious war that would all be over in a few months when they eradicated the weak enemy and they'd come home to glory.
And that call to adventure is extremely exciting and maybe even irresistible if you don't have enough adventure in your own life.
And you might say, well, how do you find as much adventure in your own life as you would find in a war?
And the answer is you conduct a sufficient war internally.
You know, and this is, I would say, in many ways, this is the central message of a psychologized Judeo-Christianity.
It's like the fundamental cosmic battle between good and evil is fought in the soul.
And I think that's true.
And if it isn't fought in the soul, it will be fought out in the world.
And so you call upon people to fight it out in their soul, but that's a...
I don't think there's any difference between that, by the way, and the notion that you're to hoist the cross of mortality and malevolence on your own shoulders.
It's the same thing.
If you're going to have an internal struggle that's as intense as an external war would be, As a substitute for that war, then that's going to be, well in many ways, as brutal as the war.
And that's a hell of a thing to ask people to do, but like with many properly moral choices, the only thing worse than doing it is what happens if you don't do it.
It's hard, Jordan, to imagine that now that we've been sort of plumped and fatted and made prisoners of comfort, that en masse there could be the type of awakening required for people to undergo the true jihad, the true apocalypse, the true inner revelation that is required for us to, as a planet, abstain from war, to have the tonic To not fall into what appears to be the manifestation of our collective inability to stop casting out the shadow.
It's curious that, you know, in order to go to war, of course, words have failed me all too often, and to the point where violence is all that's left.
You know, in a sense that we've all played out Baldwin's Maxim there, that, you know, what kind of culture creates the category of Negro and what characteristics do we attribute, i.e.
the dancing, the sexuality, the violence.
It's very telling about the nature of a host culture for what it will cast out onto its opponent.
And of course, perhaps it's even in a conversation with you that, you know, consistent across the world,
enemies are defined as having these shadow traits.
They are dirty, they are disgusting, they are worthy to be killed.
So, often when people feel that kind of personal despair, they're likely to feel these days, you know,
I feel it myself, it's how do we stoke, because I know that this is part of your personal mission,
how do we stoke in them those fires?
How do we awaken in them the significance?
How do we do it for me?
God damn it, forget them!
Like how do we awaken, how do we, how do we awaken the sort of the willingness to, you know, to pick up the sword or pick up the cross or pick up whatever it is?
I think we do remind people that they're built for adventure and not for comfort, and young men in particular don't require much convincing to accept that as truth.
You can just lay it out, like, well, do you want infantile comfort or do you want a difficult and challenging adventure?
Now, there's going to be some resistance because there's responsibility that goes along with the adventure, but But it's not a huge step to take to imagine that a compelling adventure could be posed as an attractive pathway through life.
So that's there.
The next part of that is to say, well, you actually find that in unexpected places.
You find that in willingness to say the truth.
because you don't know what's going to happen if you say the truth,
and in willingness to take responsibility, because by taking responsibility,
you force yourself beyond yourself.
And then you might say, well, you should take responsibility
for the full weight of vulnerable mortality itself, plus hell, let's say,
if you're going to confront malevolence, but that's a big ask right off the bat.
And you might say, well, you know, do the next most difficult thing that you can manage
and see how that goes.
And this is something I learned, you know, when I trained as a psychologist,
I spanned, I tried to educate myself in a manner that spanned the entire clinical literature
from the extraordinarily practical and microscopic behavioral
to the very abstract psychoanalytic.
And in doing that, I was able to bring these very high order concepts, archetypal concepts, for example, down to their practical manifestations.
And when I conducted therapy, I always started with practical because that's the most straightforward.
And you can say to people, look, Try to do something a little bit better tomorrow that you could do and just see what happens.
That's called collaborative empiricism, right?
See for yourself.
You can decide what better means by your own lights.
You'll get better at that as you practice, but you might as well start with your own judgment.
Take on a little more responsibility.
Just as an experiment and see what happens.
And what happens inevitably is you grow a little bit and then you can see a little more clearly and you can take on a little more responsibility.
And that's an upward path that's right there in front of people no matter where they are.
In fact, in some ways, the more problems that are around them, The larger the field of opportunity, because when you're in a place where everything is wrong, there is a lot to fix, right?
I mean, you could just start, like, right with the mess that's there.
And that works far better than people think, and they discover that quite quickly.
And then if you also understand that the alternative to centralized utopian power-mad governance is local authority and responsibility, you can ally that meaningful pursuit of micro-responsibility with the development of resistance to totalitarian blandishment.
It's like No, I don't need you to take care of me.
Go away.
I've got things to do.
I'm occupied with my local concerns, trying to expand them.
You know, in the Old Testament, the Israelis are always clamoring to God for a king.
And God keeps saying, look, guys, you don't want a king.
And they keep going, well, you know, we're kind of slaves and we don't want any responsibility.
So a king might be kind of nice.
And so, you know, finally God grants them a king.
And well, that's exactly, do you want a king or do you want to be the king?
Well, I want to be the king because he's got all the power.
It's no, no, no, buddy.
The true king has all the responsibility.
Right.
So do you want to be king?
Do you want all the responsibility?
And the answer to that should be a resounding yes, but, you know, one step at a time.
Because in responsibility is the adventure.
And that's such an amazing thing to understand, is that it isn't your right to pursue your hedonic gratification.
That's not where you're going to find redemption and salvation, except sporadically and counterproductively.
There's inexhaustible adventure in responsibility, and there's nobility in it, and there's the furtherance of your interests and those you love.
Well, people understand that if you explain it carefully.
Yeah, it was brilliant.
It was brilliant.
You landed it.
You landed it.
It was brilliant.
It was brilliant.
If you're watching this anywhere other than Rumble, we're going to have to leave you now.
We're going deeper with Jordan Peterson.
Yes, we're talking about some subjects you may have heard JP discuss before, like, for example, Andrew Tate.
But what is the functionality?
How is our culture shifting?
What's not being discussed and what's being deliberately censored?
Click the link in the description.
Join us now over on Rumble.
It's kind of a disgusting idea to sell to people, the hedonic idea, and when you pursue it, yeah, believe me, there are consequences in store for you if you pursue that hedonic route.
And I see a lot in the men I work with in the field of addiction, that wayward and chaotic men, when offered a simple pathway through addiction, take responsibility very well.
And this micro macro dynamic and polarity that you explained and the necessary relationship between them and I reckon what you said there about your own particular studies of starting with the most practical application of clinical therapy of like why don't you do this and how it might relate to very complex erudite to the point of abstraction ideas of archetypes is perhaps It's part of that fractal reality that you referred to earlier too, is that you need to take on ultimate responsibility.
Okay, well how do you do that in the moment?
By taking on partial responsibility, because partial responsibility is actually an element of responsibility that reflects The totality of responsibility as such like it has the same nature and so it is a step on the way it's an element of the same.
It's an element of the same spirit that's a question for you so so we talked earlier about the fact that and someone like Andrew Tate is good at this by the way and this is why he's such a popular character he says to disaffected nihilistic and depressed young men you know.
Why don't you turn yourself into a monster there, buddy, and take what the world's offering you, you know, without guilt?
You know, there's a kind of Nietzschean Superman idea lurking behind that.
And, you know, you have to give the devil his due.
As I said, I think that's a more It's a step on the way to emerging from that depressive, nihilistic state of infantile dependence.
Now, you had the opportunity to, let's say, revel in the abundance that life might offer you on the hedonic front.
And so why not do that?
Because you're in a great position to describe that.
This is the world that Andrew Tate is offering to young men, let's say, just to take a current example.
And maybe, why not glory in that and luxuriate in it?
What's the consequence?
Why isn't that the right solution?
After absolute hedonic indulgence, without resistance, abundant access to fame and to attention and to sexual pleasure, leads to a kind of despair.
And at that point... Why?
Why?
Why?
Why would that be the case?
Because you'd think that you got everything you wanted, right?
So why did it lead to despair?
Because when you are tantalised by an idea, when that idea exists culturally as an object of attraction to magnetise the vast majority that are never going to experience it, it's not a democratised principle.
Celebrity by its nature is an elitist idea.
You don't encounter it.
You don't encounter, you don't experience limitless access to these fruits.
And when you do, you recognize, no, this is a facsimile.
Now, I know in Tantra, And in some forms of totemism and, you know, Aleister Crowley style stuff, you know, sex can be sort of some transcendent vehicle and there's no doubt that there's euphoria and limitless pleasure available.
But the reason that that lifestyle ended for me is, in the end, it is, you know, it's the finger pointing at the moon.
It's alluding to the idea of unity.
It's alluding to the idea of the masculine and feminine principle existing transcendent of their polarity and dualism as one entity that's procreative.
And the reason, I suppose, that there are prohibitions in many orders around copulation, even noticeably within certain sects within Hinduism, if you are a householder couple, only sex for procreation, for example, not pleasure even within a marriage, It's because it's recognized as a powerful force, the same way violence is a powerful force.
Now these, I suppose, these motivating forces maintain our focus and our practices within the material, within the realm of the material.
They're prevented from becoming transcendent and sublime, though Lord alone knows there are instantiations of coitus that can be transcendent and sublime.
I wanted to touch upon two When talking about patriarchy and when patriarchy is used only in its pejorative form and you see yourself as a defender of the non-luciferian aspect of the patriarchy, which is male and dutiful and therefore beautiful, that in accompaniment to their condemnation of the patriarchy, there is a paternalism
That is unprecedented, the idea that your role is a little passive prisoner of comfort, that we are little larvae in cell, just supping down, not even honey, but some synthetic sap, not evolved for sugar and screens, not evolved for sugar and screens.
We're denied access even to our tribal anthropological origins.
When you talk about this A small piece of responsibility bearing the character of the whole of responsibility, you offer people a pathway, a pathway back, even in the most pragmatic way.
Start by tidying your bedroom, start by making the tea at a 12-step meeting, and before you know it... But the problem is, is with many of these spiritual modalities, even if they're psychologized as you have described, is that they're regarded actually as a route back to inverted commas normal living.
Now get out there and participate in the maternal world you've God's given you a boost, now park God and get on with the business of living a normal life, rather than retaining this connection.
Now when we talk about what is the inherent problem with globalism, when built into at least their rhetoric around an authoritarian and centralised globalist state, is the idea of unity, actually what we're talking about is tyranny.
And what I think that we need to offer as an alternative to people is Diverse, decentralized, but unified.
Is there a way?
Although, see, the only game in town at the moment is centralization because it's corporatized, because it can incorporate big tech, because it can incorporate big pharma, because it can incorporate each nation's military, because it has got the game all but sewn up in the absence of a popular uprising, which cannot happen without a spiritual awakening.
So, the pathway that we have to offer, the alchemy that we have to conduct, the spell that must now be cast, is one of reigniting the fires within the individual.
And I love that call to adventure, and I love the pragmatism in, you know, start with these small things and do not despair.
I suppose, in a sense, I'm offering you the question now of is the function of ARC inherently connected to anti-gargantuanism?
Is it connected to decentralization?
And in that, Jordan Peterson, you great crusader for so many subjects and a chief among them in the eyes of the uninitiated and the willfully ignorant would be the way that you've gone to war on subjects like gender identity, would there be the inclusion of Yeah, if you want to run your culture that way democratically,
then of course you must, as long as concomitant with that is the idea that there are
people here who are living by a very different path, and you don't seek to impose a
transcendent and a coercive order above them and upon them.
Frigidity.
Huh?
Frigidity.
A counterproductive frigidity.
Yes, sir.
Yes, sir.
Can I say that any decentralization, I just finished, any decentralization worthy of the
name will include, will have to include the possibility for people living in.
In extremely discreet ways, as we once might have done in a tribalized culture, where there'll be no reason to imagine that the tribes of Iceland would live in absolute ideological harmony with the tribes of Senegal or Japan, and true diversity would afford us that kind of uniqueness of culture.
Well, one of the advantages to the leftist insistence on diversity is that with true diversity comes a range of unexpected solutions to unexpected problems, right?
We don't know what the future will throw at us.
If we're on the right track now and we're all busily Needling down that pathway, and something entirely unexpected comes along.
Unless we have diversity within us, we won't have any answers to unforeseen problems.
And so the notion of diversity as a source of resilience, let's say, is accurate.
It's no different than respect for a plurality of thought, let's say, and approach.
But it begs the question, which is, well, what's the source that unifies that diversity?
Because Disunified diversity is conflict, anxiety, and hopelessness.
So how do you take advantage of diversity while maintaining the utility of unity?
And then on the unity side, well, you don't want rigid unity because it's too fragile and brittle.
Okay, so this problem is actually addressed in the book of Exodus.
So the existential problem that the Israelites are grappling with is Well, they're escaped from tyranny, and they don't want the tyrant, so they don't want the enforced unity of the authoritarian state.
And they don't want the habits of slaves, because being subjugated to tyranny has turned them into directionless slaves, which is why they're lost in the desert, right?
They don't know where to go, and they keep trying to turn Moses into a pharaoh.
And then there's a vision of proper governance that emerges, the analysis of which has been core to Catholic social doctrine for hundreds of years, and which actually constitutes the central aspect of a necessary conservatism.
And it's the principle of subsidiarity.
So the idea is that the proper alternative to tyranny and slavery.
So you imagine a two rigid unity at the top and a two fractionated plurality at the bottom.
OK, that's a bad state.
It's just ultimate order and ultimate chaos.
OK, well, you're intervening structures.
And so, well, for each of us as individuals, We're a plurality of dynamic spiritual forces, right?
I mean, within our breasts, rage, lust, and anger, and hatred, and love, and appetitive urges of various forms, and it's very difficult to arrange them into a unity.
But we have to do that, because otherwise we're a house divided against itself.
We operate at cross-purposes to ourselves.
And the way the brain organizes that is in an integrated hierarchy.
And as you mature, that hierarchy emerges, right?
With a union of those, that plurality of forces, not the suppression of those forces, but an integration.
And that was the point Jung made, was that it wasn't superego against id.
It was the integration of of these underlying dynamic spirits into a higher order hierarchical unity and the unity the symbol of that unity was christ as far as as jung was concerned and and he said that forthrightly it's not hidden and so on there's a reason for that but then socially what's the alternative to
tyrannical order that still allows for unity.
Well, that's hierarchical.
It's like you're married, okay?
Well, you and your wife make up a microcosm of society.
And you're not the boss, and she's not the boss.
The boss is the superordinate principle that unites you.
And in a Christian ceremony, that would also be Christ, by the way, technically speaking.
But the idea there would be that it's the spirit of radical reciprocity that constitutes the core of the marriage, and you're both subordinate to that.
You both have responsibility for participating in that.
Okay?
And so you're responsible for yourself, and your wife is responsible for herself, but the two of you together are responsible for the unity of the marriage.
And in that responsibility is the meaning of the marriage.
The meaning and the utility, right?
Because you will feel your willingness to bear the responsibility of fostering that unity as a meaningful responsibility.
That's how it will make itself manifest.
And if you both do that, your marriage will flourish.
And then if you can both do that, you can extend it to your kids.
And then there's a level of responsibility for the family.
And you take on those responsibilities, and then the government doesn't have to play nanny state, because there's no one to minister to, right?
And then families organize themselves into local communities.
And there's a level of responsibility at every step of the hierarchy.
And the unity is the harmony of the totality, the productive harmony of the totality.
And if that responsibility is shouldered, You don't need a king.
There's nothing for them to do.
They're not interesting.
They're not even compelling, you know, because the thing about a king is because he's a symbol of Unified aristocracy.
If you lack purpose and nobility in your own life, that false nobility of tyrannical unity will beckon to you.
But you can eradicate that by being an aristocrat within the confines of your own life.
It's like, look man, if you took your marriage seriously, that would be enough to occupy you.
And it's certainly the case with your children, and with your own spiritual well-being, for that matter.
It's like, what, you don't have enough to do?
You want to tell other people what to do?
Jesus, man, haven't you got enough problems of your own?
You're hilarious.
Because, of course, not only then do we cast out the shadow, as in the Schmittian dialectic of othering, we also cast out the light.
Affording others these positions of sovereignty that would be better held in the consciousness of an elevated self.
I was struck with your last shamanic proclamation by the amount of hand gestures you used there.
Indicated a kind of, I wouldn't say unconscious, but integrated awareness of the geometric connotations.
You know, crucifixes were made, triangles were made, squares were made, and indeed isn't geometry The rational approach to symbology.
And once again we can see how rationalism and post-enlightenment thought has abandoned its pair, its partner.
Jung's obvious defining, perhaps, interest in symbolism.
That there is that which can never be said, that which cannot be measured with the measure in mind, but can be felt intuitively with the belly.
I love too your insistence on subsidiarity, that there is no connective tissue between the chaos, the deliberately, I would argue, and I feel that you are arguing too, the deliberately induced and fed and festering chaos at the bottom of society and the unity And lack of transparency at the head of the pyramid, the head of the serpent, the head of the beast.
No transparency, total unity and convergence of purpose when it comes to corporate, authoritarian, militaristic, pharmacological goals.
There's this peculiar unity there.
And any attempt, any sort of alchemic attempt to send this energy up, to create some unity amidst the chaos, that might You see that, for example, you see that absolutely consciously.
We talked a little bit about conspiracies to begin with.
I mean, one of the things that the revolutionaries always do, And the revolutionaries want centralized power, let's say.
One of the things the revolutionaries always do is demolish the subsidiary structures.
Marriage is nothing but patriarchal tyranny.
The family is the shining artifact of the, what would you say?
It's a dreadful artifact of the tyrannical past.
There's nothing in motherhood but slavishness, right?
The father is completely unnecessary.
It's the attempt to demolish all the intermediary structures.
And part of the way that's done is by telling people, well, you have nothing but You'll be granted all your individual rights, which is like hedonic advantages.
What you're being offered as a replacement for that hierarchical responsibility is hedonic gratification, endless hedonic gratification.
But as you already said, that's not a Fruitful pursuit, even when it's successful, you know, it beckons very powerfully when it's not successful because it's the well, what would you say?
It's the hidden treasure of the forbidden and unattainable and fairly.
So, you know, I mean, I can see why a completely disaffected young man would regard Andrew Tate as a role model.
But when the fruit of that new mode of being, which is essentially a form of domination oriented towards hedonic self-gratification, when the fruit of that is nothing but a higher order despair, it's a dreadful vision.
And so, and the alternative to that is, well, perversely enough, the alternative to, and it's not that surprising, what would the alternative to a pointless hedonic self-gratification be other than a hierarchy of responsibility?
I mean, obviously that's the alternative.
And then you think, well, is that just the Rousseauian type would say, all of that social responsibility is nothing but the burdensome excess that interferes with the free-flowing manifestation of my self-actualizing spirit, as if everything that was of value was only located internally.
That's the opposite mistake.
It's like, no!
You experience the abundance of existence in harmonious relationship with the totality of that hierarchy.
And I think a good model for that, Russell, a good experiential model for that is music.
You know, you go listen to a symphony or a rock band for that matter, a jazz ensemble.
And everyone plays their bloody part.
And there's a hierarchy of harmony that makes itself manifest.
A great balance between chaos and order.
Everyone highly skilled, playing their part, organizing themselves into a hierarchy of harmony.
And you feel that as a manifestation of meaning itself.
And the reason for that is because it is!
It's the right model.
That musical harmony.
So...
I try to, in a sense, we can use as a kind of litmus test for the direction that the culture is headed in, the way that you have become a kind of polarizing figure.
Because I feel like when you're talking about the, you know, the application of these principles within marriage, I feel like how would anyone be offended by these ideas?
And yet people appear to be offended by these ideas.
And of course, yes, that when you say, when you point out that there's a kind of deconstructist kind of fervor, Underlying this attempt to create chaos among the lower orders, unity at the top of the pyramid, perhaps the opposite of the inversion of what a better society might look like.
It shows me, it demonstrates to me, that the fact that what you say has become so contentious is an indication of where our society has gotten itself to.
That once upon a time, once upon a decade or two ago, these were ideas You know, and I know that you are very much a creator and a product of your time sort of simultaneously.
These ideas would have just been incorporated into the culture.
The culture has amplified conflict.
They didn't even have to be put forward in some ways because people just acted them out as a matter of course.
And, you know, you might ask yourself, well, why has identity become the central issue of our time?
And the reason for that is because the intermediary hierarchy of identities has collapsed.
And so everyone's wondering, well, you know, what do we do?
Is it all hedonic self-gratification?
Well, there's the world of pornography.
It's like, Jesus, that's unbelievably dismal.
And also in accompanying Puritanism, a kind of a deracinated Puritanism as a sort of a polarised to that.
Of course all energy on the physical level requires a type of polarity and even within the Rousseauian ideas that you are not disavowing but advising caution towards, there was much beauty and certainly you would have to say that the trajectory and march of civilisation has oppressed, repressed Crushed many of the ideas and organic and original conditions that I suppose that Rousseau was showcasing, alluding to, and prizing.
So there's a sort of a necessity for the acknowledgement of that.
And I also want to fold in here that when you were talking about, say, the collective Israeli will to create a sovereign from the judges create a king, it made me wonder about the individual culpability of a dictator.
The dictator, the Stalin, dare I say even the Hitler, is potentially called forth by the collective in some way.
But how else could it take place?
And if it did take place as a result of the individual culpability of a bad actor, then why is there a pre-existing template for it in scripture?
The demand for the malign, if not the malign sovereign specifically, the demand for the sovereign and unifying figure and the potential for that Particularly stripped of, as with post-industrialization, as with increasing modernity, perhaps there is no better definition for modernity and post-industrialism and even the trajectory of our kind in general as a sort of a movement away from God.
A movement away from God that somehow cannot, until we resolve that, until we resolve the true and evident progress of technology and medicine with its unaddressed Departure from the Holy Land that we have to, we will be confronted, we will continue to reiterate this problem or live in this sort of false polarity that is disempowering.
It seems like, you know, God think how often in scripture and in prophecy we talk about the inversion and, you know, and even in alchemy as above so below.
You know, when I talk about the war as a symbolic event, when I talk about the messianic advent as being one of the key prophecies, perhaps this time of crisis is calling that, that inversion, that reversal, and perhaps that's much of what you're talking about, even when you're talking about, you know, in your own training, this is the macro, the source, even the essence, and this is the application, the pragmatic and the practical, that somehow, Somehow, as discussed with this principle of subsidiarity, there has to be, there's a sort of a tension, a flip, a reversal on the axis.
And my God, there's no better word for that than revolution.
And sometimes it feels to me that that's what's somehow required.
And I know that you advocate for conservatism so strongly that it seems odd that that's something that we might have to consider.
Well, I think that's part and parcel of this strange reversal, but I would say it has to be a revolution within, right?
It's an apocalypse within, fundamentally, to begin with.
And, you know, you asked earlier, too, how is it that you can communicate to people how they would take part in the revolution that would make them immune to the blandishments of tyrants and part of the answer to that as well is by adopting a viewpoint of radical humility, right?
So humility opens yourself up to the possibility that your problem is your problems, right?
Your inadequacies.
And if you understand that that's an inexhaustible well of potential wisdom, then it can flip the way you construe your own inadequacy.
You know, why should I examine myself And my conscience for the errors I once committed.
The answer to that is, well, those errors took me off the proper path.
And if I could identify what they were and rectify them, then I could identify the proper path.
And that would be worth any amount of self-abnegation, let's say.
Because why wouldn't you want to be wiser if wisdom was associated with flourishing?
And not only for you, but for everyone else.
And that's another peculiar inversion, you know, that the road to redemption is through the through the what would you call it through the through the arch of Of confession of the most radical sort.
And that is an internal revolution.
And I think it lays the groundwork that enables you to start taking on responsibility.
Because the consequence of grappling with your inadequacies is that you will start to rectify those inadequacies by becoming more integrated and responsible.
And then who needs the tyrant?
You know, and there's more to it than that, too, Russell.
There's something else we want to talk about at ARC, is that there is a notion in the Exodus narrative that the land of milk and honey is the state ruled by the subsidiary structure.
And what that means, in a sense, is that if everyone took on the responsibility that was requisite to these multiple levels of social organization, so you took full responsibility for yourself, for your wife, for your family, for your community, so on, for the town, for the state, for the nation, under God, if you did all that, the desert would bloom.
That human ingenuity is such that if we specialize and cooperate, there is no problem we can't solve.
There's no desert we can't make bloom.
And that's actually the answer to the zero-sum Malthusian objection that the world is characterized by limited resources and that privation is the only way forward.
It's like, no, if we organized our society ethically and distributed responsibility optimally, there is literally no limit to what we could do.
And I would say that a figure like Elon Musk is actually trying to demonstrate that symbolically.
You know, because I look at Musk and I think, Jesus, buddy, why Mars?
Like, put a habitation on Antarctica.
It's just as difficult.
Why Mars?
It's so preposterous.
And then I think, oh yes, the preposterousness is the point.
Musk is trying to demonstrate that if we organize ourselves properly, and he's very, very good at making organizations.
If we organize ourselves properly, nothing, no matter how preposterous, is beyond our field of apprehension and accomplishment.
And he's trying to demonstrate that concretely.
And I think he's actually doing that.
And, you know, it's definitely a heroic venture.
And there isn't anything we couldn't do.
You know, the Israelis have already figured out how to desalinate water at scale, at low cost.
We're not going to have a water shortage.
There's no reason to have an energy shortage.
The universe is made out of energy and matter.
We're not going to run out of energy.
We could run out of ingenuity and cooperation.
We could run out of trust, that's for sure.
And then everything will collapse.
The idea that we're stringently constrained by some set of arbitrary material limitations is just another apocalyptic blandishment of the utopians.
Yes, and of course a problem of materialism.
If all that is real is observable, then the ultimate destination is the individual, and we live in a world of limitation because we are only interested in that which can be measured. I love your analysis of Musk
there and I love the optimism within that. It's only the only commodity we're running out
of is God. I like when you were talking about redemption there, in of course the etymology
or just a definition actually of that word, you are giving something back.
So in self-actualization, to be redeemed, you are giving back.
To be actualized, you are giving back.
Personal redemption is not an individuation, as the word would suggest in the Jungian sense, a severance and a cutting off, but a redeeming and a return, a returning, a giving back.
I would say this is actually one of the weaknesses of the Jungian approach, is that Jung regarded the heroic endeavor as an internal voyage of transformation.
And I would say that is one valid variant of the heroic process of redemption.
But Jung underestimated and under-emphasized the necessity of hierarchical social organization and the relationship between the harmony of social organization and mental health itself.
All the clinical psychologists did that because, well, they were concentrating on the individual and fair enough, but it's still a, it's a marked lacunae.
The only psychologist I know who essentially filled that was, was, uh, it was Jean Piaget with his studies on children showing that The fundamental unit of social organization is voluntary play, and that that scales up across levels of social organization.
Piaget wasn't a clinician, you know, so his theories didn't have that much effect on clinical practice.
And we did get, in the humanists of the 60s, the idea that, you know, you free your trammeled spirit by rejecting the superego tyrant and finding within you that root to salvation.
It's like, well, yeah, but what about other people?
And the route to salvation is, it's not just you getting your act together, it's you getting your marriage together and your family together, you know, to belabor a point.
Don't presume that that individual identity, that the proper identity, ends with the boundary of your skin.
That's foolish and it's counterproductive.
Let's say that's radically successful.
I would say that as a hedonistic individual, you were radically successful.
Right?
Really.
I mean, you had what that offered.
Well, and your conclusion was that led to despair and it was extremely dangerous.
It's like, okay, why don't we take that at face value?
There was something in that that's better than nothing.
Because nothing is dreadful.
Hopeless, anxious nothingness.
Jesus.
Dismal.
But that doesn't mean that the next rung up still isn't a form of hell.
It's just a slightly less horrible form of hell.
And that's not nothing.
Like, it's part of the clambering upward, but it's certainly no final destination.
And it's perverse that the proper orientation of the self-actualized individual is radical responsibility for the whole social order.
But that's what it means to take the sins of the world onto yourself.
That's what it means to bear the cross uphill.
You take the whole thing on, and then, man, hey man, then you got something to do.
You know?
Seriously.
I like that a potential unit for progress could be voluntary play, and that the numinist, this personally felt interface with God and awe, at some point, somehow, for some reason, suggests a set of ethical steps Not solitary yogic revelry and play in the dominions of God, the personal internal dominions of God, but some kind of mission, some kind of purpose.
As you said with the 60s humanists, well what about other people?
At some point this suggestion that there is a sublime realm, that there is a unitary force that we are participants in, that we can access and can use as a principle if we are not trapped and ensnared in the many levels of hell that might hedonically or materially suggest themselves, for surely they will come through material channels.
Then, unitary behavior, such as kindness, such as service, such as a social organization, suggest themselves.
I'm also struck that at some point you said, redistribution of responsibility, that suggested a kind of spiritual communism, the radical redistribution.
That's very funny, that's very funny, yeah.
Let's redistribute the responsibility.
Well, absolutely, that would be way better than distributing the wealth.
It's a way better model because the problem with redistributing the wealth is you have to steal the wealth and then you distribute it to the psychopaths.
And then if the people you're distributing it to aren't psychopaths, you make them dependent and you destroy the adventure of their life by making the state the benevolent paternal, like the all benevolent combination of mother and father under whose wings you're currently permanently suffocating.
Not sheltered, but suffocating.
It's like, well, why shouldn't you have a basic, um, guaranteed income?
Let's say, well, how about because you'll pay for that, buddy.
You think you're going to get that for free?
You're a fool.
You're not going to get that for free.
There will be strings attached and many of them, like one of the immediate strings would be, well, I don't think you should spend your money on that.
You can see that with a digital currency instantly.
It's like, well, you'll get your basic income, but you'll get to have one flight every three years and three articles of clothing a year.
And there's a lot of things you really shouldn't be allowed to eat.
And, you know, maybe you have to wash your laundry once a month because that's plenty for someone like you, etc, etc.
If you think you're going to get the largesse of a utopian state without all those strings attached, you are one deluded fool.
Yeah, and you're going to lose that then you think about how much necessity is required to set you on your feet like if the responsibility for your own satiation was lifted off you by an arbitrary other.
You'd have nothing left to occupy yourself with.
It would be the despair of satiation.
And that's basically, you know, endless cookies and pornography, like in the Dostoevskian dystopian vision.
That's exactly what he foresaw.
You know, and he knew that people would destroy that in a second because it was so insufficient.
We just smash up a utopia, a hedonic utopia, if it was ever delivered to us.
Yes, yes.
There would be strings attached.
Jordan, then you would experience the unitary force underlying all apparent separateness.
Jordan Peterson, I've got to offer you this.
I have to stream my live show now, which I can happily do with you, or we can cease our ongoing free-flowing conversation.
It's up to you.
I believe that I have a number of people in Amsterdam, which is where I am now, that I'm meeting for dinner, a number of comedians and other such creatures.
I have a very nice crew of people around me.
Now, I'm so fortunate because that happens pretty much wherever I go, you know, and that's a hell of a privilege, that's for sure.
So, yeah, well, maybe just to close, you know that the art conference is occurring right away, the 30th, 31st of October, the 1st of November.
We still have the public event on November 1st.
I'm going to be speaking at the O2 with Jonathan Paggio, who's the deepest religious thinker I ever met, a real Old Testament prophet, Paggio, with Bjorn Lomborg, who's a brilliant environmentalist, and with Douglas Murray, who's witty beyond belief.
Very strong advocate for the, what would you say, for the non-tyrannical advantages of the patriarchal West.
Let's put it that way.
And we're going to discuss the subsidiary vision and the distribution of responsibility and invite people to come on board with their own responsibility, right?
Because this model of leadership is something like Get out there and do what you need to do.
Don't be waiting around for direction from the top other than the direction that says, look buddy, it's on you.
And you want that, and you should want that, and you should understand that as As good as it can possibly get.
And so we're running this experiment to see if we can provide a compelling positive vision of the future, not a zero-sum Malthusian utopian nightmare, which is what we seem to be being terrified with non-stop as the only viable pathway forward.
Jesus!
Brutal!
It's got to stop, you know, and I would say in that optimism, there's a kind of courage.
It's not naivety.
I know that the world can be a terrible place, a place of brutal tragedy and malevolence, but That you can know that and you can see it and you can still have the courage to put forward a vision of abundance and opportunity and to try to make that a reality by retooling the limited precepts that are what constraining you in your attempts to move and everyone else in their attempts to move forward in life.
We don't need that.
And the pathway out is truth and responsibility.
There's more, but that's a good start.
We will do everything we can to support and assure the success of this beautiful project.
I only wish that I could join you there.
We'll post the link in the description now and we'll do everything we can to support that.
Jordan, thank you as always for being so generous with your time and the almost limitless breadth of your thought which I understand
now better than before since you told me about the manner in which you've studied and
I can see how important that is to a kind of a fractal version of
reality and indeed discourse and the impact that you've made with that is you know speaks for its speaks for itself
and is also Shouted down pretty efficiently as well in some quarters.
Thanks for joining us doctor Hey, it's always a pleasure to talk to you Russell, and I'm
looking forward to when we speak again Yeah, I want to see you in the car.
Hopefully we'll get together when you're over, even if it is in some clandestine vestibule with me in some kind of shroud.
Maybe not that!
Perhaps I'll cross-dress.
Yeah.
All right, Russell.
Good to talk to you, man.
Thank you.
Give my love to Tammy and thank you once again.
Thank you.
You can visit Arkforum.com to find out more about what Jordan Peterson's doing here in the UK at the moment.
Thanks for watching this Arkforum News video.
Now, here's the f***ing news.
Good news!
There's not gonna be a nuclear war because Putin will never use nuclear weapons.
How do I know?
Because Joe Biden told me so.
Do you feel reassured?
Do ya?
Do ya feel reassured?
Who knows what Vladimir Putin might do?
He's certainly shown NATO that if you provoke him, crossing line after line, he will engage in war, like the one in Ukraine, that we were told would be short and simple.
And at the beginning, do you remember Joe Biden said, oh, we would never put troops on the ground because that would mean World War 3?
Do you remember that?
Do you remember that bit?
Or did you switch off because there were so many crises going on, so much lies, so much Misinformation being censored, some of which is accurate information, truthful information, that you actually, almost by accident, became an obedient little prisoner of the state rather than recognizing that it is your opponent and you have to participate in revolution right now.
Now let's get into this story.
What do you think's a greater risk to your life and the life of your loved ones?
Is it Nuclear war and let me remind you there's a war between Ukraine and Russia that's perhaps a proxy war between the United States and Russia.
There are escalating tensions between China and the United States of America.
Both of those combatants, all combatants in there, have access to nuclear weapons and if that weren't enough tensions in the Middle East continue to escalate and now are likely to involve Iran as well as Israel and they all have nuclear weapons.
But, also though, are you more worried about climate change?
Because some people are, because I'll tell you why, because climate change means you can be put in a 15 minute city and only allowed a certain number of flights per year and you can only buy this number of items of clothing.
They're looking at ways to control you and pretending they're trying to help you.
Is that bad?
Basically what's going on.
Let me know in the chat.
Let's have a look at Joe Biden.
Reassuring all of us as he's done so many times that there's not going to be a nuclear war because Putin won't use nuclear weapons based on what?
Insight?
Is this the same sort of integrity and insight you used to get your son that job at Burisma?
I hope so.
We've seen more disarray with Russian generals, most recently with the firing of a general who criticized the defense ministry.
Does this raise any new concerns about Putin potentially doing more drastic things regarding Ukraine, like nuclear weapons, or potentially against the U.S., like election interference?
Like those two are the same thing.
Oh no, they're sending over a uranium-tipped bit of election interference!
Well, first of all, they've already interfered in American elections.
So that would not be anything new.
Well, that's not true.
It's been disproved.
Steele dossier been disproved.
They did that last time they tried to.
No, no, just lies.
Do you know what I think's behind that?
It's like, why wouldn't people vote for us?
We're so great, we're so kind, we're so nice.
It's a sort of mad hubris that the only reason people would consider voting for anyone else... Tell me!
Did you vote for Joe Biden?
If not, why not?
What is it?
Are you a racist?
Are you mad?
Did a Russian interfere with you?
I was just about to vote for Joe Biden, and then all of a sudden, along came Dostoevsky!
Put me hand over here!
I don't think there's any real prospect, you never know, of Putin using nuclear weapons.
Not only has the West, but China and the rest of the world have said, don't go there.
Don't go there.
Ah, don't go there.
Don't go there.
Well, that's the end of that then.
Let's get on with provoking China and seeing if we can get this conflagration in the Middle East stoked up to fever pitch.
Anyway, who's got time to worry about nuclear wars?
Is the climate changed a bit?
Is it different than it used to be?
Now listen, I'm not a climate change denier.
I love the planet.
I love each nation.
I love every single one of you awakened wonders.
What I will say is, how is this crisis being utilised?
What are they going to suggest?
Once I've established climate change, what's it going to be now?
And that's why all of these massive organisations and these powerful institutions are going to be heavily regulated.
Or is it going to be you?
Stay indoors.
Does the president stand by that comment?
Absolutely he does.
Climate change is an existential threat.
It can, you know, it actually threatens and is capable of wiping out all human life on earth over time.
He said it was more frightening than a nuclear war.
Is that, it's more frightening than a nuclear war in this moment?
The president believes wholeheartedly that climate change is an existential threat to all of human life on the planet.
He seems to have changed his opinion from last year because that's when he said this.
At a private Manhattan fundraiser one year ago this month, President Joe Biden shared an assessment that he had not told the public.
From his vantage point, Biden told the room of Democratic Party donors the world faces the prospect of Armageddon for the first time since Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis.
But to be fair, Joe Biden could have forgotten that he said that.
At the time, Biden was referring to the conflict in Ukraine.
Oh, the heady days when there was only one potential nuclear war threat.
Do you remember that?
You know, when we were kids, there was just one possibility of nuclear war.
Now, Daddy, everywhere we look, there could be a nuclear war.
That's right, son.
It's called progress.
Thank you, Joe Biden!
Thank you!
Which had just intensified with the bombing of the Nord Stream pipelines.
Ah, the Nord Stream pipelines.
Remember those guys?
Remember that bit of propaganda?
Who could possibly have bombed those pipelines?
Do you remember what the answer was?
Putin.
Putin!
But doesn't he need those pipelines for his whole business model?
That guy's crazy.
And I'll tell you this, he will, hold on a minute, won't now use nuclear weapons.
Phew, dodged a bullet there.
Hopefully we can dodge these missiles.
And Russia's declared annexations of four Ukrainian regions.
Despite noting the dangers of a proxy war against Russia, the world's other top nuclear power, Biden has nonetheless pursued the higher priority of enforcing US hegemony by attempting to weaken it.
Accordingly, Biden has continued the proxy war with a signature policy of flooding Ukraine with weapons, encouraging a failed counter-offensive, and blocking diplomatic off-ramps.
When you hear it described like that, it doesn't seem like a very good idea, does it?
Like, especially the bit where the off-ramps are being blocked.
That would seem to be our best opportunity of evading and avoiding Armageddon.
The deterioration of nuclear arms treaties, especially within the context of the war in Ukraine, presents worrying trends not seen in generations as Washington and Moscow are one step away from direct conflict.
The doomsday clock now stands at 90 seconds to midnight, the closest to global catastrophe it's ever been, according to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
It's a shame we've even got a doomsday clock.
Could we set it back for summertime?
Don't move that thing forward!
We've only got 90 seconds!
But the farmers!
The Russian Duma has advanced plans to withdraw ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, citing the need to restore parity with the US, which has yet to ratify the decade-old treaty.
While the decision to withdraw ratification will not be as damaging as America's unilateral withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in 2002 and 2019 respectively, it serves as another reminder that attention must be directed towards addressing an increased nuclear threat.
Especially as war rages in Ukraine.
The U.S.
must lead by example.
Like ratifying the CTBT when it comes to international treaties it expects other countries to abide by.
I'd like you to abide by this treaty.
Will you be abiding by this treaty?
That's your treaty.
Keep that treaty away from me!
And why don't you sign that treaty, you warmonger?
Unsurprisingly, following Russian President Vladimir Putin's comments on the subject earlier this month at the Valdai International Discussion Club... Discussion Club?
A bit relaxed... Oh, welcome!
Sit down!
Let's have a discussion.
Would you like to die in a nuclear war?
No, I'd prefer to live peacefully in a kind of democracy.
Vetoed!
The legislative process for de-ratification began at pace.
That's what they're doing at the old discussion club.
And now, let's not ratify any peace treaties.
I love this discussion club.
More wine?
Yes, please.
Tastes a bit radioactive.
Small price to pay.
Down the hatch?
Actually, we should get down the hatch because... Oh yes, bloody hell, another mushroom cloud.
Officials have clarified that, present, Moscow does not see a need to resume nuclear tests, even if Russia were to withdraw.
Is it me, or does the future feel more insecure and uncertain?
Wars, pandemics, lies, trickery.
My cats keep having kittens.
The last one's personal.
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precious metals literally made in stars. The CTBT adopted in 1996 by the United
Nations General Assembly and ratified by 174 countries prohibits nuclear weapons
tests or explosions anywhere in the world.
Reasonable.
The treaty has never officially entered into force, so several states have not signed or completed the process of ratification.
Let's see which ones.
And whether this list includes the people that you'd really, really want to sign that treaty.
Here goes.
Haven't read it yet.
China?
Mm-mm.
I'd like them to sign it.
India?
Yes, please.
Especially because the next one is Pakistan.
Ooh.
Egypt?
Oh, would you?
Iran?
Oh, God.
North Korea?
Oh, it's getting worse.
Israel?
And finally, dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun, the United States.
Do you notice that all the people that ain't signed it are people that you most want to sign it, who are most likely to be involved in a nuclear conflict?
What a coincidence.
Nevertheless, the CTBT is one of the most successful agreements in the long history of nuclear arms control and non-proliferation.
Well, watch this space!
Without the option to conduct nuclear tests, it is more difficult, although not impossible, for states to develop, prove, and field new warhead designs, notes Darrell G. Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association.
In part due to Russia's war in Ukraine, Moscow has increased reliance on its nuclear arsenal in an attempt to deter escalations as its conventional forces have encountered stiff resistance by Ukrainian fighters heavily backed by American and European financial and military support.
Indeed, there have been several So still climate change?
I mean, you know, remember that news broadcast, what's gonna kill you first?
I mean, is this where we are now?
What do you want to die of?
Choose your poison?
as its existential interest in Ukraine, ultimately with nuclear force if necessary.
So still climate change?
I mean, you know, remember that news broadcast, what's going to kill you first?
I mean, is this where we are now?
What do you want to die of?
Choose your poison?
It looks like Vladimir Putin does have nuclear weapons and has said he will use nuclear weapons
and has shown that he will respond to red lines being crossed by increasing military
activity and we are continuing to increase military activity.
So, I don't know which one's gonna kill you first, but I wouldn't bother recycling.
Not to be outdone by their Russian colleagues, commentators in the US and Europe appear comfortable calling Moscow's bluff and encouraging an array of options for the intensification of the conflict.
While American and European commentators have proven right thus far, and no nuclear escalation has occurred, the greatest tragedy is that the day after they are proven wrong, there will be nobody left to tell.
Yes, that's the nature of Armageddon.
We believe there will not be a nu... Wait a minute.
Nope.
We still... Oh, wait a minute.
We don't think... We are a hundred... Ninety percent?
Fifty percent?
Actually, I'm gonna go into the basement for a couple of months.
Bye!
Following the near-apocalyptic episode remembered as the Cuban Missile Crisis, leaders from the US and the Soviet Union sought to establish mechanisms to prevent once again from being on the doorstep of nuclear annihilation.
Yeah, it's not a good doorstep.
I hope they're not in.
We've come a long way, baby.
We must have nuclear war.
Yes, we must.
Ah, progress.
test ban treaty and by 1985 Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan jointly
stated that nuclear war can never be won and must never be fought. Sensible, those
were the glory days weren't they of Gorbachev and Reagan.
We've come a long way baby. We must have nuclear war. Yes we must. Ah,
progress. Is this what progress means daddy?
It is son, it is.
It is, son.
Now go get yourself a job at Burisma.
You're overqualified, if anything.
Take this gas mask!
The two leaders eventually went on to sign the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which represented the first time the US and USSR agreed to reduce the actual number of nuclear arms.
As strategic stability between the two most heavily equipped nuclear states on Earth continues to deteriorate and the deplorable state of diplomatic relations does not bode well for the return of nuclear treaties, China, Britain and others are seeking to modernize and enhance their nuclear capabilities.
It's also possible that more states may resort to developing their own nuclear arsenals, viewing the possession of such weapons as the only real means of self-defense in an increasingly disorderly world.
Another facet of the apocalypse we've not considered?
Have you not seen The Upside?
What about those guys over in Nuclear Weapons Manufacture?
It's a boon for them and a boom for us.
For its part, the U.S.
is in the process of a two trillion dollar, three decades long initiative to upgrade its nuclear triad and accompanying infrastructure.
A recently published report by the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States paints an alarmist picture of the strategic threat the U.S.
faces in the world today and offers recommendations that will likely produce, fingers crossed, fingers crossed, further instability.
As the Quincy Institute's Bill Hartung recently wrote, astoundingly, the commission argues that these investments are not enough and that the U.S.
should consider building and deploying more nuclear weapons, even as it endorses dangerous and destabilizing steps like returning to the days of multi-warhead land-based missiles while placing nuclear-armed missiles in East Asia.
These steps would only introduce more uncertainty into the calculations of China and Russia, making a nuclear confrontation more likely.
So it's not just in your imagination.
Things are actually getting worse.
Fuel prices are increasing.
Food prices are increasing.
Health is getting worse.
Children are becoming more obese.
Peculiar pandemics.
strange policies and outcomes, and treaties that protected our future are being torn up,
and nations across the world are increasing their nuclear weapons arsenal. Nice little
game now for families to play around the campfire, or maybe nuclear fire, is what
particular mode of death is likely to be the one that destroys your life? A fantastic new board
game from the Bidens! The exorbitant expense that the maintenance and modernization of nuclear
arsenals require, not to mention the otherworldly destruction that their usage entailed, ought to
be reason enough for the leading nuclear nations of the 21st century to work towards managing
relations so as to eschew a new nuclear arms race.
Yeah!
Unfortunately, a return of serious strategic stability discussions in the short term appears to be more wishful thinking.
That doesn't appear to be the direction it's heading in, does it?
With provocation between Ukraine and Russia, escalation with China and Taiwan, more nations becoming enwrapped in the conflict in the Middle East, more bombast, hyperbole, jingoism and terrifying war-like language being used by everyone, more invitations to pick a side and be more incendiary everywhere you look, more censorship, more surveillance, more denial of God, more closure of dissenting voices.
Doesn't look good, does it?
And on top of that, climate change.
We're not even gonna get a chance to enjoy the nuclear apocalypse because it could be a hurricane or an earthquake or a bit more rain or whatever.
Best get yourself locked up in a 15-minute city, get yourself a vaccine passport, shut your little old mouth, mask it just in case, and wait quietly and enjoy a lovely game of What's Gonna Kill You First?
Brought to you by the Bidens.
Maybe, alternatively, you could start supporting independent media, which will become an independent movement as we find new ways to confront this corrupted system, chop the head off this vile serpent and awaken together.
But that's just what I think.
Why don't you tell me what you think in the chat?
See you in a second!
Thank you for choosing Fox Series for this video.
Now, here's the fucking news!
On tomorrow's show, I'll be talking to Edward Dowd, author of Sudden Deaths.
Why is this happening?
It's a subject we won't be discussing in many places, but we'll be discussing in depth here.
Robert Kennedy, in his foreword, uses this interesting quote from Edward Dowd.
He says that in between 2021 and 2022, 60,000 young Americans died.
That's more than died in the Vietnam War.
So in a sense, Was a war waged on American young people in the last three years?
And what was the nature of that war?
And what was it that killed them instead of bullets?
Let me know in the chat.
Become an AwakendWonder, get early access to interviews when we have to pre-record them, on some occasions we do because our guests are all around the world, that's the nature of the thing.
But join us for independent communication, independent thought, to start to examine together how we might move forward, transcend these systems, create something glorious together.
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You're on the arc, baby.
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