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Oct. 3, 2023 - Uncensored - Piers Morgan
47:16
20231003_piers-morgan-uncensored-jordan-peterson
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Young Canadian Media Expert 00:15:03
Tonight on Piers Morgan Uncensored, one of the world's most influential and controversial intellectuals in his most revealing interview yet.
Dr. Jordan Peterson one-on-one.
Live from the news building in London, this is Piers Morgan Uncensored.
Good evening from London.
Welcome to Piers Morgan Uncensored.
Jordan Peterson is the closest thing in the world to a rock star intellectual.
His books are overnight smash hits.
Millions watch him online.
His tours pack theatres and arenas across the world.
Tomorrow I'll bring you Jordan and his superstar daughter Michaela together for their first major interview.
Tonight though, it's the big dog, Jordan Peterson, uncensored.
Well I'm joined again by Jordan Peterson.
Jordan, it's been one year.
Can you believe that?
Since you came and sat in my studio and we had what was an extraordinary interview, got very emotional at one part of it.
A, can you believe it's a year?
And what kind of reaction did you have to that interview?
Because some of the clips went so big and everyone was having a view about it.
What was your reaction?
Well, I enjoyed talking to you and I was, I'm never that happy really when I become emotional about something that's being discussed.
And sometimes for me, that's a consequence of not exactly optimal health.
You know, it makes me a little bit more emotionally fragile than I'd like to be.
But by the same token, I wasn't unhappy with it.
I do still hold to my belief that I am addressing a loss, a demoralization among young people and maybe particularly young men and that I don't feel that there's anything inappropriate about that.
And so we touched on that.
And other than that, I was very happy.
I was very happy overall with the interview and with the manner in which people received it.
I was too.
I had an extraordinary reaction just in the streets of London and New York, people coming up to me, wanting to talk about it, wanting to know what I thought of you.
And it made me realize just how wide your influence is and how important you are to so many people, especially actually young men.
How do you feel about that influence and power that you have through that influence over so many young minds?
Well, I hope it's not power, you know, because power is not a good thing.
You have to be a fool to want power.
If it's influence, that's a good thing.
If it's an invitational influence, that's a better thing.
If it is the sort of influence that encourages people to stand up on their own and to help them believe that they can do that and that they should do it and that the world is a lesser place if they don't, then that's a good thing.
And I do think that that's what's happening.
I interviewed Steven Pinker recently and he'd always said for years that we've never had it so good as a planet.
Statistically, whether it was poverty or health or age or whatever it may be, on almost every recordable metric, this is the best time to ever be alive.
And I asked him whether post the pandemic, the war in Ukraine, the cost of living crisis around the world, did he still feel that that held true?
And he said, yes, that actually despite that, this is the best time, actually, in many ways, to ever be alive.
When I read your Twitter feed, which I find fascinating, exciting, challenging, combative, but often quite furious, I get a sense of somebody quite angry with the state of the world.
Is that a fair reflection of your state of mind about the world?
If so, why?
Am I angry?
No, I wouldn't say precisely so.
I'm upset at many things that I see.
I think the net zero move is a travesty in five different dimensions.
I'm absolutely appalled that the globalist utopian elitists would sacrifice the poor to save the planet, especially when there's no evidence whatsoever that they're actually effectively saving the planet, and we could take Germany as a case in point there, and I would say the UK to some degree.
But I'm fundamentally optimistic.
I think that people, I think that human beings can solve any problem that's set in front of them.
This is also another place where I think the apocalyptic utopians have got something seriously wrong.
Like, they basically take a zero-sum approach to economic analysis of the world.
We have finite resources.
There's only room for a certain number of people.
And so, of course, that begs the question of what in your world you're going to do with all those excess people.
And we have to move towards degrowth or there's going to be an apocalypse.
And I think everything about that set of presuppositions is wrong.
We don't live in a zero-sum universe.
The apocalypic outcome that everyone's predicting isn't necessary.
And the more fundamental truth of the matter is that people, if people adopt subsidiary responsibility, and we could get into what that means, and we organize our social hierarchies effectively and generously, we could make the desert bloom.
We can make much out of virtually nothing.
And human beings have that capacity because we can transform cognitively.
And there's no reason to assume at all that we couldn't have more than enough for everyone.
Now, that would mean those who want more for themselves than for other people would have to let go of that essentially power-mad desire and be willing to share and be willing to raise the poor out of poverty.
And of course, doing so decreases the gap between rich and poor, and that's very annoying if you're narcissistic and rich.
What's fascinating, actually, is that whenever I've interviewed you or done your podcast, and I'm feeling it again now, I agree with so much of what you say, but that's not really the point.
I believe that you come from a place of authenticity.
And I think there are other people like that.
Joe Rogan is another one that I watch him.
I don't always agree with him, but I always feel he's authentic in a different way and to a lesser degree, but I think the point's the same.
Someone like Andrew Tate, I could see why he resonates so much with young men in particular, because much of what he says, they feel fills a void in their lives where they feel oppressed as a group of people, and he gives them a sense of empowerment.
So I get that.
And it's interesting that I cite the three of you, because Gavin Newsom, who's the governor of California, and many think may end up being the Democrat nominee for the presidency next year, he said this.
He said, I have a very serious conversation with my eldest daughter about the chat bots on Snapchat.
I really worry about the misinformation, disinformation about what's happening with our country.
But I really worry about these micro-cults that my kids are in.
I say micro-cults because I don't know if there's a better way to describe it.
My son is asking me about Andrew Tate, Jordan Peterson, and then immediately he's talking about Joe Rogan.
And I'm like, here it is, the pathway.
And when I read that, I sort of laughed because I thought, what pathway do you think that is?
That statement was unconsciously comical in four dimensions, which is pretty remarkable achievement as far as I'm concerned.
I mean, first of all, anybody who talks about misinformation and disinformation, that the misinformation and disinformation that other people are spreading, they immediately invalidate themselves as a serious observer in my viewpoint, because they're basically arbitrary censors.
I mean, it's not as if we have some stellar and completely omniscient manner of distinguishing truth from falsehood, which is why we have free speech, so we can hash things out.
And if people are foolish enough to believe that there's some straightforward way of identifying the purveyors of myths and disinformation, which is what the UN insists upon now, then they are in fact identifying themselves as the prime purveyors of such falsehood, I would say.
Then the microcult comment, that's just ridiculously funny, because if you are daft enough to think that Joe Rogan is a microcult, you live in 1995.
Joe Rogan is the most powerful journalist who's ever lived by an order of magnitude.
And if you don't know that, you're just not in the, you're not in the modern world.
And so, and young people are in the modern world, and they know that Joe Rogan isn't a microcult.
And Gavin Newsom might not know that, but that just means that he's anachronistic enough to be deluded.
So that's pretty damn funny.
And then the next part that's funny is that maybe if Newsom had a clue, he'd be curious about why his own children are interested in these microcults and exactly what it is about, let's say, Tate and Rogan and I that are grouped together, even though it's a strange grouping.
I mean, I'm not particularly happy to be grouped with Andrew Tate because I think that there's some elements about what he does that are quite reprehensible, but that we could certainly talk about that.
And so, you know, there should be some curiosity on Newsom's front, trying to figure out why it is that this degree of popularity exists.
And then the pathway comment is also extremely comical.
I tweeted out after that.
It's like, well, yeah, Gavin, you better be careful.
We're coming for your children there, buddy.
We're going to turn your girls into women and your boys into men.
And I know that's a dreadful proposition, but well, you know, it's just so preposterous.
I don't know.
Well, I don't know who he thinks he is in the most fundamental sense.
And that's really something crucial since he's likely going to run for president.
And I don't know what world he thinks he lives in, but he certainly has virtually zero curiosity.
You know, and I should point out as well, Pierce, I have invited many, many, many, many Democrats onto my podcast.
And one has agreed, and that's going to be broadcast soon.
But for years, I've worked, and I have very many contacts with Democrats, by the way.
They're all terrified to come on my podcast.
They won't talk to me.
And so if it is a microcult, at least half the reason for that is that the damn useful idiots on the progressive side, let's say, are too terrified of the woke mob to come out and actually have a conversation.
Uncensored, thanks.
Jordan Peterson has spoken up for him, Battle Russell Brand.
Does he stand by it?
Welcome back to Uncensored and my exclusive interview with Jordan Peterson.
In the next part of our conversation, I start by asking him what it's like living in Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's woke paradise.
Living in Justin Trudeau's Canada, it's a never-ending hallucinogenic surreal dream.
Justin Trudeau's mode of governance is to top each scandal with a bigger scandal.
And he's really good at that.
And you might say, well, what's wrong with Canadians?
And I can tell you what's wrong with Canadians is that Canadians have a very difficult choice to make.
They can either wake up and realize that under the jurisdiction of this preposterous narcissist, we've compromised virtually every institution of integrity in Canada, which is a really bitter pill to swallow, or we can assume that everyone who's pointing that out is some sort of conspiracy theorist.
And it's way easier for Canadians to follow, to swallow the latter story than to actually contend with the true ramifications of the former story.
Now, unfortunately, the former story is true.
So that's okay.
But what is extraordinary?
What's the last time?
What's extraordinary?
I mean, what's extraordinary, right now, you've been ordered, I don't even know if that's the right word to use, to take social media training by a Canadian court, because you posted tweets criticizing the transgender and body positivity movements.
My first question is, do you intend to do this?
Oh, well, I've got all sorts of evil plans on that front.
I mean, at the moment, we've appealed the decision of the court in Canada to allow the college to proceed with their re-education of me.
Now, the re-education, one of the criteria of the re-education program is that I'm required to sit down with a social media expert, whatever the hell that is, because that's not a genuine, that's not a genuine occupation.
I don't even know how you define it.
And I'm supposed to also, as a clinician, be very careful about how I allow myself to be educated, let's say.
I'm supposed to educate myself according to the tenets of scientific investigation, for example, or recognized clinical practice, and social media expert doesn't fit into those categories.
Anyways, I'm supposed to sit down with a social media expert, and then I'm supposed to modify my attitude, however I'm supposed to do that, until they're satisfied that I've changed.
And, you know, that's not that likely, as far as I can tell, because I haven't changed since I was three years old, really, in some core elements.
Jordan, it's also preposterous, isn't it?
I mean, the idea that in a modern democratic society, which Canada purports to be, the idea they take one of its great thinkers, you know, clinical psychologists, like someone who literally is one of the smarter thinkers and brains in the country, and think that they can get a social media expert, whatever that is, to re-educate you about views that you honestly hold about some of the insanity of the gender debate or the insanity of the body positivity debate.
The idea that somehow you're in the wrong and you have to be re-educated, that in a way is a form of fascism, isn't it?
I mean, it's the kind of Nazism that someone like Trudeau would profess to hate most of the world, and yet he's encouraging the demonization of you for challenging the insanity.
It's the world of evil clowns, man.
It's preposterous in the extreme.
Let me ask you about something else sort of vaguely attached to it.
But the Russell Brand scandal, for example, raises a number of issues.
You know, I've felt quite strongly for a while since the Me Too Time's Up campaigns came along.
Not that I had any objection to very bad people getting their comeuppance.
Good, I'm glad they have, but that due process was getting flatlined time after time in these campaigns with particular instances.
And this strikes me as another one, where Russell Brand has been accused by a number of women, anonymously in most cases, of serious allegations, rape and sexual assault and so on.
He's vehemently denied them, and yet he's already being cancelled, left, right, and center by corporations, by politicians Politicians trying to stop tech companies paying him any money and so on and so on.
Offensive Beliefs and Patriarchy 00:14:19
Why are we now doing this to people where they get eviscerated, destroyed, cancelled, ruined, and convicted in the court of public opinion before they ever really get a chance to go through proper legal process?
Well, part of it is, you know, we have people that we admire and that we aspire to be, and sometimes for better or worse, they're often celebrities and we love them, but we kind of hate them too because they're so annoying because they're better than us in many ways and that's why we admire them.
And so on the one hand, we elevate them to a status that we probably shouldn't have elevated them to, but on the other hand, we're pretty damn happy when we can, you know, fling them to the ground and peck off all their feathers, especially if we can do that at no cost to ourselves.
And social media enables that tremendously, because you can generate a mob of accusers and they can be anonymous and you can do that no time flat and you can peck the feathers off someone and you can walk away feeling real good about yourself and you can be happy that you got to express your resentment and bitterness and away you go, and of course, you sacrifice someone for doing that, but it's not you and and that's just fine, and so we're doing that non-stop, and and social media definitely enables that, and that's a huge danger.
So social media enables narcissistic psychopathy, and that's not good, because we've virtualized the world and we put a tremendous amount of power in the hands of narcissistic psychopaths, and so that's the virtual world and that's the world we live in to a large degree now, and so the accuser has all the power, and that's a real technical problem as well as a moral problem, and that's what's happened to Russell.
Now, Russell, you know, I mean, Russell's sexual behavior was exactly the kind of hedonistic nightmare that all the radicalists and progressives are rah-rah-rah-ing about nonstop, except when it comes to visit them at home, let's say.
And he was celebrated for his womanizing, and he's apologized for that, and he stopped drinking, and he stopped taking cocaine, and usually people who engage in licentious and impulsive behavior of the sort that's liable to get you in trouble are extraordinarily intoxicated by alcohol.
at the time of doing it.
So the mere fact that he's, you know, become sober in recent years and also attempted to atone for his sins, is a real plus.
I think it was Nietzsche who said however, that just because you're, you think you're done with your past, doesn't mean your past thinks it's done with you, and that's a dreadful statement, and everyone who's alive should, you know, be set back on their heels by the reality of that.
But but hey, here we are, that's the world we live in, and I'm not so sure that the cancellation that right.
I was gonna ask you on that.
If it turns out though, that these women are telling the truth and he is, and he is demonstrated to be proven to be, a rapist and sexual assault, presumably you would agree that that is despicable and he should be punished for his crimes.
Well, as you said earlier, we have courts for determining that, and what constitutes the truth, especially in retrospect, particularly in the fog of an alcoholic encounter, let's say, is not an easy To determine, and that's why you have to trudge so horribly through the court system to try to make sense out of it.
And of course, then what we do as citizens of a democratic and at least in principle functional society is accept the verdict of the court.
But you don't do that beforehand, and you certainly don't presume that just because someone's accused, it's time to strip them and throw them out into the street.
And the reason you don't do that in part is if that becomes the norm, it will 100% come to visit you and your loved ones.
So, you know, when you attribute to someone else the right to the presumption of innocence and due process, you are simultaneously, absolutely, accruing to yourself that privilege and right.
And we have to remember that because we're all stupid, we're all fools, we all do stupid things.
And so we need careful protection for our own fragility and foolishness.
And presumption of innocence and due process is part of that protective structure.
We sacrifice that at our great peril, even though it's so enjoyable to do so.
Right.
Did you see the Barbie movie?
Not yet.
Not yet.
I plan to see it this week.
I want to see it.
From what you've gleaned about it, read about it, heard about it, it mentions the word patriarchy, I think, a dozen times or something.
Oh, yeah.
There's no doubt the whole theme of the thing is that, you know, you don't really need men anymore.
Women, you can have everything you want without these ghastly people.
And we need to completely dismantle the whole patriarchy and have a matriarchy, right?
Where women run everything and particularly.
Oh, yeah, that'll work.
Run beastly men.
I mean, this war on the patriarchy, what are your thoughts on that?
Well, I would say the online world in many ways is a matriarchy.
And the reason I would say that is because the online world enables female form antisocial behavior.
And females who are antisocial use reputation savaging, bullying, and exclusion to gain their narcissistic pathway forward.
There's a very well-documented psychiatric literature on female antisocial behavior.
And the online world has many of the elements of a matriarchy.
And so, yeah, well, there's the matriarchy for you.
And I mean, I'm not saying it would be worse or better than the patriarchy, although the patriarchy is a foolish concept to begin with because it's such a radical oversimplification.
But the idea that if we just replaced a hierarchy of men with a hierarchy of women or no hierarchy at all, I mean, if you think that, you're so foolish that you should be put in university and educated by people who know what they're talking about.
Of course, we can't do that in the universities anymore either.
So, you know.
I think the most ridiculous.
I started a new university with my daughter.
I remember one recent case.
It was a professor who for 25 years had given a lecture in the use of offensive language.
And as part of the lecture, he used offensive language and he got cancelled for using offensive language.
And at that point, I realized that parody was dead.
Everything was dead.
I mean, in that moment, you couldn't parody that, that a professor teaching how to use offensive language, using examples of offensive language, then is deemed to have offended students so much that he has to get cancelled and lose his job.
I mean, completely insane.
Yeah, well, welcome to the land ruled by the evil clown.
You know that he has ascendance, so to speak, when, as you pointed out, you can't parody it.
It's gone to the point where it is its own parody.
And I see that happening all over.
And part of the way you deal with that, and I mean this most seriously, is you deal with that with a positive sense of humor.
And I can do that when I'm not ill, and I'm feeling much better even than I did last year when we were talking.
And so I can handle it with a bit of a sense of humor now, and you need to do that.
If you lose your sense of humor, in some ways you've been defeated if you lose your sense of humor.
I completely agree.
If we don't continue to laugh, then these joyless, soulless, woke wastrels win because they are joyless.
They don't laugh at anything.
They are offended by absolute laws.
No, and they don't like comedians.
They find comedy offensive.
Well, the moment people find comedy offensive, I find them so offensive, I want nothing to do with them.
Well, you can tell the tyrants they hate two things.
They hate comedians and they hate cars.
That's so true.
Welcome back to a Duncan's special with Dr. Jordan Peterson.
Next up, the biggest question of them all.
I want to talk to you about your new book, We Who Wrestle with God.
A lot of your fans, there's all sorts of Jordan Peterson groups that you can join who debate whether you really believe in God or not.
So let's just get it on the table.
Do you believe in God?
I don't think that's any of, I don't think that's anybody's business.
I think it's the most private question you could ask someone, but then I would say also, what's the right response to that?
By their fruits, you will know them.
How's that?
Well, let me ask you a different question then.
Do you think there is a God?
I'm terrified that there might be, Pierce.
How's that?
And, you know, I'm not trying to be a smartass when I'm making that comment either.
Like, they say it's an Old Testament saying, I believe, that the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom.
And that is actually about as true a statement as you could manage in such a short phrase.
And, you know, people have congratulated me.
I was at the Buckley Institute last night and they were congratulating me on my courage.
And I think, and I said this last night, it's like, you guys don't understand.
It has nothing to do with courage.
I'm just afraid of different things than the people who lie.
And I'm afraid, for example, of what happens when you lose control of your tongue.
And I said that back in 2016 when I first opposed the Canadian government.
And people were, you know, congratulating me.
It's like, well, you're so brave to stand up to the government.
It's like, I'm nowhere near as afraid of the government as I am of what happens when people lose control of their tongue.
I studied totalitarianism for, well, since I was 13 years old, in depth.
And I know what happens when people lose control of their tongue.
What happens is everything goes to hell.
And I don't mean, I mean that metaphysically.
I might even mean it theologically, but you can just say, don't even bother with that.
But what's fascinating is that you're not.
Let's just mean it practically.
But what's interesting is I completely agree with you, by the way.
And you are the most open book of almost anyone I've ever interviewed, right to the point I asked you if you believe in God.
I didn't actually know what you were going to say, but for some reason, you're reluctant to say.
Why are you reluctant?
Well, okay, let's walk along that.
Well, because it's not a well-posed question.
It's too complicated an issue to be dealt with like that.
You step into instant traps just by accepting the question.
So I'll show you what I mean.
So the first thing I would say is, what do you mean by believe?
Like, do you think that a statement about the existence of God is something like a scientific theory?
Do you think it's a list of facts?
Is it a factual question?
Does God exist or not?
Is it a factual question like you're asking about whether a cup on a table exists or a plate on a table, an artifact in a room?
What do you mean by this?
What do you mean by believe?
I'll stake my life on the proposition that God exists.
How's that?
Is that an answer?
That's the right answer.
I would ask you, here's my supplementary.
Do you ever pray?
Always.
Who do you pray to?
The spirit that protects you from hell.
But that many people would say is God.
Hey, sounds good to me.
And so you might say, well, I said I pray always.
So what does that mean?
I'm trying to say the clearest words I can say.
And I do that by paying attention.
I'm listening to the words and feeling them as I move along, thinking, is that a firm foundation in the morass?
Is that a bridge over the abyss?
Is that word the right word?
I do that when I'm writing.
I do that when I'm talking.
And I do that because I don't want to be in the abyss.
And the pathway over the abyss is the truth.
Now, with regards to belief in God, you might say, and I know that you're not particularly religiously inclined.
At least that's the theory.
It's like, well, you have a character, Pierce.
Everyone has a character.
You could say that would be the spirit of Piers Morgan.
And then we might say, well, let's inquire into that spirit.
If you were a hedonist, then the spirit that would be Piers Morgan would be your hedonistic whims.
And that would be your God.
I would say if you're a noble person, then your spirit is something elevated above your mere whims.
And then there's the spirit that's inculcated within you.
It's a consequence, perhaps, of your socialization.
But in a more sophisticated way, it's actually a consequence of the spirit that you've allowed as a consequence of your choices to dwell within you.
And that spirit has a nature.
It might be allied with the truth.
It might be allied with falsehood.
If it's allied with the truth, it's a manifestation of what has been considered traditionally the Logos.
The more you're aligned with the truth, the more your spirit is an avatar of the Logos.
And that's just, it's true.
It's religiously true, as it turns out, but it's also technically true.
It's technically true.
See, I had a debate.
And so I'm making that case in the new book.
Right.
So I had a debate with Richard Dawkins about this, who was a bit disingenuous of me, because he sat with me for a whole show, seemed to enjoy it, thanked me very much for it, and then called me a fool afterwards in some podcast.
I know you've had a few run-ins with him, and it doesn't surprise me.
But what I said to Dawkins was, because I was raised a Catholic, I was given spiritual guidance for several years by Catholic nuns.
And I do believe in God.
And the reason I said to him is that no human brain can really explain to me, or anybody, what was there before nothing.
So if you believe in a Big Bang theory, well, what was there before that?
Because I don't think any human brain has that power to explain or answer that question.
To me, it makes perfect sense there should be some being, entity, something, which is superior to a human brain.
And I would think that someone with your brain would think that too, because there are questions we simply can't answer.
Prayer Moments Before Dying 00:09:28
Okay.
Okay, three things about that.
So the first is that's the argument by design, that things are so complex and sophisticated that that cries out for the hypothesis of something like a creator.
I'm not a big fan of the argument by design.
I can see its advantages, but it isn't the primary argument as far as I'm concerned.
So the Big Bang proponents have a problem because it's a tenet of the Big Bang theory that the laws of physics themselves break down at the point of the singularity, and that would be the point just before the Big Bang.
And when you say the laws of physics, the existence of space and time even, is unknowable prior to the Big Bang, you're basically positing a miracle at the beginning of existence.
And so if you get to have your miracle, there's no reason the religious types can't have theirs.
You might argue about what the miracle needs to be, and I think that's an argument that has to be had.
I don't like the argument by design.
I like the argument by conscience better.
So the argument by conscience, which is another string of classic theological thought, is that something dwells within you that aligns you with the spirit of reality.
And it's the still small voice within that was identified first by the prophet Elijah.
And it was part of a transformation in the religious viewpoint in historical terms that moved the notion of God from something like Baal, B-A-A-L, a nature god, the God of storms and earthquakes, of what would you say, remarkable and awe-inspiring natural phenomena, to the voice within that can, if you attend to it, align you with the structure of reality itself, that internal voice being a manifestation of God.
And I think that's an extremely powerful argument.
And I think it's right.
And I'll tell you something about Dawkins' work that's very interesting.
So Dawkins has pointed out that an organism has to be a microcosm of its environment in order to survive.
And I would say the voice of conscience within us is the most unerring manifestation of the microcosm within.
And I think you can make an extraordinarily powerful biological case for that.
And I've done that in this new book.
So I think Dawkins' argument, I think Dawkins' argument invalidates his epistemology.
Yeah, I agree.
I really believe that.
But what do you think?
I mean, you've had moments in your life in recent years where I would imagine you have faced the prospect of potentially dying.
And in those moments, in those moments, what have you felt and what do you think happens to you?
If you do die, or you had died, what did you imagine might happen to you?
Well, I had lots of moments, moments, years in the last few years where dying would have been an absolute relief.
And had that been accompanied by the complete cessation of my being, I would have been perfectly content with that.
There are things that are far worse than dying.
So if you're only terrified of dying, you've hardly begun to plumb the depths of existential catastrophe.
Death is for you.
You just don't have an imagination.
What could be worse than dying?
Being a prison guard at Auschwitz?
But you'd still be alive, even if you were witnessing horror.
It's not death that the soul that I'm thinking perpetrating it.
Right.
You mean that?
How about being an Auschwitz guard?
How about being an Auschwitz guard who really enjoyed his job?
How about that?
That's worse than death, as far as I'm concerned.
Right.
I mean that.
No, no, I see that you know.
That's hell, man.
Yeah, it's a living hell.
That's hell.
Yeah, I agree.
But do you think there is...
Do you think there's an actual hell, Jordan?
Is there somewhere that people like that go to, which is hell?
Oh, definitely.
Now, what relationship that has to what happens to you when you die, I have no idea.
I mean, I don't think anybody's in a position to speak about what's truly beyond our ken, let's say.
I don't think we understand consciousness at all.
We don't understand time.
We don't understand the relationship between finitude and the infinite landscape that surrounds us.
That's all a great mystery.
And I tend to leave that alone because I try not to speak about things that I can't speak about.
But does hell exist?
It's like study history and see if you can figure it out for yourself.
Does heaven?
There's nothing that's more obvious than that hell exists.
Does heaven exist?
Mao's China was hell.
Right.
So you're talking about hell on earth, but do you believe there's a hell after death?
Like I said, I can't, I don't speculate about such things.
I don't, that's where my ignorance finds its, what would you say?
That's where my knowledge finds its limit.
I'm concerned enough about what I'm doing right now, right here, and leaving the rest of that.
And, you know, so I have to leave it at that.
The hell that I see as a potential on earth is sufficient as a deterrent and it's of sufficient reality.
You know, you can ask, well, is it eternal?
Well, I would say, well, look, all totalitarian states are variants on a theme, let's say.
And that theme persists.
All archetypal stories are eternal.
Everything that happened in the Bible happened and is happening and will continue to happen forever.
It's part of the eternal human story.
It's hyper-real.
And heaven and hell are part of that.
What that means in the final analysis, I don't know.
I mean, you asked, I think you asked in there, you know, hell is real.
Is heaven real?
It's like, well, heaven is as far away from hell as you can get.
That's a good way of thinking about it.
I've spent my whole life trying to determine how you get as far away from being a camp guard at Auschwitz who enjoys his job as possible.
And one of the things I've realized in recent years, for example, is that you are far from that if you're engaging in your interactions with the world in the spirit of voluntary play.
You know, and we're playing during this conversation, and Joe Rogan plays on his podcast all the time.
And if you're in a playful state with your wife, your marriage is optimized.
And the state of play is the opposite of tyranny.
And that's why it says in the Gospels that if you want to enter the kingdom of heaven, you have to become like a little child.
So you want to reinstate that open-eyed, wide-eyed acceptance of life that is the precursor to voluntary play.
You want to develop your character to the point where that's part and parcel of your life on an ongoing basis.
And that's allowing that spirit of the Logos to inhabit you.
That's another way of thinking about it.
And you can certainly aid that with prayer.
People don't understand.
People think of God as the joke is a cosmic butler.
You pray to have your wishes granted.
It's like, he's not a genie.
You want to pray?
It's like, pray about your stupidity.
Here's a prayer that'll work for sure.
You want to see if prayer works?
Here's one.
This will work.
Sit on the edge of your bed.
Ask yourself, what bloody, stupid thing do I continue to do that's making my life more miserable that it has to be, and everyone else's life around me, that I could give up, that I would give up.
But you have to really want the answer.
So you open yourself up in humility to a revelation.
You'll get an answer.
It won't be one you want.
That's how you'll know it's true.
But if you act on it, then your life will improve.
And that's a proper prayer.
That's what you do.
Like in a metaphysical sense, the Christian insistence that you should be aware of your sins, which is in a sense an existential burden, is also the idea that you should attend to your own inadequacies and admit to them because in doing so, you open up the possibility that something better can make itself manifest within you.
And there's no doubt that that's the case.
That's for sure that's true.
But you have to do it in humility.
And you have to be looking.
That's why you're supposed to take the moat out of your own eye instead of worrying about the beam in your neighbor's eyes.
Like, there's something about you that's stupid you could fix.
And God will tell you what it is if you want him to, so to speak.
So as the next, a quick fire round, Jordan Peterson unloads wisdom on some decidedly practical matters, including how often should we be having sex?
Welcome back to the final part of my one-on-one with Jordan Peterson.
Next, I wanted to set the famous psychologist some practical philosophical poses.
I want to end this part of the interview just with you, John, before we bring your daughter in.
My team were curious whether you would be able, actually physically able, to answer questions with just one-word answers.
Because you think about things on such a high intellectual plane.
You're very articulate.
You're very thoughtful about them.
So I just want to throw a few questions at you and just see whether you can.
I'm not saying you have to, I'm just saying can you.
Cats, Military, and Breakfast 00:04:22
Some are straightforward, some a little bit more complex.
But what's one piece of music we should all listen to?
Hank Williams.
Which song?
Any of them?
Love Sick Blues.
Well, the supplementary is why?
Plaintive Truth.
Perfect.
Can money make you happy?
Yes.
Not by itself.
Right.
But having money would make you more happy than not having money.
Money and opportunity are very similar, and if you're wise, having more opportunity can be better.
How many hours of sleep is optimum for the human mind to work properly?
It seems that the about eight, by the looks of things.
Is marriage good for you?
Compared to the alternative.
Is owning a pet a good idea?
Definitely.
Dog or?
Not pugs, though.
Dogs or cats, because I find that cats.
Not pugs.
Anything but a pug.
I've had two, I love pugs.
I've had two cats for two cats for about 10 months, my first pet since I was a teenager.
And I find them to be utter charlatans.
Like whoever gives the most affection gets them.
Whereas my family who have dogs, they're very affectionate to everybody.
They're not disloyal like the cats.
I like dogs and cats, but I prefer cats because they bite you now and then when you don't expect it, and I think that's hilarious.
They're kind of like women that way.
We're talking to you women.
How much sex is optimum?
Per week, per month?
Well, my experience as a clinician, I'll give you a slightly longer answer to this.
My experience as a clinician is that people who are married need to communicate about their daily issues for about 90 minutes a week and they need to spend at least two, they need to have two dates a week minimum to sustain their relationship across time.
Now, you know, it varies with the couple, obviously, but that's 90 minutes of business-like communication to set everything straight and to keep you updated with your partner.
And then you have to spend, you have to have two dates a week to keep the romance in your life alive.
And it's really, really, really important to do that.
And you can do that, but you have to work at it.
And by dates, are you including sex?
So twice a week is optimum.
Depends on how the date goes, man.
You should know that.
Should people go to therapy or can it really screw you up?
Depends on the therapist and why they go.
It can be very, very helpful.
There's no real difference between a therapeutic relationship and a genuine relationship.
And so the question really is, are genuine relationships beneficial to people?
And the answer to that is, of course.
And you might say, well, can you mimic a genuine relationship in a therapy practice?
And the answer is yes.
It's not as good as a marriage if it's a good marriage.
It's maybe not even as good as a great friendship.
But if you lack both of those, then a therapeutic alliance can be extraordinarily helpful.
Now, if your therapist is incautious and poorly trained and foolish and ideologically addled, then it can be a complete bloody nightmare.
But everything's like that, right?
If you go to a surgeon who doesn't know what he's doing, well, you know, he'll cut off the wrong leg, and that's often not a good thing.
Who is the one philosopher we should all read?
Nietzsche.
Breakfast, lunch, or dinner.
What's the most important meal of the day?
Breakfast.
And Admiral McCraven, I don't know if you ever saw this speech, gave a fantastic speech.
He was one of the top military guys in the American military.
And it was basically centered around making your bed.
That the very first thing you should do each day is make your bed because it set a discipline for your day and a purpose and got you going.
What would your advice be for the first thing people should do when they get up?
Open their eyes and look around them.
It's a good thing to do all day: open your damn eyes and see what's right in front of you.
Well, the bed, bed making, bed making duplicates the cosmic order, by the way, right?
Overwhelming Emotions and Fame 00:02:54
Because you make order out of chaos, and that's a good thing to do when you first awaken because you're reenacting the creation of the world in a symbolic manner.
And finally, on this part of the...
Oh, it's a good way to get your day going.
Yeah, it is.
The final part of this section.
What is the best and worst thing about being Jordan Peterson?
The worst?
I'm a bit much, you might say.
I'm sort of running in, I'm running in all directions very rapidly, and so that can be a bit much.
It's hard on people around me.
I'm a bit much, man.
And what's the best thing about you?
The best thing about being me?
Yeah.
It's overwhelming, really.
Well, the deep appreciation that people have for what I've been doing.
It's stunning.
It's soul-destroying, but it's amazing.
Is it not soul-enhancing?
I mean, I feel it when I do interviews with you, the reaction I get from people, just how much you mean to them.
I mean, I can imagine it.
Yeah, well, that's a bit much, you know.
I mean, look, when I go wherever I go, it's so strange, hey, because wherever I go, it's like I have friends there because I walk down the street and people wave at me and, you know, they call up my name.
It's a bit much.
It's amazing.
It's really something, but it's hard to.
It is.
It's hard to.
It's hard to wrap my head around it.
It's very hard to wrap my head around it.
And especially because it happened to me, you know, when I was, well, I didn't, when I was older than 50, it's been quite an adjustment.
I wouldn't say it's one I've made.
And it's an immense responsibility.
And I'm not complaining about that at all.
I'd be a fool to complain, an ungrateful fool.
But it's, you know, it's a strange thing to have far more than you could ever imagine.
What do you mean?
Well, that's my life.
I have far more than I could ever imagine.
I didn't think it was possible.
I mean, you've become somebody who, in the later stage of a life.
Yeah, you did it again.
You got me again, God knows.
Yeah, it's very interesting.
I mean, you are an emotional person.
I know that.
But I think it's also interesting to me what makes you emotional.
And in a way, it's similar to why you were emotional last time I talked to you, is that you are very acutely aware of the influence you now have over so many millions of people.
And I think you feel that responsibility profoundly.
And I think that's what triggers you an emotion.
Yeah, it's gratitude.
Yeah.
It's an emotional.
You know, imagine someone gave you everything you could possibly imagine.
Price One Part Two 00:01:07
And more.
Well, that's the situation I'm in.
And do you find it overwhelming sometimes?
Always.
Always.
Yeah.
I think that's partly what made me ill.
Yeah.
It's an amazing thing, Jordan.
I can't think of a better segue, actually, than to bring in for the next part of this interview your daughter, Michaela, who will have been, I'm sure, watching this and knows you better than anybody.
So we're going to come back and have the second part, which is two Petersons for the price of one.
Terrible thing to inflict on the world.
The full extended interview is available now on the Piers Morgan Uncensored YouTube channel.
And tomorrow we're joined by his daughter Michaela for one of the most fascinating interviews of the year.
Father and daughter.
Both of them hugely influential.
Until then, whatever you're up to, keep it
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