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Jan. 8, 2024 - Uncensored - Piers Morgan
47:13
20240108_piers-morgan-uncensored-jordan-peterson-returns
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Piers Morgan Uncensored in Los Angeles 00:01:13
Tonight on Piers Morgan Uncensored in Los Angeles, back with a bang and an unmissable blockbuster interview.
The post office scandal, the Epstein files, the Golden Globes, a massive election year in the UK and the US, wars raging in Israel and Ukraine.
So many big stories, big events, and who better to talk about it than Dr. Jordan Peterson, the man with one of the biggest brains in the world.
Tonight he joins me for the hour and he's uncensored.
This is Piers Morgan Uncensored.
Well good evening from Los Angeles.
Welcome to Piers Morgan Uncensored.
The Golden Globes is one of the biggest nights in the Hollywood calendar.
Stars jetted in last night from across the world and descended on this city in their stretched limousines and sparkling gowns for a glorious celebration of Tinsel Town's top talent, coupled with enthusiastic mutual backslapping on stage.
At least that's the plan.
Ricky Gervais hosted it in 2020 and famously did this.
You'll be pleased to know this is the last time I'm hosting these awards, so I don't care anymore.
Golden Globes Return and Accountability 00:02:38
I'm joking.
I never did.
Come up, accept your little award, thank your agent and your God and f ⁇ off.
Okay?
Well last night after it was taken off air for a year for bad behaviour and a diversity row, the Golden Globes returned just down the road from where I'm sitting and an extraordinary thing happened.
The ceremony was so devoid of the usual political pontificating and virtue signalling sermons, it looks as if Hollywood might finally have got the Ricky Gervais memo.
Even more amazingly, Gervais himself, who's currently running the cancelled culture gauntlet once again for his supposedly unacceptable and distasteful jokes in his new Netflix special Armageddon, actually won a top award for it.
Amid the conflict, disruption and a massive year for elections around the world, maybe 2024 has begun with a suggestion, just a suggestion, that the woke worm is finally turning.
But back in Britain, it's the ordinary people who represent the very best of our communities who are making the news.
And what's happened to the victims of the post office scandal is nothing less than a national outrage.
More than 700 post office branch managers were convicted of false accounting, fraud and theft over a period of six years.
But we now know that was because of faulty software they were forced to install and use.
They did nothing wrong.
They weren't criminals.
Men and women who were often the backbone of their towns and villages, running small businesses that provide an essential service for some of their most vulnerable, were hauled over the coals as fraudsters.
Some were wrongfully sent to prison.
Many were financially ruined.
Marriages broke down.
Many collapsed into addiction and sickness as they lost everything.
Some of them have since died, including four who took their own lives, simply unable to cope with the appalling smear and strain of false convictions hanging over them until the very end.
Yet where is the accountability for this shameful fiasco?
Paula Venels, who was chief executive at the time, wasn't punished for presiding over such a disgrace.
Instead, incredibly, she was awarded one of his country's finest honours, a CBE.
That honour for dishonour should, as Prime Minister Rishi Sunak suggested today, be revoked.
As for Sir Ed Davy, who was postal minister at the time and now leads the Liberal Democrats, well he fobbed off the victims with dismissive letters, saying there'd be no point meeting to discuss it.
This is a man who spends most of his time demanding the resignation of other public figures.
Backlash Against Dishonored Honors 00:03:37
He's done it no fewer than 31 times in the last few years.
It's time for Sir Ed to maybe take his own medicine.
There should also be full and immediate compensation payments to all those who were wrongly accused.
And it shouldn't just come from the British taxpayer.
Vujitsu, the Japanese firm that made the faulty IT system, should be made to pay too.
This was a sickening betrayal of decent, hard-working people, the absolute salt of the earth of this country.
And nothing will ever properly fix the wrong that was done to them.
But it's long over due time that we made a serious and swift attempt to rectify the damage.
Well, who better discuss all these issues and many others facing the world than the author and psychologist, Dr. Jordan Peterson.
Jordan, great to have you back on Uncensored, and may I wish you a very happy new year.
Same to you, Pierce, and thanks for the invitation.
Let me ask you, do you believe in New Year's resolutions?
Do you have any?
Are they pointless?
No, I don't think a vision is ever pointless.
I think it's a good idea.
And the idea of a New Year's resolution is a very ancient idea.
You can trace it all the way back to ancient Mesopotamia.
So it's the death of the old.
That's the old year, often symbolized by an old man, and then the birth of something new.
And you see a conjunction between that and the Christmas celebration as well.
And so when you have the opportunity to start again, you can start fresh.
You can lay a new vision on the world.
And that's how we cope with the world, is by laying a vision on it, consciously or unconsciously.
Better to do it consciously.
So there's any number of reasons for New Year's resolutions.
Do you have any?
Well, I make plans all the time, so I don't specifically have New Year's resolutions per se.
I've built that process of making plans and generating visions into my life for a very, very long time.
We developed software to help people do that.
There's a site called self-authoring.com that helps people elaborate out a future vision, for example.
And so it's something I do on a very regular basis.
The other thing that's happened to you in the last, since we last spoke to each other, is you've become a grandfather again.
A daughter Michaela gave birth to a little boy George.
And there's a lovely picture that our viewers are now seeing of all of you together.
Let me ask you, Jordan, you've spoken a lot about being a father, about parenting.
What's the difference between being a father and a grandfather?
Well, I think what's the colloquial way of dealing with that?
As a grandparent, you have all the pleasures and none of the pitfalls, essentially.
You can stand back farther.
You can be just more pure fun as well, because the primary responsibility for disciplinary interventions, at least in principle, has been devolved to your children.
And then it's very interesting to watch them do that too.
And it's reasonable for you to take a back seat because, well, it's now your children's responsibility to deal with their children.
And you can stand in the background and be good, fun, and wise counsel.
And that's a very good deal.
The interesting thing is what's happening, I think, to the woke world, if you like, which has been a sort of new form of fascism, albeit ironically driven by people who would say fascism is their number one enemy.
Art as Essential Escapism 00:04:38
I watched the Golden Globes last night, for example, an event that was taken off air last year in a row about racial bias and so on in the institution that puts it on.
And it came back on.
Really fascinating to me.
I watched the whole thing for three hours.
No political speeches, no virtue signaling, no grandstanding.
People basically did what Ricky Gervais told them to do three years ago, which is get up, you know, thank your agent and sit down and just celebrate making movies or TV shows.
Is this a sign, Jordan, do you think?
I felt that there is a movement going on now of a real backlash from perhaps a majority that's been silent till now has just said enough.
And that even Hollywood has woken up to the reality that people who watch the movies and TV shows, they don't want to hear this stuff all the time.
Well, we put politics first and foremost, and partly the reason we did that was because any higher aims in some ways collapsed.
I suppose that's part and parcel of the famous death of God.
If what's highest spiritually and transcendentally disappears, then something else steps up to take its place.
And in our society, that's either been a nihilistic bent that's very powerful or politicking in general.
And the problem with that is that you're supposed to render unto Caesar what is Caesar and unto God what is God, gods.
And the mistake that entertainers make is that they regard what they do as mere entertainment.
Hollywood stars and all the people who were involved in producing the narratives that entice and compel us, they're serving a master who's far higher than anything merely political.
And when they bend their art to serve a political master, they distort the higher to the lower to their own detriment.
And people aren't.
So that's the philosophical problem with an artist becoming political.
It's art supersedes politics.
The art should never be subordinated to serve the political because then it gets not only does it get propagandistic, it gets dull and contemptible.
No one cares what a star thinks about Trump, especially when what they have to say about Trump can be said just as coherently by your demented neighbor.
But the fundamental problem is that we don't understand that the story is the thing.
And these artists, movie stars who are so privileged and often so talented and have this wonderful opportunity to shape the culture from which politics is downstream have forgotten how sacred, you might say, their mission truly is.
And some of that's even a false humility.
You know, I suppose many Hollywood stars believe that their luxurious and privileged life isn't paid for by the grueling necessity of having to make a movie, which is more or something like a great adventure.
And so they feel guilty and feel that they have to serve something real.
But the problem with that is, is that, well, who said the political was real, first of all?
And second, there is absolutely nothing wrong with being a profound storyteller.
In fact, apart from being a profound artist and perhaps profound spiritually, I can't think of anything that is more clearly dedicated to the highest possible cause.
And when we forget that, we destroy art and we destroy the people who make it and we undermine our culture.
And it's possible, as you pointed out, given this pullback, let's say, at the Golden Globes, that the storytellers are starting to realize that subordinating their venture to the idiot political, especially a victim-victimizer narrative, which is the lowest form of the political, is counterproductive in every possible way, including financially, hence Disney.
Yeah.
I mean, also, I was struck by the juxtaposition of the globes with the rich and famous turning up and celebrating their art, which is great.
I totally agree with you that the art actually is a great calling.
It's also great escapism when times are difficult.
You know, in the middle of a pandemic and cost of living crisis and wars raging again in Europe and so on, to be able to escape into the world of television or movies is actually really important for people.
It's good for people's mental health.
AI Risks Skewing Election Results 00:15:36
But back in Britain, we've had this dreadful scandal involving people who are not rich and famous.
They're just ordinary, hard-working members of the public who were running little post office branches, delivering the mail to people.
And because of a faulty Japanese computer system, suddenly hundreds and hundreds of them were accused of fraud because the computers were malfunctioning.
And they were, in many cases, put in prison.
They were all given criminal convictions.
Many suffered appalling mental health.
Many lost everything they had.
Four of them committed suicide.
An absolutely appalling scandal.
And yet here we are, 20 years later, with it still unresolved, no accountability.
The woman who ran the post office at the time got honoured for her work, not punished.
The senior politician whose job it was to oversee this was so dismissive that he's now being lambasted by the victims, but remains a leader of a major party in Britain.
And you've got this Japanese company, Fujitsu, who have seen no reason so far to offer any financial compensation to these poor people.
What do you make of that scandal?
Well, the first thing I would say is that the rush that we're all engaged in to automate everything means that we can automate our willful blindness and our stupidity.
And generally, willful blindness and stupidity are in more plentiful supply than wisdom.
And we are in terrible danger of automating tyranny and what, yeah, well, willful blindness is the best way to put it.
No, all these systems that we're developing are essentially equivalent to the unconscious mind.
They're the implicit structures that shape our world.
And you see this making itself manifest everywhere.
So your country, the UK, is completely covered with closed-circuit TV cameras.
We're automating, we're risking automating a kind of tyranny that's absolutely unimaginable.
And the problem with that is that, especially once you get AI involved, you actually don't know what's being automated.
You don't know what biases and errors are being built into the system.
And you're foregoing the possibility that those accused by such systems will be able to hold someone human, capable of suffering for their sins, let's say, responsible for the injustice.
This is an unbelievably major source of current threat.
You know, I've been using ChatGPT and Elon Musk's Grok as research assistants continually over the last few months.
And they're unbelievably intelligent systems and remarkably helpful as research assistants.
It's like having a team of competent master students in multiple disciplines, more or less at your beck and call.
But they also lie constantly.
And they're biased, probably because they've been trained on a surfeite of recent publications.
They're politically biased in a way that's absolutely unconscionable.
And we genuinely risk automating our proclivity towards slavishness and tyranny.
And that's going to become a much worse problem.
It's going to threaten us digitally because our digital identities are already controlled by quasi or half automated machines and it's going to threaten us directly as it did in the case of these postal workers.
So, you know, you know, increasingly you can't move from country to country without going through a facial recognition system.
You know, you're monitored by systems that will increasingly be beyond our understanding and beyond our control.
And we have to step so carefully to put those systems into place properly that it's hardly imaginable.
And we don't have the legal framework even in place now to ensure that that's going to be possible.
Your digital self and mine as well have virtually no protection.
And as you extend yourself out into the virtual world, that is you, just as your reputation can be destroyed virtually.
You're extended now into this virtual space.
And who has ownership over the you that exists in this virtual space is by no means clear.
On the U.S. election, I've been here now for 10 days or so in America.
You can feel the heat building to the Iowa caucuses next week and then New Hampshire primary and so on.
This is the real kind of kickstart for the U.S. election.
I can also feel the temperature on both sides of this debate ratcheting up.
It seems to me that there's no short-term solution to the toxic tribalism that infests not just the American political system, but the UK political system, in fact, political systems everywhere.
What do you feel about that?
What's your sort of prediction for how you think this election may unravel here?
Well, I think the danger of artificial intelligence generated false news skewing the election results is extremely high because you can imagine, and I can't even see how this won't happen, you can imagine the unbelievable utility of a well-timed fake video account of Trump or Biden doing something clearly reprehensible, timed mere hours before an election.
And I see at the moment absolutely no way that we can protect ourselves against such things.
I think for me at a deeper level, the solution to the problem that you're describing is a psychological solution that is inevitable in light of our increased technological power.
People are going to have to understand more consciously that the errors that they propagate morally, the acts of willful blindness, pretending that they're doing something other than they are doing, morally grandstanding, outright lying or avoiding the truth.
With all this technological power at our hands, the cataclysmic consequences of those moral errors are radically magnified.
And I don't see that there's an alternative to that.
As we get better at doing good things faster, we simultaneously get better at doing bad things faster and at a wider scale.
And, you know, I concluded decades ago, and this is partly why I stayed as a psychologist rather than, say, pursuing a political career, is that we've always known in the West that the weight of the world rests on our individual shoulders, right?
The central story of the West is that each person is to take up their cross and carry it uphill, and that that's a divine calling and that the fate of the world in some sense depends on that.
And we're going to see Pierce in the next 30 years.
We're going to see, and it might be a lot faster than that, just exactly how true that is, as the evidence for the world-disrupting consequences of our hypothetically trivial errors start to become increasingly manifest, increasingly and rapidly manifest.
Lay out the underlying archetypal structure of reality, you know, the endless battle between good and evil.
And the most profound commentators on such battle have always concluded that the fundamental line is drawn in the human soul.
And if you want to get the demons of the world under control, you better start with the demons in your own skull.
And if you don't think that's enough to keep you busy, that just means you haven't looked inside with enough, what, courage and perspicacity.
There's plenty of disorder in your own soul to occupy yourself with for the rest of your life.
And this is something we're either going to learn this voluntarily, consciously, and wisely, or we're going to be beat to death by our own stupidity.
And that's going to happen quickly in many, many ways.
You can see it unfolding.
Well, you can see it unfolding around us now.
So two questions on the U.S. election.
Can Donald Trump win?
And would it be a good thing for America and the world if he does win?
Well, I think he can win, assuming that he'll be put on the ballot, as far as I've been able to tell.
And God only knows how reliable the polls are, and generally not very because the questions are usually biased, unconscionably.
He's certainly popular enough to win.
I don't see another candidate emerging on the Republican side at the moment who poses a threat.
There are some interesting people running, that's for sure.
It looks to me like DeSantis is a pretty competent character, and Vivek Ramaswamy is, at minimum, very interesting and bright and quite the disruptive force.
On the Democrat side, you know, Dean Phillips, who almost no one knows about and who the Democrats are doing, what would you say, everything they can to keep it that way.
He's an interesting alternative to Biden.
I don't think Kennedy has a chance, although there are some things about him I like.
I think Trump could win.
Will that be good?
It depends on what he does if he wins.
It depends on the manner in which the victory takes place.
It depends on whether or not the people on the more conservative side of the spectrum are able to extend a welcoming hand to those who are more on the progressive side.
And it certainly depends on whether those on the progressive side are willing to dispense with some of the ideological stupidity that possesses them that is generating an endless sequence of unnecessary culture war.
No, the left in particular has become 100% preoccupied with the most pathological possible political narrative, which is essentially a victim-victimizer story, that you can understand every element of social interaction among humans from marriage upwards to the political in terms of who's got the power, who's the oppressed.
And there's nothing in that but an endless recipe for not only for the most bitter of soul-devouring resentments, but for the application of any form of vengeance imaginable.
I can't imagine this something that possesses the universities as well.
There is nothing more toxic than a victim-victimizer narrative.
And that certainly possesses the radical left in particular to the nth degree.
And there's nothing in that but disaster.
So, you know, it's part and parcel of what we've been discussing.
There's going to be very rapid change, not least on the electoral front in the upcoming year.
And how that goes will depend on how people conduct themselves and ever more so.
So we can pray that we're terrified enough of the potential negative consequences and enticed enough by the potential positive consequences to walk ever more carefully.
We'll see.
Yeah, if you have big toys, you better be a big boy.
And we don't have big toys.
We have giant toys.
And they will stomp us into the ground unless we're wise enough to guide them properly.
You know, the fascinating thing about Trump, for example, is I always say to people, I've known him a long time and know him very well.
He's got the thinnest skin of any person in public life.
He reacts to absolutely everything and goes to DEF CON one in a heartbeat.
But he also has the thickest skin.
He can soak up stuff that would crush any other political figure in history in seconds.
This is a guy facing nearly 100 criminal charges, and yet all that's done is actually make him more popular.
I mean, we are into completely uncharted territory with Trump as a political figure, aren't we?
Well, I don't think the Democrats could have done a better job of keeping the name of Trump alive if they would have planned to do that.
And it's certainly possible that in some ways they did plan to do that, because the scuttlebutt among the political theorists that pass for wise men among the Democrats is that, well, if Trump is the candidate, then Biden can beat him.
It's like, well, not necessarily.
I wouldn't bet the farm on that, although that's probably already occurred.
And, you know, Trump is canny enough to know that in some real way, all publicity is good publicity.
And it's certainly the case that the Democrat persecution of Trump, and I think that's the right term, has kept him alive and has also cast him so perversely in the role of victim that the Democrats themselves are always, what would you say, trumpeting as being allied with.
It's an unbelievably demented move on the strategic side.
You know, my sense was if Biden would have taken a careful look at the Abraham Accords, which he certainly should have, because then we wouldn't be in the situation we're in right now in relationship to Israel, let's say, he could have given Trump a medal, clapped him on the back, said, good job, mate, and maybe he would have ridden off into the sunset.
Now, that would have meant the Democrats would have had to contend with someone like DeSantis, let's say, who's at minimum hyper-competent.
And I don't think that was in the cards.
So instead, they determined to play idiot political games, not like those aren't well known on the Republican side, and they raised Trump from the dead.
And they do that continually.
So, well, so I think personally, and this is just a guess, because what do I know?
I think that the most likely outcome is that Trump is the next president.
That's what it looks like to me.
So I think that's unfortunate.
I think that could be a good idea.
Well, he's so divisive, eh?
That's the problem.
Yeah?
Yeah.
I mean, I, you know, it was interesting because when I did the Celebrity Apprentice, the first series of that back in 2008, I saw Trump across a boardroom table for three hours a night for about six weeks.
And you get to know somebody pretty well, actually, because a lot of it didn't get aired.
If he showed even an ounce of the empathy that he showed to people then, if he showed more of the humor without being vicious, if he showed less of the punching everyone in the face and more of occasionally putting a metaphorical arm around people, I think the perception of Trump would change dramatically.
But he seems to think the only way to be a political leader is to be a kind of swaggering, trash-talking, very aggressive person.
Entrenched Interests Prolong Conflict 00:15:08
And I think that's a shame.
It's a shame for him.
And it's a shame for those like me who see a lot of good in Trump.
He's been, you know, he was very good to me.
When I left America, left CNN, I went back to Britain.
I can count on one hand the number of American people in the business, if you like, who stayed in touch with me.
Trump did.
He rang me quite regularly to check how I was doing.
Could he help?
He didn't need to do that.
So he has got these qualities.
It's just, I don't see much evidence of him as a political leader.
He's taken a different path.
Well, I would say part of that is a consequence of the fact that the radical leftists have given it compassion and empathy a bad name.
You know, and so because Trump is standing against especially the radicals, he's been put in a position where he more or less de facto has to stand against that kind of smothering, quasi-maternal, devouring sympathy that's part and parcel of being allied with the victims.
And so part of that's an ideological problem.
I would also say that I believe that there has been no political figure, certainly in my living memory, with the possible exception of Richard Nixon, who's been vilified more thoroughly and also more falsely than Trump.
And I would point to the idiot conclusion of Russian collusion, especially with regards to the Hunter Biden laptop, as evidence in that regard.
You know, I mean, Trump has no shortage of flaws, let's say, a statement that can be said of all of us.
But apart from vicious criticism with regard to those faults, there has been an absolute surfite of devastating criticism and persecution for faults that are not real.
And, you know, it isn't obvious to me how much a person can take without starting to feel continually embattled.
You know, I've certainly had to fight against the proclivity to cease turning the other cheek, let's say, with regards to those who regard themselves as my enemies.
Because if you're gone after enough, you tend to think that the best defense is a good offense, let's say.
And it's very difficult to plot your way forward against those kinds of odds.
Now, Trump did go into the White House as an outsider, both on the Republican and the Democrat front, and he has faced no shortage of impediments.
And it's a hell of a lot to ask of someone to take all that with good graces.
And he's certainly done better than he might have in that regard.
I mean, he's still in the race, for example.
Now, you might say, well, if you want to be president, you better be the guy that has that kind of largeness of spirit.
And fair enough.
But, you know, let him who is without sin cast the first stone, let's say.
He's an old guy, you know, and he's bombastic.
And he's under a lot of pressure.
And so, And all the lies that have been generated to blacken his name have made him a worse man, at least in his public-facing image, than he might otherwise have been.
And I can't help but see in that also a kind of nefarious underhanded plan.
If you can't defeat your opponent fair and square on the field of vision, let's say, or compassion, then you can do everything you can to back them into a corner and provoke them into doing something reprehensible so that you can blacken their name.
And it's certainly the case that the Democrats have done absolutely everything they possibly could to do that, say, with regard to January 6th, while simultaneously taking no responsibility whatsoever for the widespread rioting that accompanied, for example, the Black Lives Matter movement.
What's your prediction for the UK election?
You've been quite scathing about Sakir Starmer, but the polls show at the moment, certainly, if the election happens in the autumn, it seems likely, that he is heading to some kind of victory.
What do you think that would mean for Britain?
And do the Conservatives have any chances for stopping that.
I think it'll be catastrophic.
I believe that Labour, like the socialist parties in Canada, is absolutely overwhelmed by the diversity, equity, and inclusivity victim-victimizer narrative types.
And that even if Starmer himself has any sense, which I doubt, the probability that his minions will lay waste to the UK is certain in my estimation.
There's so much behind-the-scene tyrannizing going on in the name of hypothetical utopian progress that it's almost unimaginable.
I mean, the CCTVs in the ULES zones are a great example of that.
And everything that's happened in London under Sadiq Khan, who's like poster boy for ideologically addled globalist utopians.
And if the Labour gets in, and I can understand why the citizens of the UK are hungry for a change, if Labour gets in, it's like Venezuela, here we come.
I think it'll be, I think at minimum, the UK will probably manage to overtake Canada as worst performing developed country over the next four decades if they're foolish enough to elect a Labour government.
And that's quite a, that's quite a, what would you say, an opponent to overcome, given the state of our leadership in Canada.
Yeah, it is.
What are your thoughts, Jordan, about the two wars still raging?
Ukraine and Russia, and of course, Israel and its war in Gaza against Hamas.
Well, I think Ukraine is great news for the arms manufacturers and the military-industrial complex.
And that's, I think that's really 90% of the issue right there.
I mean, it's been in their interest, and I say this without cynicism, by the way, it's been in their interest since the demise of the Cold War to insist upon the positioning of Russia as the dire enemy of the West.
I mean, first of all, if you're a military supplier, it's your job to be paranoid and to look for enemies.
And there's some utility in that, right?
I mean, that's part of being wise as serpents, let's say.
But it also means that there's constant pressure from extremely well-heeled individuals, those that run the military-industrial complex, to damn all potential peace accords with faint praise and to constantly agitate on the side of war and preparation thereof.
And the war in Ukraine is a bonanza for the military-industrial complex, and that's a complete bloody catastrophe.
We had a chance, especially in the 90s, and in the 2000s for that matter, to make a long-standing peace with Russia.
Not an easy thing to do, especially in the face of China.
And we burned up that opportunity like the fools that we are.
And here we are with that.
With regards to Israel and Hamas, well, a war occurs when people can't agree, and no one, we certainly can't agree on the facts of the matter at hand with regard to the conflict in Israel.
My sense is, most fundamentally, that it's been hyper-convenient for the radical Islamists, especially those in Iran, to have Hamas and the Palestinians suffer greatly and continually so that they can be a constant goad in the side of Israel and the U.S.
And so we've stepped right into that as well.
What's the solution?
Well, you know, I'd be a fool to offer one, wouldn't I?
Because there's been a plethora of solutions offered with regards to Israel and the Palestinians over the last six decades, and very little progress has been made on that front.
And I think the reason for that is that there are incredibly entrenched interests in whose interest it is to prolong and make as bloody as possible this conflict.
And so there's no hope for peace under those circumstances.
And for the Islamic fundamentalists, so-called Islamic fundamentalists who are fostering the conflict, what's a few hundred thousand or million Palestinian lives?
You know, doesn't hurt them if all those innocent people die.
So that's a dreadful situation.
If I was in Israel's shoes, I suppose I would likely do much the same as they are doing with one possible coda, which is that as Israel becomes more successful on the military front, which is highly likely,
the swing in popular opinion is likely to increasingly go against them because it's a lot easier to trumpet moral virtue by siding with the hypothetical victims than it is to celebrate the accomplishment of the conquerors.
And so I'm afraid that one likely outcome for Israel is that they win militarily but lose strategically.
However, we'll see.
One of the things I'm very happy about, however, and this is really a miracle and it's one that we should be very attentive to, is that despite the rising temperature and costs of this conflict, the Abraham Accords, which established a certain degree of peace between Israel and a number of states who were previously in a state of enmity, that accord has held.
And that's the best news on the geopolitical front that I can think of in the last 50 years.
You know, there is some real possibility still that Israel and its neighbors could enter into a long-standing and productive peace.
And God, we could all pray for that because that would be the best possible outcome for everyone involved.
I'm certain that Iran does not believe that that pathway is in their interest.
And so they're going to do everything they can, not only to foster this war, which is what they have been doing, but also to fund and foment all the protests that have been racking the Western world in support, hypothetical support of Hamas.
Let's end on a more positive note, Jordan.
I could talk to you all day.
In fact, one day I want to do that.
It would be fascinating.
You've got an extraordinary mind and you have such an extraordinary take on all these things.
But let's talk about you and what your plans are for 2024.
I know you've got a tour, you have your academy, and you have a new book.
Yes, I'm finishing up what I think will be two books.
The first one is called We Who Wrestle with God, and it's going to be an analysis of the fundamental stories of the Western world.
And so that really means a biblical analysis.
One book is going to focus on the Old Testament and another, the other on the New Testament.
And I'm finishing those up now.
That'll constitute the content for the tour that my wife and I are going on with some special guests, including Jonathan Pago, that will run from February through May, 51 cities across the United States and then off to Central and South America.
And I'm very much excited about doing that and recording it and releasing those recordings live.
The reason this is so important, Pierce, is because our world depends on stories.
The integrity of our psyches is predicated on the unity and functionality of the stories that guide our perceptions and our emotions.
And our social stability is predicated on the sharing of a universal narrative.
That's what it means for a culture to be united in belief and commitment and conviction.
And for better or worse, the uniting stories of the West are those derived from the Judeo-Christian tradition.
And we've lost contact with them.
We've sawed off the branch that we sit on.
And part of the reason for that is that in some way we never really understood the stories, but were willing to act as if or believe that they were true.
But we're now at a point where, partly because of the conflict between the scientific mind and the religious mind, we not only have to believe, we have to understand.
And what I'm trying to do is to make that understanding possible.
I'm writing as deeply as I can about the stories that guide us, and I hope to bring what I've been privileged to investigate to as wide an audience as possible.
I'm also going to do a gospel seminar with many of the same thinkers that I conducted the Exodus seminar with in April for the same reason.
And so I'm extremely excited about that.
I can't really imagine doing anything more interesting or having a privilege that's greater than having the opportunity to make what I know public during this tour.
As I said, a tour of 50 cities, very extensive.
So, and then in February, I'm doing a soft launch with my daughter of Peterson Academy, which is our attempt to rectify the abysmal situation that modern institutions of higher education have landed themselves in and to provide the opportunity for people all over the world to obtain a high-quality,
general university-level education very efficiently, hopefully enjoyably, and at a low cost.
Launching Peterson Academy 00:03:32
I would say we're going to drop the price of a bachelor's degree by 95%.
And I can't imagine anything being timed better than that, especially in the aftermath of the absolute catastrophe that the presidents of UPenn, MIT, and Harvard have made of their associated institutions.
Yeah, I mean, we haven't touched on that, but just quickly, what was your view of that?
It looked to me like finally the chickens came home to roost with the people that led those colleges who've been basically attacking free speech now for a number of years.
Well, when I watched it, I watched it in jaw-dropped amazement.
I felt, well, this is the testimony in D.C. of the three university presidents.
I thought two things.
I thought it's a complete bloody miracle that these people who've been clamoring for the restriction of free speech on the basis of oppression and harm can't admit that calls for the genocide of Jews, no matter how arguably tangential, don't violate these incredibly restrictive free speech codes, which they themselves have been screeching about like mad harpies for decades.
So that was just a bloody miracle of blind stupidity.
And it was a catastrophe as far as I was concerned that it characterized particularly MIT and Harvard, because those were great places.
And then to ally that with the implicit presumption, as they did, that it was self-evident that the moral stance that those same presidents took would be met with by the general public with nothing but open-armed appreciation was also an indication of absolutely how absolutely demented and self-deluding the universities have become.
And I say that, apart from my financial interest in making Peterson Academy work, let's say, and my moral interest as well.
I say that with no satisfaction whatsoever.
I worked at Harvard for six years and I loved it.
It was a great place.
And the half-wit Pharisees, scribes, and lawyers have wormed their way in with their idiot ideological moralizing and devastated those institutions.
And people like Bill Ackman, who sort of led the charge along with Christopher Ruffo with regard to Claudine Gay, the president of Harvard, they've started to wake up to how deep the rot goes, but they've just barely scraped the surface.
So many of our institutions of higher learning, including those devoted to the hypothetically scientific endeavor, have become corrupted to the point where replacement is likely the only possible way forward.
You know, like, could Harvard find its way once again?
Well, maybe if you did what Elon Musk did when he took over Twitter and fired 95% of the administrators and a fair number of the faculty, but who are you going to get to replace them?
And who's going to do that?
No, parallel institutions are the name of the game now.
And you see that with the University of Austin.
You see it with Ralston College in Savannah.
And that's what we're going to try to do with Peterson Academy.
Parallel Institutions at One Twentieth Price 00:00:45
All the quality at 1 20th the price.
And hopefully a limited amount of ideological moralizing.
We have great professors, man.
We've got 30 professors who've already taped courses.
I love the ambition for this, Jordan.
I've got to leave it there.
I don't want to, but we've run out of time.
Thank you so much for joining me.
A perfect way to start Piers Morgan Uncensored for 2024.
I wish you, as I said, a very happy new year.
All the best with your expanding family.
And I hope to catch up with you again soon.
Thanks, Pierce.
It's always a pleasure to talk to you.
Thanks, Jordan.
Great to see you.
Well, that's it from me.
Whatever you're up to.
Keep it uncensored.
Good night.
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