The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast XX
[0] Hi, everyone.
[1] I'm pleased to announce the release of my new book, Beyond Order, 12 More Rules for Life.
[2] I've been thinking for quite a while about what I would do to announce this book, and what popped into my mind constantly was that I should start the announcement with a thank you to all my viewers, listeners, and readers and readers.
[3] for the tremendous support that you've shown to my work in all of its forms and for the multitude of kind and thoughtful and often erudite and moving letters that you've sent to me and to my family and comments that you've left on YouTube and other forms of social media.
[4] I've been constantly amazed.
[5] And I mean constantly, and I mean amazed by the volume of correspondence that has come my way and by the continual support I've received from so many people.
[6] And so I'm pleased to have been of use.
[7] I'm pleased that people found my last book, Twelve Rules for Life, helpful and engaging.
[8] and I hope very much that the same thing will prove true of this new book.
[9] I'm going to read the 12 rules from this book, and then I'm going to read some excerpts from it so that you can get a sense of the book.
[10] These 12 rules, like the 12 rules in the previous book, were drawn from a longer list of 42 that I published on Quora rule one do not carelessly denigrate social institutions or creative achievement rule two imagine who you could be and then aim single -mindedly at that rule three do not hide unwanted things in the fog Rule 4.
[11] Notice that opportunity lurks where responsibility has been abdicated.
[12] Rule 5.
[13] Do not do what you hate.
[14] Rule 6.
[15] Abandoned ideology.
[16] Rule 7.
[17] Work as hard as you possibly can on at least one thing and see what happens.
[18] rule eight perhaps my favorite try to make one room in your home as beautiful as possible rule nine if old memories still upset you write them down carefully and completely rule ten plan and work diligently to maintain the romance in your relationship rule eleven do not allow yourself to become resentful, deceitful, or arrogant.
[19] And Rule 12, be grateful in spite of your suffering.
[20] Each of these rules is accompanied by an illustration.
[21] As in the case of my previous book, this time the illustrator is Yulia Fogra, and she's done, I think, a lovely job.
[22] We held a competition for the illustrations, and she, Her work was, at least in my opinion, the best of the bunch.
[23] And she's produced these lovely artworks that have a classical fairy tale appeal.
[24] And so I think they add a bit of beauty to the book.
[25] Why Beyond Order?
[26] What is the genesis of that title?
[27] How did you arrive at that title?
[28] As far as I can tell in the world of value.
[29] So let's think about value for a minute.
[30] If you move towards something, you value it.
[31] Otherwise, you wouldn't move towards it.
[32] There's an old joke about the chicken is, why did the chicken cross the road?
[33] And the answer to that is, well, he thought the other side was better.
[34] Well, that's the case, you know.
[35] And in order, we need a gradient of value to organize our action.
[36] And you have to prioritize because you can't do everything at once.
[37] And so you do the thing that's most important, right?
[38] now, now.
[39] And that means you're in a world of importance.
[40] And that's a value.
[41] That's a value world.
[42] And the value world, as far as I can tell, has two broad components.
[43] The Taoists talked about it as yin and yang.
[44] And broadly speaking, it's order and chaos.
[45] And order tends to be represented with masculine symbols and chaos tends to be represented with feminine symbols.
[46] That doesn't mean order is male and chaos is female.
[47] And, you know, I've been pilloried for this, even though it's hardly my proposition.
[48] But the idea of the patriarchy is a symbolic, it's a use of masculine symbolism to represent order.
[49] So, anyways, order is where what happens, order is.
[50] you're in order when what you want to happen happens when you act.
[51] And so that's reassuring because not only do you get what you want, but the fact that you get what you want indicates that your theory about how to get what you want is true.
[52] And every time you fail, you don't get what you want, but you also undermine the validity of the theory that you're using to organize your perceptions and your actions.
[53] That's partly why people don't like to fail because you don't know how far back that can, echo how far down your hierarchy of presuppositions that can echo.
[54] If you're clinically depressed, every minor failure means you're worthless human being.
[55] And you never know when a failure is going to demonstrate that.
[56] You know, it can.
[57] In any case, there's chaos and order.
[58] They're the two great domains.
[59] And you have to contend with chaos because too much of it overwhelms you.
[60] You drown in it.
[61] It's the flood.
[62] And that happens when your life gets beyond you.
[63] And you're somewhere where no matter what you do, nothing you want happens.
[64] It's a domain of terror and pain.
[65] Now, it's also a domain of unlimited possibility.
[66] Because outside of what you know is everything you don't know.
[67] And there's untold riches to be gathered from the domain of everything you don't know.
[68] But that doesn't mean it still needs to be managed.
[69] It's dangerous.
[70] Now, the domain of order is the same way.
[71] It's like, if order becomes too extreme, then everything becomes cramped.
[72] It becomes totalitarian.
[73] And then that starts to pathologize.
[74] That's the dying king.
[75] The king who's dying for lack of the water of life is the old tyrant who can no longer see beyond his own presuppositions.
[76] And so my first book concentrated more on pathologies of chaos.
[77] and the second book more on pathologies of order.
[78] And they're a matched set in that regard insofar as I was successful at doing that.
[79] And, you know, the liberal types, they're very sensitive to pathologies of order.
[80] And the conservative types are very sensitive to pathologies of chaos.
[81] But they're both right.
[82] It's just there's no final solution to that problem.
[83] You're stuck with it.
[84] it's an existential, it's an eternal existential concern.
[85] That's why mythological language is standard across people.
[86] It's no matter who you are, no matter when you live, you always have to deal with the fact that some things escape your competence.
[87] And no matter where you are, no matter who you are, you have to adapt to the fact of the existence of a value structure that's shared across a social group.
[88] It's the fundamental, so those are fundamental constituent elements of human experience.
[89] And we have symbols for them.
[90] And we all understand the symbols.
[91] So, for example, in Pinocchio, this is, I'm not going to go into this because it's too complicated.
[92] But no one balks at a puppet going to the bottom of the ocean and being swallowed by a whale.
[93] Why?
[94] It makes no sense.
[95] There's nothing about that that makes sense.
[96] right it's not it's obviously not an empirical description of the objective world but it's so clearly real that a four -year -old can follow it it's a mystery you know the whale breathes fire in pinocchio it's a dragon and why why is that well we face dragons forever that's what a human being is It's a creature that faces the dragon.
[97] The dragon can burn you to a crisp, but it has what you need.
[98] That's the world.
[99] It'll burn you up, but it has what you need.
[100] And so then the question is, how do you stop from getting burned up and get what you need?
[101] And the answer to that is that you mold yourself into the hero.
[102] And that's a religious story.
[103] And you would say, well, is it true?
[104] And the answer to that is, it depends on what you mean by true.
[105] And, you know, that's a weasel answer in some ways, but it's not.
[106] It's because it's such a deep question that it can't be put forth without discussing the definition of true.
[107] So it's as deep a question as what is true?
[108] Now, you know, it could be that the, I would say that part of the cultural war is a criticism of the motif of the hero.
[109] That's Derrida's fall logocentrism.
[110] Western culture is phallogocentric.
[111] I would say human culture is fell logocentric.
[112] I think Derrida was wrong about that.
[113] It's human culture.
[114] It's man, so to speak, against nature.
[115] Although sometimes it's man against culture, and sometimes it's man against man. It's man against nature, and we triumph as the hero.
[116] And maybe that story isn't true or isn't correct.
[117] But that's us.
[118] And if it isn't correct, well, then we're an evolutionary abortion, because that's who we are.
[119] And I would say, well, before you throw it aside, maybe you should try it.
[120] You don't have a better option anyways.
[121] And there are, what does it mean to try it?
[122] Mostly, I would say it means two things.
[123] It means to practice love.
[124] and that means assume that things are valuable and act according to that assumption and it requires truth which is don't say what you know to be untrue and you know when I tried to unpack the first sentence of Genesis in the context of the broader biblical narrative what appears to be happening is that there's a proposition that God is guided by I love and uses truth to create.
[125] It's something like that.
[126] And maybe love is something like the wish that all being would flourish.
[127] There isn't a better story than that.
[128] What effect do you hope your new book to have?
[129] I know that might seem like a lazy question, but I'm going to keep it broad.
[130] I'd just be interested to hear your thoughts.
[131] What would be a successful effect for this book?
[132] looking back 12 months from now, 24 months from now.
[133] Well, I would like, it would be lovely if it had the same effect on people as the last book appeared to have.
[134] You know, I mean, it's comforting to me to read through my YouTube comments, oddly enough, because that isn't generally a place people would go for comfort.
[135] You know, untold numbers of people have said to me in person, but publicly in that way, that they've put their lives together, at least in some ways.
[136] And you talked about Viktor Frankl.
[137] You know, when I wrote maps of meaning, I said, well, I was interested in malevolence.
[138] I was deeply affected by the accounts I'd read of what happened in the Second World War and in Germany and what happened in Soviet Union and in China, these horror shows that characterized the 20th century.
[139] constrain malevolence and so if you study malevolence you start to understand what the opposite of that is the opposite of malevolence is something like the hero's journey you know and it's it's easy to be cynical about that but well it's not that easy because if you're cynical about that then you undermine your own life and everyone knows this this is the other thing that's so interesting everyone knows this you never teach someone you love to lie you're always appalled if you have a son or daughter you're always appalled if they don't tell the truth you know in the deepest part of your heart that if you don't tell the truth the world falls apart and that's actually true so the new book is beyond order 12 more rules for life we'll flip that in the screen not to be effective Thank you for sending it to me, but I personally like this one more than the first one.
[140] Are you hearing that a lot?
[141] I'm hearing that more than I expected, and I'm happy about that.
[142] I mean, you hope that each thing you do is somewhat better than the last thing you did, if you're fortunate.
[143] And it wasn't obvious to me that I couldn't tell if it was the same quality, worse, better.
[144] I tried to make it better.
[145] And I would say that's the general response so far.
[146] Yay!
[147] It's like Michael Jackson putting out Thriller and then putting out Thriller 2, and Thriller 2 is somehow better.
[148] So, yay for you.
[149] I love it.
[150] Okay.
[151] What we're going to do today is 12 questions with Jordan Peterson to celebrate 12 more rules.
[152] Are you ready?
[153] Everybody always celebrates more rules.
[154] Everybody always celebrates more rules.
[155] I love rules because then I get to break those rules, just like you talked about with the Harry Potter characters, which we're going to get into.
[156] In my last book, in Beyond Order, I talked a fair bit about Harry Potter.
[157] And a lot of the people who'd like to take pot shots at me took pot shots at that because, you know, I don't know, they think Harry Potter's beneath their notice or something.
[158] But, you know, I kind of noticed that J .K. Rowling made several billion dollars building the biggest entertainment enterprise of the decade and rose herself from, you know, single mother status, unemployed single mother status to richer than the queen and then occupied every movie screen for like 10 years.
[159] maybe something's going on there.
[160] Well, these complex characters, they play out mythology.
[161] You know, and so if religion disappears in the culture in general, it pops up in our stories instantly, and that's exactly what's happened in the Marvel universe.
[162] And what happened with Harry?
[163] I mean, you even have Thor, for God's sake.
[164] Thor is a God.
[165] Yeah, yeah.
[166] It's not even subtle.
[167] You can't get rid of these stories.
[168] They come back.
[169] No matter what you do, these stories come back.
[170] So what was J .K. Rowling doing with the, with Harry Potter?
[171] Well, it's the battle between good and evil.
[172] I mean, Voldemort is Satan for all intents and purposes.
[173] Yeah.
[174] So it's the battle between good and evil.
[175] I mean, the second volume in particular is St. George and the dragon.
[176] It's Bilbo and the dragon.
[177] Harry fights a giant snake that's under the castle.
[178] It's the same story as the Lord of the Rings.
[179] And that's the same story as what's the original story?
[180] Hobbit?
[181] Yeah, but far before that.
[182] Well, the oldest story we have of that sort is a mess.
[183] of Tamean creation myth where a god named Marduk attacks a giant dragon named Tiamat.
[184] And that's one of the oldest religious tracts that we have.
[185] It's symbolic of humanity, right?
[186] The human being goes out there and encounters the terrible unknown, often in reptilian form.
[187] And that terrible unknown, well, that's why that terrible unknown is often evil itself.
[188] And so in Christianity, you get this weird intermingling, for example, of the snake in the Garden of Eden with Satan.
[189] It's not obvious why there should be a connection.
[190] Snake?
[191] Satan.
[192] It's like, well, what's the worst snake?
[193] It's not a snake.
[194] It's snakes as such.
[195] Well, it's not snakes as such.
[196] It's predators as such.
[197] Reptillion predators.
[198] Wait a minute.
[199] It's not reptilian predators as such.
[200] It's enemies.
[201] It's human enemies.
[202] It's the enemy in our own soul.
[203] That's the progression of the thought.
[204] It's unbelievably sophisticated.
[205] How does it go from?
[206] Insanely sophisticated.
[207] How does it go from enemies to the enemies in our old?
[208] and our own soul.
[209] Well, who's your worst enemy if it's not you?
[210] Who's your biggest obstacle if it's not you?
[211] And who do you contend with more than anyone else if it's not you?
[212] And to the Harry Potter thing, Harry Potter has a piece of Voldemort in him.
[213] Yes, well, that's the original sin doctrine recreated.
[214] So it's also the case that he can't understand evil without it.
[215] It's also part of what makes him sophisticated, right?
[216] Because he's being touched by it.
[217] Yeah.
[218] So is that what we got to do is just copy the Bible?
[219] We don't have a choice.
[220] Wait, what do you mean by that?
[221] It happens whether we want it to or not.
[222] I mean, the Bible aggregated itself over centuries, right?
[223] I mean, no human being directly oriented that.
[224] It's not something that could happen over thousands and thousands of years.
[225] This is just the greatest hits.
[226] That's one way of thinking about it, yes.
[227] And each one of these hits taps into something.
[228] innate to us.
[229] Yes.
[230] Otherwise, we wouldn't remember it.
[231] We wouldn't have, we wouldn't have conserved it.
[232] It wouldn't stick in our memory.
[233] It wouldn't structure the way we think.
[234] Let's dive into the book because actually so many of the things that we're talking about now are sort of part and parcel to all of the chapters here.
[235] So, so chapter one, and what I really liked about this also is the way you organized it, the new topics, because one of the questions we would get often in the, in the Q &A that you would get is, oh, was there a 13th rule that you couldn't get in the book.
[236] And you actually mentioned this in the book that you had, you had what, about 46 other, was it 46?
[237] 42.
[238] 42.
[239] 42.
[240] You had 42.
[241] Yeah, the same as Douglas Adams's answer to the universe, life, the universe and everything, 42 rules, which was actually a coincidence, but I thought it was comical in the aftermath.
[242] There's 42 rules.
[243] So now I've written about 20, I've written essays about on 24 of them.
[244] How did, when you got to 42, how long did you give it before you said, okay, 42's enough?
[245] Because I know you, you're pretty methodical.
[246] I just did it in an afternoon, the original list of rules.
[247] I was playing on Quora.
[248] I wrote about 40 answers for Quora, something like that, and I really haven't partaken in that forum for a long time now.
[249] I was investigating it, and some kid had asked what you need to know in order to lead a good life or what's most important to know, something like that.
[250] And I thought, well, I'll, you know, take a crack at answering this.
[251] And I made this list of 42 rules.
[252] And it got very popular on Quora, much more popular, typical Pareto Distribution, like that one answer got more views than all of my other answers put together.
[253] And so I thought that was kind of interesting.
[254] You know, I had touched something for some reason.
[255] And out of that, when I was asked by an agent who contacted me, Sally Harding, of, of, of, of, you know, of Cook agency.
[256] She asked me if I was interested in writing something more popular, and I knew that those rules had found an audience, so that seemed to me to be a place to dive in.
[257] So anyways, I've only written about 24 of them.
[258] You know, in the two books, I have them both here.
[259] You can see how they're structured.
[260] Yeah, it's beautiful.
[261] One's white and the other's black.
[262] They make a match set.
[263] You can read each of them independently, and one concentrates the first one, an antidote to chaos, 12 rules for life, an antidote to chaos does concentrate on the consequences of excess uncertainty.
[264] And the second book concentrates more on an excess of order.
[265] Both of those are fundamental existential dangers as far as I'm concerned.
[266] And in this universe of value, in the world of value, there are two major domains.
[267] And one domain is the domain of order.
[268] And you can technically define it.
[269] The domain of order is where you find yourself when what you're doing produces the results you want.
[270] And that's a really tight formulation because it gives you a particular idea of what a place and time is.
[271] A place and time you occupy is at any given moment is the place and time that's defined by your current goal.
[272] And you have a map of value that guides you through the actions that are necessary.
[273] in that domain.
[274] And if the result is what you want, which brings motivation and emotion into the picture, then while you get what you need or want, but you also validate your theory of existence, because it's good enough to produce the results that you desire.
[275] And given that you're fallible and that you don't know everything, you have to use proximal, you have to use proximal truths.
[276] And so something is, it's a pragmatic.
[277] It's a form of philosophical pragmatism.
[278] you're if you make a bridge and it stands up then you know how to make a bridge why because the bridge stood up now maybe you overbuilt it you could have built it more elegantly but it's sufficiently true so that the bridge functions and we're like that we're like engineers we're cobbling together solutions all the time and as long as those solutions work we assume that we're right well that's that's the domain of order the domain of chaos emerges when you lay out a plan and into action and something other than what you wanted emerges.
[279] And sometimes that can be a catastrophe, an absolute catastrophe.
[280] And your brain, our psychophysiological, our psychophysiology is actually adapted to those two domains.
[281] When something unexpected happens, all sorts of emotions and motivations break loose, fight and flight among them, anger among them, gets disinhibited.
[282] Because when you don't know what's happening, you have to prepare for everything.
[283] So you get anxious.
[284] And then you hyper -prepare, which is extremely stressful.
[285] And so the domain of chaos is extremely stressful.
[286] In small doses, it's exhilarating.
[287] And that's because, well, when you're where you don't know what's happening, you have the opportunity to learn and to expand your map.
[288] And so there's always an interplay between the domain of chaos in the domain of order, but they can each pathologize, and the pathologies of uncertainty are more associated with anxiety and nihilism and depression, and where's the pathologies of order are more totalitarian?
[289] And then I would say as well, the liberals, liberal types, the more left -leaning types, are quite sensitive to pathologies of order.
[290] They don't like them.
[291] That's the patriarchy.
[292] The patriarchy is the pathology of order, and it's symbolically.
[293] masculine, something I've been, you know, taken to task for claiming, but the patriarchy itself, the idea of the patriarchy itself is a symbol.
[294] The patriarch is a symbol.
[295] That's why it has such power.
[296] And it's a symbol that refers to the domain of order.
[297] Now, the domain of order is protective as well as oppressive, but when it degenerates, it becomes oppressive.
[298] And I would say it degenerates when it's based on power rather than competence, but it can be based on competence.
[299] You know, the Marxist critics and the politically correct types, they insist that every element of the patriarchy is only a consequence of the imposition of order, forceful imposition of order.
[300] It's all power.
[301] Well, no, no, it's not.
[302] When it degenerates, that's true.
[303] Because, and you can tell that, because the thing is, the domain of order will be upheld by those who inhabit it.
[304] if it's functional.
[305] If you have to use force, that's already an indication that it's become pathological because people aren't playing voluntarily.
[306] So would you say we're in a degenerative cycle right now that the cycle seems more degenerative than, say, a building cycle?
[307] Or you think that that's just the play that's always going on and you have to figure out your role in it?
[308] Well, I think the play is always going on.
[309] And I don't think, like, the antidote to chaos isn't order, and the antidote to order isn't chaos.
[310] The antidote to both is the balancing of them, the active balancing of them.
[311] And that's where you find me. You used to do this a lot.
[312] You would say the balance, the struggle between liberal and conservative.
[313] So people see me doing this all the time.
[314] I always credit it.
[315] Well, Jordan was talking about, he was talking about this.
[316] But so you think that's it.
[317] Well, it's really important.
[318] It's really important to understand that the antidote to chaos in the final analysis can't just be order, because order itself can degenerate.
[319] And so I believe that the antidote is active engagement with the world, honest active engagement with the world, truth.
[320] And I think it's also truth motivated by love, which is a motif that runs through this second book in particular.
[321] And love is the desire for all things to flourish.
[322] You know, in Christ says that you should love your enemies.
[323] And that's an, what does that mean?
[324] And it's really worth thinking about.
[325] You shouldn't wish your enemy's harm in a, like, and what I mean by that is that it would be better for everyone if they would conduct themselves so that they would flourish.
[326] You know, and that doesn't mean you shouldn't defend yourself.
[327] It doesn't mean that soldiers aren't necessary or the police.
[328] It doesn't mean any of that.
[329] It's not a weak need statement.
[330] It means that if you have your, if you have your, if you have yourself pointed in the right direction you don't wish an excess of harm on the world you want it to flourish that's love so you aren't yourself that way and i do believe that that that requires a certain courage because the world is so flawed and so painful there's so much suffering in it that's very difficult to fall in love with it you keep getting bounced off you think this is so terrible that maybe it shouldn't even be but that takes you down a very bad road.
[331] So it's love first, and then truth serves that.
[332] And I do think that's the motif that runs through the Old and New Testaments, the combination of those two things.
[333] Love is the desire that being flourish.
[334] And I do believe that truth serves that.
[335] Well, that's a...
[336] No, please finish your thought.
[337] Well, I also think that people find meaning in that.
[338] And you, you know, you know, you're not.
[339] And you You can, everyone can answer this for themselves.
[340] It's like you have to watch and you have to see where it is that you find the meaning that sustains your life.
[341] And I would say it's certainly not been my experience that people find that in deceit or hatred.
[342] I mean, they may be tempted by that.
[343] They may have their reasons for it.
[344] But everyone is ashamed of that and wishes it could be otherwise, even if they don't know what to do about that.
[345] As you pointed out, I'm going to hold up these books.
[346] So this is the new book, Beyond Order, and it does concentrate on pathologies of structure, and the previous book, which is 12 Rules for Life, an antidote to chaos.
[347] And the underlying presupposition there is that in our phenomenal logical landscape, so that's the world as we experience it, complete with emotions and motivations and dreams.
[348] And so the full range of human experience, including the subjective and the objective, let's say, can broadly be broken into two domains.
[349] And one is the domain of things that are beyond our grasp and reach, and that's the unknown.
[350] The unknown emerges, when the unknown emerges, you tend to experience anxiety.
[351] And then there's the known.
[352] And I define the known very specifically and very carefully.
[353] The known is the place you are when what you're doing, predict, reduces the results you want.
[354] And I say want because that brings motivation and emotion into the game.
[355] So you're motivated to pursue something.
[356] You pursue it and what you want happens.
[357] Not only do you get what you want, but you get validation for the structure that governs your perceptions and your actions.
[358] Now, if you, you know, imagine that you're, you know, you're lonely and you approach a young woman in a social situation, attempting to make some contact with her, you want to alleviate your loneliness, and so you hope you make a good impression, and you tell a joke, let's say, in a relatively awkward manner, and you get rebuffed, then you feel you're no longer where you control.
[359] You're no longer where you exercise control.
[360] And that brings up all sorts of specters immediately.
[361] It's like, well, why were you rebuffed?
[362] Well, maybe all women are to be, despised.
[363] That's one theory.
[364] Maybe there's something deeply wrong with you.
[365] Maybe you're having an off day.
[366] Maybe it wasn't a very good joke.
[367] And so when you don't get what you want, then a landscape of questions emerge, questions emerge, and those questions can resonate through different levels of your identity, from the trivial, oh, I told the joke wrong, to the profound.
[368] There's nothing desirable about me and I'll be alone for the rest of my life.
[369] Now, you asked about identity, and I used the example of a child's game, but I could go through an identity, and so I do this particularly in maps of meaning.
[370] And so, for example, let's say I'm sitting typing, okay, we could decompose my identity.
[371] So at the highest level of resolution, I'm moving my fingers.
[372] And so that could be my identity.
[373] I'm the thing that moves its fingers.
[374] And then at a slightly broader level than that, I'm typing words.
[375] And at a broader level, I'm typing phrases and thinking them up.
[376] sentences and then paragraphs and then chapters and then let's say full papers or books that that's a productive unit so I'm the author of a book or the author of a paper that's an identity but then that's nested inside for me it would be nested inside being a clinical psychologist being a professor being a good citizen and then that's nested inside something that's even broader than that and I would say that that's nested inside a cultural heroism.
[377] And I don't mean that specific to me. I mean that for everyone.
[378] That's the outermost level, whether you're playing out the role of hero or adversary, say, that's the highest possible level of identity.
[379] That's the level at which fundamental morality is adjudicated.
[380] And there isn't really anything beyond.
[381] Outside that, it's beyond us.
[382] It's the transcendent itself.
[383] And you're all of those at any one time.
[384] You're all of those levels of identity.
[385] are all practical, right?
[386] So those are the roles that you're playing in the world.
[387] All of those are a consequence of who you are, but in interplay, like in this situation with the child, all of that's negotiated with other people.
[388] And so if you have a functional identity, you see, if you have a functional identity, when you act it out in the world, then you get what you want and need.
[389] And if an identity doesn't do that, well, then you should, you either retool or your identity, or you retool the world.
[390] Your conception of the world?
[391] Well, if you're retooling your conception of the world, then you're retooling yourself.
[392] No, you can actually, I mean, what a revolutionary does is try to bring the world into alignment with their theory.
[393] Yes, literally.
[394] Well, and we all do that to some degree, because we are practical engineers, you know.
[395] I mean, not only do we perceive the world, but we also interact with it so that it does manifest itself in accordance with our desires.
[396] There's limits, obviously, to how far you can go or how far you should go with that.
[397] You know, and what are the limits?
[398] Well, there's practical limits.
[399] Nature won't do what you want it to unless you're very sophisticated in your application of your knowledge, and other people will object.
[400] So now you might say, well, you should forge forward regardless of their objection.
[401] And, you know, there are circumstances under which that's true.
[402] But generally speaking, that's not a very good idea.
[403] It certainly doesn't make you popular as a child.
[404] And so that brings up one other issue.
[405] I would also say, and I developed this idea quite a bit in the new book, you go from egocentrism as a child, you have to go through this period, where you're socialized as a child and adolescent.
[406] And that really means that you allow your identity to be molded and shaped by the group.
[407] And, you know, you think about how important peers, friends, and peers are to children and adolescents.
[408] You know, your mother will say, when you're a teenager, well, if Johnny jumped off the bridge, would you too?
[409] And you say, well, no. But the real answer is, well, probably if all your friends are there taunting you, you would, in fact, jump off the bridge.
[410] And not only that, generally speaking, you should because it's your duty, it's your developmental duty as a child and a teenager to take your isolated self and turn it into a functioning social unit.
[411] Now, you could say, well, Peterson wants everybody to be a functional social unit, a robot, you know, a cog in the wheel.
[412] And I would say, well, that isn't where development stops.
[413] It has to go through that period before you can emerge as a genuine individual, which means you have to know the rules of the game before you can break them.
[414] But not being able to abide by the rules is not anything like being a genuine creative individual.
[415] Those are not the same thing.
[416] And there's plenty of attempt to confuse the two things because it's much better if you can't follow the rules to view your yourself as an avant -garde revolutionary than as a failure.
[417] And it's not like I don't know that that social molding crushes.
[418] Obviously it crushes.
[419] And everyone feels that.
[420] These are existential problems.
[421] Everyone deals with the tyranny of culture.
[422] And the fact that it does want you to be a certain way and not other ways.
[423] And those ways might not be in keeping with the deepest elements of your nature.
[424] Well, tough luck for you, because you're also the beneficiary of culture.
[425] And so you have to offer it your pound of flesh.
[426] Now, you shouldn't do that at the expense of your soul, but you shouldn't stay an immature child, either.
[427] And so this notion of identity that we're being fed is very, very, it's very thin.
[428] What are we being fed?
[429] Be very specific.
[430] Well, there is the idea, for example, that your identity is whatever you say it is and that everyone else has to go along with.
[431] that?
[432] No, that isn't how it works, partly because no one even knows how to go along with it.
[433] Like, let's say, just for example, that you're a gender non -binary.
[434] Okay, what am I supposed to do about that?
[435] Man, I don't know, I hardly know what to do if the rules are already there.
[436] So let's say, I grow up.
[437] I want to being a heterosexual male.
[438] I want to find a woman, fall in love with her, raise a family, have children, have grandchildren.
[439] That's a game.
[440] I know the rules to it, not well, because everyone's a failure at that.
[441] You know, it's very difficult, but at least you kind of know what the goal is, and so does the person you're with, well, you leap out of that, which is already terribly difficult, you leap out of that into completely unknown territory.
[442] saying that I'm presenting yourself as something other than those categories leaves everyone around you and you completely bereft of direction.
[443] Let me put it in words that I get from your material.
[444] So what I heard you just say, tell me if I'm wrong, is part of the negotiation that we do from the time we are little kids and figuring out that play, we're up on the bridge, we jump maybe because we want to, you know, fit in with our peer group.
[445] It, there is a sense of order to that.
[446] Now, you've been very careful and it would drive me crazy if people respond to this interview as if you have not already illustrated that it is the balance between two opposing forces.
[447] But so we need enough order so that somebody can find their way through the world and that many, I think a big part of the reason that your work has resonated so profoundly with people is there, excuse me, they are left in a world.
[448] where they don't know how to move forward in a way that serves them spiritually, practically as well for sure.
[449] And so, hey, everybody.
[450] Both of those, both of those, practically shades into spiritually as you move up into the broader reaches of identity.
[451] You know, and look, this, see, one of the things I really laid this out in Maps of Meaning, it took me a long time to understand that belief regulated emotion.
[452] So what happens is that if you act out your identity, if you act out your beliefs in the world, and what you want doesn't happen, what happens is that your body defaults into emergency preparation for action.
[453] And the reason for that is you've wandered too far away from the campfire.
[454] And now you're in the forest and maybe you're naked.
[455] And so what do you do then?
[456] And the answer is, well, you don't know what to do?
[457] So what do you do when you don't know what to do?
[458] And the answer is, you prepare to do everything.
[459] And the problem with that is that it's unbelievably draining psychophysiologically.
[460] Like it hurts you.
[461] And there's an immense physiological literature detailing the cost of exactly that kind of response.
[462] And so people need people and animals.
[463] People stay where what they do has the results they want.
[464] That's partly why you want to be around people who share your cultural pre -subpoise.
[465] is because you know that, for example, even in small ways, let's say you're a country music aficionado and you're hanging around with your cowboy -hatted buddies and you throw on a tape and everyone says, great tunes, man, and you know, you're happy about that.
[466] But, you know, you throw on a piece by Chikowsky and you're in a different subculture and who the hell are you?
[467] And the people in your group will say, man, who listens to music like that?
[468] And that's a trivial example in some sense, but I believe it's one that everyone can resonate to.
[469] We like, it's very hard on us not to be where we know what, we know that what we want is going to happen.
[470] We hate that.
[471] We hate that.
[472] And no wonder.
[473] So, and then, you know, there are varying degrees of that, obviously.
[474] you can really be where you don't know what's going to happen or you can only be there to some degree.
[475] But by and large, by and large, we're conservative creatures, even if we're liberal in temperament.
[476] We can't tolerate that much uncertainty.
[477] And you might ask, well, why?
[478] And the answer is, well, because you can be hurt, pain, you can be damaged, you can become intolerably anxious and you can die.
[479] So it's no wonder you're sensitive or very sensitive.
[480] to negative emotion.
[481] And so our identities, functional identity regulates your emotion.
[482] But you do that in concert with other people.
[483] Doing things for other people is actually more rewarding than virtually anything else you can do.
[484] You know, when you hear you should be of service to other people.
[485] Well, if you actually watch yourself, you pay attention to yourself and you do something that helps someone else and it genuinely helps them, I defy you to find.
[486] find another experience that is that satisfying.
[487] It's actually quite stunning how satisfying that is.
[488] And so that's a very useful thing to realize.
[489] Why is helping another person the most satisfying thing for probably most people when they're, if they're out of their ego of like, I want to buy more things to make me happy in this moment.
[490] Why is that such a satisfying thing for human beings?
[491] there's no better strategy for there's no better life strategy i mean imagine i could give you a quick sort of technical example so imagine i take two people and i say okay um i'm going to give you a hundred dollars and you have to give some of it to the person right beside you and they can either agree or disagree with the split but if they disagree you don't get anything okay so So a classical economist would say that the person should take the hundred, offer the person next to them a dollar, and the person should accept it, because why not?
[492] They get a dollar instead of nothing.
[493] And that's the solution.
[494] But what happens is that if you don't offer that other person something close to 50 -50, they're likely to tell you to go to hell.
[495] Yes.
[496] Very.
[497] And then you get nothing.
[498] You get nothing too.
[499] You think, well, why would people do that?
[500] because they just reject $50 and who cares?
[501] And the answer is, well, we don't just play one game with other people.
[502] We play a repeating game.
[503] And so imagine we did this.
[504] So imagine it's a crowd and they're all watching you.
[505] And I offer you $100 and you have to share it with the person next to you.
[506] And you say, would you like to take $70?
[507] And the person says, well, I'm not sure that's fair to you.
[508] But if it's okay, yes.
[509] but then everyone else sees that.
[510] And now they all have an opportunity to pick who they're going to play with next.
[511] Well, you're not going to get picked last, are you?
[512] Remember what you told me you didn't want to get picked last, right?
[513] I did not.
[514] Okay, so what you did was you turned yourself into an athlete.
[515] A machine.
[516] Okay.
[517] Always get to play first.
[518] Okay, great.
[519] So, but imagine we expand that game.
[520] Yes.
[521] And we say, you want to be the person that everyone wants to play with.
[522] Yep.
[523] well then all you have in your whole life is invitations to play well how and how are you going to be that person be productive straightforward generous make everyone else better around you and they're going to want to play with you absolutely so there you go and then you get to play yeah exactly well how is that not the best possible deal it's clearly see so so the reason if if the ethical argument is put properly, it is by far the most compelling argument.
[524] It's like if you want to have everything you could possibly want and more, then be a good person.
[525] The better a person you are, the more likely that is to happen.
[526] That doesn't mean that you're completely protected against getting cut off at the knees.
[527] But there's no better strategy.
[528] That's it.
[529] And you can even think about selfishly, and I talk about this to some degree and beyond order, let's say you, let's say that I, you want to be selfish.
[530] You think that's the best possible strategy.
[531] Why should I care about others?
[532] Okay, let's say you should only act in your own best interest.
[533] Well, then it's like, well, what's your best interest?
[534] Well, what does interest mean and what does you mean?
[535] what's in your best interest your best interest three mysteries what's your what's best what's interest okay well there's you but you aren't just you right now you're you and you tomorrow and you next week and you next month and you in five years and you in 10 years and you when you're a pensioner you're a community of selves stretched across time And so if you were enlightened and selfish, you would act in a manner that would benefit that entire community across time.
[536] And I don't think that's any different than acting on the best possible part for other people.
[537] I think they're the same problem.
[538] So I think as soon as human beings discovered the future, we were no longer singular individuals.
[539] We're instantly each a community.
[540] And then the community ethic prevails.
[541] And the community ethic is, I want to win in a way that makes you win.
[542] That's the best possible victory.
[543] If I win and anyone else wins, then what's the point?
[544] Well, you think it's a zero -sum game.
[545] It's either you or me. Or maybe I want the comparative status.
[546] But I would say even if you want the comparative status, let's say you're motivated by that.
[547] What would confer upon you even hypothetically more status than to be the most popular person while being chosen for games.
[548] I mean, you think about, just think for a second about it, because it struck me that biographical piece.
[549] Alfred Adler, who is the psychologist that I talked to you about earlier, he said one of his claims was that many people have a, like a stark memory that sets the course for their life.
[550] That's true.
[551] A few moments.
[552] And you have exactly that.
[553] So Adlerian psychology would be of great interest to you, I suspect.
[554] But partly you see what happened was you had a true revelation.
[555] You thought, if I'm being picked last, something is wrong.
[556] And that's absolutely right.
[557] It's unbelievably right.
[558] And you played it out first in the athletic domain, but you have to start somewhere.
[559] Right.
[560] So that's a good place to start.
[561] Jockel was telling me when we talked this week, he's this.
[562] tough character man you know and he could have and i'm not telling tales out of school here he could have been a criminal no problem and he knows that perfectly well and i'm not saying yeah i'm not saying that as a slur on his character partly because i believe the nietzsche dictum that a lot of morality is just cowardice whatever he might be he's not a coward and so and just because you obey the laws doesn't mean you're moral just might mean you're afraid in any case so the question is well what socialized this brute well he was taught in the navy seals yeah take care of your team that's your fundamental purpose and he noted and we had a long discussion about this the successful guys man they've you know they've got your back wow right they know that above all yeah and if And if you aspire to a leadership position among those brutes, let's say, and you aren't someone they know to have your back, they're not following.
[563] You're not going to make it.
[564] You're not going to make it.
[565] And so this is why the discussions of power that are so prevalent in modern culture bother me so much.
[566] It's like you think male hierarchies are predicated on power?
[567] You really think that?
[568] they are when they've gone rotten but when they're not rotten that's not what they're predicated on at all the capacity exercise power that's really important you need that it has to be part of you for you to be admirable it's like you could be a badass son of a bitch yes i see that and and that way i'm somewhat intimidated by you and that's actually a testament to your moral virtue, that you have enough force and power to be intimidating.
[569] But then if you can encapsulate that and take that potential for power and harness it to this broader good, well, that's unstoppable.
[570] And a real functional hierarchy, that's what it is.
[571] Your book Strike Accord with me because I see them as a way, especially for a man, as a guide to how.
[572] to be successful as a way to make the most of your life, to develop your life, to take responsibility and all these kind of things.
[573] And one of the things I've seen with men of my age, I'm in my late 30s, I know I look younger, you don't have to say it, but in my late 30s, I see a lot of men struggling with what does it mean to be successful?
[574] When we look at that word success, what does that mean to you and how would you inspire men of my age and younger?
[575] It's too late for you, man. Yeah, it's too late for me. But to actually become a success?
[576] Well, first of all, I think it's really worth thinking about what success means.
[577] And I tried to do that a lot in both the books.
[578] It's really fun to make other people successful.
[579] Like, this is one of the reasons capitalism, I would say, gets a really bad rap.
[580] and an unfair rap, like the people I've known who have been successful in the capitalist enterprise, and a lot of them are entrepreneurs, rather than managers, let's say.
[581] It's just, that's the population I've been exposed to.
[582] And this was the same among the professoriate, for that matter.
[583] One of the great pleasures the people that I've seen who I respect took was in mentoring.
[584] and so don't underestimate the radical satisfaction that's associated with helping other people develop.
[585] One of the reasons that good professors, well, and good businessmen, love to be in the position they're in is because they can identify young people who are promising and open up doors of opportunity to them.
[586] It's really intrinsically motivating.
[587] And so, you know, when you think of capitalism, for example, or success as only a competitive enterprise, that's a real mistake because there's that aspect of it that's there everywhere in every enterprise I've ever seen.
[588] So success, real success means you're successful in a way that makes other people around you successful.
[589] You need both of those.
[590] And that's also really good for your conscience because then you're not working at the expense of anyone else.
[591] Quite the contrary, right?
[592] You're lifting the tide that lifts all boats.
[593] Maybe you're simultaneously elevating your own relative status.
[594] But it's really, it's not unreasonable to put that in as a constraining requirement.
[595] It has to help other people.
[596] Well, it helps you.
[597] And I would say the way we're wired, now some people are more selfish than others, but I would still say human beings are unbelievably social and reciprocal.
[598] That's built into us at an incredibly deep level.
[599] And it can go wrong and we can get cynical and malevolent and bitter and work.
[600] counterpurposes to it, but to be of service to your fellow man, your family members, your broader community, there are virtually no pleasures that compete with that.
[601] So, and so that's partly why it is useful to do a critique of mere materialism, and materialistic satisfactions are pretty fleeting.
[602] They're not non -existent.
[603] But they don't have the deep and lasting satisfaction of, well, of successful mentoring, for example, and the relationships that build out of that.
[604] So I think, I don't think there is any success at all without moral success.
[605] In fact, I think that success without moral success is actually a form of torture.
[606] You know, if you don't, let's say you don't feel you deserve anything because you're, you know that you're being.
[607] You're not being a good person.
[608] And that's your own judgment.
[609] And let's assume that you're accurate.
[610] You're not, because some people will judge themselves far too harshly.
[611] But let's just say, you know, you have reasons to have your conscience bothering you.
[612] And you're not successful.
[613] Well, at least you don't feel the continual injustice of that.
[614] You think, well, I'm a son of a bitch, but I don't have anything.
[615] But then let's say you're successful.
[616] Well, you know that's all you've gotten.
[617] how can that do any and then maybe you have to rationalize constantly to live with it everything you collect around you is nothing but a source of torment and a constant reminder that you're criminal in your fundamental orientation that you've ruined people on your mad scramble to the top Jesus you don't want that like you seriously don't want that and no amount of relative material status is going to even come close to rectifying that.
[618] You want your conscience to be clean, clear.
[619] You want your interpersonal relationships to be honest.
[620] You want to be reliable and dependable.
[621] And if you can add exciting and adventurous to that, so much the better.
[622] But success means, to be successful means to be good.
[623] And you say that successful means to be good.
[624] Isn't that a problem whereby, where in society, particularly our society, where people judge success, they judge it on the acquirement of property, material goods, and possessions.
[625] And therefore, there's that imbalance where someone can be morally good and a fantastic person, but in a materialistic society, seem to be a failure because they haven't acquired a great deal.
[626] Well, that definitely is a problem.
[627] When you have productive people, that's a problem in how the mont, it's a measurement problem in some sense.
[628] you know economic success is generally associated with intelligence and conscientiousness so there is a rough correlation between ability let's say even moral ability and success now i'm not making too much of that but i do know look if you're going to be a successful businessman especially across business person across multiple dimensions multiple enterprises you bloody well better be honest Because it's going to catch up with you, man. And the probability that you're going to be a successful crook multiple times is very, very low.
[629] You can do that, but you have to move constantly.
[630] Right.
[631] So your reputation doesn't keep up with you.
[632] So there is some association between success and moral virtue, thank God.
[633] But it's a rough approximation, and there's plenty of exceptions.
[634] It's very hard for creative people to monetize their productivity, for example.
[635] So you have unrewarded virtue, and that's a flaw of the monetary system.
[636] It means we haven't been able to.
[637] And you might say the same thing applies to such things as our inability to pay homemakers.
[638] Now, why don't we pay homemakers?
[639] Well, it's because what they produce isn't monetizable for 20 years.
[640] And our economic system isn't sophisticated enough to figure out how to pay people for returns that are that, you know, pushed off into the future.
[641] That doesn't make it right, but we don't know how to fix it technically.
[642] I mean, if you're a venture capitalist and you want to invest in something, you want a tenfold return on your investment within a handful of years.
[643] You can't afford to invest over a 20 -year period, and so that makes it really rough on homemakers because we're not sophisticated enough to monetize it.
[644] So it's a measurement problem, but unless you can figure out a better way of doing it, you're stuck with what we've got i gotta ask you how many how many more rules are there overall because it's starting to add up well originally there was a list of 42 i published that on cora i've heard that yes and so in principle there's 18 more but of course you know there's an infinite number of necessary rules uh i don't think i'll publish any more rule books however Yeah, I'm just letting you know, as someone who's trying to abide by the rules, we're doing our best out here, and we're glad that there's more, but it's also, it's a lot to do, you know, it's a lot.
[645] Yeah, yeah, well, and you can only beat the same horse so many times.
[646] Yeah, well, I don't think that's actually a saying, but now I've invented it.
[647] Well, I've seen, so I grew up in some area, they had a little bit of mild animal cruelty by us growing up, nothing real heavy, but, you know, probably, I'm glad some of it wasn't documented at the time, actually.