On Claiming Belief in God: Commentary & Discussion with Dennis Prager

[0] Welcome to Season 2, Episode 16 of the Jordan B. Peterson podcast.

[1] I'm Michaela Peterson, Dr. Peterson's daughter and collaborator.

[2] This week's episode is a bit of a continuation of last week's.

[3] If you haven't heard last week's episode, I'd recommend listening to that one first and then listening to this one.

[4] We've combined a commentary on claiming belief in God, and then a discussion with Dennis Prager, both from the May 2019 Prager U .S. Summit.

[5] Dad's a bit upset in this video.

[6] It's because of what's been going on with my mom.

[7] If you've been listening to this podcast, you know we've been dealing with some really serious health issues.

[8] So that's part of the reason for a state of being.

[9] That being said, I hope you enjoy it, and leave just a little bit mind -blown.

[10] I swear I'm always mind -blown around Dad.

[11] It's warped me into the human I am today.

[12] Enjoy.

[13] When we return, Dad's conversation with Dennis Prager.

[14] Please welcome my father, Dr. Jordan B. Peterson.

[15] So, I think I'll tell you.

[16] What I've learned over the last year, I've traveled to about 160 cities since last January with my wife, Tammy, and spoken to about 300 ,000 people at live events.

[17] And so the first thing I learned was that for some reason, I could.

[18] can travel to 160 cities and speak to 300 ,000 people.

[19] And that was a shock in itself, that it's a continual shock that everywhere we go, there's a massive hunger for whatever it is that I happen to be talking about.

[20] And I think about that constantly when I'm discussing, what I'm discussing, with my audiences trying to understand what it is that's driving this.

[21] I do that a variety of ways.

[22] You know, one of the things I do is listen for silence.

[23] If you have 3 ,500 people in an auditorium, and they all fall dead silent, what that means is that you've touched on something that's of universal importance in that moment anyways because it supersedes the topic supersedes anything else that's being considered right it supersedes the desire to shift your position in your chair it supersedes the desire to whisper to your neighbor it it grips your attention completely and forces a silence and it's a very interesting thing to listen for that because you see that people are in the grip of something and then you have to puzzle out what it is that they're in the grip of.

[24] I can tell you some about that.

[25] You know, there's this idea that became very popular in the 1960s.

[26] I just talked to a bishop, a bishop.

[27] Bishop Barron, about a week and a half ago for my YouTube video channel and for my podcast.

[28] And I told him that I was a strange psychologist because I never told my audiences that, and I always speak to individuals in the audience, I never tell someone that they're okay the way they are.

[29] You know, there's this idea that came up in the 60s, that you're okay the way you are.

[30] and well I like that idea very much and I think it's a very bad idea especially when you're talking to young people who are lost and nihilistic and depressed and suffering and aimless and ideologically possessed and prematurely cynical because they're not okay the way they are and if you tell them that they are then they think well this is it that's it that's life it's like I've hit the pinnacle at 18.

[31] I don't know anything about the world.

[32] I haven't contributed anything to it.

[33] But there's no up because I'm okay the way they are, the way I am.

[34] It's like, you're not okay the way you are, especially if you're 18.

[35] You've got 60 years to put yourself together.

[36] And you better, you better be better at the end of that than you were at the beginning or something has gone seriously wrong.

[37] And so it's not an optimistic thing to tell people that they're okay the way they are.

[38] It's a pessimistic thing because what you do is denigrate what they could be for what they are.

[39] And I know that is a terrible idea, technically speaking, from a psychological perspective, because it's who you could be that imbues your life with meaning.

[40] It's not the only thing.

[41] I mean, you have your friends and your family, but they expect something from you too.

[42] They expect the best from you.

[43] They expect a certain amount of improvement, especially if you have children, but even if you are a child, you might expect some improvement from your parents as well.

[44] But that's what you hope for, is you hope that the person can manifest what's best in them.

[45] And if they don't do that, then you're disappointed in them, just like you would be inexorably or are inexorably disappointed in yourself if you don't manifest what's best in you.

[46] And I think that that's very interesting, moral law.

[47] You know, I talk a lot to my audiences about what I believe to be incontrovertible facts.

[48] And I think that the fundamental incontrovertible fact is that life is suffering.

[49] And I think that that's why that's a primarily primary axiom of religious belief in some sense almost regardless of the faith and that life is suffering and everyone knows that although they don't necessarily like to admit it or to talk about it I mean you don't have to scrape beneath the surface very far in someone's life to find a tragedy lurking if the person that you're you you're speaking with doesn't have something pretty awful happening to them right at the moment economically or socially or within their family or physically or mentally the probability that someone they love has a problem of that sort is extraordinarily high and if you happen to be among the fortunate minority for whom that isn't true well all you have to do is wait and it will be true soon enough and sooner than you think and and worse than you imagine.

[50] And so, and everyone knows that.

[51] And so it's easy to understand why people become cynical and bitter and hurt and nihilistic.

[52] I think there's a progression in life.

[53] You know, if you're naive, you think that life will be easy and that people are basically good and then you have some experiences if you're not sheltered too much and that gets taken away from you because you betray yourself or other people betray you or you encounter a tragedy and then your naivety is shattered and the most likely place that you'll go from there is into something approximating cynicism because you don't know the alternative and your initial faith which was not faith but naivety is shattered by the terrible reality of what you encounter.

[54] And then as a cynical person, you're more wise than you are as a naive person.

[55] And that's a strange thing because you're worse in some sense than you were.

[56] You know, you're not as optimistic and you're not as filled with hope and your life is more difficult.

[57] And you're probably harder on other people and with more of a tendency towards cruelty.

[58] And none of that seems positive.

[59] There's a wisdom in cynicism that the naive lack.

[60] But the problem is there that cynicism is not a useful antidote to, let's say, tragedy and malevolence, because there are places that you go past cynicism as you approach wisdom, and it's wisdom that you need in order to fabricate yourself this sort of vessel that will keep you aflux.

[61] during stormy times and so I talked to my audience is about wisdom and I think I tell them other things that I believe to be true it's like well life is difficult and it's tainted by malevolence and it's cast in tragedy and you need something to offset that because otherwise it embitteres you and if you're embittered then you become vengeful and cruel inevitably and then you make everything that's made you worse worse in turn and there's no bottom to that you know as as anyone who's even a moderate student of history soon comes to understand well there's an idea that hell is a bottomless pit and the reason for that is that there's no situation that's so terrible, that there isn't some damn fool thing that some idiot can do that will make it far worse.

[62] And it's reasonably probable that you're that idiot.

[63] And so the question is, what might constitute an alternative to that?

[64] And if there is an alternative, and, you know, I learned a while back, long while back, reading religious mythology mostly, that there is a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of that there, there's a difference between thinking and paying attention and of the two paying attention is much more important it's not the same thing as thinking like when you pay attention you're looking for what you don't know like you you kind of detach yourself and you watch and you listen and you see if things are the way you think they are and you you hope they are because life is easier if if things are the way you think they are but if you find out that they're not and you're paying attention then you can you can weave and you can bob and you can adapt and you can learn and so you have to learn to pay attention and I just ask people when I'm speaking to pay attention to what they already know here's something that everybody knows you know in a world that's consists of suffering and malevolence who is it that you admire or who is it that you don't admire those are the same question if you know who you don't admire, well, then you have a negative model and you can go for the opposite.

[65] And if you know who you admire, well, then you can copy that.

[66] And the instinct for admiration is an instinct for imitation.

[67] And we're very imitative creatures.

[68] And our instinct for admiration is the instinct for imitation.

[69] And what would you call it a deeply biologically and metaphysically rooted guideline to the proper path of life?

[70] A question is, is there a proper path of life?

[71] Well, there's certainly pathways that make things worse.

[72] That's something to know.

[73] You could avoid those.

[74] And if there's something that, if there are pathways that make things worse, then there are the opposite pathways, even though those might not be so clear.

[75] I think that's why we're often so enamored of evil characters in fictional representations is because it's clearer, It's easier, in some sense, to make what constitutes the dark path clearer.

[76] It's easier for people to understand, whereas the path that's positive is murkier and more difficult to ascertain.

[77] But at the very least, you know it's the opposite of that.

[78] You say, well, who do you admire?

[79] Or we could start by who don't you admire?

[80] Well, you don't admire an adult who won't take responsibility for himself or herself and could.

[81] I understand there are people that are so broken and hurt that they need help constantly because they can't take responsibility for themselves, or they can in small ways, but not completely.

[82] But you don't admire someone who won't take responsibility for themselves.

[83] In fact, you have a sense of contempt for that, and if you happen to be that person, then you'll wake up in the middle of the night and berate yourself with what's left of your conscience for failing to undertake your moral duty.

[84] Your intrinsic moral duty.

[85] and you can't escape that, and that's so interesting, no, that you can't escape that.

[86] If you were the creature who could invent your own values, as Nietzsche suggested, as an antidote to the death of God, then you just forgive your transgressions, and you wouldn't suffer the bitter pangs of conscience, but you do, and the reason you do is because you're doing things that are wrong, and you should stop, and you know it, maybe you can't.

[87] And then, well, let's say then the opposite is that you admire someone who can take responsibility for himself or herself.

[88] That's a start.

[89] And then maybe you admire someone even more if they've forged their character sufficiently to move past cynicism so that not only they take responsibility for themselves, but they can take responsibility for their family.

[90] And they're there for the people who love them.

[91] when it's necessary and if you do that then you have something I wouldn't say necessarily to be proud of but at least you have one less thing to upbraid yourself with and that's something and then you can move past that and you can say well maybe if you put yourself together enough carefully enough spoke the truth enough we're courageous enough in spite of the reasons you have not to be, that you could also be someone of benefit to yourself and your family and your community, and you partake in structuring things in a harmonious manner by living in that way.

[92] It's not an individual -focused ethos.

[93] It's an ethos of harmony among levels.

[94] You should do what's good for you, but it has to be what's good for your family at the same time, and it has to be what's good for you and your family and your community at the same time.

[95] And that works musically, you know, it makes all the levels work in harmony.

[96] And you can tell when that's happening.

[97] And this is another thing that's a great utility to know is that when you're in that place where you're acting in the proper manner and you're facing things courageously, and you're speaking the truth, you're imbued with a sense of fundamental meaning.

[98] And that meaning is the antidote to the catastrophe of life.

[99] And it's the antidote psychologically, because you have to have that meaning, because otherwise your life is too dark and too dreadful, and it will corrupt you.

[100] So it's the antidote psychologically.

[101] But it's also the antidote practically, because we're not nothing, us human beings.

[102] You know, they say that we're made in the image of God, and it's hard to say what that means, but it means at least in part to participate in the process of bringing the good into being.

[103] And we can all do that, and the opposite.

[104] And if we accept our responsibility to ourselves and to other people and to our communities, and we lift that load up, then we live lives that are meaningful, and that stops us from being corrupt.

[105] It provides us with a medication against catastrophe, and it also practically improves the world.

[106] That's the other thing.

[107] It's not just psychological.

[108] It's logical.

[109] You can make things worse.

[110] Everyone knows that.

[111] And no doubt you have in many ways.

[112] But you can make things better.

[113] And they actually get better.

[114] And there's a reason for hope.

[115] And there's something to be said to know that you're the sort of creature that can look mortality and catastrophe and malevolence straight in the eye, so to speak.

[116] And nonetheless, stand up and do what's right.

[117] And that all there is in that is good.

[118] And that's what I've been telling people.

[119] Thank you very much.

[120] So everybody, when I never met in person, I never met Jordan Peterson in person.

[121] But I said to him when we met right before lunch, something that is said to me by so many people who meet me for the first time, I feel like I know you.

[122] And that is the highest compliment in effect.

[123] I now understand what a compliment that is when I receive it because I never gave it to somebody before you.

[124] And I have watched you for hours and listened to you and read your book.

[125] And in fact, I didn't just read your book.

[126] I heard your book from you.

[127] so I want to tell you something without embarrassing you but I think I I like to you open your heart and your mind and so do I when I was very young I realized that God or nature had given me what I have called a goodness detector and I knew I always knew when I was in the presence of a good person because that's all I really care about.

[128] I think brains are wildly overrated, wildly.

[129] That's why I think you're not bright if you join Mensa.

[130] Why you would want to announce to the world your IQ is so bizarre to me that I'm sure there are nice people there, but I don't understand it.

[131] But I always picked up that, and I've always been right.

[132] I'm batting a thousand, essentially.

[133] And when I heard you read your book, the passion comes from, I just want to help people lead a better life.

[134] And it's really, it's quite overwhelming.

[135] You didn't just read that book.

[136] I won't say you sang it, but I like that you use music.

[137] I'm very much into music too.

[138] So this is the man that I'm honored to have this dialogue with because everybody knows you're bright, but I know you're good.

[139] So I wanted to state that at the outside.

[140] I have something to say about that.

[141] Good.

[142] That's good.

[143] see I don't think it's true I mean this is why I got motivated to do what I've been doing and I've been doing what I've been doing for I would say since about 1979 in one form or another because things take a long time to generate and one of the things I learned in the early 80s was that people have a great capacity for evil And I didn't really understand that of myself until the early 80s, something like that, after meditating on it for a long time.

[144] And so I would say, it's not that I would never claim to be good.

[145] I think it's dangerous.

[146] But I did become terrified of how terrible I could be.

[147] I mean I became terrified about how terrible human beings could be and that's one thing but it's easy to confuse that with other human beings you know it's a different thing to understand that it's true of yourself I often recommend to my students that they read history as a perpetrator and not as a victim or a hero and people very seldom do that and it's no wonder but I would say perhaps that I became terrified enough from learning what I learned that I tried to avoid the pathways that lead people to the dark places that they go and there's something in that that might approximate good yeah it does approximate good I I would agree with that the parallels between us are so eerie to me that in my book on happiness which came out of 99 I actually have a chapter on the necessity of having a tragic view of life.

[148] And then I hear you speak of like just now, this tragic view of life.

[149] And ironically, if you don't have that, you can't be happy.

[150] So it's just another example of this, that you're getting this message out.

[151] If you want to comment on that, please, if not I'll go on.

[152] I watch you and you're such an intense listener.

[153] I don't know when you're going to react.

[154] Well, there's this old idea.

[155] You all know this idea.

[156] It's an idea that's expressed, for example, in the classic Disney movie, classic Disney movie, which I really like, called Pinocchio.

[157] And you know when Pinocchio is attempting to free himself from the forces that manipulate him as a puppet and to become an autonomous being, He is required to go to the darkest place to find the worst monster and face that voluntarily.

[158] And in doing so, he rescues his father.

[159] And that's a very old idea.

[160] I don't know how old it is.

[161] It's one of the oldest ideas we have in written form, and there's no doubt that in its pre -written form it would be tens of thousands of years older than that.

[162] And it's a very strange idea that you have to journey to the darkest abyss to free the spirit of your father.

[163] But there's a reason for it, and it has to do with the tragic view of life, which is that you can't discover what you're capable of being or withstanding.

[164] And those are the same things.

[165] without, if you hide away from any of the things about life that are terrible but true, and the reason you can't discover who you are without doing that, is that only necessity will force that out of you.

[166] And I mean that from the perspective of learning.

[167] If you go work in a palliative care ward, you'll learn to deal with death.

[168] You'll learn that the psychological strategies necessary, the steps.

[169] You'll become more informed.

[170] But it's deeper than that even.

[171] We know now from a biological perspective that if you put yourself in new situations, in new and challenging situations, that new genes turn on in your nervous system and code for new proteins that produce new neurological structures.

[172] And so you can't even be what you are fully biologically unless you expose.

[173] yourself to everything that you can expose yourself to as you journey through life.

[174] The old idea of a pilgrimage was predicated on that idea, as is walking the in Chart Cathedral.

[175] The labyrinth, the idea that you walk the labyrinth in Shartran, you come to the center, is that you traverse every corner of the world, quarter by quarter, and then you come to the center.

[176] And the center is the center of the church, and it's the center of the crucifixion, it's the center of suffering.

[177] And you can't get to what that center signifies without having journeyed everywhere.

[178] And so the tragic view of life is necessary because it puts you on the journey that reveals to yourself who you could be if you were courageous, as courageous as you could be, and as truthful as you could be.

[179] And that's equivalent to discovering, to revivifying your dead father, because you are an ancient creature in some sense, and perhaps one with a spark of divinity inherent in it.

[180] But you will never release that unless you're willing to go everywhere that you have to go, because only necessity will call that out of you.

[181] And so you can't be happy.

[182] You can't be complete without, you can't know what you could withstand.

[183] You can't have any proper sense of self -respect unless you know what you can tolerate.

[184] And if you avoid everything that you have reason to avoid, but should nonetheless not avoid, you won't know who you are.

[185] And then you can't live properly.

[186] You have said on a number of occasions, and on every, on every occasion, on every, occasion that I have watched you say it.

[187] Not a single person in the panel, you often talk on panels.

[188] Not one person has ever actually reacted to it.

[189] I totally get it.

[190] Nevertheless, it's one of the most important things you regularly say.

[191] You live as if there is a God.

[192] Is that correct?

[193] Well, people ask me if I believe in God.

[194] You know, I just, I'm going to release a podcast about that, because I answered that question for about two hours in Australia, because people kept asking me that question, which I really don't like.

[195] I don't like that question.

[196] And so I've sat and thought about it for a good while, and I tried to figure out why.

[197] And then I thought, well, you believe.

[198] I thought, who would have the audacity to claim that they believed in God, if they examined the way they lived, who would dare say that to believe, you think, to believe in a Christian sense, to actually, this is why Nietzsche said there was only ever one Christian and that was Christ, to have the audacity to claim that means that you live it out fully.

[199] And that's an unbearable task in some sense.

[200] I just debated Slavois -Gijsijek about a week ago, although it wasn't really much of a debate.

[201] It was a strange event, but he said something very brilliant, to me that justified the entire event, at least from my perspective.

[202] He talked about Christ's moment of crisis on the cross when he cried out to God that he had been forsaken.

[203] And what Zhijik said was that what that meant was that the conditions of human existence are so, tragic, that even God himself in human form lost faith for a moment in the goodness of being.

[204] And I thought that was a remarkable observation because, well, if God himself would lose faith under such conditions, what we do you expect from normal human beings confronted with what we're confronted by.

[205] And to be able to accept the structure of existence, the suffering that goes along with it and the disappointment and the betrayal, and to nonetheless act properly, right, to aim at the good with all your heart, right, to dispense with the malevolence and your desire for destruction and revenge and all of that, and to face things courageously and to tell the truth, to speak the truth and to act it out, that's what it means to believe.

[206] that's what it means.

[207] It doesn't mean to state it.

[208] It means to act it out.

[209] And unless you act it out, you should be very careful about claiming it.

[210] And so I've never been comfortable saying anything other than I try to act as if God exists.

[211] Because God only knows what you'd be if you truly believed.

[212] I mean, if you think about it in some sense, That's the central idea in Christianity, is that if you were capable of believing, it would be a transfiguring event, a truly transfiguring event.

[213] And I know people experience that to one degree or another.

[214] But we have no idea what the limit of that is.

[215] And we have no idea what the possibility is within each person if they lived a life that was maximally courageous and maximally truthful.

[216] You know, because maybe you're running at 60 % or 70 % or 20 % and at cross -purposes to yourself.

[217] God only knows what you'd be if you believed.

[218] And so, well, I act, I try to act like I believe, but I'd never claim that I manage it because it's too, it's a lot to manage properly, and you have to be careful about claiming to manage things that you can't manage.

[219] And so that's part of the answer to that question.

[220] It's a great answer as it happens.

[221] I'd like you to react to something that is very operative in my life.

[222] I just, and a few, I always tell people on my radio show and totally feel free to say, sorry, I really don't, don't find that tenable or whatever you, however you want to react.

[223] My root as an adult to God has been completely circuitous.

[224] I have come through the back door.

[225] As I wrote 25 years ago, how I found God at Columbia, I realized in the 70s graduate school at Columbia that I was being taught nonsense, literally nonsense, things that made no sense.

[226] And it drove me crazy because they were all bright.

[227] Bright people taught me nonsense.

[228] One day, walking through Columbia, the only time I ever had, I wouldn't say, I never had a theophony, but I did have an epiphany.

[229] All of a sudden, one of the verses from my Yeshiva education in Brooklyn, New York, the cloistered, Orthodox world of my child, and I don't use cloistered, I don't like clostored, but I'm not using it in a pejorative way.

[230] I'm just explaining what I had.

[231] And all of a sudden, one of the verses that we said every morning in kindergarten, first grade and second grade, for the first time since second grade came to my brain.

[232] Rishit Khachmaiy, wisdom begins with fear of the Lord.

[233] changed my life there's no wisdom at Columbia because there's no God at Columbia and that has been that is one of the ways I knew oh without God look what happens without God look what happens morally intellectually in terms of wisdom and I my biggest reasons for belief in God are watching what happens when people don't so I'd love to have your reaction is it C .S. Lewis was it C .S. Lewis who said that if you cease to believe in God, you'll start to believe in anything?

[234] That was the British God.

[235] Chesterton.

[236] Yeah, Chesterton, right, yeah.

[237] Well, that's a good way of looking at it.

[238] I mean, if Catholicism, you know, I've gone through lots of Catholic cathedrals in Europe, and of course they're stunning creations, but they're Gothic and strange, And the doctrine is eerie and complex and surreal.

[239] And the biblical writings are the same.

[240] You think of a book like Revelation, for example.

[241] But I think that the Catholicism, that's as sane as people can get.

[242] Broadly speaking, is that we need a metaphysics, a narrative metaphysics, to hold us together, and it has to be predicated on something that's transcendent and absolute.

[243] And if you lose that, then you'll fall for something else.

[244] You'll fall for something else, or you'll fall for nothing, which is no better.

[245] And I learned that from reading Nietzsche, and I learned that from reading Dostoevsky.

[246] And this is the problem with the rationalists like Sam Harris and the atheists.

[247] Dawkins.

[248] Now, they believe that if we dispensed with our superstitions, we'd all become Harris and Dawkins.

[249] Rational beings devoted towards the good, however, we conceptualize that for rational reasons.

[250] And I don't believe that, because I don't believe that we are irrational beings fundamentally.

[251] I think we're deeply irrational.

[252] It's amazing that we can all sit in this room together without tearing ourselves into shreds.

[253] And I mean that.

[254] It's really quite a remarkable thing that all of us who've come from all over North America can sit here so peacefully and concentrate on a single thing without any tension or trouble.

[255] The improbability of that should not be underestimated.

[256] The unlikelyhood that that might be the case.

[257] And then the issue of God as well is that, There has to be something of fundamental worth.

[258] There is something that you consider a fundamental worth.

[259] I think that regard for other people, for the consciousness of other people, for the conscious being of other people, is in that realm.

[260] If you're going to have a relationship with yourself, if you're going to be able to love someone else, if you're going to be able to take care of your family, your community, you have to attribute to human beings a value that might as well be described as divine given that it has to be the ultimate value that you hold.

[261] And I see, it seems to me, that it's not unreasonable to associate that value that is intrinsic in humanity with something that's of metaphysically, that's metaphysically, that's metaphysical real, that's part of the structure of reality itself.

[262] And my sense has been that it's, it makes, if you watch how people act when they're acting properly, the hypothesis that there is divinity within us that reflects divinity itself is the only conclusion that makes sense that works.

[263] And so I think the evidence, I think the evidence suggests that.

[264] You know, you said, you look, look what happens when societies lose their bearings.

[265] It's like, yeah, that's what convinced me. To the degree that I became a religious person, I didn't, wasn't as if I discovered God.

[266] It was more like I discovered Satan, discovered the devil and certainly believed that very part.

[267] powerfully, metaphysically or not, you don't have to read that much about what happened in Nazi Germany or what happened in the Soviet Union or what happened in Maoist China, what continues to happen in many places around the world, to be convinced that there's a great darkness.

[268] And it seems to me that if there's a great darkness, then there has to be a great light.

[269] And the first part of that is true beyond any hope of refutation.

[270] And the second, and seems to be a logical necessity in the light of the first.

[271] It's a powerful line that you, I feel so obviously the same.

[272] I want to talk to you about the darkness.

[273] So I've often said all of my life really that we have a wrong metaphor in calling evil dark because it's actually so bright that people can't stare it in the face.

[274] the number of Canadian or American students at the most prestigious universities who could identify Paul Putt or even the Gulag Archipelago, let alone the Great Leap Forward in China, is so small.

[275] The knowledge of evil, it is now up to over a quarter of kids never heard of Auschwitz.

[276] It'll be a half very soon.

[277] It will be three quarters in a generation.

[278] They don't know evil.

[279] I at Berkeley I was had a dialogue with two leftist students my last question to them was do you believe people are basically good and they said yes and I said it's so demonstrably wrong that belief that there's only one possible explanation for why you hold it because you live in such a good country yeah well that's the that's the goodness of naivety right and it's something that that's encouraged, you encourage that by producing safe spaces around people, you produce that by sheltering them, you want to preserve that childlike innocence, but once you're no longer a child, it's not childlike, it's just childish, and that's not good to be a 40 -year -old child and to think that people are fundamentally good.

[280] It's not that good is very difficult.

[281] It's by no means the default position.

[282] What's the default position?

[283] Entropy, catastrophe, tragedy, malevolence, and death.

[284] That's the default position.

[285] The good struggles up against that.

[286] That's no easy thing to manage.

[287] To think of that as intrinsic.

[288] It's an intrinsic possibility, but it's not something that you, it's not something that you can manifest without faith and commitment.

[289] And the more faith and the more commitment, the better and the deeper the better and it's the most difficult of things to do.

[290] And it is, it's appalling to teach people the alternative.

[291] And I know that speak, I can speak of this clinically.

[292] You know, the people who are most prone to post -traumatic stress disorder are naive people.

[293] This is well known clinically.

[294] It's, there's nothing about this that's, that's, that's, um, it's, it's, um, it's, it's questionable or unorthodox, if you believe that people are basically good and that the world rewards goodness with good in return, if that's your fundamental belief, that there's not really any such thing is evil.

[295] And you encounter someone malevolent, which could be yourself, well, that's often what happens to people who develop post -traumatic stress disorder.

[296] You know, it's very common that people develop PTSD.

[297] because they've done something so incomprehensibly, morally repugnant that it's damaged them psychophysiologically, and they cannot recover.

[298] It's very common among soldiers.

[299] It's not what they saw, although sometimes it is.

[300] It's what they did.

[301] They have no framework within which to conceptualize it.

[302] If you have no theory of evil, if you have no theory of good and evil, if you have no metaphysics, and someone malevolent touches you, you're done.

[303] And so telling people that human beings are basically good and that evil doesn't exist, makes them ripe fruit for the picking by the malevolent.

[304] And there's nothing about that that's positive.

[305] It's mere cowardice masquerading as virtue.

[306] It's the devouring mother from the Freudian perspective.

[307] I'll keep you innocent, I'll keep you young and naive, and nothing will ever come to harm you.

[308] It's like precisely the opposite is the case in life.

[309] That is why, by the way, I truly, yep, that is why I truly believe that a 12 -year -old at a traditional Christian or Jewish school is wiser and more likely to be happy than a secular professor of philosophy.

[310] who was 50 years old just because I knew I went again to yeshiva or so half the day in Hebrew Jewish studies half the day in English secular studies I knew at six people were not basically good because God said so in Genesis when he decided to destroy the world because it turned out rotten so I knew at the earliest possible age people were not basically good and it not only affected my Veltencha in my world view it made me happy because then I realized, wow, I'm meeting good people, despite the fact that people are not basically good.

[311] I really do have good people in my life.

[312] Am I lucky or what?

[313] Yeah, yeah.

[314] Well, that's a really good point because you see, when I said that it was a miracle that we can all sit here peacefully.

[315] Right.

[316] Like that is how I look at it.

[317] I think every day when I walk out into the world and it's not rack and ruins and flames and floods that it's a blood.

[318] miracle.

[319] I mean it, that we hold this together.

[320] It's not an easy thing to do.

[321] And peace, to think of peace as the default position is a form of deep insanity.

[322] It requires work to maintain peace.

[323] And you can't be properly grateful unless you understand how unlikely it is that, well, we're not in the throes of World War III.

[324] We're not.

[325] still in the depths of World War II, that the Cold War is mostly over, that the economic conditions of people everywhere on the planet are improving at a rate that could only be described as miraculous, and that most things are going in a positive direction.

[326] If you assume that that's normative, then you think, well, that's life, and you have no reason to be wide -eyed, to have your eyes wide -opening admiration and gratitude at the fact that the worst, which is frequently manifested itself, is not knocking at your door at this moment, because that's the story of humanity and not peace and prosperity.

[327] So here we have it, and here we should preserve it, and here we should spread it, we should do everything we can to live in a manner that makes that most likely, and we should do that because, well, you said, what did you say?

[328] Fear of God.

[329] It's like throughout the Old Testament, you know, it's one story after another is that people develop societies and they become arrogant and they wander off the path.

[330] And as soon as they wander off the path, all hell breaks loose.

[331] And if you're fortunate enough to be where all hell isn't breaking loose, you should do everything you can to help ensure that we stay the course and walk the straight and narrow path.

[332] So I have a very deep worry in light of our absolute unanimity, if you could speak of unanimity among two people.

[333] But we're so consonant in this.

[334] This is shocking how good things are.

[335] and yet in the United States and I follow Canada a lot but I'll speak about America right now in the United States half at least half of young people think they are living in a rotten society sexist intolerant xenophobic homophobic Islamophobic racist bigoted that's a six herb that's my acronym for what I just said this is frightening to me and I want to know, is it frightening to you?

[336] Well, you know, I always try to give the devil as due.

[337] And the idea that the West is an oppressive patriarchy characterized by the sins that you just described is true.

[338] You know, there's, if we look through our history, personal or political.

[339] There's no shortage of things to be appalled by.

[340] But that's not the question.

[341] Exactly.

[342] Or that's not the issue.

[343] The issue is compared to what?

[344] No, it was Churchill.

[345] This time I've got this right.

[346] It was Churchill who said that democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the other forms of government.

[347] And I would say that about our society.

[348] is that there's no, we have every reason to be awake and cognizant of our errors, whether they're political or economic or personal.

[349] But compared to how it could be, and how it has been in many places, and how it is most everywhere in the world, and how it was for much of the 20th century, things are so good here that it's absolutely beyond comprehension.

[350] And so along with that, careful awareness of the flaws of the patriarchy, let's say, should be an unbelievable gratitude that we could wake up in the morning and the lights are on and the freeways are running and there's no starvation directly facing us and that our children will live.

[351] And that the probability that any one of us will die a violent death is negligible.

[352] And the thing that bothers me about one of the things that bothers me about the modern university is the absolute lack of gratitude that characterizes its teachings.

[353] It's like it's half the story.

[354] You know, it's like people are oppressed by nature and people are oppressed by culture and people are oppressed by their own dark side.

[355] It's an existential reality.

[356] But you have to balance that.

[357] You have to understand that nature has its benevolent element and that's what's given you life and you have to be grateful for your culture for everything that is provided to you and you have to understand that people can be good as well as adversarial and malevolent.

[358] And you have to be grateful for that and there's a there's a damnable shortage of gratitude in the modern academy.

[359] And that's based on a naivety or a resentment that's so deep that it's almost incomprehendant.

[360] A naivety and a resentment and a willful blindness to the reality of history that's so deep that it's almost incomprehensible.

[361] So if, I'm going to ask you, it may be, you may strike who's absurd, but I'm going to ask it anyway, except for technical knowledge like medicine or engineering, mathematics, obviously, any of the natural sciences, law, if nobody went, if all North Americans graduating high school decided I'm not going to college with the, the, would North America be a better or a worse place?

[362] If you took away the STEM fields.

[363] Yeah, taking away the STEM fields.

[364] I think that universities, not colleges necessarily, I think that universities do more harm than good now.

[365] And I'm very loath to say that, you know, because I've been part of the academy for 30 years and taught great institutions.

[366] but the postmodern collectivist doctrine is so psychologically and politically toxic that I think that academia now does more harm than good.

[367] And it's not only what it teaches, which is the ideology, this ungrateful ideology, which denies the existence of the individual.

[368] One of the things I might tell you, just so you know this, is that, you know, that you hear that there are debates about free speech on campus, about who should talk and who shouldn't, and people think that's what the debate is about, about who should talk and who shouldn't.

[369] But that's not what the debate is about.

[370] You're not even scraping the surface of the debate, if that's what you think it's about.

[371] The debate on campus is about whether or not a human being has the capacity to communicate intelligibly as an individual or not.

[372] And the answer for the postmodernist collective types is that there is no such thing as an individual.

[373] And therefore, the very notion of free speech is absurd, because free speech is predicated on the idea that each of us have something to say that's ours, that's a consequence of our unique individual.

[374] Not our group identity or the multiplicity of our group identities, but something that we have that speaks from our spirit that can speak to the spirit of another and produce a negotiated peace.

[375] And that's what's being debated.

[376] The war that's going on philosophically or theologically in the campuses is far deeper than you think.

[377] The entire notion of the reality of the individual, which is, I think, also the entire notion of the idea that human beings are made in the image of God most fundamentally.

[378] That is what's being attacked.

[379] It wasn't for nothing that Derrida called Western culture fell logocentric.

[380] phallus for masculine, logos for logos, for truth and courage and centric for centric.

[381] That was a criticism from his perspective, the idea of the sovereignty of the individual.

[382] If you don't have the idea of the sovereignty of the individual, because there's no individual, there's no free speech.

[383] All you are is an avatar of your group interests.

[384] And if I'm not in your group, it's not in my interest to let you speak.

[385] There's nothing that we have to say to one another.

[386] There's nothing but power.

[387] It's a Hobbesian nightmare of group against group, and that's the postmodern doctrine.

[388] And so, to call it appalling, is to barely scrape the surface.

[389] It's an assault.

[390] It is truly an assault on the most fundamental principles by which the West is governed.

[391] It's not surface -level philosophy.

[392] It goes all the way to the bottom.

[393] him.

[394] This is partly why I've been concentrating on religious themes in my lectures, let's say, because the argument goes all the way down to first principles.

[395] Is there, is the idea of the sovereignty of the individual correct?

[396] The Western answer is, it's the great discovery of the West.

[397] The Western answer is that's the most fundamental truth.

[398] That is exactly what's under assault at the universities.

[399] The reason that the collectivist types hate me is because I've got their number.

[400] I know what they're up to.

[401] And I think further that they do not wish to shoulder the unbearable responsibility of being a sovereign individual.

[402] So not only is it, and that accounts for the cowardice, and that accounts for the attempt to weaken the spirit of the people that they're teaching by over -protecting them.

[403] They're not willing to take on the responsibility and that the fault has to lie elsewhere.

[404] And I think that's a good judge of someone, someone's character in general.

[405] It's like, well, the world is in a messy state, let's say.

[406] And the question is, whose fault is it?

[407] And the answer is yours.

[408] That's the right answer.

[409] It's not the patriarchy, it's not some identifiable group, it's not some structure that's gone wrong, even though those things can go wrong.

[410] And that's the other fundamental truth of the West, is that things would be a lot better if you were a lot better.

[411] And you have to decide if you're willing to accept that.

[412] And you have every reason not to.

[413] It's a terrible thought.

[414] No, Solzhenitsyn, I think, this is a paraphrase, but it's close enough.

[415] He said that one person who stopped lying could bring down a tyranny.

[416] And that, when I first read that, I thought that can't possibly be true.

[417] And as I understood it, I thought that can't possibly not be true because the only thing that can break the spine of a tyranny is the truth.

[418] And the only way that the truth can be told is that some individual tells it.

[419] And so it's necessarily the case that tyranny is broken by the truth of the individual.

[420] But then the question is, well, is it going to be you that's going to do that?

[421] It's no trivial thing.

[422] You know, people come and tell me very frequently.

[423] And they write me and they say, well, you know, I agree with what you say and this terrible thing is happening in my workplace.

[424] And, you know, I don't know what to do about it.

[425] And I don't want you to make my story public and because of the potential for repercussions.

[426] And I think, yeah, well, I mean, I understand your position.

[427] It's no joke to stand up when the amateur totalitarians are knocking on your office door.

[428] But if you don't, then sooner than you think it'll be the professional totalitarians.

[429] And then you'll be in the sort of trouble that unless you've tried to imagine it, you can't possibly imagine.

[430] in the minutes remaining I'm going to ask a few personal questions as I did with the late great Charles Krauthammer at one of our weekends because people like including me just fascinated so here's one what was the city in Alberta you grew up in?

[431] Well it wasn't a city exactly it was a little town It's called Fairview.

[432] It's about 800 miles north of the American border, so it's a long ways up there.

[433] Right.

[434] So how often, if at all, do you think when people stop you at airports and go around the world lecturing?

[435] Jordan Peterson from Fairview, it's hard to believe.

[436] Does that happen?

[437] Well, I live in a constant state of disbelief.

[438] I mean, I'm dead serious about this.

[439] Like, I think it's a form of post -traumatic shock in some sense.

[440] I mean, my life in the last three years has been just a continual series of surreal impossibilities.

[441] I mean, on the one hand, I've been involved in a political scandal of some sort for a good year and a half, it was at least twice a week.

[442] And then for the entire three -year period, it's been at least once a week.

[443] It's non -stop.

[444] And sometimes it's national, and sometimes it's international, but it's continual.

[445] And so that's...

[446] I'll give you an example.

[447] This is a funny little story.

[448] My son came over one day about a year and a half ago, and I was having a kind of a rough day, because 200 of my colleagues at the university had signed a document trying to get me fired.

[449] And then they gave it to the union, and the union presented it to the administration without even informing me, even though I'm part of the faculty union.

[450] And so I said to my son, Julian, you know, 200 of my colleagues today just signed a letter saying that I should be fired.

[451] And he said, oh, dad, don't worry about that.

[452] It was only 200.

[453] And I thought, well, that's where we were at, you know.

[454] It was like, oh, that's nothing.

[455] That was a light day.

[456] That was okay, you know.

[457] And then so there's that.

[458] And the fact that it doesn't quit, that's another thing I can't understand.

[459] It's like, you know, all this blew up around me around Bill C -16.

[460] And I thought, well, I've had my 15 minutes or my, and then it was like, well, I've had my week.

[461] And then it was like, oh, I must.

[462] have had my month and then but none of that happened it just kept expanding and expanding and expanding and expanding and and every day i wake up and i think well this is going to come to an end but it doesn't it just expands and and that just doesn't seem credible in the least every time i come to an event like this or i mean when i was in australia i was speaking to audiences of 5500 people and it's like how in the world can you believe that?

[463] It's like, you heard what I just said.

[464] Who in their right mind would come and listen to someone who just told you what I told you?

[465] You know, it's so dark and it's so demanding.

[466] You wouldn't think that people would line up for blocks and spend their hard -earned money and come because it's like a marital anniversary.

[467] That's what they say.

[468] This was our anniversary president.

[469] to each other.

[470] I thank you, people.

[471] You're completely out of your mind.

[472] And so, and then I think, too, that the state of disbelief is necessary.

[473] And maybe that's an advantage to being older, because I'm too old to adapt rapidly.

[474] And this isn't the sort of thing that you should adapt to, right?

[475] I should be in a constant state of shock disbelief because it keeps my head on straight.

[476] I don't know what's going on exactly.

[477] I don't know why it's the case that what I'm saying is so necessary, apparently.

[478] But it seems to be, and I'm trying to figure out why, but I'm certainly not for a second.

[479] I think I take very little for granted.

[480] And I mean, I think I take even less for granted than you might think.

[481] I told you that I don't take it for granted that you can all sit here peacefully, you know?

[482] And that is how I look at the world, is that if it isn't burning in rack and ruins, then I think it's a bloody miracle.

[483] And the fact that things have gone well for me and that I'm still standing, which is also a miracle of sorts, you know, I mean, there were probably 30 different scandalous episodes that had every, that anyone with any sense would have thought would finish me. And they've all backfired.

[484] And that's also, I also don't understand that.

[485] It's like, I don't understand that.

[486] I get attacked in the New York Times.

[487] And my friends call me, who are New York Times readers, and they say, you've had it this time because that was the New York Times, you're not going to recover from that.

[488] And I think, well, that's probably true.

[489] I mean, I was expecting it to happen all along, and then I wait, and then, you know, everybody clambers at me, and then I don't respond too much to that, and it starts to die away, and then all the supporters come out.

[490] And then there's a hundred people who clamor and 10 ,000 supporters.

[491] And, you know, here's something I can tell you about my life that's really remarkable.

[492] So, you know, if you just read the press, well, you'd have all sorts of ideas about me, I mean, you know, that I'm a bigot in the broadest possible sense.

[493] And so that's, you know, racist, sexist, homophobic, ethnocentric, white nationalist, alt -right.

[494] Islamophobic, Hitler, all of those things.

[495] And you'd think that there was just nothing but hatred, although I have been treated well by many journalists, but you could easily get that sense that, like, I live in a world where I'm surrounded by hatred.

[496] And that is absolutely not true.

[497] It's so not true that it's, you know, there are lies, and then there are anti -truths, And an anti -truth is even worse than a lie.

[498] It's like the ultimate form of lie.

[499] And that isn't what my life is like at all.

[500] What my life is like is that I travel with my wife and wherever we go, and I mean that literally, wherever we go, and we've been to, I don't know how many countries in the last year.

[501] It's like I don't know how many.

[502] 30, 40, many countries.

[503] If I go down the street, or if I'm in an airport, or if I'm in a cafe, or if I'm in a movie theater, or if I'm in a mechanics shop, some person comes up to me every 10 minutes and says, I hope I'm not disturbing you, and they're very, very polite.

[504] And they say, I've been listening to your lectures, or I've been watching your YouTube videos, or I read your book.

[505] and I was in this dreadful place six months ago and then they tell me a little bit about the particulars of that little corner of hell they were ensconced in and then they say well I've been trying to develop a vision for my life or I've been trying to take more responsibility or been trying to be grateful for my job mundane though it may be or I've decided that I'm going to try to put my family together and make peace and I've really been trying, and it's really working, and things are way better, and thank you.

[506] And so, well, it's overwhelming to have that happen continually.

[507] It's very difficult to believe, but it's unbelievably positive.

[508] You know, I mean, it's, if you could imagine, if you could ask for what you wanted, you could have anything you wanted.

[509] You might think it would be lovely if I could live my life in a manner so that wherever I went in the world, perfect strangers would come up to me, one after the other, and tell me that they're suffering much less, that their families are in better shape and that their lives are on course because they took to heart something that they took something that I was communicating.

[510] That's as good as it gets, as far as I can tell.

[511] I really, I don't want to ask anything else.

[512] I think this was so powerful.

[513] And if that didn't prove my instinct is right, nothing will.

[514] Jordan Peterson, you are a good man, you are doing a lot of good.

[515] I thank God he made you.

[516] Thank you.

[517] If you found this conversation, meaningful, you might think about picking up dad's books, maps of meaning, the architecture of belief, or his newer bestseller 12 rules for life, an antidote to chaos.

[518] Both of these works delve much deeper into the topics covered in the Jordan B. Peterson podcast.

[519] See jordanb peterson .com for audio, e -book, and text links, or pick up the books at your favorite bookseller.

[520] I really hope you enjoyed this podcast.

[521] If you did, please leave a rating at Apple podcasts, a comment, a review, or share this episode with a friend.

[522] Next week's podcast is going to be a throwback to one of Dad's 12 Rules for Life lectures from London, Ontario, recorded on July 21st, 2018 at Centennial Hall.

[523] Stay tuned.

[524] Thanks for listening.

[525] Hope you have a wonderful week.

[526] Follow me on my YouTube channel, Jordan B. Peterson, on Twitter at Jordan B. Peterson, on Facebook at Dr. Jordan B. Peterson, and at Instagram at jordan .b. peterson.

[527] Details on this show, access to my blog, information about my tour dates and other events, and my list of recommended books can be found on my website, jordan b peterson .com.

[528] My online writing programs, designed to help people straighten out their pasts, understand themselves in the present, and develop a sophisticated vision and strategy for the future can be found at self -authoring .com.

[529] That's self -authoring .com.

[530] From the Westwood One podcast network.