Jordan Peterson's Rules for Life with Richard Fidler

[0] Welcome to the Jordan B. Peterson podcast.

[1] You can support these podcasts by donating to Dr. Peterson's Patreon, the link to which can be found in the description.

[2] Dr. Peterson's self -development programs, self -authoring, can be found at self -authoring .com.

[3] Professor Jordan Peterson is a clinical psychologist at the University of Toronto in Canada.

[4] He read a book a while back on the common truths that he found embedded in myths and legends and in some of the earliest Bible stories.

[5] He says that when you pull apart the story of Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, you can find all kinds of truths about human beings and belief and morality.

[6] Dr. Peterson taught at Harvard and other universities, and then in 2016 something happened.

[7] He was catapulted into international prominence when he spoke out against new legislation in Canada that would have compelled him and others to use gender -neutral pronouns.

[8] And for this, he was hailed as a defender of free speech and denounced as a transphobic, a word he doesn't much care for.

[9] Jordan Peterson's university lectures on YouTube have become spectacularly popular, and he's Australian speaking to a sold -out almost instantly.

[10] He's something of a phenomenon right now, but interestingly, neither his attackers on the left and his loudest supporters from the alt -right really seem to be listening to what he actually has to say.

[11] Jordan Peterson's now written a book called Twelve Rules for Life, which offers advice like, stand up straight with your shoulders back.

[12] Set your house in perfect order before you criticize the world.

[13] Pursue what is meaningful, not what is expedience, and do not bother children when they are skateboarding.

[14] Hello, Jordan.

[15] Hello.

[16] Twelve rules.

[17] Twelve rules to guide you towards what?

[18] Happiness or something else?

[19] No, not happiness.

[20] Happiness is something that happens to you if you're fortunate, and it's a byproduct of pursuing, perhaps a byproduct, a fortunate byproduct of pursuing, what you should pursue.

[21] And that's not happiness.

[22] It's not, first of all, happiness doesn't tied you through periods of tragedy and betrayal and loss.

[23] So if that's the purpose of life, well, what happens when things aren't going well?

[24] What do you have then?

[25] It's better to pursue things that are meaningful and meaningful is the right way of thinking about it, engaging and meaningful.

[26] You say that the point is to embrace being, that you spell with a capital B. What do you mean by being with a capital B. Well, it's an idea that I got in part from the philosopher Heidegger, who was very interested in, I would say, construing reality in a manner that was somewhat alternative to the reigning materialist viewpoint.

[27] I mean, you have, you live in your experience.

[28] Your experience isn't really made out of matter.

[29] It's more made out of things that matter.

[30] It's a very different way of looking at it.

[31] I mean, in your field of experience, you have emotions and motivations.

[32] and dreams and desires and stories and goals and aims it's it's a narrative structure in some sense that that you inhabit and that's a reality that's really reality in some sense and well it's it's harsh that reality it's it has a tragic element because people are vulnerable and and mortal and it has an element of malevolence as well because we're all touched by betrayal and the what would you call it the the sins of our fellow men but we're all capable of those things ourselves.

[33] And so the question is, how do you cope with that?

[34] And what do you make of it?

[35] And one answer is, you can judge it harshly and denounce it and become bitter and resentful.

[36] And maybe you have your reasons for that, but it's a counterproductive approach.

[37] And so the approach that I lay out is the alternative to that, I would say.

[38] If life is based in suffering, that's what you argue.

[39] To begin, suffering is inevitable.

[40] Yeah, well, it's an incontrovertible fact.

[41] Yeah, absolutely.

[42] So then the point is what you're going to do about to that.

[43] That is, that, well, it's, it's worse than just suffering.

[44] It's, it's suffering tainted with malevolence.

[45] Because there's the tragic element of suffering, which is just that, well, you know, you're, you're, you're a fragile creature like, like everyone.

[46] And because of that, you're subject to mental and physical deterioration and to death.

[47] And so that's rough in and of itself, hard enough, and maybe hard enough to turn you against being itself.

[48] But that's made even more complicated by the fact that much of the suffering that people endure is a consequence of they impose it upon themselves or it's imposed by them on others, by others on them.

[49] Yeah, well, what about the suffering that you create yourself and coming to a proper accounting with that?

[50] Well, that's a very difficult thing to do.

[51] People know perfectly well that, number one, they don't take advantage of their full potential.

[52] They don't make use of their full potential.

[53] They don't make full use of the opportunities that are granted to them.

[54] They're characterized by laziness and procrastination and irritation and and all sorts of habits of mind and of character that that make their lives more better than they need to be and that that's and that's also something that people have a very difficult time coming to terms with they feel guilty about that and and so that's the complicated landscape of being let's say the question is how do you respond to that yeah I've known people who've banged their head against the war because the world isn't as good as they want it to be or they feel it ought to be or as pure in fact as I think it ought to be.

[55] Well, hey, there's no shortage of evidence for that.

[56] I mean, so the thing is, these problems are real.

[57] And I think part of the reason that people have been gravitating towards my lectures, let's say, is because I make a very, very straightforward case for this.

[58] I'm not a feel -good self -esteem optimist.

[59] That doesn't mean I'm pessimistic, but I'm trying to help people grapple with the fact that life itself poses a very serious problem.

[60] That's an existential idea, right?

[61] is that the problem of life is embedded in the structure of life.

[62] You have to contend with your own inadequacies as an individual.

[63] You have to contend with the tyranny and arbitrariness of the social world, and you have to contend with the brutality of nature.

[64] Now, that's only on the negative side, right?

[65] But those are real things.

[66] They're real.

[67] That's the part of the mythological landscape, the reality of those things.

[68] And then you have to plot your course through that.

[69] And hopefully, you do it in a manner that doesn't make everything worse.

[70] That's a good start.

[71] One of your rules.

[72] Indeed, the first one you have is stand up straight with your shoulders back.

[73] My producer, Nick, was discussing this with you.

[74] And as you were talking with her over the phone, she said she unconsciously sat up straight.

[75] Right, right.

[76] And so you must have this odd hypnotic power over the phone, Jordan Peterson.

[77] This is really a disquisition about status and status consciousness.

[78] What's your understanding as a clinical psychologist of how deeply embedded status consciousness, awareness of one's own status is in animals like humans?

[79] Oh, it's absolutely unbelievably deep.

[80] There is an idea that's very attractive that's being put forward by thinkers on the left, that hierarchy and exploitation, which clearly exist, are secondary consequences of political and economic schemes.

[81] So you might say, if you're a Marxist, for example, that inequality and hierarchy can be laid at the feet of capitalism in the free market.

[82] It's like, there's no doubt that there's hierarchy.

[83] There's no doubt that there's inequality.

[84] and there are prices to be paid for both of those.

[85] But you are an unbelievably naive optimist if you think that that can be laid at the feet of the free market and capitalism because the problem of hierarchy and inequality is a third of a billion years old.

[86] It's so old that your nervous system is adapted to it as a permanent feature of existence.

[87] So the systems that regulate your emotions, these are serotonergic systems essentially.

[88] Serotonin is a brain chemical.

[89] The systems that regulate, your negative and positive emotion, do it in part unconsciously, pre -consciously, by evaluating your relative status in whatever hierarchy happens to be relevant to you and determining whether the negative emotion should be turned up and the positive emotion turned down or vice versa.

[90] So if you encounter a status failure, let's say, and you move down the hierarchy, then your nervous system transforms so that you become more sensitive to negative emotion and less sensitive to positive emotion.

[91] And the inverse true, if the more powerful and status, of higher status you attain, you get the happy, happy drugs in your head and the unhappy drugs.

[92] My experience of a lot of senior political leaders is that they're kind of highly strong and quite shouty, Jordan, I don't know if that really accords with what you're saying.

[93] Well, status is not the only determinant of your emotional well -being.

[94] There's an observation of your own competence, so that's one.

[95] The other is your temperament.

[96] So some people are temperamentally more or less anxious, and that's established very early on, very heavily under biological control.

[97] And then the third is your relative status within your communities.

[98] Those are the three determinants of your anxiety levels, let's say.

[99] So if you're giving that advice to someone, stand up straight with your shoulders back for someone who is feeling like they have low status in society.

[100] I don't want to say, so you're saying, but I don't want to say that.

[101] No, I don't want to say that.

[102] No one wants to say that.

[103] Let me try and paraphrase you then and say, are you saying, Fake it till you make it then.

[104] Carry yourself like you are a formidable person until you actually become more familiar.

[105] Well, it's part of that.

[106] It's part of that.

[107] So there's practical advice in that postureal readjustment because if you set yourself up properly, physically, then you can breathe better.

[108] And you manifest yourself as more competent and confident.

[109] And that does produce an internal feedback process that tends to facilitate that.

[110] So you can make yourself feel better generally if you're slouching, habitually.

[111] if you learn to stand up straight, that actually does make you feel better physiologically.

[112] But there's a metaphorical element to it too, which is that even if you've had to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fate in some particularly unfair manner, you still have the option of accepting that in some sense voluntarily, and that means to stand up straight and to expose yourself to the world.

[113] Because partly what you're doing when you're standing up is you're exposing your most vulnerable surfaces to the social and natural world.

[114] And so that's an, that's an indication of confidence.

[115] But you're not hunching over like an armadillo.

[116] In other words, you're exposing your soft underbelly.

[117] Well, you are precisely doing that.

[118] And it's particularly true with human beings because, of course, we stand up on our hind legs.

[119] And so most animals are armored against the world by their back.

[120] But not us.

[121] We put our soft parts front and forward, which is that's partly the realization of nakedness in the Garden of Eden, right?

[122] That's partly what that story details in some sense is the discovery of that, the human, self -conscious human discovery of that vulnerability.

[123] So, but your best path forward is to accept that vulnerability voluntarily.

[124] And the strange thing is, is that in that acceptance, there's a simultaneous transcendence.

[125] So if you're a clinician, for example, and if you're dealing with people who are anxious, you don't make them safe.

[126] You don't build higher walls around them.

[127] You help them develop strategies to voluntarily expose themselves to the things that they are frightened of or detest.

[128] And That makes them stronger.

[129] So rule one is an injunction to adopt that as a metaphysical stance in life, is to take the tragedy on voluntarily.

[130] As a clinical, I mean, you lecture in psychology at the University of Toronto, but you've worked clinically as well as the psychologist.

[131] You would have been in a room, I'm just guessing here, you would have been in a room with a person who would be suffering terrible bullying, terrible, the tyranny of other people to the point where they're almost, They're tearful and they're full of rage and woundedness and vulnerability.

[132] Oh, yes.

[133] Bearing what you just said in mind, what advice do you give to someone who's actually who's carrying that kind of woundedness, that pain and that rage against the tyrant, whether it's a boss or a violent husband or someone like that.

[134] Well, the first thing you do with someone like that is listen to them.

[135] It's like, imagine, so when someone comes to see you clinically, they have a problem or they wouldn't be there.

[136] and it may be a psychological problem, but it might just be a problem, right?

[137] Because there's a distinction between a psychological problem and a problem.

[138] Like if your father is dying of Alzheimer's disease, that's a problem.

[139] It might also be a psychological problem.

[140] So people come because they have problems or psychological problems or both, and they also come because they're not doing as well as they need to and they would like things to be better.

[141] So what you do to begin with, if you're a careful clinician, is you listen to the person, tell you what their problem.

[142] them is.

[143] And they may have never had anyone listen to that.

[144] They might not even know.

[145] They come in because they're suffering in some manner.

[146] And when you told that story, a particular client, or when you asked that question, a particular client came to mind who'd been terribly bullied.

[147] He had a lot of physiological and cognitive problems.

[148] And he'd terribly bullied.

[149] And used to people sneering at that, I expect, as well, yeah, yeah.

[150] In ways you just can't imagine.

[151] I mean, you just can't believe how much people, some people can be alienated and bullied.

[152] And, you know, you spend hours to begin with as a clinician just letting the, I had a client a while back who had been bullied into a psychotic break.

[153] When I first saw her, she could hardly speak.

[154] She was a young woman.

[155] She could hardly speak.

[156] And she would put her hands in front of her and move them up kind of robotically.

[157] And when I asked her what she was doing, she said, well, I can see lines.

[158] And I'm trying to balance the lines, like in a psychotic manner.

[159] She was completely fragmented.

[160] It took six months of listening to her say what had happened to her at school before I could figure out what broke her and help her put herself back together.

[161] She was targeted by two kids who were particularly malevolent.

[162] Like they were in to take her out.

[163] That was their goal.

[164] And they broke her.

[165] You know, and so, yeah, that can be absolutely brutal.

[166] So anyways, you let the person delineate out their experiences and you do a causal analysis.

[167] It's like, well, let's figure out exactly what the chain of events were that led you to be vulnerable to that catastrophe because the cure, and this is actually why you remember the past, right?

[168] What you want to do if something terrible has happened to you is analyze the terrible experience so that you can now reconfigure your perceptions and your behaviors so that the probability that that will happen again in the future is reduced.

[169] That's the purpose of memory.

[170] So you recognize it.

[171] So you identify and go, uh -huh, right?

[172] And then you're standing outside the problem.

[173] Well, and then you can also develop a strategy because that's the next thing you do as a clinician.

[174] It's like, okay, well, okay, now we see the situation.

[175] You were bullied, and these were the people who were after you, and they had malevolent intent.

[176] And in some way you were vulnerable to that, even though that doesn't mean it was just or that it was your fault or any of those things, although we want to see what you might have contributed to it so that you can stop doing that.

[177] And then you need a strategy of defense.

[178] It's like, okay, if you meet someone like that again, how are you going to reconfigure your behavior so that they cannot take advantage of you again?

[179] And when you find these people are harboring things, feelings like homicidal thoughts towards their tormentor, and they're shocked by that, what do you tell them about those thoughts?

[180] Oh, well, we explore why they have them.

[181] I mean, I've seen people get pushed into positions sometimes where they have homicidal thoughts that you can understand.

[182] They've been betrayed by someone.

[183] The betrayal is ongoing.

[184] They've been pushed into a corner where terribly, terribly unjust things are happening to them that have serious consequences for their lives.

[185] It's not surprising that they have vengeful and hostile fantasies and obsessions sometimes.

[186] So you have to have them lay out the problem, which is often extraordinarily complicated, and then strategize towards something that would be a better solution.

[187] You know, sometimes you see people who are so trapped and hurt that they feel that their violent impulse is actually the only way of obtaining justice.

[188] And discriminating between justice and revenge is not easy.

[189] Like, that's a very, very, it requires a very, very sophisticated analysis of the situation to distinguish between vengeance and justice.

[190] And so you might say to people, well, you should give up your anger because it's so hard on you, it's ruining your life.

[191] And they say, well, I can't.

[192] This is so unjust.

[193] My every ethical bone in my body cries out to me to rectify this.

[194] You have to help people find a pathway that's more productive.

[195] It's very difficult.

[196] So much of these conversations come out of something you touched on a bit earlier, which is a fundamental view of human nature, if indeed such a thing is appropriate.

[197] I don't know.

[198] I mean, there is a view.

[199] I had a guest on the show last year who was, whose view is an economist.

[200] And his view is really that human nature is fundamentally good.

[201] that most of our interactions are either benign or kind, but it's the horror show that gets the publicity.

[202] And it's like that when you write history, the most colourful bits are the bloodiest bits.

[203] The most interesting bits is when there's all this great wickedness being perpetrated.

[204] But the boring truth is, according to him, the boring truth is that people are fundamentally good.

[205] What do you say to that?

[206] I think the second part of that is true, but the first part is not true.

[207] I think that people are good and evil.

[208] And that that's the case for everyone.

[209] And that, you know, Hannah Arendt wrote a book called The Banality of Evil, which could have been reversed.

[210] It could have been the evil of banality, which I think would have been a better title, actually.

[211] But she pointed out very clearly, and many commentators have done this, that terrible acts are often the culminating consequence of an accumulation of what you might regard as minor sins.

[212] So the mythological landscape is that the individual is the hero and the adversary at the same time.

[213] That would be mythologically represented in Christianity, for example, or represented theologically as the eternal conflict between Christ and Satan.

[214] But you see this sort of thing mirrored in popular culture all the time.

[215] It's Harry Potter v. Voldemort, for example, or it's Batman versus the Joker, Superman versus Lex Luthor.

[216] You know, that's that idea of that duality of spirit that inhabits a single individual.

[217] That's an ancient mythological truth.

[218] That's exactly right.

[219] That's mythology.

[220] That's not what real life feels like on a day -to -day basis, does it?

[221] Oh, it depends on what your life is.

[222] Well, that's true.

[223] That's true.

[224] I mean, I'm not living in the killing fields of Cambodia.

[225] This is true.

[226] And it's always a good thing to remember that.

[227] I give thanks and praise to it every day.

[228] Right.

[229] Just quietly.

[230] But nonetheless, I think by and large, I mean, most people listening right now would feel that their lives are, there's not many jokers or Lex Luthor's or Voldemort's in their lives.

[231] There might be here and there, they're rare.

[232] And when they pop up, they're a big shock to everyone.

[233] Yeah, well.

[234] So they're outliers rather than an integral part of human.

[235] Well, they are as.

[236] they are as super villain figures, you know, because those are obviously, those are cricketers in some sense, you know, but it doesn't, you don't have to scrape very far down underneath the surface of most people's lives to find fairly appalling stories of betrayal and self betrayal.

[237] And those are reflections of that proclivity for evil, let's say, that that desire to do harm for harm's sake, that that's characteristic of, well, you see that in school, in school yard bullying.

[238] You see it in children.

[239] It's everywhere, and people don't like to see it.

[240] And I would also say, you know, with respect to your point, is that we have managed to formulate societies primarily in the West, where the default interaction between people is decent.

[241] But that's a kind of miracle.

[242] It's not the case for most of the thagocracies in the world, you know, that are rife with, I would say, individual, familial, social, and economic pathology, where the default transaction is hostility and suspicion.

[243] It's not obvious at all how we manage to create societies where the default interaction between strangers is trust.

[244] That's an amazing accomplishment.

[245] One of the things you've talked quite a bit about is apprehending the true nature of certain evil figures like Hitler.

[246] I mean, yeah, but particularly Hitler.

[247] We have to sort of focus on him.

[248] There's also Stalin.

[249] There's also Pol Pot.

[250] There are other figures, Genghis Khan as well, people like that.

[251] The thing that's most misunderstood about them, you say, is that they're not necessarily.

[252] playing to win so much as to purify the world with fire.

[253] Can you just talk a bit about that?

[254] Well, in rule six, the rule is set yourself, set your house in perfect order before you criticize the world.

[255] And it's a very dark chapter.

[256] And I would recommend it to people who would actually like to understand why the school shootings in the United States in particular continue to occur.

[257] Why it is that a young person might spend months or even years fantasizing about taking dark revenge, you know, of the sort that might involve killing elementary school children, for example, which is what happened at Sandy Hook.

[258] You have to go to a very dark place for a very long period of time before you dream up something like that.

[259] And the question is, well, why might you go there?

[260] And well, part of it is that life, as we already discussed, is very hard.

[261] And for some people, they're outcast and almost nothing works out for them.

[262] And they have a certain, they have been subject to a certain amount of malevolent treatment and have nursed a certain amount of malevolence in their own heart.

[263] They get very, very judgmental about the structure of existence and regard themselves as eternal judges, I would say, in some sense, that was certainly the case for the Columbine High School killers, and conclude that being itself, because it's full of tragedy and malevolence, is an evil that should be punished and annihilated.

[264] And then they work to do exactly that.

[265] And you don't want to encounter someone like that.

[266] I mean, if you're a naive person, and I've had many people like this in my clinical practice, and this happens to people in the military, too, if you're a naive person and you encounter that in someone else or in yourself, it will produce post -traumatic stress disorder.

[267] Because post -traumatic stress disorder occurs when people are touched by evil.

[268] That's not how it's normally described clinically, because academics, I would say, people in general don't really like to grapple with that sort of reality.

[269] But if you talk to military personnel who have post -traumatic stress disorder.

[270] And you start talking to them about a dialectic between good and evil.

[271] They're instantly on board for that.

[272] They need a dialectic of good and evil to recover from post -traumatic stress disorder.

[273] Well, the murderous types, the types that are out for destruction, they make an artistic process of bringing as much misery to the world to the least deserving as rapidly as possible with the most amount of trouble.

[274] And that's what they're aiming at.

[275] They're not misunderstood.

[276] They're not bullied people who are just, you know, responding and seeking justice.

[277] It's gone way, way, way past that.

[278] There are people who just want to see the world burn.

[279] That's right.

[280] There are people who, and not only burn, but, you know, because maybe you could have a quick death if it was burning, but burning in a way that would give you the most drawn -out possible pain.

[281] You know, Winston Churchill famously in the 1930s was the one conservative politician in Britain who recognized Hitler for what he was.

[282] Chamberlain and his colleagues believed Hitler ultimately would be a rational actor and would act in rational self -interest and was constantly confused and confounded by but Churchill kind of recognized that that malevolence in Hitler.

[283] Do you think he was able to do that because he had part of that in himself?

[284] Oh, definitely.

[285] And recognized it in himself and was fascinated by it.

[286] The first thing that we might point out is that it's by no means self -evident except as an axiomatic statement, which is what the economists do, that self -interest is rational.

[287] That's foolish.

[288] It's foolish.

[289] Look, in chapter two, I suggest rule two, that people should treat themselves like they're someone that they're responsible for helping.

[290] You might think, well, that's self -evident.

[291] That's the economist claim.

[292] People are rationally self -interested.

[293] It's like, no, you're not.

[294] Not if you hate yourself.

[295] Not if you're terrified of your life.

[296] Not if you're contemptuous of yourself and other people.

[297] You have no rational self -interest.

[298] you might be perfectly willing to punish yourself on an endless basis.

[299] There's no shortage of teenage girls who are cutting themselves constantly.

[300] They don't have rational self -interest.

[301] They think that they deserve to be punished and continually.

[302] And it's not actually that surprising because people tend to carry a load of guilt, some of which is unwarranted, but much of which is justified, because everyone knows that they're not everyone they could be.

[303] And so the idea of rational self -interest is that's naive, That's a naive fool.

[304] There were no shortage of economists at the outset of before the First World War who said, war is impossible.

[305] It would defeat everyone's self -interest.

[306] There's too much economically at stake for war to start.

[307] Right.

[308] Well, you know, you'd think that people constantly presume that the current situation is somehow different than the historical reality.

[309] And it would be lovely in some sense if people were enlightened, rational, self -interested actors.

[310] Even if that was primarily based in selfishness, at least it would be, at least it would be devoted towards the preservation of at least one thing.

[311] But when you're dealing with someone who's gone beyond the pale, and you think that their actions could be conceptualized within the framework of rational self -interest, you are a, you're a lamb to their wolf.

[312] That's all you are.

[313] So that's not helpful.

[314] This is Conversations with Richard Fiedler on ABC Radio.

[315] To get a sense of your worldview, I'd like to talk about your origins.

[316] You grew up in a town called Fairview in northern Canada.

[317] Where is Fairview?

[318] Can you give us a sense of its landscape and how far it is from everywhere else?

[319] It's on the western side of the country.

[320] It's about 600 miles from the Pacific Ocean, east of the Pacific Ocean.

[321] It's north of the Rocky Mountains.

[322] It's about 600 miles north of the American border.

[323] It's at the northernmost reach of the North American Prairie.

[324] And so it was among the last land settled in the settler rush into North America.

[325] It was settled about, well, it would be about how long ago now, 60, 1910, about 70 years ago.

[326] All right, that's pretty recent then.

[327] Oh, yes, definitely.

[328] It was just scraped out of the prairie.

[329] And the railway ended 13 miles north of us.

[330] How close is the nearest big city to 50?

[331] 400 miles.

[332] Right, so it's nearly like 1 ,000 kilometres, in other words.

[333] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, about 700 kilometers, yeah.

[334] Given that you're that far north, how dark and cold were winters?

[335] No, it was cold.

[336] I was just up there three weeks ago.

[337] I gave a talk to my alma mater, which was in a little college about 60 miles away, and a reasonably larger urban center, about 50 ,000 people.

[338] And it was 30 below when we were up there for the whole week.

[339] I mean, and when I was a kid, when I went to college at Grand Prairie Regional College, there was a, there was a segment of time there, 38 days, where it never got above minus 40.

[340] And minus 40 is really cold.

[341] Like, you go outside at minus 40.

[342] Well, if you throw a kettle full of boiling water in the air at minus 40, it will vaporize completely before it hits the ground.

[343] And the tires used to freeze flat on the bottom and, you know, and things act very strangely at 40 below.

[344] Yeah, what does smoke do when it's coming out of a chimney there?

[345] It tends to drift downward.

[346] Yeah.

[347] It's that heavy.

[348] Yeah, yeah.

[349] Yeah, it just gets cold so fast that the particulates drift downward.

[350] You can tell it's really cold outside when you can see the chimneys, the smoke kind of drift downward and collect on the ground.

[351] And how much daylight do you get in the middle of winter?

[352] About six hours.

[353] So it's like Iceland, in other words, essentially.

[354] It's the kind of weather of Iceland.

[355] As you were growing up there, did your parents...

[356] It's much colder than Iceland, though, because it has the Gulf Stream.

[357] Of course it does, yes.

[358] Was the expectation always that you would leave?

[359] the expectation for most people in the town most young people who had options let's say and who weren't options that transcended a working class horizon was that they would leave because what else were they going to do even to further their education there was you know there was a college there but it was an agricultural college mostly if you were going to attend college or university you were definitely leaving you could go to college 60 miles away for the first two years of your University, which is what I did in a larger urban center.

[360] It only had about 45 ,000 people at that time.

[361] But by Northern Alberta standards, it was the urban hub.

[362] And then I went to Edmonton after that, which was 400 kilometers away.

[363] The big city.

[364] Yeah.

[365] How old were you when you met your wife there?

[366] About I was eight.

[367] Yeah.

[368] She was a childhood friend of mine.

[369] A childhood friend.

[370] Yeah.

[371] We used to play together all the time when we were kids.

[372] And then you kept in touch.

[373] She used to hit my croquet ball out in the street and then laugh.

[374] That'll do it for a young man in love.

[375] Who was it that made you a reader when you were in this town?

[376] Oh, my father taught me to read when I was very young.

[377] He was a school teacher.

[378] He's still alive.

[379] And he spent a lot of time with me when I was a little kid.

[380] And he taught me to read when I was very young.

[381] He had a workbook that he had designed that stepped me through the process of learning with phonics.

[382] And he'd spend an hour or so a night with me when he came home for work, which was something I really, really liked, really looked forward to.

[383] And so he taught me to read.

[384] And I had a particular facility for it as well.

[385] So it was a happy marriage of innate ability, I would say, and care and attention.

[386] Who was the librarian that opened you up to the world of books?

[387] Yeah, well, she was an interesting person.

[388] Her name was Rachel Knottley, and she's actually the mother of the current premier of Alberta, Rachel Notley, who was a childhood friend of mine, adolescent friend of mine, really.

[389] Sandy Naughtley was a New Englander, an educated person, a very anomalous person for our small community, partly because she was genuinely a literary person, let's say, an educated person.

[390] She was the librarian in our local junior high and also the wife of our local member of the Legislative Assembly, who was the only socialist in Alberta.

[391] Alberta, my home province, was the entire Legislative Assembly was conservative.

[392] every single member.

[393] And for decades, like for 40 years, he was the only member of the opposition.

[394] And people in Fairview, Albert is a conservative province, people in Fairview, my town didn't vote for him because he was a socialist.

[395] They voted for him because they thought he was a good person.

[396] And he was.

[397] Anyways, his wife was also a committed socialist.

[398] And she worked as our town librarian, our junior high librarian.

[399] And she introduced all the delinquent and semi -delinquent types used to hang out in her library because, well, she was an interesting person.

[400] And that was you?

[401] You were delinquent or semi -delinquents or not really?

[402] Well, yeah, a kind of, you know, Fairview was kind of a rough town and the number, the people to hang out with, there wasn't a lot of variety.

[403] I kind of like the kids who weren't particularly obedient and, and were kind of tough, you know.

[404] Now, I wasn't, I wouldn't say I was a particularly tough kid.

[405] I'd skip the grade.

[406] So I was smaller than my peers and, and I was rather small for my age.

[407] But I was pretty mouthy so I could hold my own, in a verbal dispute and it was it was I just I kind of admired the kids who had some fight in them you know and anyways you used to go hang out in the library and she got a fair number of my friends to read things that were quite sophisticated but she piled books on me what's some stuff which you were using you to oh well she introduced me to 1984 and brave new world and one day in the life of Ivan denisovich and also Ayn Rand's books which was quite interesting because of course oh for socialists to Hey, look, she was, she was a genuine intellectual, right?

[408] It was, it was, she thought that I would read those books and come to the appropriate conclusion, you know, and I suppose in some sense that was the case.

[409] But she really put me on a path to reading, I was reading a lot of science fiction at that point.

[410] I read a book day when I was a kid.

[411] And she tilted me more towards what you might think of as higher quality literature.

[412] And so that was a big deal.

[413] So when you went reading Solz and Itson in the library, what were teenagers doing for fun in fair view?

[414] What kind of stuff?

[415] Oh, God.

[416] Drinking ice -cold vodka behind their neighbor's fence and, like, it was, it was, I wouldn't call it a particularly salutary adolescent culture.

[417] Yeah, what were a lot of drugs in town?

[418] What do you remember of teenage parties at that time?

[419] I never really liked teenage parties because they were very dark places.

[420] You know, there wasn't, there was a lot of disengaged premature cynicism that kind of characterized the teenage population.

[421] It was in the 1970s and at, you know, the 60s had a certain amount of optimism and then they kind of, the detritus of the 60s washed up on the shore of the 1970s.

[422] And like, illicit drug use peaked in North America in 1979, which was the same year that I graduated.

[423] And the teenage parties were full of people who had, who had consumed far too much alcohol, who were listening to music, and I liked music and I liked loud music, but who were listening to music at volumes that precluded any possibility of any sort of conversation whatsoever.

[424] And we're also places where there was no shortage of drugs, and there was a real nihilistic hopelessness about them that I didn't like.

[425] I don't think anyone liked it particularly, but what were we going to do, sit at home and wait for Godot, you know?

[426] You and I are roughly the same age.

[427] I think you're a tiny bit older than me. Like you, Well, like me, you had recurrent worries, if you like, a certainty in the early 80s, particularly as the Cold War reached a new kind of dangerous intensity that we weren't going to live to see our 30s.

[428] I mean, I was quite convinced of that.

[429] Oh, many people were convinced of that.

[430] I was quite convinced of that.

[431] Yeah, yeah.

[432] And then you kind of had to live knowing that.

[433] You used to have a kind of recurrent nightmares.

[434] I had nightmares all the time about that.

[435] Oh, yeah, I was just watching Terminator, the Terminator movie.

[436] And there's a scene in there where there's a scene of hydrogen bombs being blown off in the horizon, you know, where you could see the mushroom clouds arise.

[437] I had dreams where it contained that sort of imagery all the time.

[438] All the time.

[439] Do you understand what you said you began to read obsessively after that, about the Holocaust, about terrible things, the worst things that have happened.

[440] Do you understand your fascination for that?

[441] Not really.

[442] I think it might have something to do with temperamentally.

[443] I have a fairly strong proclivity towards depression.

[444] which I think is an autoimmune illness in my case.

[445] And I think that that might have highlighted the negative for me more than it might for someone else.

[446] But I am voraciously curious.

[447] So I don't know if you combine a bit of a dark side with voracious curiosity, you get obsession with tyranny and malevolence, something like that.

[448] But the curiosity, I think, apart from the darkness, I mean, I was oriented towards finding the biggest problem I could conceptualize to try to solve it, you know, because I like an intellectual challenge.

[449] It's built into me that liking.

[450] And so I thought, well, especially once I went to graduate school and decided to, my first degree was in political science and literature.

[451] And I thought that political science held the key to understanding complex problems.

[452] It was to be, they were to be analyzed at the political level.

[453] But I learned fairly rapidly, partly because I didn't buy the human being as rational actor theory or the people are motivated primarily by economics theory, which was the competing theory, say, on the left, I thought, no, neither of those are true.

[454] Psychology became much more attractive.

[455] And then when I decided to become a psychologist, I thought, well, if I'm going to try to solve a psychological problem in my research, then I might as well pick the biggest problem I can, then I can conceptualize and have that it.

[456] I mean, at the same time, I did my PhD on inheritable forms of alcoholism.

[457] It was much more bounded and much more, I would say, classically scientific, biological.

[458] So I was doing that at the same time.

[459] You try to make yourself invulnerable with this?

[460] Like if I can really expose myself to the full knowledge of this, this terrible thing, these awful things, the worst things that can possibly happen.

[461] And I've really meant I'm kind of fascinated by this stuff myself, you know, forms my reading.

[462] It makes you then, well, now I know that.

[463] I won't be surprised or something.

[464] Well, I think there's some of that.

[465] Some of its preparation.

[466] but no, I think I was more interested in making myself not bad.

[467] You know, one of the things I learned quite rapidly from reading the literature pertaining to situations like those that obtained in Auschwitz was that people could be Auschwitz camp guards, and not only that, they could really enjoy it.

[468] And I thought, see, I learned early that history isn't about other people.

[469] History is about you.

[470] And then you might think, well, you might still try to warm out of that, let's say.

[471] And you think, well, the history that's about me is the history of the victim.

[472] It's like, fair enough, you know.

[473] But it's also the history of the perpetrator.

[474] And if you don't read history as the perpetrator, then you haven't, you haven't figured out how the world works.

[475] So you think history is a warning then, a warning not just to other people, but to yourself.

[476] Yeah, well, history is an autobiography.

[477] History is a biography.

[478] It's about you.

[479] You're the Auschwitz camp guard.

[480] You might think, well, no, I'm not.

[481] It's like, maybe not.

[482] Maybe you're the person who would have opened her house up to Anne Frank and her family.

[483] But probably you're not.

[484] Because that's statistically very, very, very unlikely.

[485] And it requires a level of courage and a level of willingness to accept risk, even on behalf of your family that virtually no one has and that almost no one should ever lay careless claim to.

[486] I see I've really experienced that in the last year watching people respond as I've been immersed in one political controversy over another I am I knew people were timid before I stepped into this political arena let's say or before it engulfed me but people are way more timid than than I thought not everyone there are people you meet that have backbones of steel but they're not very common I'd say it's one in a thousand maybe a book early on in your academic career called Maps of Meaning?

[487] And what were you looking for when you were writing that book?

[488] I was doing two things.

[489] I was trying to understand what the fundamental issue was at the heart of the Cold War.

[490] And then I was trying to determine whether what the Cold War was merely an argument between two hypothetically equally valid narratives, which would be kind of a postmodern view of it, right?

[491] So well, there's a left -wing, radical left -wing narrative, and it's arbitrary, but perhaps we can organize society along its guidelines, and there's a free market capitalist, democratic narrative, and it's just as arbitrary, and perhaps we can organize society along those lines, but one's arbitrary, and so is the other, and so is any other narrative that you might impose.

[492] And so I was curious about that, because I thought, well, look, it looks like there's something really at stake here.

[493] We've generated tens of thousands of unbelievably powerful weapons.

[494] We've aimed them at each other.

[495] We're willing to put the world to the torch because of this argument.

[496] Maybe there's something to it.

[497] So I went into it with what I would say is an open mind, trying to understand if it was merely an argument between two arbitrary systems of moral relativism, or if there was something else at stake.

[498] And what I discovered, I would say, partly by reading the works of other people who had discovered this before me, let's say, was that, no, they weren't equivalent systems in any way at all.

[499] The West is founded on something that's far deeper than mere arbitrary narrative.

[500] Part of that is the idea of the sovereignty and divinity of the individual, which is the most powerful idea there is, the most powerful human idea there is.

[501] And it's also the idea that without which, in the absence of that idea you cannot produce a functioning society at every at any level of analysis you can't function in relationship to yourself because you won't take yourself with any degree of seriousness you won't function well within your family because you won't treat your family members like they matter and you won't function well as a citizen because you'll be nihilistic and cynical how did you then with that met that on to stories old old stories which is what you wanted to do with this book the older stories from the bible and stories like pinocchio we and even Harry Potter.

[502] Yeah, well, even the political debates are, in some sense, are competitions between stories about how to live.

[503] Okay, so then the next observation is, well, stories map out how to live.

[504] When the question then becomes, well, what's the story that maps out the proper way to live?

[505] And that story would have to contain a description of the environment, right?

[506] Because just like a map has to map out the territory, the story would have to contain a description of the environment, and that would have to contain a description of your role in the environment.

[507] environment.

[508] And so the mythological landscape is something like this.

[509] It's good and evil at the level of the individual.

[510] That's the hero and the adversary, right?

[511] Everyone has to contend with that.

[512] The darkness and goodness in yourself and in other individuals.

[513] Everyone contends with that.

[514] So it's universal truth.

[515] And then that's, that individual is encompassed within society.

[516] And society is the wise king and the tyrant.

[517] And it's always the wise king and the tyrant.

[518] It's both.

[519] Now some societies are almost all.

[520] tyrant, and some societies tilt quite nicely towards wise king.

[521] But even if you grow up in a relatively benevolent society, like ours, you're still crushed by the mob into a certain conformity.

[522] And there's a lot of pain and wastage that goes along with that.

[523] Now, there's benefits.

[524] And then the last element of the mythological landscape is the terror and creative potential of nature.

[525] Well, that's the mythological landscape.

[526] And a meaningful story guides you through that.

[527] Well, they're the same stories we need to.

[528] Joseph Campbell wrote about this.

[529] George Lucas read it.

[530] It's there in Homer's, the Iliad and the Odyssey.

[531] It's there in Star Wars.

[532] It's there in the Wizard of Oz.

[533] There's the hero.

[534] The world is out of joints.

[535] The heroes living in this kind of strange environment.

[536] There's the call to adventure, which is refused, then acceded to.

[537] You go into the world.

[538] You encounter shapeshifters and allies and secret adversaries.

[539] And then you go into the evil kingdom, take the elixir, bring it back to the village, and the good world is restored.

[540] That's exactly right.

[541] That's that pattern.

[542] Or you revive your dead father and restore him to life.

[543] Oh, yeah.

[544] A variant of it.

[545] And then it might be Darth Vader, but that's the whole other thing.

[546] But no, this is exactly right.

[547] These stories, like when they're recast, Star Wars is a great example.

[548] Although I don't think that the Star Wars stories are of particularly high quality.

[549] No, but we seem to need these stories, though.

[550] I mean, we seem to need to hear these stories again and again.

[551] It's almost killing Hollywood, but it's something we need to hear again and again.

[552] Well, if you get in a car without a map, you don't know where you are or where you're going.

[553] It's like, what good is that.

[554] that like all there is then is confusion and pain so yeah you the story this the story is life the story is well it's the story of rule one stand up straight with your shoulders back stand up and confront the catastrophe of existence or voluntarily move forward under your load discover new things share them with the people around you it's life is a call to adventure and and everything's at stake that's the thing it's it's an all -in game so you might as well play it that way Dutch economist I had on recently, Ricka Bregman was talking about the state of play with jobs at the moment in the Western world particularly.

[555] And he quoted a poll that was done in Britain that showed as many as 37 percent, 37 percent of British workers say they have a job they think doesn't need to exist.

[556] And the proliferation of jobs, worthless jobs that create little or no value and induce a kind of despair in people who created a big problem in modern life.

[557] This is something you've seen and this is something you can, you feel these.

[558] ideas can address?

[559] Well, one of the prices you pay for a hierarchy, like a society that's organized in complex, multi -level hierarchies is that you can get ensconced in the middle of one of those hierarchies, and you're kind of detached from reality.

[560] And so the adventure isn't so self -evidently there.

[561] You know, maybe you're a mid -level functionary in a large, faceless corporation that makes some sort of widget.

[562] And I'm not being cynical about this.

[563] Like, we need widgets, you know.

[564] We need washers and screws.

[565] I'm not talking about those guys.

[566] I'm not talking about the people who collect their garbage and clean houses and actually do worthwhile useful things.

[567] I'm talking about people who are living in some kind of strange, vague bureaucracy and moving things around that are quite often very well -paid jobs.

[568] These aren't low -status jobs.

[569] They're often also difficult, even if they're not producing anything.

[570] Well, that's right.

[571] It's easy for, it's easy for large -scale bureaucracies to end up doing pseudo -work.

[572] It's still difficult, you know, but the connection between the work and the actual world, let's say, gets attenuated to the point that the job appears either meaningless or even counterproductive.

[573] I mean, that's a sign that you're in an organization.

[574] That's the tyrannical king, right?

[575] He's old and willfully blind and ready to fall apart, but you're still part and parcel of that.

[576] Yeah.

[577] One of the things I'm getting at, I suppose with this, is that your videos, particularly on YouTube, tend to resonate particularly with young men.

[578] Young men are very, very large part of your audience.

[579] What do they want to know?

[580] And what do they say they get from your videos to you?

[581] Oh, they want to know first that they're not everything they should be, which is, I have very perverse messages.

[582] They want to know that they're not everything they should be.

[583] Oh, absolutely.

[584] It's like, I mean, it's so funny.

[585] I've thought about this a lot over the last couple of years because, well, especially, I did these biblical lectures in Toronto.

[586] And they're pretty harsh.

[587] And they sold out.

[588] It's like, and I thought, well, just imagine this.

[589] I imagine that I formulated a business plan and I went to a venture capitalist.

[590] And I said, here's my plan.

[591] I'm going to talk around the Bible.

[592] Yeah, I'm an academic.

[593] I'm going to rent a theater.

[594] I'm going to talk about the Bible, responsibility and truth to disaffected young men.

[595] Yeah, we're going to get them out of the pub and into the lecture to hear about.

[596] That's my plan to make a profit.

[597] It's like, well, you know, how that's just so absurd.

[598] But it's not so absurd because, you know, psychologists, the more pathological brand of psychologists have been pushing this doctrine of self -esteem on young people for 50 years.

[599] It's like, you're okay the way you are.

[600] It's like, well, actually, for most people, most young people, they actually don't think they are okay the way they are.

[601] And that's a really pessimistic message.

[602] It's they think, well, I don't have a really good relationship.

[603] I don't have any real goals in my life.

[604] I know I'm really undisciplined.

[605] I procrastinate all the time.

[606] I play video games till three in the morning.

[607] Not that there's anything wrong with video games, but they can become an obsession.

[608] You know, I don't have any discipline.

[609] I'm not happy with my career.

[610] I'm not very well educated.

[611] It's like the list goes on, you know.

[612] And then you come along and you pat them on them, they were back, and say, oh, well, you know, you're, you're just lovely the way you are.

[613] It's like it's so pessimistic.

[614] And so I've been suggesting to, not just to young men, although there are people who tend to be more on YouTube, that there's a hole in the structure of reality that's exactly their size, and they should rise up and fill it.

[615] They have a destiny to achieve, and that becoming disciplined and forthright and having an aim and paying attention to your family and taking on responsibility.

[616] and learning to speak truthfully, all of those means that things don't careen towards hell.

[617] It's really important that each person sets themselves in order.

[618] And I know that that's true.

[619] And I'm on the side, like, I'm not finger wagging and saying, oh, these young people today.

[620] It's like, it's not obvious to me that young people today are any worse than they were in Socrates's time.

[621] There's certainly no worse than they were in the 1960s.

[622] You know, baby boomers are so self -righteous about young people.

[623] Oh, look at those young people today.

[624] It's like, yeah, look at those baby boomers, man. I mean, they were called the me generation for good reason.

[625] And so I'm telling these young guys, I'm suggesting to these young guys.

[626] And I put myself in the same category, you know.

[627] It's like, look, you're a make work project, man. There's lots of things about you that could be fixed.

[628] And so fix them.

[629] I'm pretty sure you don't like gurus.

[630] Yet people are always asking you, how should I live my life?

[631] Your book is called 12 Rules for Life.

[632] And they are your rules.

[633] Are you troubled by that?

[634] Well, I'm troubled by it to some degree.

[635] I mean, there's always a danger in that.

[636] I'm not troubled by it to any great degree because I don't think it's a fairly strange guru who says, chart your own destiny, take your own risks, make your own choices, pick your own aims, be responsible, right?

[637] Take this on yourself.

[638] It's like, well, that's not, that's a paradoxical message for a guru.

[639] So what am I, the leader of individualists?

[640] You know, you know what I mean?

[641] That's, I'm not too concerned about that.

[642] Now, you know, people, I would say, have a proclivity to, at now, at least, to be occasionally somewhat starstruck, let's say, when they encounter me. But I can get over that very, very rapidly.

[643] You know, I have experience with that sort of thing.

[644] anything anyways because that happens to you upon occasion when you're a clinician you have to learn to deal with that and properly you know so no i'm not too concerned about that it's been great pleasure to speak with you jordan peterson i've only got through half the questions i wanted to ask you so i'd like to come back on some time in the future so we can go through those questions as well that would be such a pleasure it's been very nice talking with you thank you so much on air online and podcast this is conversations with richard fidler Jordan Peterson's new book is called 12 Rules for Life.

[645] ABC .net .net .au slash conversations is our website.

[646] I'm Richard Fidelar.

[647] Thanks for listening.

[648] You've been listening to a podcast of Conversations with Richard Fideler.

[649] For more conversations interviews, please go to the website.

[650] ABC .net .orgas slash conversations.