The Joe Rogan ExperienceJoe Rogan Experience #1139 - Jordan Peterson
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,074 words- 0:03 – 2:55
From lectures to arena-sized "discussions": reading the audience in real time
- JRJoe Rogan
5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Hello, Jordan Peterson.
- JPJordan Peterson
Hello, Mr. Rogan. How you doing?
- JRJoe Rogan
You look very spiffy today.
- JPJordan Peterson
Thank you, sir.
- JRJoe Rogan
This is a new look for you. You're, you've been rocking these a lot, these big, gigantic, uh ... What do you call those things? These concerts that you guys are doing? What do you ... Speeches?
- JPJordan Peterson
Well, lectures.
- JRJoe Rogan
What-
- JPJordan Peterson
Discussions is really what I-
- JRJoe Rogan
Discussions.
- JPJordan Peterson
... think of them as, yeah-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- JPJordan Peterson
... because I'm discussing ... I mean, you might think it's kinda perverse to be discussing with a 3,000-person audience, but it's not, because if you pay attention to the audience, they're constantly ... And the individuals in the audience, they're constantly providing feedback. So it's a discussion as far as I'm concerned.
- JRJoe Rogan
Feedback in applause, laughter. Sometimes they shout things out too, right?
- JPJordan Peterson
Shuffling.
- JRJoe Rogan
Shuffling?
- JPJordan Peterson
Yeah. Well, really what you want, if, if you're on track, if you're where you should be, then it's dead silent, and everyone's focused and listening. And so if that's not happening ... I mean, you know, there can be laughter and that kind of thing, but generally speaking, you don't wanna hear noise from the audience. So if, if you're, if you're on a r- if you're pursuing a complicated topic and you're paying attention ... And I'm always looking at individual people in the audience, you know, in the first few rows 'cause that's all I can see because of the lights. I'm trying to make sure that everyone's on track with the talk. And, you know, there's ... People gesture with their face and they gesture with their eyes and they shake their head and they nod and there's lots of things to pick up. And if you're not speaking with notes, you can really pay attention to the audience, and then you know if you're in the dialogue, and that's where everyone wants to be.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, it's an interesting thing you're doing because you have experience in doing that with lectures in colleges and universities, but now it's the general public, and people just pay to see it, and you fill up these huge, gigantic theaters. I mean, I've seen some of the places that you guys are doing it. You and Sam just got done doing one in Vancouver, and it's huge places.
- JPJordan Peterson
We did two.
- JRJoe Rogan
You did two, that's right.
- JPJordan Peterson
Yeah, yeah, back to back, and yeah, so it was about five hours of intense discussion over two days. And you know, we were supposed to talk for an hour each night and then go to Q&A, but we asked the audience ... Brett Weinstein, who was moderating, asked the audience if they wanted to go to Q&A or continue the discussion, and, you know, the, the response from the crowd was definitely continue the discussion, and so we ended up talking for about two and a half hours each night. And again, it was ... The audience is along for the ride.
- JRJoe Rogan
Hmm.
- JPJordan Peterson
You know, and they were good discussions as far as I'm concerned. You know, it was kind of marketed as a take-down in some sense, Harris versus Peterson, you know.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- JPJordan Peterson
But the discussion itself was an attempt on Sam's part and my part to further our thinking about the topic and to bring everyone along for the ride, you know, for the journey, so to speak.
- 2:55 – 4:41
Peterson vs. Sam Harris in person: truth, facts vs. values, and why the debate matters
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. Well, you guys had two podcasts that you did, uh, over the phone. So this, these were the first meetings that you guys had in person?
- JPJordan Peterson
Yeah, it was the first time I'd met Sam.
- JRJoe Rogan
The first one that you two had was marred by this discussion about what is truth.
- JPJordan Peterson
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
And it was a, like s- a strange sort of a ... You got stuck. You guys got kinda stuck in that first conversation. But I feel like the second one was much better.
- JPJordan Peterson
Yes.
- JRJoe Rogan
You c- you ... I mean, uh, both of you kind of recognized that there were some errors made in the first podcast or at least-
- JPJordan Peterson
Yeah, we augured in on a definition and, and couldn't-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- JPJordan Peterson
... let it go, and so that wasn't so good. Yeah. And, uh, I wasn't in tip-top shape for that first discussion, well, or for the second one for that matter. (clears throat) But they've been getting ... Each discussion I've had with Sam has been getting better, so ... As far as I'm concerned, and I think he feels the same way. And I mean, we're tr- we're trying to sort something out that's really, really difficult, and it's the relationship between facts and values, which is p- parallel to the relationship between, say, objective truth and, and narrative, or parallel to the distinction between scientific f- fact and religious truth. All of those things sort of are layered on top of each other, and it's an extraordinarily difficult topic. And so it's not surprising that it's taking all of this discussion to even vaguely get it straight. It's been a central bone of contention among philosophers for, well, probably forever, but certainly since the time of, of David Hume, several hundred years.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, one of the more fascinating things that's coming out of the realm of podcasting is these kind of discussions, these long form live discussions in front of enormous groups of people where you go over very complex issues. It's a new thing. I mean, and it's, uh, it's something that's greatly received by the public, which is really interesting. I mean-
- JPJordan Peterson
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... you guys are selling out all over the place.
- 4:41 – 7:56
Podcasting as a Gutenberg-scale shift: why long-form is exploding
- JPJordan Peterson
Yeah, well, one, one, one ... I've really been trying to make sense of this, hey, because I'm thinking, "Well, what the hell's going on? Why, why am I selling out 3,000-person auditoriums?" And then, and then ... But not just me, obviously. Sam is doing it, and you're doing something on a larger scale but very similar with your long form podcasts. And, and, and then there's this whole rise of, of what Bari Weiss described as the intellectual dark web. That's actually Eric Weinstein's coinage. And so there's a group of us that have been sort of clumped together for, for reasons that aren't obvious, but I've been trying to figure that out as I do these lectures. Another thing I'm doing with the lectures or the discussions is trying to continually further the development of my ideas. I use the, the, the stage, let's say, as a, as a, uh, opportunity in real time to think, and I've been thinking, well, if you're surfing, you don't confuse yourself with the wave, right?That's, that's a real mistake. You might be on top of the wave, but you're not the wave. And I think this long form discussion, and the public hunger for that, is best conceptualized like that. There's a technological revolution. It's a deep one. The technological revolution is online video and audio immediately accessible to everyone all over the world. And so what that's done is it turned, it's turned the spoken word into a tool that has the same reach as the printed word.So it's a Gutenberg Revolution in the domain of video and audio. And it might be even deeper than the original Gutenberg Revolution because it isn't obvious how many people can read, but lots of people can listen. And now it turns out ... So, I mean, you got a little bit of that with TV, right? And you got a little bit of it w- with radio. But there was bandwidth limitations that were really stringent, especially in TV, where you could get 30 seconds if you were lucky and six minutes if you were stellar to, to elucidate a complicated argument, so you can't do that. Everything gets con- compressed to a, to, to a kind of oversimplified entertainment. But now all of a sudden we have this forum for long form discussion, real long form discussion, and it turns out that everyone is way smarter than we thought, right? We can have these discussions publicly and there's a great hunger for it. And I see this parallel to ... And, and this would be, what would you call it? Supporting evidence for this hypothesis. The same thing's happened in the entertainment world because, you know, f- t- TV made us think, "Well, we can handle a 20-minute sitcom or maybe we can handle an hour and a half made for TV movie." But then Netflix came along, and HBO as well, with the bandwidth restrictions gone and all of a sudden it turned out that, no, no, we can handle 40-hour complex multilayered narratives where the characters shift, where the complexity starts to reach the same complexity as great literature and there's a massive market for it. And so it turns out that we're smarter than our technology revealed to us. And I think those of us who've been placed in this intellectual dark web group, you know, there's some things we have in common. We more or less have independent voices because we're not beholden to any corporate masters except peripherally, and we've been operating in this long form space and the technology has facilitated that, and so all of a sudden it turns out that there's more to people than we thought. And thank God for that.
- 7:56 – 14:37
The IDW backlash and media incentives: labeling, polarization, and clickbait dynamics
- JRJoe Rogan
I'm, I'm struggling with, um ... Uh, I want us ... I don't want to use the word hating. Uh, there, there seems to be, uh, a non-acceptance or a, a resistance to the idea that anything of quality could come out of this group of people.
- JPJordan Peterson
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's really interesting to me, and, uh, I'm wondering why when I listen to you speak or Sam or Eric or any of these people, B- Ben or Dave, and I, I hear very interesting points and I'm like, "Why are people resisting that these are interesting points?" Why are they resisting this? And I think there's a lot of people that are beholden to mainstream organizations, whether it's newspapers or magazines or television shows, that feel trapped. I think they feel trapped by this format that they're stuck in. It's a very limiting format and it's a format that, in my opinion, is like ... I mean, it might as well be smoke signals or ham radio or something. It's fucking ... It's dumb. You know, this, this idea that you're gonna go to commercials every 15 minutes and, you know, and in between you have 15 people arguing. I mean, I, I watched a panel on CNN once and I, I think we counted 10 people that were trying to talk during this five-minute segment. I'm like, who ... What genius thought that it would be a good idea to get 10 people struggling for airtime, barking over each other, no one saying anything that makes any sense because everybody's talking over and trying to stand out and trying to say the most outrageous things? And I'm, I'm seeing like some of the resistance to this when we span ... I mean, I mean pretty far, you know, from Sam and I lean more left and Ben leans more right and you're what you would call a classic liberal and Eric's very difficult to define and Brett is fiercely progressive. I mean, these are ... I mean Brett in particular's a very left wing guy, but this desire to label and to, to have this diminishing label as like alt-right or, you know, right wing or fascist, it's, it's very strange to me.
- JPJordan Peterson
Yeah. Well, there's a couple of things going on. I think (clears throat) one of them is that the technological transformation that I laid out, and then the other is that I do believe that especially for the radical leftist types, the whole notion of free speech among individuals is not only anathema but also something that isn't possible within their framework of reference. I've been trying to think this through very carefully because, you know, f- free speech in some sense has become identified as a right wing issue and I thought, "Well, how the hell did that happen?" And then I thought, "Oh, yes. Well, if you're radically left and you're playing the identity politics game, there's actually no such thing as free speech because you're only the mouthpiece of your group whether you know it or not. So you don't get to talk as Joe Rogan, you get to talk as like Joe Rogan patriarchal white guy." And that's it.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- JPJordan Peterson
And your utterances aren't a reflection of your own opinions as an individual but they're an attempt on your part, whether you know it or not, to justify your position in the power hierarchy. And so everything right now ... And, and this is where the technology and the death of the mainstream media and, and this, and this po- political polarization all unite, everything has turned into a political conversation in the, in the mainstream media, uh, media. And it has to be cast as left versus right, and if you're criticizing the left, then all of a sudden you're right and right wing, and it has to be about politics. It's like-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- JPJordan Peterson
Well, it doesn't have to be about politics. It could be about philosophy. It doesn't have to be cast in political terms and, and then it's also subject to a, a form of, of, of ... Well, it's, it's made more stupid than it has to be by these terrible bandwidth limitations.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- JPJordan Peterson
Like, I mean, I've been on mainstream TV talk shows and it's very strange experience because you're definitely content. You know, Marshall McLuhan said, "The medium is the message," right? The medium shapes the dialogue and it does in, in great, in great ... In, in, in a, in a tremendous way, powerful way.... you go on a TV talk show, and maybe it's an hour long, something like that, and there's five guests, and you've got your eight minutes, something like that. And you have to be bright and chipper and entertaining and, and intelligent and sort of glitzy. And it, it puts that façade of momentary charisma on you, and if you don't play that out, you actually fail. Right? 'Cause you can't start a long form discussion when you've got six minutes, and if you're trying to talk about something that's, that's deep and difficult, well, you wanna talk about it because you've got the access then, and the opportunity, but you've got your, your six minutes. You, you can't help but turn into sort of a glitzy entertainer. And so it cheapens everything. And then the other thing that I think is happening is that as the mainstream media, television in particular, dies, the, the quality people are starting to desert like rats leaving a seep- sinking ship. I guess they're good rats if they're quality people, but... Um, and then the, the, there's ever more enticement to use clickbait journalism to attract a diminishing portion of the remaining audience.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- JPJordan Peterson
You know? It's like, one of the things that's happened, so if you look at the five major indices of violent crime in the United States, the d- they, they've declined by 50% in 25 years. It's absolutely beyond comprehension. It's so good. This includes violent gun crime, by the way. And yet the reports of violence in media have gone up and up and up and up. You think, "Well, what's going on?" It's like, well it's, it's, it's clickbait. It's the es- it's the equivalent of clickbait. And then to turn everything into a polarized political discussion takes no real intellectual energy. But it's also driven by the death spiral of the classic media, I think. And I think that's actually why the polarization seems to be so acute now. Some of it is genuine, but some of it is, some of it is the consequence of this underlying technological transformation and the death throes of the smoke signalers, fundamentally.
- JRJoe Rogan
What you're talking about when you're, when you're saying, "The people, especially radical leftists, have to concede certain points whenever they discuss things," th- this is so true and so important, because you see that play out over and over again. There's very little variation from the official narrative when they talk about important subjects-
- JPJordan Peterson
Mm.
- JRJoe Rogan
... or controversial subjects, whatever they are, whether it's, um, you know, uh, transgender rights, or whatever, whatever's in the news that's, that's big and, and c- and, you know, the... It's very popular right now. There's these, these certain things that you're not allowed to deviate from.
- JPJordan Peterson
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
And that, that's an insanely restrictive perspective and it... Who's establishing these norms? Like, who's estab-
- JPJordan Peterson
That's a good question, man.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, who is?
- 14:37 – 17:49
Universities, Title IX, and activist “buzzwords”: equity, implicit bias, and DEI critique
- JPJordan Peterson
Well, I, I blame, I blame the universities in large part for this, the activist disciplines.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- JPJordan Peterson
But that's only a partial answer because the universities are also responding to legislation like Title IX, so and, and so, and so they've been driven into the-
- JRJoe Rogan
Explain Title IX for people so standalone.
- JPJordan Peterson
Well, Title IX, Title IX originally was just a piece of legislation that, that ensured that women would have equal access to sports events and so forth at the universities. That's what it was designed for, but it's become this umbrella legislation that pushes equality of outcome essentially across every possible dimension in the universities, and it's been used as a weapon by the radical left. But, you know, some of that's driven by legislative necessity. Um, what, what's happening, what... The reason that I think this is coming from the universities is because I don't think that this could... Well, there's all these activist disciplines that are essentially subsidized by too high tu- tuition fees and also by state funding, and they've produced an entire substructure of, of activists. And those activists are doing everything they can to lay out the theoretical structure for the radical left, and that's a, that's a structure that involves... There's buzzwords, right? Diversity is one, but that means diversity by race and ethnicity and, and sexual preference, for example, as, as if those have anything to do with genuine diversity of ideation, and they don't, and there's no evidence that they do. Inclusivity, I'm never even sure what that means. Um, equity, which is a marker for, uh, what would you call it? It's a code word in some sense for equality of outcome, which is an absolutely deadly doctrine. I think of all the mistakes that the radical left are making and the moderate left for not calling them out on it, the equity doctrine is at the top of the list. And then there's other associated things like white privilege, that's a good one, and systemic bias, and, which is a... (sighs) It's an absolute embarrassment from the perspective of a, of a reasonable academic psychologist because psychological tests have been used to prove that there's this implicit bias that, that lurks everywhere, and the tests aren't reliable and valid enough to make that claim. That's even the people who've made the test, the implicit association test, have admitted, except for Mahzarin Banaji, who's the chairman of the Department at, of Psychology at Harvard, they've admitted that the tests aren't reliable and valid enough to be used for the purposes they're being used for. And there's also no evidence at all that these unconscious buying- bias retraining seminars have any effect whatsoever that's positive. It's all nonsense pushed by this, the, the, the, the ideological, what, fulminations of the radical left.
- JRJoe Rogan
Is there any benefit in having these conversations, talking about implicit biases, and recognizing that there's, uh, an extreme pushback against racism or sexism and all these different things, and that even though these things, these, b- b... These, these ideas that they're pushing might not be tested and proven, the idea of putting it out there in the mainstream, that there's a shift in consciousness in terms of like how people will or won't accept racism or sexism or homophobia or whatever is, else is being discussed, that...Maybe it's far left, but maybe it's moving the needle towards where it needs to be.
- 17:49 – 22:04
Why societies need hierarchies—and why left/right must keep each other in check
- JPJordan Peterson
Well, I, I think that, well, that, I think that happens. I mean, I certainly believe that there's space and necessity for a constant dialogue between the left and the right. This is also something that I've been developing more particularly during these lectures. So, so I'm gonna lay out a couple of propositions. So imagine that you have to move forward in the world. You have to do things.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- JPJordan Peterson
And the reason you have to do things is because, well, if you just sit there and don't do anything, then you suffer and die. So that isn't an option. You have to move forward. You have to move forward towards valued things, so you have to have a value hierarchy. It has to be a hierarchy because one thing has to be more important than another, or you can't do anything, right? You're, you're too split with your choices. So you have to do things. You have to value. You have to value some things more than others. Then you have to act out what you value in the social environment because you're a social creature and you're not gonna do things alone. Then as soon as you start to act out things of value in the social environment, you inevitably produce a hierarchy. And the reason you do that is because no matter what you're acting out, some people are way better at it than others. And, and it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if it's basketball or hockey or plumbing or law. It doesn't matter. As soon as there's something valuable and you're doing it collectively, there's a hierarchy. Okay, so then what happens? Well, the hierarchy can get corrupt and rigid and, and then it stops rewarding competence and it starts rewarding criminality and power. And so there's always the danger the hierarchy will become corrupt. The right-wingers say, "We really need the hierarchies and we should abide by them." That's sort of the motif of patriotism and, and, and, and, and, and, and positive group identity. And the left-wingers say, "Yeah, but wait a second. There's a problem here." A, your hierarchy can get corrupt and might, and B, because some people are way better at it than others, you're gonna produce a bunch of disse- dispossessed people at the bottom. And that's not only good f- not only not good for the dispossessed people, it actually threatens the whole hierarchy, so you have to be careful. You have to attend to the widows and the children, let's say.
- JRJoe Rogan
Hm.
- JPJordan Peterson
The widows and the orphans. Okay, so now and then y- now you can think about that as an eternal problem. You can't do without hierarchies, but, and that's the right-wing claim in some sense, you can't do without hierarchies and they're valuable, but they're also prone to corruption and they dispossess people. Okay, so now that's an eternal problem. The question is what do you do about it? And the answer to that is there's no final answer to the problem. So what you have to do is you have to have a left wing and you have to have a right wing, and they have to talk all the time about whether the hierarchy is healthy and whether or not it's dispossessing too many people. And then the problem with that is, is that discussion can go too far. Because the right-wingers can say, "Hierarchy uber alles," right? That, that, that we've, the state is correct and everything's right. And so that's the right-wing totalitarian types. And the left can say, "We'll flatten everything so there's no inequality." And so both the left and the right can go too far. Now, the problem is we don't, we know how to define... I think one of the problems is we know how to define when the right goes too far. I think we learned that after World War II. I think if you're making claims of ethnic or racial superiority, you get to be put in a box and put off the shelf, right? You're not in the dialogue anymore. It's obvious that the left can go too far, even though they are necessary participants in the discussion, but we don't know when to... we don't know how to define when they've gone too far.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right. We don't have an obvious example.
- JPJordan Peterson
And we, no, and, and, and you might think, well, that's the moderate leftists' problem. It's their moral responsibility to dissociate themselves from the radicals, just as it's the moral responsibility of reasonable conservatives to dissociate themselves from the Birch, John Birch and, and Ku Klux Klan types.
- JRJoe Rogan
That's a very important point.
- JPJordan Peterson
But, but the prob- but it isn't just the moderate left's problem, because even the people on the right don't know what to point to when they say, "No, you've gone too far as a leftist." Now I've tried to... it's complicated because I think it's, it, it might be more than one policy. I think the really deadly leftist presumption is equality of outcome. I think as soon as you start talking about equality of outcome, you should be put in a box and put off the shelf. That's the, but, but it isn't obvious why. Like that doesn't sound like, you know, white people over all. It doesn't have the same guttural punch that the excess of the right has. It's-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- 22:04 – 38:08
Equality of outcome and the oppressor/oppressed trap: Solzhenitsyn and revolutionary escalation
- JPJordan Peterson
... "Well, you're for equality of outcome. Why is that bad?" well, it's bad because when you play it out in society, and there's endless evidence for this, it's an instantaneously murderous doctrine. And I think it's because it shifts so quickly into a victim/victimizer narrative. I, I've had a great opportunity, eh, in the last month and a half. I got asked to write the preface to the 50th anniversary edition of Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago.
- JRJoe Rogan
Hm.
- JPJordan Peterson
And so I've been writing that, and one of the things Solzhenitsyn did, which was one of the things he, one of the things that made that book arguably the greatest work of non-fiction of the 20th century, I mean, it's in the top 10 anyways, was to point out very clearly that the excesses of the Russian Revolution started right away. It wasn't that Lenin was a pretty good guy and then Stalin came in and corrupted everything. It was like Lenin was not a pretty good guy. The revolution got bloody really fast. And what seemed to happen, so imagine you, you're, you're starting to divide the world up into oppressor and oppressed, right? And you're gonna do something about the oppressors. The problem is, is that you can define people multiple ways. This is the intersectionality problem. And almost everybody can be defined, in terms of their group identity, in some way that makes them an oppressor. So like if you're a Black man, well, you could argue that you're oppressed because you're Black, but what about the fact that you're a man? And so does that make you an oppressor or someone who's oppressed? And the answer is, as the revolution progresses, if there's any dimension along which you can be categorized as oppressor, you end up dead. And so that's part of the pathology of the equality of outcome doctrine.
- JRJoe Rogan
What do you mean by that, like, you end up dead?
- JPJordan Peterson
You end up rounded up. You ended up being put into the oppressor camp.... right? And so-
- JRJoe Rogan
But, but there's only so far you can go with that, right? I mean, you can't put all men in the oppressor camp. There'd be no men left. Like what do you-
- JPJordan Peterson
Well, that, but, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
How do you-
- JPJordan Peterson
But that, that is exactly the sort of thing that-
- JRJoe Rogan
So you really think that's how it plays out?
- JPJordan Peterson
Well, it is how it plays out. I mean-
- JRJoe Rogan
When you look for equality of outcome?
- JPJordan Peterson
Well, it, it is how it played out in the Soviet Union and China. I mean, in the, in the Soviet Union, we don't know how many people died. The, the, the reasonable estimates look like about 25 million. That's dead. That's not just, that's not imprisoned, that isn't families destroyed, that's just dead. And in Ma- in Mao's China, it might have approximated 100 million. That's just internal repression. And so what, what seems to happen as soon as you decide that the hierarchy's unfair because there are oppressors and oppressed, then you can go after the oppressors with moral virtue. But the problem is, is that y- there's almost no limit to the number of ways that you can categorize someone as an oppressor. The, the category just starts to expand. Like, the communists killed all the socialists. They killed all the religious people. They killed most of the students. They killed all the productive farmers, and they killed the productive farmers because they owned land and, you know, and maybe a little house and a few cows, you know? I mean, (laughs) to be a successful farmer in Russia at the, at the turn of the 20th century didn't mean you were rich, right? It just meant you weren't starving. It's like, they killed all those people because they were oppressors, because they had more than someone else.
- JRJoe Rogan
That's how they defined it in order to get the people to rally against it.
- JPJordan Peterson
Yes. Yes, exac- yes, and it, and the, and the definition kept slipping. Because well, look, look even now, it's like, well, let's say we rally against the 1%. You know? And, and those would be the money owners, let's say. It's like, okay, who's in that group? Well, everybody in North America's in that group.
- JRJoe Rogan
Worldwide, yeah.
- JPJordan Peterson
Well, (laughs) but who, who sets the parameters, right?
- JRJoe Rogan
But when you ... Right, well it's 34, it's $34,000 a year sets you in the 1% worldwide.
- JPJordan Peterson
Right, right. So, so does that make all of us oppressors?
- JRJoe Rogan
Ba- basically everybody who lives above poverty in America is in the 1% of the world.
- JPJordan Peterson
Right, right. And also by historical standards.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- JPJordan Peterson
And so the problem is, the problem with the oppressor/oppressed narrative is that you can multiply the oppressors endlessly. And there's no end to going after them.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right. And you, as soon as you make a, a definition, you can move the boundaries, and then the next person is the oppressor.
- JPJordan Peterson
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
And then you keep going.
- JPJordan Peterson
Mm-hmm. Well, and you also see the interesting thing too is that ... And this is complicated. So I've been thinking about this proclivity of the left to, to destroy members of the moderate left. It's like there's a, the game, part of the game is, that's being played, as far as I can tell, the ideologically pathological game is, "I'm more virtuous than you." Now, look, if, if you're on the, on the radical left and you say, "Well, you're more virtuous than a right winger," it's like, well, who cares? That's obvious, because the right-wingers are, are, are, are, you know, pathological. So being more virtuous than them, that's not much of an attainment. But if I have my moderate leftist compatriot standing right beside me, and he's pretty damn virtuous, but I'm even more virtuous than him, then that's a real, that's a real, uh, attainment on my part. It's a moral attainment with no effort on my part. If I can figure out some way of classifying that f- previously virtuous person as an oppressor along some dimension, then all of a sudden I get an increment in my moral virtue. And that happened all the time in these leftist revolutions run amok. That was just a constant feature. So it's not good. It's not good.
- JRJoe Rogan
Why is it ... And this is something that's always puzzled me. Why is it that the left is defined by ... There's like cert- there's certain values, and, uh, one of 'em is, uh, when you look at the right, you, you automatically think of racism, potential racism at least, um, a dislike for gay people, homophobia. There's, there's certain qualities that are always attributed to conservatives, and then there's certain qualities there is ... And that there ... And these are social things, and that, that I'm, I'm not quite sure I understand. Like, why is it that the left is always associated in support of gay rights, the left is always associated in support of, uh, you know, of all races and all genders and there's-
- JPJordan Peterson
Well, I think it's the dispossessed issue again. So imagine ... Okay, imagine that, um, we, we make these hierarchies, and they're hierarchies that are devoted towards a goal. And that the sum total of all those hierarchies is something like the patriarchy. Even though I hate that word and I don't think anybody should use it.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's a weird word.
- 38:08 – 53:01
Sports as moral education: “how you play” and winning across a lifetime of games
- JRJoe Rogan
It's interesting because the accusation has always been that what the left is trying to do with this equality of outcome thing is sort of an infantilization of th- the populace, right? And w- the best example of that is sports. Um, when you look at sports, clearly the best people win, right? The, the fastest runners win the race, the, the people that have the best strategy win the game. The infun- inf- that's a weird word, infantilization, I never get it right-
- JPJordan Peterson
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
... but of that is what we do with children where you get participation trophies and no one wins.
- JPJordan Peterson
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
You know, when my daughter was three years old, she was in soccer, and they didn't keep score, but everyone knew. Everyone knew these kids scored and they didn't ... At the end of the game, they didn't announce a winner. There was no, n-
- JPJordan Peterson
Well, you can't. You can't have a soccer game without keeping score.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, but-
- JPJordan Peterson
It's not a soccer game anymore, it's something else.
- JRJoe Rogan
But the score was kept-
- JPJordan Peterson
Of course.
- JRJoe Rogan
... it just wasn't discussed.
- JPJordan Peterson
Oh, of course.
- JRJoe Rogan
It was the strangest thing-
- JPJordan Peterson
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
... but this is, to treat these little kids 'cause they couldn't handle it.
- JPJordan Peterson
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Y- you know, she cried when the other team scored. I'm like, that's ... y- it feels bad when they score, so it feels good when you score. It's very difficult to say-
- JPJordan Peterson
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
... that to a three-year-old.
- JPJordan Peterson
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
So-
- JPJordan Peterson
But part of it-
- JRJoe Rogan
... is she going to run hills? Is she going to practice drills so that she feels that good feeling more? And then there's a point where that becomes too far. There's a point where you become an obsessive over-winner, right?
- JPJordan Peterson
Yeah. Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
And this is the people that want to crush their enemies.
- JPJordan Peterson
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Then you become Conan the Barbarian.
- JPJordan Peterson
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
This is, this is the far end of it.
- JPJordan Peterson
Well, okay, so-
- 53:01 – 1:12:29
Self-improvement as meaning: responsibility, humility, and incremental goals (12 Rules)
- JPJordan Peterson
Okay. So my, in my book, rule four is, (clears throat) this is 12, (clears throat) excuse me, (clears throat) this is from 12 Rules for Life. Rule four is, compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- JPJordan Peterson
Because you need to be, you need to have, uh, a hierarchy of improvement. You need t- to be aiming s- for something, and that means you're gonna be lesser than people who've always, already attained along that dimension.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- JPJordan Peterson
And that can give rise to envy. So the question is, who should you defeat in the final analysis? And the answer is you should defeat your former self. You should be constantly trying to do that. And you're the right control for yourself too, because you're the one who's had all your advantages and disadvantages. And so if you wanna compete fairly with someone, then you should be competing with you. And it is the case, a- and this is what we were talking about too with regards to the self-improvement of the fighter, is, well, if you're improving yourself, then what you are doing is competing with your lesser self.And then, you might also ask, "Well, what is that lesser self?" And that lesser self would be resentful and bitter and, and, um, um, aggressive and vengeance-seeking, and all of those things that go along with having a negative moral character. And those are things that interfere with your ability to progress as you move forward through life. So, it's very necessary to understand that this is why, you know, I've been stressing this idea of personal responsibility as like, well, personal responsibility is to compete with yourself, is to be slightly better than yourself the next day-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- JPJordan Peterson
... and it better in some way that you can actually manage. And that's humility. It's, right, like, "Well, I'm a flawed person and I've got all my problems. Could I be as good as person X?" It's like, not the right question. The right question is, could you be slightly better tomorrow than your currently flawed self? And the answer to that is, if you have enough humility to set the bar properly low, then you could be better tomorrow than you are today. Because what you also have to do is you have to say, "Well, here's all my flaws and my insufficiencies, and the best that someone that flawed and insufficient could do to improve and actually do it is this." And that's not worth going out in the street and celebrating with placards, you know? It's like, well, this is why I tell people to clean their room. So, you're not gonna brag to someone that you did that. But someone as insufficient as you might be able to manage it, and that means you actually are on the pathway to self-improvement and you're transcending your former self. And you might say, "Well, what's the right way of being in the world, if there is such a thing?" And it's not acting according to a set of rules. It's attempting continually to transcend the flawed thing that you currently are. And what's so interesting about that is that the mean- meaning in, the meaning in life is to be found in that pursuit. So, I've been laying that out in these discussions too, because I say, well, the, the fundamental issue is that life is tragic and difficult, very tragic and difficult for everyone. And it's also tainted by malevolence because no matter how ... (laughs) Things are tragic and difficult, but there's always some stupid thing that you could do or someone else could do that could make it even worse than it has to be. And so, that's life. And you need an antidote to that because that can embitter you, constant contact with that. Just the tragedy, but the tragedy combined with betrayal and malevolence, (clears throat) that makes it even worse, especially if it's self-induced. Okay, so you need something to set against that so you don't get bitter and resentful. Well, what do you set against that? Doing something worthwhile, by your own definition say. You need some reason to get the hell out of bed on a terrible day, because you've got something good to do. Well, what's the best thing you can do? Transcend your current wretched and miserable self. There's meaning to be found in that, and real respon- and that's, that's a meaning that's associated with responsibility. One of the things that I've been trying to lay out clearly is that life is hard. It's tainted by malevolence and betrayal. That can make you bitter. You need a meaning to offset that. Where is the meaning to be found? Not in rights, not in impulsive pleasure, but in responsibility. You take responsibility for yourself, so you take care of yourself. If you're good at it, you can, you have some excess left over to take care of your damn family. If you're good at both of those, then you have some excess left over to take care of your community. Those are heavy burdens. You pick up the burdens, you find that's meaningful. The best way to pick up the burden is to continually improve yourself, and that's where the meaning is to be found. And so, that meaning is in the continual self-transcendence. That's letting your old self die and the new self be reborn. You, did you watch When We Were Kings? Ali and-
- JRJoe Rogan
He's got the Ali documentary.
- JPJordan Peterson
... Frazier?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- JPJordan Peterson
God, that's an amazing, amazing, amazing movie. Uh, right at the end of it, so Ali defeats Frazier basically by letting him defeat himself, right? 'Cause Frazier is angry and he's got a chip on his shoulder and he doesn't conduct the fight properly. So, he exhausts himself chasing Ali, and Ali has basically just trained himself to take the damn blows, right? And to wear Frazier out. That's his plan. Then right at the end of the movie, he knocks Frazier down and, uh, it's pretty much the end of the fight, but Frazier sort of struggles to his feet, you know? He's just getting up off the mat and Ali's got his hand pulled back to just nail him 'cause he's completely laid open, and he puts his gloves down and turns away. That's the end of the fight. And Frazier said, and, and this is true as far as I know, that that fight tamed him. Like, Frazier had a big chip on his shoulder and he was a, kind of a dreadful guy up till that fight. And afterwards, he was affable and he was, he was civilized. Ali civilized him. And so, but th- that gesture that Ali made was the, that great gesture because he could've flattened him, right? And he had every reason to, man. He got, he got, he got taken apart. Ali took punches like mad in that fight. And then in the final analysis when he had Frazier down and he was struggling to his feet, he just let him go, man. Nobility of character right there. Something impressive to behold. So ... yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
When, uh, why are you defining people, like, when you're saying this, why are you saying, "Your miserable, wretched life"? Because there's a lot of people that don't have miserable, wretched lives that also just wanna improve. Like, why does it have to be the worst case scenario in order to-
- JPJordan Peterson
'Cause it has to work in or-
- JRJoe Rogan
... warrant improvement.
- JPJordan Peterson
It has to, it has to work, the theory has to work in the worst case scenario.
- JRJoe Rogan
Okay.
- JPJordan Peterson
That's why, so-
- JRJoe Rogan
So, you're using the worst case scenario as an example.
- JPJordan Peterson
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, because he-
- JRJoe Rogan
But do you think that that perhaps may alienate someone who doesn't have the worst case scenario and just wants improvement?
- JPJordan Peterson
No, I, no, I don't, uh, no, I don't think so because I-
- JRJoe Rogan
No?
- JPJordan Peterson
Well, uh, you know, it depends on how much time you have to outline the ideas, but-
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- JPJordan Peterson
... you know, what, what I, because even if things are going really well for you now, there's gonna be a time in the future where things are rough, you know? You're gonna be ill, family member's gonna be ill, a dream is gonna fall apart. You're gonna be, you're gonna be, uh, uh, uncertain about your employment status. Like, the, the flood is coming, right? The apocalypse is coming. It's always the case in life. And you have to be prepared for it, and the question is how to prepare for it. And the answer to that is to find a way of being that works even under the direst of circumstances. That's the issue. And so, you outline ... And I, I mean, I am pessimistic about this in my approach in some sense because when I'm talking to my audiences and the same thing happens in, happened in my book, Maps of Meaning and in 12 Rules For Life, I'm laying out the worst case scenario.... and that's sort of like hell. It's things are going really badly for you, and that, there's just chance associated with that sometimes, and you and the people around you are doing stupid things to make it worse. It's like, okay, what have you got under those circumstances? You've got the possibility to slowly raise yourself out of the mire. You've got the, the possibility to do just what the fighter does when he's defeated, which is to say, well, regardless of the circumstances that might have led to my defeat, like even if there were errors on the part of the referee, this is no time to whine about it. This is a time to take stock of what I did wrong so that I could improve it into the future, and that's the right attitude. You know, in the Old Testament, one of the things that's really interesting about the Old Testament stories is, in the Old Testament, the Jews keep getting walloped by God. It's like they, they struggle up and make an empire, and then they just get walloped, and then it's all crushed and they're, and they're, they're out of it for generations. And then they struggle back up and make an empire, and then they get demolished again, and it happens over and over and over. And the, the attitude of the Old Testament Hebrews is, we must have made a mistake. It's never to shake their fist at the sky and curse fate. It's never that. The presupposition is, if things aren't working out, it's my fault, and that's a hell of a presupposition. And you might say, "Well, of course, you know, it's, that, that underestimates the degree to which there's systemic oppression," et cetera, et cetera, and, and the, and the vagaries of fate. It's like, it doesn't over, underestimate it. It's not the point. The point is, your best strategic position is, how am I insufficient and how can I rectify that? That's what you've got, and the thing is, you are insufficient, and you could rectify it. Y- both of those are within your grasp if you aim low enough. One of the things you do-
- JRJoe Rogan
Why do you see the, y- that's another thing you keep saying, "Aim low enough, have a low enough bar." Why do you, why do you mean that?
- JPJordan Peterson
Well, let's say you've got a kid and you want the kid to improve. You don't set them a bar that's so high that it's impossible for them to attain it. You take a look at the kid and you think, okay, this kid's got this range of skill. Here's a challenge we can throw at him or her that exceeds their current level of skill, but gives them a reasonable probability of success, and so, like, I'm saying it tongue-in-cheek to some degree.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- JPJordan Peterson
You know, it's like, but if you're, but I'm doing it as an aid to humility. It's like, well, I don't know how to start improving my life. Someone might say that, and I would say, "Well, you're not aiming low enough." There's something you could do that you are regarding as trivial, that, that, that you could do, that you would do, that would result in an actual improvement, but it's not a big enough improvement for you, so you won't lower yourself enough to take the opportunity.
- JRJoe Rogan
Incremental steps.
Episode duration: 3:20:21
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Transcript of episode 9Xc7DN-noAc
