The Joe Rogan ExperienceJoe Rogan Experience #2308 - Jordan Peterson
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,009 words- 0:00 – 1:12
Cold open banter: vanity, head dents, and early head-trauma jokes
- JPJordan Peterson
(drumming music) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.
- JRJoe Rogan
The Joe Rogan Experience.
- JPJordan Peterson
Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. (rock music) No, no.
- JRJoe Rogan
Of course.
- JPJordan Peterson
No, no, no, no.
- JRJoe Rogan
That's on there, ƒ4, right?
- JPJordan Peterson
I'm too vain. That's exactly right.
- JRJoe Rogan
Uh...
- JPJordan Peterson
I look back and I think, "Oh, that, those headphones are pushing up my hair."
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- JPJordan Peterson
(laughs) Isn't that sad?
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, you should shave your head.
- JPJordan Peterson
That's so sad. That's sad.
- JRJoe Rogan
And never look back if you do.
- JPJordan Peterson
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, it's the greatest thing in the world.
- JPJordan Peterson
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's freedom.
- JPJordan Peterson
I have a, I have a big dent here from when a meteorite landed on me when I was a kid.
- JRJoe Rogan
A meteorite?
- JPJordan Peterson
Yeah, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, funny story.
- JPJordan Peterson
I know...
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, I've got plenty of cuts on my head.
- JPJordan Peterson
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
I got 'em all over the place.
- JPJordan Peterson
Well, you're looking pretty unscarred, n-
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, the back of my head, I have, uh, one when I was a little kid that's pretty big that, uh, these, one of these cranes that lifts up sewer pipes, those big concrete pipes, banged me off the back of the head. Yeah, I grayed-
- JPJordan Peterson
Oh yeah, that's not good.
- JRJoe Rogan
... grayed out, went to the hospital.
- 1:12 – 2:38
O.J. Simpson estate-sale oddities and why dark memorabilia feels wrong
- JRJoe Rogan
I grayed out, but I came back to. I didn't completely go unconscious. So, uh, Jamie went golfing this weekend with O.J. Simpson's golf clubs.
- JPJordan Peterson
Uh-oh.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
Not, not with O.J. He's not here.
(laughs)
- JPJordan Peterson
You nee- y- you should be exercised. I think that, that would be the next step.
- JRJoe Rogan
Jamie bought O.J. Simpson's golf clubs after he died.
- JPJordan Peterson
This is, like, a childhood dream?
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
No, they were just for sale. I saw 'em for sale, I said, "Why not?" They came in. I wanted some big grips.
Yeah, uh, a couple of my friends...
They weren't that expensive.
What did, uh, Shane get? Shane got a bunch of stuff, right?
(laughs) Talked him into buying some stuff, yeah.
He got, like, scarfs and...
Ties. He bought a bunch of ties.
... ties. I think scarfs too.
Okay. He bought a trophy...
A trophy.
... and a Bill Clinton signed photo.
Yeah. And he spent thousands of dollars.
(laughs)
- JPJordan Peterson
What was this? Was this some sort of O.J. Simpson auction?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, it was like an estate sale, yeah.
Yeah.
- JPJordan Peterson
I see.
- JRJoe Rogan
You know, he's dead now, so you can get his stuff.
- JPJordan Peterson
Right, for nothing. Pennies on the dollar.
- JRJoe Rogan
Let's... I mean, only people like Jamie and Shane-
(laughs) Arguably.
- 2:38 – 4:51
From O.J. trial evidence to George Floyd: messy facts and binary moral narratives
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, it's dark in both ways. It's also dark in planted evidence, you know? There was blood at the scene of the cri- the crime that had preservative in it, allegedly, supposedly, according to Robert Kardashian and according to, I believe, the forensic scientists when they a- analyzed it. It matched O.J.'s blood, but they had to draw blood from O.J. in order to determine whether or not it was his blood that was at the scene of the crime, and some of the blood found at the scene of the crime had that preservative in it that they use. They were sloppy in the '90s.
Mm-hmm.
You know?
- JPJordan Peterson
Compared to now.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, there was no DNA evidence back then. You know, people were... Cops were... There, there's always gonna be a certain percentage of cops that just wanna convict somebody regardless of the evidence, and if there are s- you know, in their mind, if they believe someone's guilty, they'll do whatever they, they can, including planting evidence, I guess. At least, that's allegedly. I don't, not that I don't think he did it. I definitely think he did it, but I also think the cops planted evidence, which is probably at least partially why he got off, you know?
Mm-hmm.
I think the big reason why he got off was Rodney King, right?
- JPJordan Peterson
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. Yeah.
- JPJordan Peterson
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. Have you gone into the whole George Floyd story at all? Have you ever, like, looked at, like, what they actually did to him for... It's a combination of things. Like, what the cop did was horrible, but also, he was dying.
Mm-hmm.
You know?
- JPJordan Peterson
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
Like, most people probably, like, if they did that to you, you probably would've lived.
Mm-hmm.
You know, that guy had an enlarged heart.
- JPJordan Peterson
That was my understanding of it, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
He was fucked up. But that cop did lean on his neck, which it's always interesting to see people try to minimize that, you know? I'm al- I'm always, like, you gotta be able to just say what it is.
- JPJordan Peterson
Well, that situation can be ugly in a multitude of ways.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- JPJordan Peterson
Right? That's when things get... Well, that's when it's very difficult to pick your moral pathway forward. All your choices are not good.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- JPJordan Peterson
Right?
- JRJoe Rogan
Which is oftentimes the case when it comes to conflicts, right?
- JPJordan Peterson
Yes.
- JRJoe Rogan
Conflicts are very complicated, and they're, and people want it to be binary. They want there to be a good guy and a bad guy, and that's oftentimes not really the case.
- 4:51 – 6:38
Why people default to ‘good vs. bad’: combat psychology, conflict, and decision-making
- JPJordan Peterson
Yeah. Well, it's har- hard to organize yourself for combat unless you are quite convinced that you're the good guy.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- JPJordan Peterson
So, there's a default to that dichotomy that's a necessary part of, well, even standing your own ground, right? 'Cause otherwise, you get demoralized.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- JPJordan Peterson
And so I suppose people, well, when they're threatened, they default to a simple narrative, and because that's, you can't defend yourself in some ways.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- JPJordan Peterson
It's, it's very hard to defend yourself, es- especially physically or militarily without a pretty cut and dried narrative.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, especially, like, military operatives. You know, you have to have a very s- your, your life and the people that you're with, their life depends on you not having any confusion about whether or not-
- JPJordan Peterson
Yeah, right.
- JRJoe Rogan
... it's morally correct to be doing what you're doing.
- JPJordan Peterson
Yeah, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
That's why they like to break it down to kill bad dudes, you know?
- JPJordan Peterson
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
Kill bad dudes.
- JPJordan Peterson
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
Real simple. Let's go.
- JPJordan Peterson
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
They tell us what to do, we do it, which is why you wanna stay alive, you want your teammates to stay alive, that's what you have to do.
- JPJordan Peterson
Yeah, well, you never know when doubt will cause a fraction of a second difference in reaction time.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, yeah. Yeah.
- JPJordan Peterson
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. That's the, always the thing with physical altercations with people too.
- JPJordan Peterson
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
You know, oftentimes people get sucked into these things where they're not sure whether to act or not act, and that's when they get in trouble.
- JPJordan Peterson
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
You know?
- JPJordan Peterson
... right? That's probably true in life. You don't wanna oversimplify things too, but once you made a decision, well, that's when it's necessary to put doubts behind you. Because otherwise, you just act in half measures.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- JPJordan Peterson
Right?
- JRJoe Rogan
And oftentimes, you have to have done the wrong thing before, like, like, fail to act or hesitate to act, and it cost you. And then you have to learn that lesson. It's very difficult to, like, know that without experiencing mistakes.
- 6:38 – 10:41
‘Any plan is better than none’: algorithms, Peter Pan adulthood, and the discipline to mature
- JPJordan Peterson
Yeah, well, that's, I think, that's partly true. One of the things that I often faced in my clinical practice and with the students that I mentored was this confusion about acting. "I don't know what to do, so what should I do? Well, nothing. I'll wait around until I figure out what to do."
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- JPJordan Peterson
It's like, "No, you should put together a bad plan, and you should implement it, because even if you fail in the implementation, you'll gather information-"
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- JPJordan Peterson
"... and then you can rectify the plan." And so staying in that malaise until you know what to do makes you get older and more miserable, and you gather no information along the way. A bad plan is a good idea. Best, you know... Any plan is better than none, that's a good rule of thumb. And a bad plan, a bad plan can be incrementally improved-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- JPJordan Peterson
... right?
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- JPJordan Peterson
With experience.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right. He who hesitates is lost.
- JPJordan Peterson
Yep.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, that's really difficult for young people. I think more so today than ever at any time in history, because the distractions are so many and they're so engrossing, you know?
- JPJordan Peterson
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
If you get out of high school, you don't know what to do, and then you start playing video games and you're on social media, a day can slip by (snaps fingers) like that.
- JPJordan Peterson
Yep.
- JRJoe Rogan
A day becomes a week, becomes a month, becomes a year, and before you know it, you're 30-
- JPJordan Peterson
Yeah, right. That's for sure.
- JRJoe Rogan
... and you haven't done shit.
- JPJordan Peterson
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
And that's really common, that's really common today. And I don't think we can ignore those factors, the factors of just engrossing distractions.
- JPJordan Peterson
Yeah, well, and the algorithms optimize for short-term attention.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- JPJordan Peterson
So-
- JRJoe Rogan
You know.
- JPJordan Peterson
... you know, it's a weird thing, eh, because you could imagine that you would want a machine that offers you what you want, right? 'Cause you want a- ads that are targeted to you, 'cause do you wanna see a bunch of ads that aren't relevant to you?
- JRJoe Rogan
Sure.
- JPJordan Peterson
Now and then, because maybe you'll learn something. And content, well, why not have a machine shovel the same sort of things that you are interested in at you?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- JPJordan Peterson
That's a kind of curation. The problem comes, and we haven't figured this out at all technically and probably not psychologically, the problem comes in timeframe, right? Because there's a big difference between what you might be interested in if you were diligently striving towards a long-term goal that required conscientiousness and what's gonna attract your attention right now this moment.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- 10:41 – 13:48
Play as the opposite of tyranny: Piaget, voluntary community, and ‘mature play’ in marriage
- JPJordan Peterson
I've been thinking a lot about play in the last year or so.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah?
- JPJordan Peterson
Well, I spent a lot of time trying to take apart the causes of, like, truly pathological degeneration, right? On the sadistic side, on the criminal side, on the totalitarian side, very curious about tyranny. And, uh, I, I, it was very difficult for me to conceptualize the opposite of that as cleanly as I could characterize its, its presence. Like, what's the opposite of tyranny? It's not freedom, by the way. It's certainly not anarchic freedom. It's not hedonistic freedom.
- JRJoe Rogan
Benevolence?
- JPJordan Peterson
I think it's play.
- JRJoe Rogan
Play.
- JPJordan Peterson
I think it's play.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- JPJordan Peterson
Yeah. Well-
- JRJoe Rogan
That makes sense.
- JPJordan Peterson
Well, p- the, the developmental psychologist Jean Piaget, one of the things he pointed out was that pla- so, let's say, play is the foundation of micro-community, right? When you're a little kid, you, you play a, a game with another kid. And then, if that works well, you inhabit a little dyadic community, you're both in it together. And then if it really works, you replicate that across time and that gives you a friend. But there's... Play is a very interesting, it's very interesting psychologically and psycho-biologically, because it has to be entered in voluntarily. You can't force someone to play. And it's also motivationally f- fragile. So-... mammals have a play circuit, and it can be disrupted by pretty much any other motivational or emotional circuit, so the circumstances have to be set up properly. Like the walled garden, you know that idea?
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- JPJordan Peterson
The walled garden is a place that play can take place, like eternally so to speak.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- JPJordan Peterson
And- and because it has to be undertaken voluntarily, it's the opposite of tyranny. And I- like, my wife and I have really started to apply this in our marriage more consciously, you know, once- once I'd figured out this relationship, 'cause I've been lecturing to people for a long time about how to conduct themselves in life so they don't become a tyrant or a handmaiden to the tyrants, right?
- JRJoe Rogan
Hmm.
- JPJordan Peterson
A silent handmaiden to the tyrants, let's say. And aiming at play. You know, when we walked in here today, one of the things we said was, "Let's have some fun." You know?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- JPJordan Peterson
And I'd been thinking this- this morning too about what attitude I should take coming in to talk to you, and there isn't a better attitude- there isn't a better attitude than play. And so- and I think it is because it's the antithesis- it's the antithesis of tyranny, in particular. And then you were talking more about mature play, and that's that good- you know, that also makes sense. Th- this is the issue with the ideathat adulthood isn't any fun. It's like, well, do you wanna play a simple game or do you wanna play a really sophisticated game really well? Now, you're- that's gonna require some discipline and some training and some maturation, but the payoff is much higher. That's a b- good way to conceptualize marriage.
- JRJoe Rogan
The highs are higher-
- JPJordan Peterson
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... when you're successful.
- 13:48 – 25:58
Marriage realism: sexual revolution consequences, commitment, and keeping relationships functional
- JPJordan Peterson
Well, and- and also, the- the people who have the most sex now are religious married couples.
- JRJoe Rogan
Really?
- JPJordan Peterson
Yeah. I know. Isn't that funny?
- JRJoe Rogan
Which religion?
- JPJordan Peterson
It's like ... (laughs) Yeah. Good- good question, Joe. Good question. Well, I guess in the West, that would obviously be Christianity. But- but- but it's an i- but it's an interesting case example of the sorts of things we're talking about, because you can imagine at the dawn of the sexual revolution when the birth control pill became prevalent, that the last hypothesis anyone would have possibly generated was that the cascading consequences of that over 50 years would be, well, radical increase in pornography use, because sex has been made less dangerous by the pill, and that the people who are having the most sex would be religious married couples.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs) Right. But is that true? Because, like, pornography essentially was very difficult to acquire before the birth control pill was invented.
- JPJordan Peterson
True. True, but-
- JRJoe Rogan
Like, you used to have to go somewhere to get the pornography. Isn't part of the excess use of pornography just the access is so instantaneous now?
- JPJordan Peterson
Oh, definitely, but you could imagine, too, that you might have hypothesized that if the birth control pill took the threat out of sex that pornography would be less necessary, but that didn't seem to work out.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- JPJordan Peterson
So on a- it's certainly- the a- availability is a- a, uh, yeah, cr-
- JRJoe Rogan
We would never know, though, because the-
- JPJordan Peterson
No.
- JRJoe Rogan
... the- the birth control was- when was it? 19 ... 60 something?
- JPJordan Peterson
'60 ... That's really when it started to-
- JRJoe Rogan
Somewhere around then?
- JPJordan Peterson
Yeah, when it started to- to- to ramp up, let's say.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's so crazy, because it completely changed the dyn- the dynamic. Women could have sex for recreation, with people that they didn't even know and not have any consequences in terms of, like, having to carry that person's child, whereas that was always a giant fear. If you're a woman, in the back of your head, every time you have sex, you possibly could be taking care of a child for the next 18-plus years.
- JPJordan Peterson
Yeah. Yeah, well, that-
- JRJoe Rogan
Every time.
- JPJordan Peterson
Mm-hmm. Right. Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
Take this thing, this is a consequential thing, where with- with a guy, it's like you have this biological imperative to spread your seed, but you're not thinking about making babies, right? You're thinking about sexual activity. When a guy's having sex, he's not thinking, "I can't wait to make a baby." He's just thinking, "Boy, sex is gonna be great. I'm excited. Oh, boy, that's fun." You're not thinking, "I'm making a kid," uh, 'cause that would make you hesitant, and, uh, nature's not interested in hesitation. Nature's like, "No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Let's just make you dumb as fuck for about 20 minutes and focus on one goal."
- JPJordan Peterson
So, why did you get married?
- JRJoe Rogan
Hmm ... Well, I love my wife. She wanted to get married. We had a- a child. It seemed like a good thing to do. It's like, at a certain point in time, making a baby is more of a commitment than getting married. You made a life, you know? Like, the commitment of getting married seemed-
- JPJordan Peterson
Right. Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
... like, of course. But it's also-
- JPJordan Peterson
But why did you stay committed then before the marriage once you had a child?
- JRJoe Rogan
I just think it's a thing to do.
- JPJordan Peterson
Now, you said you loved your wife.
- JRJoe Rogan
I love her. It's the thing to do. It's, uh ... Life and raising a child became everything. It- it becomes- it becomes a very different thing, right? I think ... I have a lot of friends who don't have kids, and I don't- I'm not the type of person that thinks everyone should have a kid. You know, I know a lot of people with kids that do say that. I don't think everyone should have a kid. I think you should do whatever you want. I don't know how your brain works. I assume your brain works along similar lines with me, but there's a thing that happens when you do-
- 25:58 – 41:34
The dark side of marriage failure: divorce, reputation destruction, and public humiliation
- JRJoe Rogan
Nice enough to be around. Then you deal with all the other crazy nonsense, and you're, you're setting yourself up for ... I've had many friends ruin their fucking lives. And then they go through divorces and, you've said this best, that one of the things that women are very good at is reputation destruction.
- JPJordan Peterson
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
I have seen that happen. So, imagine you are legally entangled with someone who, at one point in time, you loved intimately, and now that person's trying to destroy every aspect of your life. And you have to pay for their lawyers.
- JPJordan Peterson
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
So you have to pay for the general of the army that's trying to destroy your kingdom.
- JPJordan Peterson
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
And I've seen this happen to many of my friends.
- JPJordan Peterson
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
And th- that is why people are afraid of marriage. That's why people are afraid of commitment, 'cause the disastrous implications of, like, what can happen if it goes sideways? Like, what can happen if you wind up hating each other? And what can happen if you just lie to yourself and you trick y- like ... Wh- want, some of the hesitant, hesitation that I had, um, for getting married is most of my friends that got married when I was young all went through horrible divorces. When I was on NewsRadio, Dave Foley, Stephen Root, and, um, Phil Hartman, were all going through it, all going through it, in different levels of psychosis. Obviously, Phil Hartman's being the worst 'cause his wife shot him, when he was leaving her, by the way. He decided to leave her, and he tried to leave her a few times, and she shot him in his sleep, and then she shot herself. It was a horrible, horrible story. But Stephen Root went through it, and they, you know, they'd confide in me, and I'd be like, "Oh, Jesus Christ." The amount of money these women were trying to get from them when they knew that they couldn't afford this. So one of the dirty tricks that will happen, uh, with, uh, divorce lawyers, with, um, people that are on sitcoms, is when you get on a sitcom, if you're an actor and you get on a sitcom, it is the s- most stable job, the greatest job in show business for a lot of them. Because you're gonna get a steady check. You're gonna do 24, maybe 26 episodes a year. You're making more money than you've ever made in your whole life. But then you get divorced. So y- what happens is, it gets set up where your ex-wife wants a percentage of what you're making at this very unrealistic level-
- JPJordan Peterson
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
... where you're never gonna achieve this again. And for Dave Foley, it was so bad that at one point in time, I don't believe he was allowed to go back to Canada.
- JPJordan Peterson
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
I don't know if that's changed, but the, the judge literally told him, when he told the judge, like, "I don't have that kind of money anymore. I don't have the potential for earning."
- JPJordan Peterson
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
"I was on a hit sitcom." Like-
- JPJordan Peterson
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
Not even a hit sitcom, but, "I was on a sitcom and it, on NBC, paid a lot of money, and that was the only time I made that kind of money." The judge said to him, "Your obligation to pay has no relation to your ability to pay."
- JPJordan Peterson
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
That's Canadian judges for you.
- JPJordan Peterson
Ah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Just insane. And, you know, he was-
- JPJordan Peterson
Those are words you never, (laughs) those are words you never wanna hear even once in your life.
- JRJoe Rogan
I love him. So I was going through this pain, not like he was, but just like, "Oh my God. Oh my God." So there's three people that I was very close to, and then most of the other people that I knew. You know, I knew so many people. Fortunately, my mother and my stepfather have a great relationship, and they have for a long time.
- JPJordan Peterson
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
So I had that modeled.
- JPJordan Peterson
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
Like, they were always very close, and they didn't fight, which is really nice. It was really nice to have that as a model.
- JPJordan Peterson
Great.
- JRJoe Rogan
You know, like, uh, where I realized, "Oh, okay, it's not, everybody's not at each other's throats all the time." And some people actually do enjoy spending time together.
- JPJordan Peterson
You know, Tammy and I on, on the tour, she started to introduce me, um, two years ago, and to talk about some of the things we're doing, uh, in the family, some of our family business, talk about Peterson Academy, talk about Essay. And so she'd go out on the stage and then-
- 41:34 – 46:01
Status games vs truth-seeking: social media conflict, reputation ‘treasure,’ and parasitic incentives
- JPJordan Peterson
Well, you could imagine maybe, I think, and I think this is worth delving into in, in some depth. You could imagine that there are, there's various ways of attaining status, renown, reputation. Uh, uh, status isn't exactly the right word because reputation is better 'cause you can have a reputation that you deserve, right? And so people do work for reputation and all things considered, that's a good thing.
- JRJoe Rogan
Earned reputation is the best.
- JPJordan Peterson
Earned reputation.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- JPJordan Peterson
Earned reputation. Earned validation reputation.
- JRJoe Rogan
Or someone who's truly unique or the Jordan that guy, that's a unique human being and that's a real reputation.
- JPJordan Peterson
Right. Right. Okay.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. That kind. That's what people want.
- JPJordan Peterson
So, right, right. And, and it's also, there isn't anything more valuable that you can have than that, not even close. This is why... By the way, this is very cool. Uh, it's a bit of an aside, but it makes... It's worth bringing up. In the Gospels, Christ tells people to store up.... h- treasure in heaven, where it doesn't rust, and where the thieves can't steal it. That's reputational treasure.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm.
- JPJordan Peterson
Right? So if you ... So the idea is that if you conduct yourself impeccably, you'll develop a storehouse of reputation that will withstand all catastrophe.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm.
- JPJordan Peterson
Nothing can e- nothing... Do you... There's no place you can put your wealth that's more effective than that. It's the least violatable place. And that's right. It's, it's right.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- JPJordan Peterson
And so... But the problem is, and this is a really tricky problem and you're touching on it, is that the reputation game can be gamed. Okay? So when your reputation rise, rises, your serotonin levels rise, and that makes you less sensitive to negative emotion and more sensitive to positive emotion. So that's a really good deal.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm.
- JPJordan Peterson
And what that also means is that there's a high psychological benefit to status increase, reputational increase, and a real cost to reputational decrease. So that's partly why people don't like losing face, for example.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- JPJordan Peterson
Because their emotions dysregulate. Okay. So, now the best way to play that game is to establish a genuine reputation, and the best way to do that... You've done this, by the way. I figured out this year on my lectures that I'm always trying to answer a question on stage, so that's a quest, and I'm bringing the audience along on a quest. And it's a real quest because I'm actually trying to figure something out, and I do that in real time. And that's a very different game. That's a very different conversational game than the status battle game.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- JPJordan Peterson
Right? 'Cause I could come on here... I don't know if it would work, but I could come on here and I could try to show that I was smarter than Joe Rogan. Now, I've watched you, and that's a very difficult thing to pull off. But hypothetically, that could be my aim, and I could play gotcha questions and I could lead you into places-
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, the problem, the problem is that wouldn't work because I'm willing to accept that you're smarter than me. First of all, like, I talk to a lot of people that are smarter than me, and I like it. It's enjoyable.
- JPJordan Peterson
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
I don't ever feel uncomfortable talking to people-
- JPJordan Peterson
Yeah, well, th-
- JRJoe Rogan
... who are smarter than me.
- JPJordan Peterson
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
I want to know some things that they can tell me on certain thing-... I wanna-
- JPJordan Peterson
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... educate myself. I wanna be f-... I wanna see how their mind works. I wanna be blown away. I don't wanna compete with them intellectually. There's times-
- 46:01 – 55:18
Political psychopathology and the ‘woke Right’: Dark Tetrad infiltration and antisemitism as a vehicle
- JPJordan Peterson
Like, I'm seeing this come up on the right now. So imagine, imagine this. I've been working on a new, a new theory of political psychopathology, and I like it quite a lot.
- JRJoe Rogan
Is this where the term the woke Right comes in?
- JPJordan Peterson
Yeah. Well, i- the... Lindsey is pointing at that, but he hasn't got-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- JPJordan Peterson
... he hasn't got the diagnosis exactly right. H- so it isn't woke. That's not the issue. It's not exactly. He's one level-
- JRJoe Rogan
I think what they're talking about is, like, similar types of behavior.
- JPJordan Peterson
He is talking about that.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- JPJordan Peterson
Yeah. No. What he's point-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. But he's just... Woke just lets you clarify in your head, oh, it's like that.
- JPJordan Peterson
Yeah. But the problem is-
- JRJoe Rogan
It's like Antifa.
- JPJordan Peterson
Yeah, ex- absolutely. But the problem is, is that that argument is predicated on the claim that the ideas are the problem, like the woke ideas, for example, on the right or the left, but that's not the problem. The problem is that 4 to 5% of the population, something like that, is cluster B... That's the DSM-5 terms, histrionic, narcissistic, antisocial, psychopathic, or they have... and they have dark tetrad traits. They're Machiavellian, they're sadistic. That's about 4%. Okay. So the question is, how do these people maneuver? And the answer is, they go to where the power is and they adopt those ideas and they put themselves even on the forefront of that.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- JPJordan Peterson
But the ideas are completely irrelevant.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- JPJordan Peterson
All they're doing is, they're the Pharisees, they're the modern version of the Pharisees. They're the people who use God's name in vain, right? Is they proclaim moral virtue.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- JPJordan Peterson
Doesn't matter whether it's right or left or Christian or Jewish-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right. Right.
- JPJordan Peterson
... or Islam, they invade the idea space, and then they use that, those ideas as false weapons to advance their narcissistic advantage.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- JPJordan Peterson
And so then you have the problem, and the right's gonna face this more and more particularly, 'cause the left had to face it when they were in powers.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- JPJordan Peterson
How do you identify the psychopathic parasites, 4% of the population, who are clothed in your clothing-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- JPJordan Peterson
... and waving your flags-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- JPJordan Peterson
... but who are n- who are only in it for narcissistic benefit? You know, the people who studied the dark triad, these were people who originally studied psychopaths and they moved into ordinary personality, so to speak, on the fringes. They showed that the non-criminal psychopaths, so the fringe cases, are Machiavellian, they use their language to manipulate, they're narcissistic, they want unearned reputation, that's what a narcissist wants, and they're psychopathic, which makes them predators or parasites. Okay. That's pretty bad, those three things. But they had to expand the nomenclature after a while because they found that they were also sadistic, which implied that if you're Machiavellian-... and narcissistic and psychopathic. You develop a sufficiently bad view of your fellow man that their undeserved pain is a source of pleasure to you.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- 55:18 – 1:01:38
Collapse of trust in institutions: legacy media, Watergate suspicion, COVID reversals, and censorship
- JRJoe Rogan
The legacy media is the worst at that now.
- JPJordan Peterson
Yeah, I know.
- JRJoe Rogan
They're the worst at that-
- JPJordan Peterson
I know.
- JRJoe Rogan
... which is fascinating. You know, it really is. It's really fascinating when (clears throat) you lose faith in, uh, a New York Times piece. You know, it's like you, you go like, "Well, this is bullshit."
- JPJordan Peterson
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
"I know, I know this, I know what they're doing."
- JPJordan Peterson
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
"I know they're do- they're just, this is editorial bullshit." And that didn't used to be the case, I don't think. But then-
- JPJordan Peterson
No, it didn't.
- JRJoe Rogan
But then I go back to, like, what I learned about the Woodward, Bernstein, Nixon thing at Watergate that was all essentially an intelligence operation. Have you ever looked into that?
- JPJordan Peterson
No, I haven't.
- JRJoe Rogan
'Cause I did Bill Murray on the podcast, and Bill Murray said one of the wildest things. He read the first five pages of Bob Wo- Bob Woodward's biography on John Belushi, Wired.
- JPJordan Peterson
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
Read the first five pages, he's like, he goes, "Oh my God, they framed Nixon."
- JPJordan Peterson
Oh, really? (laughs) Oh, wow.
- JRJoe Rogan
Isn't that crazy?
- JPJordan Peterson
Mm, yeah, no kidding.
- JRJoe Rogan
He's like, "What they wrote about my friend was so not true, it was so wildly off." He said, "John Belushi was a lightweight. John Belushi would have a couple of drinks and he'd be fucked up. He wasn't, like, a big partier." That time he did that speed ball is probably the only time he ever did it in his life. But Woodward had him painted as this maniacal, off-the-rails, just drug-addled monster, and he knew that to not be true. He was very close to Belushi for a long time. And so he was like, "Oh my God, they framed Nixon." And then when I told him the whole story, you know, what Tucker Carlson had told me about Woodward being an intelligence asset and then that was his first job ever as a journalist was Watergate and that those FBI guys that were involved in it in the break-in, and the whole thing was tried, they tried to get Nixon out of there, the most popular president in the history of the country in terms of the vote, and they were successful. They got him out of there, and it's probably becau- or likely because Nixon was very concerned with who killed Kennedy and he wanted to find out and he wanted to get that information out, and apparently he had been talking about it, "I know who did it," and he was, you know, he didn't want it happening to him, obviously, and he knew it could. If you're a president, you know, a couple of guys ago, you know, just f- most, one of the most popular presidents, at least posthumously popular presidents, I know he was very polarizing while he was in office, but was shot in the head in the middle of Dallas, and you think that the government might have had something to do with it. Like, that could, that could fuck with your head, obviously.
- JPJordan Peterson
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
You know?
- JPJordan Peterson
Yeah, well, there, and there's many things like that. I mean, you saw the government website that came up two days ago about COVID?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- JPJordan Peterson
Okay.
- JRJoe Rogan
Wild. Wild to see that.
- JPJordan Peterson
Yeah, that's, that-
- JRJoe Rogan
Wild to see in print.
- JPJordan Peterson
... that's for sure. What are you supposed to do with that?
- JRJoe Rogan
All the things that have g- would have gotten you fired if you were a professor and you said them four years ago, you would have 100% got fired for espousing any of these ideas that turned out to be true.
- JPJordan Peterson
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
- 1:01:38 – 1:08:54
ARC and the leadership test: Moses, invitation vs force, and apocalypse-as-control
- JPJordan Peterson
So, okay, so that's, that's an interesting point there too, that issue of control and fear. You know, I started this... I, I was part of a group that started this organization in the UK called the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship. We had our second convention in November, which went very nicely, by the way.
- JRJoe Rogan
So, you're doing, like, a positive counter to the World Economic Forum?
- JPJordan Peterson
Yeah. Well, we have some rules and one rule is you don't use force or fear, right? Use invitation.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm.
- JPJordan Peterson
So, can I tell you a story about that?
- JRJoe Rogan
Please do. Please do.
- JPJordan Peterson
Okay. So, I've been touring about this new book of mine, right, We, We Who Wrestle With God, and it's, uh... I've been lecturing about lots of the things I know, but I've been using biblical stories mostly to provide an analytical frame, 'cause that's what stories do, they provide a frame. And there's a great story in the continuing Exodus story, the story of Moses and the Israelites, where Moses has led the... his people away from the tyrant and away from their own slavery 'cause the... there's a dynamic in that story between those two things. No tyrants without slaves.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm.
- JPJordan Peterson
Or you might say, no tyrants without willing slaves. And so, the Israelites have to get away from the tyrant, but then it's across the Red Sea of chaos and blood and into the desert for 40 years. You don't escape from the tyrant if you're a slave without paying a price and maybe for three generations. It's rough. So, Moses is trying to get these people to stop being slaves and to take responsibility so they don't need a tyrant. And so, he's, kind of, got there and they're on the edge of the Promised Land, right? And so, they're almost at the end of their voyage and, uh, they run out of water. They're still in the desert. They run out of water and they get all whiny and bitchy about the fact that they had to go across the desert and that it was way better under the tyrant and that Moses is nothing but a corrupt patriarch and he's only power-mad, and they foment some rebellion. And anyways, it's, it's a pretty ugly situation. And the Israelites go to Moses and they say, "Look, we're really starving. We're, we're thirsting for water. We're gonna die. Do you think you can have a chat with God? See if he'll do something about this." And God tells Moses to go to some rocks in the desert and to ask them to bring water forth. And so, he goes with his people to these rocks and instead of asking, he takes this staff of his. The staff is a really important thing. It's like your staff if you have an organization, same derivation, but it's also the magic wand of Gandalf. It's the flag you plant in new territory. It's the tree of life. It's the living tradition that has, uh, a spirit inside it and that's a serpent and that's the serpent that eat- eats all the serpents of the Egyptian tyrants' magic, magicians. That's the staff. It's his rod of his authority. And he... instead of asking the rocks, he hits them twice with the s- with the staff. So, he forces them and God tells him that in consequence of that, number one, he's going to die, and number two, he's not going to get to the Promised Land.
- JRJoe Rogan
Ch-
- JPJordan Peterson
Right, right, right. So, there's this insistence. It's really interesting. Well, it's a... it's crucial insistence and it's very important in this time, I think, to, to understand what this means. So, Moses is a leader, he's the archetypal leader and he realizes his responsibility in the encounter with the Burning Bush, which is something that attracts his attention, that he takes with great seriousness and that transforms him. And so, then he becomes the leader who stands up against the tyrant and frees the slaves and takes them through chaos into the desert. And his temptation, as leader, is to use force. So, when he's a young man, for example, he kills a Egyptian aristocrat who was tormenting a Hebrew slave and that's why he has to leave Egypt. He's tempted by power 'cause he's a leader and then at the end, even though he's done all these things, he's, he's been an upstanding man and done... gone beyond his call of duty and he's right at the point where he attains victory, right, to enter the Promised Land and uses force once-
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm.
- JPJordan Peterson
... when God tells him to use invitation, to use his words, the logos, to use words, to use invitation. And that's enough so that he's, he's dead. So, is his brother, Aaron, that's his political arm, and he doesn't enter the Promised Land. And then in the Gospels, of course, Christ forgoes power altogether. The temptation in the desert, one of the three temptations is the temptation for use of power. So, one of the things that maybe we could conclude from all this, given the context of what you said, is that you can tell the tyrants, they use fear and compulsion.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- JPJordan Peterson
And they don't use invitation. So, one of the rules we put together for ARC was invitation only. Play, we're gonna do this playfully-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- JPJordan Peterson
... and we're not going to use force or fear, ever.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- JPJordan Peterson
You have to use invitation. And so-
- JRJoe Rogan
The pro-
- JPJordan Peterson
... I don't know what you think about that as a distinguished... imagine it's a distinguishing... it's the distinguishing characteristic between the wannabe tyrants and the true leaders. The true leaders say, "Here's an offer. Would you accept this of your own free will?" And the tyrants say, "The apocalypse is coming-"
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- JPJordan Peterson
"... and everything and we're-"
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- JPJordan Peterson
"... we are allowed to do everything to forestall it."
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- JPJordan Peterson
Right? Including control you and everything-
- JRJoe Rogan
Ah.
- JPJordan Peterson
... that you do.
- JRJoe Rogan
That's the problem.
- 1:08:54 – 1:27:44
Climate narratives, ‘global greening,’ and energy abundance as the pro-human alternative
- JPJordan Peterson
Well, I read Kearney's book, Values. I read it twice, and I understood it. And Kearney says in that book, well he says, he's a, he's an advocate of centralized planning, ESG. He was a huge ESG advocate. He organized many large corporations to go down this, um, central planning governance route, because the market wasn't pricing everything properly. And so central planners had to step in, and BlackRock and Vanguard and places like that were big parts of that. Don't know if they were directly affected by Kearney, but it's the same thing. And they've stepped away from that. And he's a big DEI advocate, and he's also a net zero advocate. And Kearney says in his book, this is a good example of this, and I think also a good example of this kind of narcissism that we talked about earlier, um, every single financial decision that every individual or organization makes has to prioritize decarbonization above all else.
- JRJoe Rogan
(sighs)
- JPJordan Peterson
Or else, and there will be many, he doesn't say casualties, but he implies that, there'll be many, there'll be many who pay a price along the way, but it's necessary, you know, 'cause you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs. And then he says 75% of the world's fossil fuels have to stay in the ground. And this is who Canadians are seriously thinking about electing, right?
- JRJoe Rogan
Why, why does he say that fossil fuels have to stay in the ground?
- JPJordan Peterson
Too much carbon.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. You know, the real problem with that is the same problem with the COVID narrative, is that they don't allow any dissent, they don't allow any data that conflicts with the narrative, and they don't want to look at any possible ... Look, both of them are complicated. They're not similar in a lot, but there are, because they're top-down, tyrannical tools.
- JPJordan Peterson
Using fear and compulsion.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. So, they did, and during the COVID times, nobody wanted to look at any alternative treatments, they didn't wanna look at m- health, metabolic health. They didn't wanna look at any factors other than vaccination and compliance. With carbon, no one wants to look at, I'm sure you saw that Washington Post study of the last, was it 50 million years, the graph that shows, uh, the temperature of Earth? Have you seen it?
- JPJordan Peterson
Hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
We're in a cooling period.
- JPJordan Peterson
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
And that was always what, I mean, during the 1970s, Leonard Nimoy, when he had that In Search Of show, one of the things that they covered was that we are at the verge of an ice age.
- JPJordan Peterson
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
And how terrifying an ice age is.
- JPJordan Peterson
Yeah, well, the, the conclusion you draw about climate and carbon dioxide is entirely dependent on where you put the origin point of your graph. So, if you go back 150 years ago, carbon dioxide is increased. If you go back 500 million years ago, which is quite a lot longer, we're in a drought, like a serious carbon dioxide drought.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right, and also-
- JPJordan Peterson
And so-
- JRJoe Rogan
... carbon dioxide is the f- fuel of plants.
- JPJordan Peterson
Yes, they, turns out that they like it. Well, you know the glo- you know the global green- greening data.
- JRJoe Rogan
Uh-huh.
- JPJordan Peterson
Well, when, when-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, say it, 'cause-
- JPJordan Peterson
Well-
- JRJoe Rogan
... so people know it.
- JPJordan Peterson
Well, you know, one of the things I learned as a scientist was that there's usually an explanation or two that accounts for a phenomenon so completely that almost everything else is noise. Like, the MAHA Movement, Make America Healthy Again, the fundamental issue is insulin resistance. Like, that's the fundamental plague of, say, North America, and everything else is noise. It's not unimportant noise, but insulin resistance is the major contributor. On the climate side, when I look at the data, the thing that leaps out for me is greening. Like, the planet is 20% greener than it was 30 years ago. Okay? 20%. This is NASA data. I'm not inventing this.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- JPJordan Peterson
Okay, and then the next ques- you think, "Oh, 20%." If 20% of the plants had vanished, you'd be sure we'd heard about that.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- JPJordan Peterson
Okay, so, and the agricultural outputs got up 13%. Now, whether all that additional carbon dioxide is a function of human activity, that's still debatable, doesn't matter. There is an association between the carbon dioxide rease- rise and the plant propagation. Okay? It's, it's, it's even more particular than that, because a lot of the greening has occurred in semi-arid areas, so areas around deserts. And the reason for that is that if there's more carbon dioxide, the plants can close their breathing pores more, and they don't...... lose water. And so not only is there 20% more vegetation, which is a lot. I think it's twice the area of the United States that's greened. (laughs) That's a lot of green. And where our agricultural production is more effective. And the places that have greened were the very places that the deserts were supposed to expand into.
- JRJoe Rogan
Hmm.
Episode duration: 3:11:27
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