How to Break Out of Old Psychological Patterns - Jordan Peterson

1. 0:00 – 3:04

   Why We Need to Experience Difficulty

   1. CWChris Williamson0:00

      You say, "You are morally obligated to do remarkable things."

   2. JPJordan Peterson0:04

      Mm-hmm.

   3. CWChris Williamson0:05

      Why?

   4. JPJordan Peterson0:08

      Well, I think partly because life is so difficult and challenging that unless you give it everything you have, the chances are very high that it will embitter you and then you'll be a force for darkness and not good. And so, you know, the f- the fact that life is short and can be brutal, can terrify you into hiding and avoiding, but it- it can also... You can flip that on its head and understand that since you're all in anyways, you might as well take- take the risks that are adventurous, and that's a very good thing to understand. And what is also useful to understand in that manner is that there isn't anything more adventurous than the truth. This is something that took me a long time to figure out. Well, you can craft your words to get what you want, you know, and people do that all the time. They craft their words so they can avoid taking responsibility for things they should take responsibility for, or they can craft the words to gain an advantage that they really don't deserve. That's what you do when you manipulate. And the problem with that, you might say, "Well, why not do that if I can get what I want?" And the answer to that is, you aren't necessarily the best judge of what you need and it's easy to be deluded in what you want, and that's the sort of delusions that people chase if they chase power. If you decide instead that you're going to just say what you believe to be true, you have to let go of the consequences. And you might think, "Well, I don't wanna let go of the consequences because I wanna control what's going on," but what you miss then is adventure, because if you don't control what's going on, you don't know what the hell's going to happen, and maybe that's exciting. And actually, there's no doubt about it. And then you have the additional advantage if you're attempting to say what you believe to be true and attempting to act in the manner that you think is most appropriate, that's genuinely you and you have the force of reality behind you. Obviously, that's what you have if you're trying to, say, live in the truth, is you have the force of reality behind you. That seems like a good deal. Then you have the reality and the adventure. So why is that a moral obligation? Well, if you hide and you don't let what's inside of you out and you don't bring into the world what you could bring and you become cynical and bitter, you will start doing very dark things. So you'll start ins- in... Not only will you not add to the world what you could add, but you'll start being jealous of people who are competent and doing well and work to destroy them. So, that's the pathway to hell, really. So...

   5. CWChris Williamson3:03

      One of the trends

2. 3:04 – 10:20

   Is Cynicism Helpful?

   1. CWChris Williamson3:04

      that I've been railing against most recently has been cynicism.

   2. JPJordan Peterson3:07

      Mm-hmm.

   3. CWChris Williamson3:07

      There's this pervasive belief that everything is terrible and it can't get better-

   4. JPJordan Peterson3:14

      Yeah.

   5. CWChris Williamson3:14

      ... and the people who believe that it can improve are dumb and delusional and the problem.

   6. JPJordan Peterson3:19

      Yeah.

   7. CWChris Williamson3:19

      And I- I don't know where it comes from. I don't-

   8. JPJordan Peterson3:23

      Mm-mm.

   9. CWChris Williamson3:23

      I don't like it.

   10. JPJordan Peterson3:23

       Well, it's the beginning of wisdom, cynicism. This is part of the reason why it's hard to combat. You know, because people start out naive, and naive people are optimistic, but not really. They're just naive. And naive people have no idea that there's, say, malevolence in the world. They have no idea that there's malevolence in their own heart. They're sheltered and dependent. And when that breaks, it often breaks into cynicism. And so cynicism is actually an improvement, because-

   11. CWChris Williamson3:56

       The veils have fallen from your eyes.

   12. JPJordan Peterson3:58

       Exactly. Exactly. The problem with cynicism is that, especially if it's allied with a kind of arrogance, is that you can end there, and that's a big mistake. So then the question becomes, well, once you- once you've been bitten hard and you're no longer naive, well, that is very hard on your optimism, let's say. So then the question is, how do you restore that without reverting to the naivety, which you can't do anyways without blinding yourself once you've been bitten? And the answer to that is you substitute courage for naivety and you- and you regain your optimism as a moral imperative. Right? So, one of the things you might ask yourself is, well, if the future is likely to be catastrophic in a variety of different ways, which is definitely the case, both socially and personally, then what attitude should you bring to bear on that? And the answer might be, well, if you were courageous and faithful, uh, and I can explain what that means, then you would conduct yourself in- in a manner that met the future head on, with the presumption that you can manage it. And this is the presumption we should bring to bear politically. Now, these... The people who are using fear to garner power point to the various apocalypses that might befall us, and it's difficult to counter them because the future is always an apocalyptic horizon. Like, everything can fall apart and- and has before and might well again, and will, in fact, in your life as you age and die. And so, it's very easy to conjure up an apocalypse. Th- then the question becomes- the question becomes not, "Is that apocalypse potentially real?" 'Cause the answer to that is yes, but what attitude should you have towards that? Naive? That's not good. Cynical, that's b- that's better, but it's still not good. It's another form of hell and it also tends to make the potential apocalypses more likely. Well, so what do you have when you move beyond cynicism? And what you have when you move beyond cynicism is wisdom.... and that's not naïve, it's courageous. And one of the things that religious people have done relatively badly, especially in recent years, is they've failed to delineate the relationship between faith and courage. You know, people like Dawkins and the new atheists, they point to faith and they describe it as something like belief in foolish superstitions. But that isn't really what faith in the deepest sense means. It means that you are willing to act out the proposition that you can ride the wave no matter how big it becomes, and that we can all do that together, especially if we do that in goodwill. And I think that's, that's a much more... It's a much more appropriate way to confront the future, and it's also the proper medication for cynicism. Now the other thing that cynics... See, the other thing a- about cynicism that's interesting too is that cynics aren't cynical enough about their own cynicism, right? Because you can get doubtful enough to start doubting the validity of your own cynicism. It's like, what makes you so smart? What makes you the judge of being? You know, the Columbine kids were like that. You know? They decided that existence itself was unsustainable given its cruelty, and that the proper response was to put up a giant middle finger to man, men and God, right? Well, here's a way of being cynical about cynicism. How does your cynicism let you off the hook? Right? How does your cynicism justify your desire to avoid necessary responsibility and to pursue your own short-term hedonic gains? It's like, why aren't you cynical about your own doubt? And that's, that's another place where wisdom begins. It's like, as- so that's two, right? Cynicism beats naivety, but it's not the, uh, ultimate deni- destination, and you should be cynical enough to question the moral validity of your own, of your own resentment and your own, what would you say? Your own turning away from the world.

   13. CWChris Williamson8:04

       The way that I see it, given that we don't know the future, given that much of our motivations are invisible to us, we're not a crystal pond that we can see into, you have to have some form of delusion about what's going to happen in the future. You're trying your best to see the way that it's going to be, but given that the glass could be half empty or half full-

   14. JPJordan Peterson8:25

       Mm-hmm.

   15. CWChris Williamson8:25

       ... why not have a delusion that's going to be useful to you?

   16. JPJordan Peterson8:28

       Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

   17. CWChris Williamson8:28

       One of hope, even in the face and the understanding that things might be difficult and that there's going to be obstacles.

   18. JPJordan Peterson8:33

       You know, th- there was a, there was a line of social psychology that pursued that argument for quite a while, that made the argument that people had to have positive illusions about the future, and that that was the fundamental way that people staved off despair and bolstered their self-esteem. But I don't think, I don't think... We need to separate out the distinction between fantasy and delusion. You do have a fantasy about the future. You have to, because like you said, it's not structured, so you have to m- you have to provisionally map the future. That's what a plan is.

   19. CWChris Williamson9:08

       Positive goal.

   20. JPJordan Peterson9:08

       That's what a strategy is.

   21. CWChris Williamson9:09

       Yeah.

   22. JPJordan Peterson9:10

       Right. But that doesn't make it a delusion. Like, it becomes a delusion when the map bears no relationship to the underlying territory. So if you have a strategy for the future, you know, maybe let's say that your strategy for the future, just for the sake of argument, is that you have five million YouTube subscribers in three years. Well, you have no evidence of the strict sort that that's how it's going to be, because anything could happen be- between now and three years from now, let's say. But you... There's no reason to call that a delusion. It's a, it's one, it's one hypothetically possible path of potential, and then you can make the sacrifices necessary to bring that about. So even though it's a fantasy, because it maps something that isn't there, it's not a delusion. It's a delusion when you're ignoring elements of your own experience that would inform your fantasy more effectively. You're ignoring them so that you can live in a positive representation of the future without having to pay the appropriate price for it.

   23. CWChris Williamson10:19

       One of my favorite

3. 10:20 – 16:44

   The Inner Citadel

   1. CWChris Williamson10:20

      ideas I learned over the last couple of years is the inner citadel from Isaiah Berlin. Do you know this?

   2. JPJordan Peterson10:24

      Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

   3. CWChris Williamson10:25

      So Isaiah Berlin says, "When the natural road toward human fulfillment is blocked, human beings retreat into themselves, become involved in themselves, and try to create inwardly that world which some evil fate-"

   4. JPJordan Peterson10:37

      Right. Yeah.

   5. CWChris Williamson10:37

      "... has denied them externally."

   6. JPJordan Peterson10:39

      That's a delusion, often.

   7. CWChris Williamson10:40

      "If you cannot obtain from the world that which you really desire, you must teach yourself not to want it. If you cannot get what you want, you must teach yourself to want what you can get."

   8. JPJordan Peterson10:50

      Mm-hmm.

   9. CWChris Williamson10:51

      "This is a very frequent form of spiritual retreat in depth into a kind of inner citadel-"

   10. JPJordan Peterson10:55

       Mm-hmm.

   11. CWChris Williamson10:55

       "... in which you lock yourself up against all of the fearful ills of the world." Mutual friend-

   12. JPJordan Peterson10:59

       Mm-hmm.

   13. CWChris Williamson10:59

       ... Rob Henderson explained it-

   14. JPJordan Peterson11:00

       Mm-hmm.

   15. CWChris Williamson11:00

       ... in a simpler way.

   16. JPJordan Peterson11:01

       Mm-hmm.

   17. CWChris Williamson11:01

       "If your leg is wounded, you can try to treat the leg."

   18. JPJordan Peterson11:03

       Mm-hmm.

   19. CWChris Williamson11:03

       "And if you can't, then you cut the leg off and denounce that the desire for legs is misguided and must be subdued."

   20. JPJordan Peterson11:10

       Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

   21. CWChris Williamson11:10

       And I think that we see this everywhere.

   22. JPJordan Peterson11:12

       Well, o- okay, so you, so imagine that you lay out a plan and it meets with an impediment and it knocks the slats out from underneath the plan. Okay, now you retreat. Okay, now you have an option when you're retreating, and one option is to construct a world in fantasy where you're taking revenge on those who wronged you and getting what you want. That's, that's a pathway to madness. So often people who develop serious delusions do develop, um, what would you s- call them? Their, their compensatory fantasies, and then they start to dwell in them, and often for hundreds of hours. So the, the kids, again, who shot up the Columbine High School, they dwelt in a fantasy world for hundreds of hours before they undertook their dreadful actions, right? But you can also flip back into yourself, let's say, and you can...This is like, this is like confession and atonement. It's the proper way to think about it, is you can think about what it is that you did wrong or insufficiently that led to the collapse of your plan. Right? So, that's the first investigation. I made some sacrifices, I attempted to bring about a particular form of the future, it didn't happen. Okay, why? Well, the world is set against me and the cosmos is evil and there's no God and I'm bitter and cynical. That's one potential explanation, right? Poor me. Right? And, and I'm not trying to be flippant about this, because sometimes people's dreams are quite realistic and they still fail catastrophically. You know, it can be brutal. You know, maybe you did make a lot of good decisions and you suddenly got ill or someone in your family did and everything went to hell on you. It doesn't have to be because you've done something cardinally foolish that you fail, you know, it's built into the structure of the world. But doesn't matter. You can also retreat into yourself and you can say something like, "All right, I need to retool my conception of strategy, but also potentially my conception of goal." You know, maybe I'm looking in the wrong place, maybe I have to look somewhere else, and you can open yourself up to a revelation. So, there's a Gospel statement that's very relevant to this. So, Christ tells his followers that if they knock, the door will open, if they ask, they'll receive, and if they seek, they'll find. And so it sounds like, it sounds magical. It sounds like the sort of thing that the new atheists would have a field day with, but that isn't... it, that's not a wise interpretation of that saying. The proper interpretation is something more like a recognition of the way thought works. So, imagine your plans didn't work out. Okay, now you sit down and you say to yourself, "I'd like to know, even if the world was conspiring against me and my failure was 95% the fault of external occurrences and other people, what did I do that wasn't as good as it could have been and where did I fail to look so that the probability of my failure was higher?" Now, now, to ask that question, you have to want the answer. That's, that's what it means to knock or to ask or to seek. This, this is no joke. It's like you have to want to know, and it's a very painful thing to do, because especially if you had given it your all to the degree you were able and you have reason to be bitter, you're going to be searching for the errors that you still made, and discovering your own errors is always extremely painful, right? Especially if they're errors that you're in love with. And so you have to be willing to strip yourself down. That's what humility means, fundamentally. And then... but the advantages, this is why it's so useful to listen to people, you might find out where you're stupid, and then you could stop being stupid. And so one of the reasons you confess your sins, let's say, is because you want to discover where you're insufficient. Now, it's painful. You know, it's painful to encounter an impediment in the form of someone else's opinion that might show you where you're blind and ignorant or willfully blind even, but the advantage to that is you can rectify the error, and then as you move forward, you're stronger. You know, one of the things I taught my kids, and I hope at least somewhat successfully, was that you should always ask a stupid question. And that doesn't mean the sort of question that someone who wasn't paying attention would ask. If you're listening to someone and you don't understand what they're saying and you reveal that, you're revealing your ignorance. You know, and maybe you're in a room full of people and you think you're the only person stupid enough to not get it, which is very rarely the case, by the way. The thing is, though, if you, if you reveal that ignorance to yourself and to the other person, they can rectify it, and if you do that a thousand times, you're not ignorant anymore. And, and this is a real pathway to success too. You see it, you do this because you ask real questions in your podcast, and Rogan does this. Okay, Rogan's always trying to be a little smarter than he already is, and then that works. Iterated, like if you ask a thousand dumb questions and you listen to the answer, then you know a thousand things, some of them deep, that you didn't know before. So, that's the, that's the advantage to searching your soul, let's say, for the... for unrequited sins and attempting to atone. That's not a delusion, right? It's an attempt to set yourself right. It's the opposite of a delusion, even though there can be a fantastical element to it.

   23. CWChris Williamson16:43

       Yeah.

4. 16:44 – 23:43

   Balancing Happiness & High Standards

   1. CWChris Williamson16:44

      The, uh, conversation around people who try their best, do as many things right as they could and yet still fall short because-

   2. JPJordan Peterson16:52

      Yeah.

   3. CWChris Williamson16:52

      ... the world is random and, and unfortunate things happen. Happiness, as far as I can see, it sits in the gap between your expectations and reality. But the problem here is that people who have high standards often end up feeling a lack, right?

   4. JPJordan Peterson17:09

      Mm-hmm.

   5. CWChris Williamson17:10

      How can people who strive like this avoid feeling despondent at falling short of their own high standards? I've heard you talk about the statue of David saying something like, "You are not all that you could be."

   6. JPJordan Peterson17:24

      Yeah.

   7. CWChris Williamson17:24

      And as soon as you posit an ideal, you begin to compare yourself-

   8. JPJordan Peterson17:27

      Yeah, yeah, yeah.

   9. CWChris Williamson17:27

      ... to that ideal. So-

   10. JPJordan Peterson17:29

       Well, par-... that's a good question. I mean, um, the ultimate ideal is also the ultimate judge, because the ultimate ideal is, is something against which you fall far short, and that might be so painful that you can barely stand it. But then what you do is you, you, you... two things, I suppose, is you lower the ideal and you raise your estimation of your possi- of your potential. And what do I mean by lower the ideal? Well, if you're comparing yourself to someone or even to a future self and the gap is so painful that it paralyzes you-... then you've created a dragon that you don't have the tools to master. And so what you have to do is you have to scale the dragon down to size. And you wanna scale the dragon down to size until it's a size that you are willing to move toward. However small that is. Now, you know, if you're here and your ideal is here and that gap is unbearable, then you reduce the gap, and you reduce the gap. And you're gonna have to do that anyways, because you're not gonna move from where you are to perfect in one fell swoop, right? There's gonna be incremental steps. So you have to fill in that, that hierarchy of progression with, with a high enough resolution representation so that you can start to move forward. And, and then you should be buttress. There's another gospel comment that's very interesting. It has to do... It's called the Matthew Principle. And the Matthew Principle is, "To those who have everything, more will be given. And from those who have nothing, everything will be taken." Now, it's brutal, because it implies that reality works like this. When you're moving up, you go like this, right? And that's pretty nice. That's a lot better than this. But when you're going down, you go like that, right? It's like downhill, downhill, cliff. Okay. So you want to avoid the downhill path. Well, if the uphill path is like this, which is like exponential, let's say, or geometric, then what that means is that it doesn't matter how big the first steps you take uphill are. Even if they're trivial, even if they're shameful in their, in their size, because you're so useless, that... If you're, if you're disciplined in that, you'll speed up extraordinarily rapidly. And so that's the good news, you might say, is that you can take very small steps, even ones that might be shameful in their size, and you have to admit that to yourself, but once you get the ball rolling, it doesn't roll in a linear fashion. It rolls in a geometric fashion. And this is a really good thing to know, because it can take the sting out of the realization of your own stupidity. It's like, yeah, you know, everybody has their weak sides, let's say. Things they're embarrassed about. When I first started going to the gym, I was like... How old was I? 1985. 23. And I think I weighed 135 pounds and I was fi- six foot one. Very, very thin. A

   11. CWChris Williamson20:36

       Right.

   12. JPJordan Peterson20:37

       27-inch waist, something like that. I smoked like mad and I drank too much. Like, I wasn't in good shape. Huh, the first, the first attempts forward I took in the gym, I went to this swimsercise class. Jesus, it was me and this like really fat guy, young guy, probably not in any worse shape than me, and like seven old women over 70. And they could out-swim me. Like, it was pretty damn humiliating. And so I did a semester of that and got myself in somewhat better shape, and then I started to go to the gym to work out, to lift weights. And that was also rough, because, you know, I'd be underneath a bloody bench press trying to lift 75 pounds off the, off the rests, and, you know, some muscle-headed bastard would come over and tell me how to do it. And it's like, "Yeah, thank you." But, you know, it's embarrassing. And lots of times people won't do things like go to the gym because they're so embarrassed about how they look or what sort of shape they're in. And it's a pain to start at the bottom, but you start at the bottom where you're weak. And if you want to rectify what's weak, you have to accept the fact that you're at the bottom and that the first steps are gonna be painful. You know, I... It took me about three years, but I stopped smoking, and then I stopped drinking, and I gained 40 pounds of muscle in like three and a half years, something like that. I basically had to stop doing that 'cause I had to eat like six times a day. It was crazy. But I got a lot more physically confident and a lot more coordinated, 'cause working out with dumbbells makes you coordinated, right? 'Cause it, it exercises all the small ligaments and the tendons, and so my lower body, in particular, got a lot more coordinated. Then I could dance, so that was better when I was going out dancing, 'cause I did a lot of that in graduate school. And... But the point of all this is, if you're gonna rectify your weaknesses, you have to admit your insufficiency to your own shame. Now, if the gap between you and your ideal is so great that it paralyzes you, you shrink that, right?

   13. CWChris Williamson22:40

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5. 23:43 – 28:30

   Who Are You Comparing Yourself To?

   1. CWChris Williamson23:43

      One of the things I've been talking about in the live shows is, your comparison group is incorrect. The fact that, you know, we have the opportunity to sit down and listen to anybody on the planet, right? The best minds, the best athletes, the best thinkers, the most articulate that are alive right now. Or listen to the people that have died that were around when video cameras existed. And you can compare yourself to that group.

   2. JPJordan Peterson24:09

      Yeah.

   3. CWChris Williamson24:09

      But that's not your comparison group. If you have the impetus to sit down and listen to me and you-... waffle on for three hours about these deep topics, these interesting ideas, you are so already selected out of the normal group.

   4. JPJordan Peterson24:27

      Mm-hmm.

   5. CWChris Williamson24:27

      You're already asking yourself questions that-

   6. JPJordan Peterson24:30

      The right questions.

   7. CWChris Williamson24:30

      ... almost nobody, almost nobody else is, right? But because your comparison group are people that are unbelievably high performing... I remember before I started my podcast, I'd listen to, to you or to Sam or to Joe, and I'd think, "God, their recall is, is amazing." It's so... It, it's like that they, they've just got this eidetic memory, and everything that they've ever read is able to come to the surface, and they're able to say it in this way that's completely seamless and all the rest of it. If you go, okay, well, are you really, person that's never recorded a podcast before, going to compare yourself to Joe Rogan, man that's recorded 1,000 and spent 10,000 hours on stage and done all of this UFC commentary and done all of this stuff in terms of TV? Is that really who you're going to compare yourself to?

   8. JPJordan Peterson25:12

      Mm-hmm.

   9. CWChris Williamson25:12

      And it's unfair. And-

   10. JPJordan Peterson25:13

       Mm-hmm.

   11. CWChris Williamson25:13

       ... the problem that I see is, people who have big dreams for themselves and want to do great things, they like to set their sights high.

   12. JPJordan Peterson25:21

       Yeah.

   13. CWChris Williamson25:22

       And yet they feel despondent in the comparison.

   14. JPJordan Peterson25:24

       Yeah.

   15. CWChris Williamson25:25

       So I think that that-

   16. JPJordan Peterson25:25

       Well, there's a pride in that, too, eh? Uh, like-

   17. CWChris Williamson25:28

       I can be. I want to be.

   18. JPJordan Peterson25:29

       Well, or that's who I should be comparing myself to.

   19. CWChris Williamson25:33

       Mm.

   20. JPJordan Peterson25:33

       Right? That's the pride, and the pride is something like, "I should be that," or even, "I could be that." It's like, well, maybe you could, but you're certainly not going to do it, as you already pointed out, without the apprenticeship. Right? So you could say that the despondency is actually, is, is in proportion to the f- to the false pride. Now, I wrote a chapter in, I think, my first book, which was compare yourself to who you are today, not to who someone else is. It's... Sorry, I, I mangled that to some degree, but you get the point. The proper comparison group for you is you yesterday, because you can make... First of all, you're the, you're your, you're the only control group that's appropriate to you, because you have a certain set of talents and possibilities and limitations and tragedies that are truly unique to you. And so you might be comparing yourself to someone else on some dimension, but it's not a reasonable comparison, because you don't know what talents they were blessed with, and you also don't know what opportunities they had that you didn't, et cetera. It's just not a reasonable comparison. It's a lot better to think about who you were and then to think, "Well, could you be somewhat better in some dimension?" And the, the, the positive thing about that is the answer is almost always yes. Now, you can orient that transformation towards some stellar target, and that's a reasonable thing to do, but that doesn't exactly mean that you should compare yourself to that target. Aiming at something and comparing yourself to it are not exactly the same thing. Plus, your bloody comparison is also a delusion. You know, that's another thing that you have to understand, is that you look at the person you're jealous of, and really what you're doing is you're, you're looking through a very narrow aperture at a very thin slice of their life. You're looking at the thin slice of their life that's turning out the best, but you're also looking at a thin slice of their life that's marketed to be the best. Right? And you have no idea what the horror of that person's life might be in its totality. And you have no idea if, like if the deal was, say, you wanted to be Russell Brand. There's a good example. You wanted to be Russell Brand. You wanted to be as charismatic and as famous as he is. Well, your real wish is that you get to have everything Russell Brand has, but none of his problems. Well, come on. I mean, that's just, it's just... It's no wonder that a vision like that would make you despondent, because it's, it's naïve, it's resentful, it's jealous, it's bitter, and it's unreasonable. Y- you have to take the good with the bad. You have to take the bad with the good. And people ver- v- rarely think about that when they're thinking about, you know, the famous people they think they'd like to be.

   21. CWChris Williamson28:29

       There was a recent

6. 28:30 – 34:31

   What It’s Like to Be Elon Musk

   1. CWChris Williamson28:30

      interview with Elon Musk where he said something: "My mind is a storm. I don't think most people would want to be me."

   2. JPJordan Peterson28:38

      Right, right.

   3. CWChris Williamson28:39

      "They may think they would want to be me, but they don't. They don't know. They don't understand."

   4. JPJordan Peterson28:45

      Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

   5. CWChris Williamson28:45

      What do you think of that? Elon's someone that people probably look up to and admire-

   6. JPJordan Peterson28:48

      Yeah, well, you know-

   7. CWChris Williamson28:49

      ... and aspire to be.

   8. JPJordan Peterson28:51

      ... o- one of the downsides to high-level genius is, you might describe it as hypomania. So here's a simple test that people can do. So, this is a test of something called verbal fluency, and verbal fluency is associated with creativity. And so a ver- Here's a simple verb- verbal fluency test. Write down as many four-letter words as you can in three minutes that begin with T. Okay, that's- that's pretty constrained, four letters and T. Or, or write down as many words as you can in three minutes that begin with S. That's less constrained. All right, so, there's quite a powerful correlation between the sheer number of words that you produce and your lifetime creative achievement. Right? Especially in the artistic and verbal domains. That's different than vocabulary. Vocabulary is how many words you understand. Fluency is how many words you can produce in a given amount of time.

   9. CWChris Williamson29:48

      Deployment of those words, yeah.

   10. JPJordan Peterson29:50

       Yeah. Well, people vary to a degree that you can hardly imagine. So some people, if you get them to do the four-letter test in three minutes, they'll write down like 12 words, and some will write down 150. And the ones who are writing down 150, their minds are going at a hypomanic rate. They're just thinking five times as fast as-

   11. CWChris Williamson30:13

       Bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing.

   12. JPJordan Peterson30:13

       ... o- yeah, without any remission whatsoever.And, you know, when that gets completely out of control, you have manic. You have someone who's manic. And there's nothing fun about manic. That's where the word maniac comes from. And someone who's manic has a thousand different plans, each of which are one sentence long, that they're hyper-enthusiastic about. They'll spend every cent of their money pursuing them, and things just go immediately to hell. And so that's the, that's the outer limit of pathology on the creative front. And someone like Musk, who's clearly a genius, that's what he's contending with in his internal landscape. Now, I'm not saying that he's manic, 'cause I see no signs of that. But someone that creative is on that edge. Or you t- see someone like Ben Shapiro. I mean, it's very interesting to talk to Ben, because... And Russell Brand is the same way. Shapiro speaks, I think, more rapidly than anyone I ever met. But if you're with him, you see very clearly that he's probably thinking five times that fast. And that's a lot. And when I was writing Maps of Meaning, which was my first book, I had a very difficult time shutting off my mind. I was obsessed with that book, and so I was writing about three hours a day, and then I was thinking about the material, like, for 12 hours. As... And the thoughts came as... way faster than thinking. They probably came about as fast as I can read. And I can read about 1,200 words a minute if the material isn't overwhelmingly dense. And so it was just nonstop thought for, like, 16 hours a day. That's part of the reason I started lifting weights, because if I was lifting heavy enough weights, that would-

   13. CWChris Williamson31:53

       Can't be thinking at 1,200 words a minute while I've got 100 pounds on my back.

   14. JPJordan Peterson31:56

       Exactly, exactly. It was enough to-

   15. CWChris Williamson31:57

       Yeah, yeah, yeah.

   16. JPJordan Peterson31:57

       It was enough to shut it down.

   17. CWChris Williamson31:59

       Yeah.

   18. JPJordan Peterson31:59

       And it was also one of the reasons that I drank, because that was another thing that would shut it off.

   19. CWChris Williamson32:04

       Yeah. Well-

   20. JPJordan Peterson32:04

       Um-

   21. CWChris Williamson32:04

       I, I think the price that people pay to be the person that you admire is just such an interesting frame. To look at someone like Elon Musk, "My mind is a storm. I don't think most people would want to be me. The price-"

   22. JPJordan Peterson32:19

       Mm-hmm.

   23. CWChris Williamson32:19

       "... that you would have to pay in order to be me is not one that you would..." But you're th- one of the richest men on the planet, and you get to-

   24. JPJordan Peterson32:24

       Mm-hmm.

   25. CWChris Williamson32:24

       ... you know, dance on stage and, and release cars that, uh, bulletproof, and put rockets in space and stuff.

   26. JPJordan Peterson32:31

       Right.

   27. CWChris Williamson32:31

       Well, yeah, but what about all of the baggage? What's the price? What's the entry price?

   28. JPJordan Peterson32:34

       Yeah. Well, he's also, he also appears to me to be hyper-conscientious, and I know people who've worked with him. Uh, like, Musk isn't just a creative genius. He's also an extremely conscientious engineer, which... And really conscientious engineers, they have very interesting minds. I like talking to engineers, because my brother-in-law's a great engineer, and when, when he understands something, Jim, when he understands something, he understands how to build it out of atoms, right? Like, he understands it at every single level. And Musk appears to me to be someone who's this rare combination of hyper-creative, but also hyper-conscientious-

   29. CWChris Williamson33:12

       Does that wrangle-

   30. JPJordan Peterson33:12

       .... and I know that he works all the time.
7. 34:31 – 47:43

   Has Fame Changed Jordan?

   1. CWChris Williamson34:31

      interesting to consider the changes that happen to people as well as they... as their, their platforms, as the scrutiny around them continues to increase. Obviously, this has been a journey for you over the last, you know, nearly approaching 10 years now of-

   2. JPJordan Peterson34:45

      Mm-hmm.

   3. CWChris Williamson34:46

      Was it 2006? Was that still C16?

   4. JPJordan Peterson34:48

      2016.

   5. CWChris Williamson34:49

      2016, yeah, sorry.

   6. JPJordan Peterson34:50

      Yeah.

   7. CWChris Williamson34:50

      Um, how have you found fame change you? What's been impacted or changed due to the, the scrutiny and the surveillance and the adoration and the criticism?

   8. JPJordan Peterson35:07

      Well, the first thing that changed, I think, was that I saw misery on a scale that I hadn't really seen it before. You know, I had worked as a clinician for a long time, and I'd worked with, say, 20 people a week, and I was always in the realm of difficult existential problems, wrestling with my clients' problems alongside them, and I liked that a lot. And then I had my research and I had my family and various business interests. And so that misery, in some ways, was contained and boxed in, and I had a lot of structure around that to be able to function despite the fact that, you know, I was neck deep in 20 people's serious problems, which I really liked, by the way. When, when I started speaking on a larger scale and meeting more and more people, the scale of demoralization really hit me. I didn't know that... I didn't know how deep the demoralization in our culture had become, and I think that was especially obvious to me at that point among young men.... now, it looks like, this is Jonathan Haidt's research is indicating this, that possibly young women are even in worse shape. But for whatever reason, most of the people I was meeting, at least to begin with, were young men. I think it was probably because most of the f- far more people on YouTube are young men. And so the... It was shocking and brutal to see how much demoralization, how... widely spread the demoralization in our culture was. Other than that, and tha- that was a real shock, and it, it was very hard on me, I would say. Um, everything else about it has been, at minimum, ridiculously interesting. I have an unbelievable wealth of opportunity. I'd be a fool to be anything but abjectly grateful. I mean, the misery that I saw was a shock and it hurt me, and it, it was part of what made me ill.

   9. CWChris Williamson37:16

      How did that im- how did that impact you? Did it change the way that you see the world at all?

   10. JPJordan Peterson37:27

       It made me understand more deeply how important it was to offer people an encouraging word. I could see that so many people were dying, psychologically or actually, for lack of an encouraging word. And so it made being in the position to provide that much more necessary. I mean, part of the reason that Tammy and I tour constantly is because it seems to be good. It s- seems to be a good thing. You know, we've even seen changes in the audience. So five years ago, six years ago, when we did our first tour, a lot of the people who came to the talks were in pretty rough shape. There were more men than there are now. Like, the proportion of men to women was higher, and the men were generally there alone, and they were... A lot of them were looking pretty ragged around the edges. And now, five years later, half the audience comes in suits, like, it's as if they're dressed for a wedding. Most of the guys are there with some woman. Um, the, the audience members are doing much better, and the lecture events are extremely positive. You know, if you looked at my life from the outside, you'd think that I was in a constant storm of, you know, aggravated controversy. But all of that, virtually all of that is virtual. It's just in the online world. Now, it touches the actual world from time to time, because I am being pursued by my regulatory college in Ontario.

   11. CWChris Williamson39:07

       Your re-education camp.

   12. JPJordan Peterson39:08

       Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which is, you know, mostly just an annoyance, and a preposterous annoyance, a preposterous, expensive, and time-consuming annoyance. But apart from that, everything that's happened around me has been positive. (laughs) That's a strange thing too. Positive at such an intensity that even that is daunting. You know, you'd think... It's hard to imagine that you could be in a situation where things are so positive that you can barely stand it, but, but I am in that situation, and it's quite something to contend with. I... I was fortunate, I suppose, to some degree, that it didn't happen to me till I was old, 'cause I've never really g- I've never really got accustomed to it.

   13. CWChris Williamson39:54

       I've had a thought about this, observing what's happened to you, and, you know, the Weinsteins are a good example of this too.

   14. JPJordan Peterson40:02

       Mm-hmm.

   15. CWChris Williamson40:02

       We often hear the perils of getting fame too young.

   16. JPJordan Peterson40:04

       Mm-hmm.

   17. CWChris Williamson40:05

       You know, the Macaulay Culkins of the world, the Britney Spears of the world, you know, uh, individuals who don't have any sense of identity being thrust into a non-representative experience of the world, and they're completely unmoored. But I think that there's an equally interesting question to ask, okay, um, what happens if you think you know who you are? If you've spent decades, five decades, six decades of your life understanding your place, your status, the trajectory that you're on, and then out of nowhere, you get ripped away from all of the-

   18. JPJordan Peterson40:38

       Mm-hmm.

   19. CWChris Williamson40:39

       ... areas of reference, all of the way markers that you thought you knew, and now you're just floating in the air. I, I imagine that could be even more disquieting in some ways.

   20. JPJordan Peterson40:49

       Well, wh- when everything blew up around me to begin with, it was stressful, I would say, because my job was on the line, my university job, and I never thought that would happen. I mean, my... When I w- worked at Harvard and at the University of Toronto, that was all positive. Like, I really liked working with my graduate students. I had at least cordial relationships with my, with my f- fellow faculty members. At Harvard, they were more than cordial. At the University of Toronto, most of the faculty members that I started to develop friendships with were also those who ended up moving away, and so... And they were often people who got offers from other places and, you know, they, they would disappear, and so a lot of the friends I developed at the University of Toronto went elsewhere, and so I didn't get as tightly tied in with regards to friendship networks among my peers as I had at Harvard, for example, but I had great relationships with undergraduates and with my graduate students, and that was plenty. Like, I loved working with my graduate students, and so it wasn't like I was pining and alone, not at all, and I had a good network of friends, and... Um, and so then that was threatened and really disappeared in 2016, um, and my clinical practice was threatened, and so that was unsettling. I think there were things that continued though. Even when I was teaching as a university professor, the way I taught wasn't typical.... the things I taught weren't typical. I thought for decades th- you know, eventually someone's gonna find out what I'm teaching and th- and, uh, you know, there's gonna be trouble. I couldn't believe I was allowed, encouraged to teach what I was teaching. Um, but, you know, the universities, and this was particularly true of Harvard in the '90s, that's how they were structured.

   21. CWChris Williamson42:47

       What was so rebellious about what, what you were teaching?

   22. JPJordan Peterson42:53

       Well, there wasn't really anybody who was concentrating on the nexus between, say, archetypical ideas, archetypical and religious ideas in neuroscience, so that wasn't a thing. I mean, there was a few people, Jaak Panksepp was one of them, who... A lot of the researchers who were interested in the neuroscience of emotion became interested in deep narrative, because they started to understand that our emotional life is a story, that's a good way of thinking about it, and that w- we're guided, you know, we're guided by our emotional instincts. And what our emotional instincts do is put us into certain stories. That's what it means to be in love, for example, is that you're in a love story, and that-

   23. CWChris Williamson43:34

       Yeah, it's not, it's not, uh, a particular balance th- of oxytocin and endorphins that you are aware of. It's not broken down to its constituent parts.

   24. JPJordan Peterson43:42

       No, definitely not.

   25. CWChris Williamson43:42

       It's part of a narrative that you tell yourself about what this means and how this feels.

   26. JPJordan Peterson43:45

       Right, right. Well, and it's interesting that the instinct manifests itself as a story, and so I was very interested in narrative and story, and I... And also, see, no psychologists study Carl Jung. Ne- like, literally, virtually none.

   27. CWChris Williamson44:02

       Really?

   28. JPJordan Peterson44:02

       Now... Oh, yeah, yeah. Oh, definitely not. I mean, psychology, (laughs) psychology really developed in some ways as the materialist antithesis to psychoanalysis. So Freud and Jung, and even Adler to some degree, they were off limits for, for scientifically trained behavioral psychologists, and that's what I was and am. Like, I trained at McGill. There were no courses in psychoanalytic theory at McGill. I read Freud and Jung completely on my own, uh, flying in the face of the advice that I was getting even from my well-meaning graduate supervisor, who was a great guy and who never got in my way in the least, quite the contrary. But I was warned, for example, when I went on the job market not to talk about the things that I was truly interested in, and I ignored that, by the way. And what that meant was some places that I went to apply for a job didn't want me, but then Harvard did, so that worked out quite nicely. You know, and that's one of the advantages, too, also, of being true to your own vision, is that you won't get what you don't want. See, I didn't want to go work somewhere where they'd wouldn't want me.

   29. CWChris Williamson45:19

       Mm.

   30. JPJordan Peterson45:20

       I wanted to go work somewhere where they wanted me.
8. 47:43 – 54:20

   Why You Should Always Tell the Truth

   1. CWChris Williamson47:43

      story that Douglas Murray told me about one of his first bosses at an early newspaper that he worked at, I can't remember the gentleman's name. This guy is a legend within the industry, he's been working for a long time, he's accumulated a number of, uh, haters and, and fans. And toward the back end of his career, as Douglas is starting his, he decides that he wants to release a West End play about the life of Prince Charles in rhyming couplets. Adventurous as, as West End plays go, and obviously there was all of this scrutiny because he was this very well-known, uh, individual within the publishing world. And, uh, opening night, by the halftime interval there was no one left in the entire auditorium, including the cast.... and this guy was devastated, right? And, uh, he was mocked in the press and all the rest of it. Apparently, Douglas saw him shortly afterward and asked him kindly, he was like, "Look, like, what were you thinking? A West End play about the life of Prince Charles in fucking rhyming couplets?" He said, "Well, Douglas, I followed my instincts. And instincts, they may sometimes lead you wrong-

   2. JPJordan Peterson48:51

      Mm-hmm.

   3. CWChris Williamson48:51

      ... but they're the only thing that's ever led you right."

   4. JPJordan Peterson48:53

      Right, right.

   5. CWChris Williamson48:55

      And that stuck with me because-

   6. JPJordan Peterson48:56

      Yeah, well, well, there, there, there's something very relevant there, too, on the instinctual front. Okay, so things will beckon to you and call to you, and you'll have intuitions about which pathway to take. And you will, in all likelihood, follow those, because what else do you have? You have these orienting instincts. This is another reason why you don't lie. 'Cause if you lie and you practice lying, you pathologize your instincts, and then your intuitions lead you wrong. And so there's a sin that's laid out in the Gospels. It's the sin against the Holy Ghost, and it's unforgivable. And people have been debating for, like, 2,000 years about what this particular sin is. But it's something like the pathologization of the instincts that orient you. Like if you sacrifice your relationship to the truth, you warp your vision, and then you can't see. And then one day, it'll be dark and there'll be sharp things in the fog in front of you, and you'll wander right into them because you've pathologized your own vision.

   7. CWChris Williamson50:02

      Yeah.

   8. JPJordan Peterson50:02

      You d- you don't want to lie because you, you program yourself falsely, and then you automatically see what isn't there. And then, of course, the world will slap you in the face continually, and you'll think, "Oh my God, the world's such a pathological place," when the truth of the matter is, is that, no, you just keep running into things that you refuse to see. And then you think, "Well, the world's made of nothing but obstacles." It's like, well, you put the obstacles in your own path, and you did that by developing these complex s- self-serving delusions, a story that you tell other people about who you are that isn't true. You're trying to lay out a map that bears no relationship to reality, and you keep wondering why you wander off the path and into a pit. It's like, well, how could it be otherwise? If, see, if you really unders- this... People have commented to me many times about my bravery, and I, I th- I don't like that. I, it's, it's, it's not right. I'm afraid of different things than the typical person. Maybe that's a good way of thinking about it. I'm way more afraid of the consequences of saying something that's false or wandering off the appropriate path than I am of whatever consequences might come for saying what I believe and doing what I believe to be the case. I'm way more afraid of that. You know, I've been reading the Gospel of St Matthew. I'm, I'm writing a book at the moment called We Who Wrestle With God, and one of the things Christ s- says to people continually is to not damage their vision, is to not put... (sighs) That's the best way of putting it. Don't occlude your eye. You can see what's in front of you if you're willing to see it. And if you're willing to see it, the terrible obs- many of the terrible obstacles in life, you can just walk around. But if you blind yourself purposefully to follow your own narrow, self-serving delusion, you're gonna run into terrible things and terrible people and the terrible part of your own soul all the time. That's what you should be afraid of.

   9. CWChris Williamson52:17

      But the best thing that you can hope for, if you do do that, is to fluke success living somebody else's life.

   10. JPJordan Peterson52:24

       Right, right, great, wonderful. Yeah, exactly. You get to be, you get to be a successful fraud. I remember this documentary about Ron Jeremy, think they called him The Hedgehog. He was this famous porn star.

   11. CWChris Williamson52:38

       I've seen a music video with him in, yeah.

   12. JPJordan Peterson52:39

       Yeah, okay. Not one of the world's most attractive people physically, and, you know, he lived in this very interesting world. He lived in this world, he was stopped constantly on the street by people-

   13. CWChris Williamson52:50

       (clears throat)

   14. JPJordan Peterson52:50

       ... who thought Ron Jeremy was a hero. Right, so he was in hell because the people who admired him were the people who admired... (laughs) He was surrounded by the people who thought that he was an avatar of, of success, right? And so he got what he wanted, I suppose. He had easy access to easy women.

   15. CWChris Williamson53:13

       In other news, this episode is brought to you by Manscaped. If you are a gentleman who is still using an old face shaver from three Christmases ago to trim your gentleman's area, what are you doing? Join us here in the modern world. There are purpose-built tools for the job, and the brand-new Lawn Mower 5.0 Ultra is the tool that you need. It's got a cutting edge ceramic blade to reduce grooming accidents, a 90-minute battery so that you can take a longer shave, waterproof technology so that you can groom in the shower, and an LED light which illuminates grooming areas for a closer and more precise trim. Or if you just want to do it in the dark like a ninja would. Going into the holiday season, you might want to get the man in your life a gift or hint at him that he's a tiny bit more hairy than you would like. And the Manscaped Lawn Mower 5.0 Ultra is the perfect blending of these two worlds. Since we're on YouTube, I can't show you how this actually works, but what I can show you is that transformation right there. That's you, gentlemen. Unwrap the gift of smoothness this season by going to the link in the description below or heading to manscaped.com/wisdom using the code WISDOM at checkout for 20% off and free shipping. That's manscaped.com/wisdom, and WISDOM at checkout. Well, let me give you-

   16. JPJordan Peterson54:19

       Mm-hmm.

   17. CWChris Williamson54:19

       ... let me give you

9. 54:20 – 1:06:20

   How Pickup Artistry Created Incels

   1. CWChris Williamson54:20

      this. This is why I think the beginning of the incel movement and the black pill movement was born out of pickup artistry. The origin, if you trace it back using internet history, of the incel/black pill...... uh, ideology was a, I think it was a subreddit or a website called PUA Hate, pickup artist hate. And what it was, was a, a group of men who had been through the pipeline of pickup artistry-

   2. JPJordan Peterson54:47

      Yeah.

   3. CWChris Williamson54:47

      ... and come out the other side with a very jaded, an even more jaded view of the world. And I-

   4. JPJordan Peterson54:52

      Even more jaded?

   5. CWChris Williamson54:53

      Yes. And I'll tell you why. So, what happens if a guy learns old school, mid 20 naughts pickup artistry-

   6. JPJordan Peterson55:02

      Mm-hmm.

   7. CWChris Williamson55:03

      ... is you realize that there is a particular set of actions, a script that you can run-

   8. JPJordan Peterson55:08

      Yeah.

   9. CWChris Williamson55:09

      ... which makes it more likely that a woman is gonna go to bed with you.

   10. JPJordan Peterson55:12

       Right, right, right, right.

   11. CWChris Williamson55:13

       But what you realize when you do that, as you learn how to neg and do kino escalation and tell them that story about the midget fight outside, or whatever your script is that you're running, you then begin to see just how far away that person is from the person that you actually show up as.

   12. JPJordan Peterson55:32

       Right.

   13. CWChris Williamson55:33

       Who you are, and this extravagant persona that you need-

   14. JPJordan Peterson55:37

       Yep.

   15. CWChris Williamson55:37

       ... to convolute into existence in order to get this woman into bed makes you feel-

   16. JPJordan Peterson55:42

       Worse even, yeah.

   17. CWChris Williamson55:44

       ... fill the gap between where you are and what you have to do in order to achieve the thing that you want.

   18. JPJordan Peterson55:48

       Right.

   19. CWChris Williamson55:48

       Now what you don't realize is that there are a million other ways that you could become sufficiently charming to get this person to like you.

   20. JPJordan Peterson55:54

       Mm-hmm.

   21. CWChris Williamson55:54

       This is just-

   22. JPJordan Peterson55:55

       By actually doing it, for example.

   23. CWChris Williamson55:57

       This is just one that happens to be robust and-

   24. JPJordan Peterson56:01

       Mm-hmm.

   25. CWChris Williamson56:01

       ... easy enough to write down in a book and easy enough for-

   26. JPJordan Peterson56:03

       Mm-hmm.

   27. CWChris Williamson56:04

       ... most guys to replicate.

   28. JPJordan Peterson56:04

       Yeah, well it's basically a form of scripted psychopathy. So what a psychopath does is feign competence, right? So most psychopaths are very emotionally stable, and so one of the early stage markers for competence is self-possession and calmness. And so if you're not an anxious person, you've got an edge on that already. And most psychopaths are very high in emotional stability. And so they look confident, 'cause confident people tend not to be that nervous. Like if you're doing something you're expert at, well you're not nervous 'cause you know how to do it. Okay, so the lack of nervousness is a hint to competence. Well you can feign that. You can feign competence. You can feign confidence. That's what the pickup artists teach. Now, the... I would say there's even some utility in what they do, right? Because if you're dependent and bitter and resentful and charmless and self-destructive and nervous (laughs) and socially unskilled, the probability that you're gonna be successful with women is very, very low. Okay, so you should be other than who you are. Now, if you start putting on this persona, then you could think about that as a new suit of clothes, and you could learn through that how to fill in the gaps-

   29. CWChris Williamson57:28

       Fake it until you make it.

   30. JPJordan Peterson57:29

       Absolutely, absolutely. But if you take on that without doing the effort necessary to integrate that in a genuine way, then all that's happening is that you're, you're being rewarded for being fake.
10. 1:06:20 – 1:13:38

    Reflecting on the New York Times Hit Piece

    1. JPJordan Peterson1:06:20

       and quite educated, but all tricks. And so... But, you know-

    2. CWChris Williamson1:06:24

       How does it feel looking back on those two? They were a very formative time. It was kinda the inflection point or one of the inflection points, I suppose, for yourself as well.

    3. JPJordan Peterson1:06:31

       Yeah.

    4. CWChris Williamson1:06:31

       How does it feel looking back on that? I remember you said at the time it took you many days to recover from that kind of cantankerous sort of adversarial interview. Is that... Does that seem like a different lifetime, or is that still very much sort of with you?

    5. JPJordan Peterson1:06:44

       Well, I'm a lot healthier than I was then. So-... t- those sorts of things wouldn't have the same effect on me now as they did then. I- because I was ill, it took me a long time to recover from, you know, a serious bout. I mean, the first time I talked to Sam Harris, not that Sam played tricks, like, I like Sam and we've had very productive conversations. I was so ill when the first time I talked to Sam that I could barely sit in my chair. It was awful.

    6. CWChris Williamson1:07:08

       Talking to Sam Harris makes you ill.

    7. JPJordan Peterson1:07:10

       (laughs) .

    8. CWChris Williamson1:07:10

       That's the, the headline (laughs) .

    9. JPJordan Peterson1:07:11

       No, no, not, not at all. No, no. Sam and I have had very productive conversations. That was another good example, uh, I suppose of the utility of an adversarial conversation.

    10. CWChris Williamson1:07:20

        Yeah.

    11. JPJordan Peterson1:07:20

        You know, I mean, Sam comes to a conversation like that pretty well-armed. But it's very helpful because it forces you to look in nooks and crannies that you might not have looked in, and to be crystal clear, to the degree that that's possible, about what you're actually saying.

    12. CWChris Williamson1:07:39

        The idea of, of loving your enemy is something I've been playing with a little bit recently. There's been... I, I guess, my platform's getting to the level now where, uh, there's a reason for someone to have a bullseye pointed at least r- remotely in my direction.

    13. JPJordan Peterson1:07:53

        Yep.

    14. CWChris Williamson1:07:54

        Because there's no point in trying to take somebody down that's got nothing, that's got no status.

    15. JPJordan Peterson1:07:57

        Right. Right, right.

    16. CWChris Williamson1:07:57

        Why would you, why would you invest the time?

    17. JPJordan Peterson1:07:59

        Right.

    18. CWChris Williamson1:07:59

        You'll... The step that you're going to get in terms of your state of standing on their shoulders is so small that no one can notice.

    19. JPJordan Peterson1:08:04

        Right. So it's a backhanded compliment.

    20. CWChris Williamson1:08:06

        Y- yeah, in some ways.

    21. JPJordan Peterson1:08:07

        Yeah.

    22. CWChris Williamson1:08:07

        Um, but you're right, man. Some of the, some of the criticisms that I've got, and I, I was re- reminded by a friend recently about this, uh, have been some of the best inflection points, very uncomfortable, and to see it as a gift-

    23. JPJordan Peterson1:08:21

        Mm-hmm.

    24. CWChris Williamson1:08:22

        ... to think about that thing as a gift.

    25. JPJordan Peterson1:08:23

        Mm-hmm.

    26. CWChris Williamson1:08:23

        It's like, I know that you weren't doing this to make me better.

    27. JPJordan Peterson1:08:26

        Yeah.

    28. CWChris Williamson1:08:27

        I know that you weren't doing this to try and, to try and benefit me, and yet...

    29. JPJordan Peterson1:08:32

        And yet, yeah.

    30. CWChris Williamson1:08:33

        In reflection, it's like alchemy. It's like how Rory-
11. 1:13:38 – 1:23:23

    Being Grateful For Suffering

    1. CWChris Williamson1:13:38

       Here's another thing, I spoke to David Goggins about this last year, about how, uh, I was bullied as a kid, and I was quite unpopular in school, and I was an only child, so I didn't really have many people to back me up, uh, you know, in the schoolyard or whatever. And I, for a long time, had a chip on my shoulder about the kids-

    2. JPJordan Peterson1:13:56

       Mm-hmm.

    3. CWChris Williamson1:13:56

       ... that mistreated me in school, as you might expect. And then I got to where, you know, maybe a few years ago now, really, really started to reflect on it and realized that so many of the things that I valued in myself were the light side of something dark that had been created during that time in school.

    4. JPJordan Peterson1:14:15

       Mm-hmm.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:14:16

       So, um, m- my complete preparedness to just spend time on my own means that I don't mind about moving out to a country where I don't know anybody and trying to make this podcast thing work, or spending hours and hours working or researching or recording podcasts or doing intros or whatever it is. Like, all of those things. Um, not having a super tight social network as a kid meant that I wasn't beholden to anybody when I grew up, that I, I didn't feel the need to have as much, uh, um, support as I go along to do stuff.

    6. JPJordan Peterson1:14:50

       Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

    7. CWChris Williamson1:14:51

       Now, other sides of it haven't been so great, because I still seek validation, I still seek a lot of validation-

    8. JPJordan Peterson1:14:55

       Mm-hmm.

    9. CWChris Williamson1:14:56

       ... because that was something that I was missing-

    10. JPJordan Peterson1:14:58

        Mm-hmm.

    11. CWChris Williamson1:14:58

        ... as a kid. Um, but yeah, realizing not only you probably wouldn't be here if it wasn't for the things that you went through.

    12. JPJordan Peterson1:15:06

        Mm-hmm.

    13. CWChris Williamson1:15:07

        Okay, there's step one. And then step two is, and I'm quite grateful for what I've done, and then step three would be something like, wow, I'm proud of myself for having turned something that was negative into something that's positive.

    14. JPJordan Peterson1:15:20

        Mm-hmm.

    15. CWChris Williamson1:15:21

        But then another level above that would be, wow, so maybe I should be thankful.

    16. JPJordan Peterson1:15:28

        Yeah. Right. Well, you know, we were talking earlier in the podcast about what is the appropriate attitude towards the future, and I would say, well, we could put past, present, and future in the same bin, say well, one of the things that you want to do is practice gratitude, that's one of the primary religious rituals, you might say, is the practice of gratitude. And you might say, "Well, my life is so horrible, what do I have to be grateful for?" And I would say that's, that's (laughs) , for better or worse, that's still a form of blindness. Right? I mean, uh, people can have very, very difficult situations, can be in very, very difficult situations, and it's in those difficult situations where the search for gratitude becomes something that is by necessity deeper and more difficult, but that doesn't mean it's not appropriate. You know, and, and there is, there is a very tight association between loving your enemy and being grateful in spite of the terrible things that occur in your life. I've been writing about the Book of Job, and Job is a story of unjust suffering, fundamentally. God deems Job a good man, so we have it on God's word that Job is actually a good man, and then all hell breaks loose, partly 'cause God makes a bet with Satan, which is, you know, a hell of a thing to do, and says, "Do your worst. He's not going to turn on me no matter what you do." And so Job, despite his torment, he becomes very ill, he loses everything he has, his friends, he b- becomes ill in a way that's disfiguring, his friends come around and laugh at him and tell him that he's a bad man and that's why all these terrible things have been happening to him, and it's brutal. And Job refuses to lose faith in himself. He says, "Look, I'm, I'm not perfect. I'm... But as far as men go, I've done what I should do, and it, I'm not being punished in some manner that's obviously related to my sin, it's more like the random play of tragic forces in the world. I'm not going to lose faith in myself no matter what, and I'm also not going to..." His wife says, "Shake your fist at God, curse him, and die," 'cause things have gone so badly for Job she thinks that's all that's left to him, and he refuses to do that. So, he maintains faith regardless of what's happened to him, and that's really the moral of the story of Job, which is that you are morally obligated to maintain faith no matter what happens to you, and there's a practical side to that. So imagine that God and Satan conspire against you. There'll be times in your life where it feels like that's happening. And then imagine that your reaction to that is to become bitter and resentful and hostile. Well then, whatever hell you're in, merely as a consequence of the confluence of tragic events, you have opened a whole other hell underneath it, uh, the hell of bitterness and resentment and ingratitude and, well, and that turns into the desire for revenge very, very quickly. Think things are bad just because they're bad. You wait till you see how bad they can become...... if you allow yourself to be corrupted by your unjust suffering, right? And so, it's as- and I- I- I do think that this is the most practical possible advice that can be given to people, which is that you are morally required to maintain faith, to aim up, and to treat other people the way you would want to be treated, no matter what's happened to you. You know, and that's a hell of a thing to say. And, you know, you might say, "Well, that's impossible." Pe- some people have such brutal lives that they're destined to be corrupt. But I would say that's not true. Like, I've met many people, particularly in my clinical practice, who had lives that were so brutal that you couldn't even listen to them without it, like, breaking you into pieces. Brutal, brutal childhoods of, of a depth of malevolence you can hardly conceptualize, who decided, despite that, that they were gonna aim up and they were going to maintain faith in themselves and the world. And so, it's like, that's on the table for people.

    17. CWChris Williamson1:19:51

        It seems like an odd paradox that the people who have been brought up under lives of the most privileged are often the ones that have the most complaints about the world, and people who have been brought up in deprivation a lot of the time are able to be perfectly in gratitude. It seems very strange that, that- that's the way.

    18. JPJordan Peterson1:20:08

        Yeah, well, I... Having... (laughs) So one of the things I saw at the university, I saw the faculty members, my peers, retreat in the face of the advancement of the administration over, like, three decades, to the point where the universities really became corrupted. And it didn't really happen at Harvard when I was there in the 1990s, although the- it was starting to fray around the edges slightly. But I really watched it at the University of Toronto in the 20 years I was there. The administration kept making demands on us, and every time they made a demand, we would fold. Every time. 10,000 micro retreats. So then the administrators took over the university, and then the woke-types took over the administration, and that was that. Well, the reason... Uh, what I saw my faculty members do, the academics that I worked with, is that this is how the corruption starts, is like when you're an undergraduate, you write down what you think the professor wants to hear to get the grade. And then you're a graduate student, and you, you have to, let's say, get along with your professors and your supervisor. You have to tell them what you think they want to hear so that you can get your PhD. And then, maybe you are on the academic track and you're an assistant professor. There's three levels of being a professor. You're not tenured as an assistant. So you really can't say what you think or do what you think you should do then, because you have to get tenured. And then when you're tenured, well, you're not a full professor yet, and so you don't speak then. And back- in the back of your mind, you have this idea, "Well, at some point, I'll have enough security so that I'll be able to tell the truth." But that's based on this weird idea that the courage to tell the truth is based on security. Well, courage isn't based on security. That's a stupid theory. You're not courageous if there's no risk. So your notion is you'll be courageous when there's zero risk. Well, obviously that's a contradiction in terms. You're only courageous if there's a risk. And not only that, by the time you've sacrificed your word for illusory security for 15 years, there's nothing left of you that's true. You've already s- that's gone a long time ago. You, you probably look back at the former self who was naive and thought that you could say what you think as just... Well, you're a bit- you're cynical about it. You know, that person just didn't know how the way th- didn't know how the world worked. And then, it's the same thing, uh, that you pointed out. The idea that you become good because you have material plenty. Well, that's a silly idea. Like-

    19. CWChris Williamson1:23:00

        It's like the same.

    20. JPJordan Peterson1:23:00

        ... why would that be the case?

    21. CWChris Williamson1:23:01

        It's like the same as assuming that all rich people have got taste.

    22. JPJordan Peterson1:23:04

        Hmm. Right, right.

    23. CWChris Williamson1:23:05

        There's poor people who've got beautifully designed interiors, and rich people who've got gaudy messes.

    24. JPJordan Peterson1:23:12

        Right, right.

    25. CWChris Williamson1:23:13

        Yeah, yeah.

    26. JPJordan Peterson1:23:14

        Right, right.

    27. CWChris Williamson1:23:14

        There was a-

    28. JPJordan Peterson1:23:14

        Yeah, well, then the poor people are actually rich.

    29. CWChris Williamson1:23:17

        W- absolutely. Uh, there's a, a report, I wanted to bring this to you, it's so interesting. So a recent report

12. 1:23:23 – 1:37:26

    The Decline of Mental Health in Young Adults

    1. CWChris Williamson1:23:23

       was released by the Harvard Graduate School of Education detailing the drivers of anxiety for young adults aged 18 to 25. 34% reported feelings of loneliness. 51% said achievement pressure negatively impacted their mental health. 58% reported lacking meaning or purpose in their lives in the last month. 50% reported their mental health was negatively influenced by not knowing what to do with my life.

Episode duration: 3:23:32