Jordan Peterson - The Dark Cost Of Being Timid & Comfortable

Jordan Peterson 0:00 Predators are one thing, but predatory people, other tribes, man, they're brutal. They're brutal. What about your predatory friend? Oh, that's pretty bad too, the friend who stabs you in the back, the person who betrays you. Well, how about when you betray yourself? Oh, yeah. Well, what's the ultimate predator? What's the ultimate predator? What's the enemy you harbor in your own heart who hates you? That's the ultimate predator. (air whooshing)

Chris Williamson 0:28 Dr. Jordan Peterson, welcome to the show.

Jordan Peterson 0:30 Hi, Chris. Good to see you.

Chris Williamson 0:32 How's the tour going?

Jordan Peterson 0:34 It's going great. It's, um, the crowds are well-dressed, huh, extremely positive, there for good reasons, apolitical in, in the most, in the best sense of the word, uh, welcoming. The theaters are packed. The lectures are going well too, extremely well. The time I spend afterwards meeting people is s- like being in a w- wedding celebration, I would say. That's the closest thing I could...

Chris Williamson 1:09 What do you mean?

Jordan Peterson 1:11 Well, you know, you go to a wedding and you meet all sorts of people you don't know, generally, and everyone's happy to be there, and they're all looking good 'cause they dressed up for the occasion, and it's a positive event, and, and that's the closest analogy that I, that, that I can think of that would describe what's happening, and so... And, uh, people that are there are there because they're trying to put their lives together, and they are putting them together, and it's working, and so everything about it is as positive as it can be, fundamentally. So,

Jordan Peterson 1:48 yeah, it's going great.

Chris Williamson 1:49 I saw you took a trip to the Tesla factory. What were your thoughts after meeting Elon Musk? Did you get to speak to him much?

Jordan Peterson 1:54 Uh, I wouldn't say much. We, we spoke probably for 20 minutes in total, uh, not purely privately 'cause there was other people around, but, you know, I just- that just barely gets you to know the surface of someone like Musk, because he's an amazing person, and God only knows what's, what's up with him, all things considered. We saw his new truck. He was taking people out for a ride. I, I didn't, I didn't go out for a ride. Uh, the truck's an amazing piece of engineering. The factory is massive. Um, you know, what do you say about someone who built a functional electric car then shot it into space on a rocket? It's... He's a singular person, but I th- I thought... Uh, it went very well. It was a very interesting evening, so I was pleased to be there, and, you know, we sort of walked around each other a bit, and it was just fine.

Chris Williamson 2:46 You guys interact a fair bit on Twitter.

Jordan Peterson 2:48 We seem to, yeah. Yeah. So-

Chris Williamson 2:50 What do you think that is? Why are you converging?

Jordan Peterson 2:54 I don't know. I don't know exactly. Um, we're both well-known, and I suppose to some degree that, that increases the probability of that kind of convergence, but maybe he's aiming up. Me, too. He seems to be He's ending up literally. With the rockets and everything. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 3:12 He's ending up very literally, yeah.

Jordan Peterson 3:13 Definitely.

Chris Williamson 3:14 Didn't he put a... Wasn't there a spaceman, a model of a spaceman in the driver's seat of the car that he put out into space?

Jordan Peterson 3:20 Oh, that, that's certainly possible. He's got a theatrical, uh, twist. There's no doubt about that, and a great sense of humor 'cause that's really funny to shoot your own car out into space on a rocket. That's like-

Chris Williamson 3:30 Needlessly.

Jordan Peterson 3:30 ... that's a pretty damn good joke.

Chris Williamson 3:32 What is it-

Jordan Peterson 3:34 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 3:34 What is it that's, or why is it that someone like Elon has got himself to the stage where he can say things that almost every other CEO? You know, he's the richest man on the planet.

Jordan Peterson 3:42 I don't think he's got himself to that stage. I think he's always done that, and so now he, he still knows how to do it. I mean, you know, people think I'll say what I have to say when I get to the point where I'm protected and secure. It's like, first of all, being protected and secure does not give you the courage to say what you have to say. That's, that's a completely... Uh, that theory couldn't be more backwards. You think you're gonna get braver and braver as you get more and more protected? You think that's (laughs) how the world works? I mean, I've watched university professors think that at some point they are going to say what they think as they develop their career, but by the time they're protected and secure, they've spent so much time not saying what they think that they aren't even who they were, and they don't know what they think. So, no, he says what he says because he's always done that, and people who are like him are like that. And so Steve Jobs, I presume, was exactly the same way. I mean, I know people who knew him. He always said what he thought, and, and he was pretty damn cut-and-dried about it, which is why the Apple products are such miracles of, of technological mastery. He had a unbelievably canny design eye and was very, uh... He cut whole projects without a second thought in some sense when they weren't working.

Chris Williamson 5:02 He did that, uh, when he came back to Apple the second time, refined the entire product line, got rid of a ton of different things, and said-

Jordan Peterson 5:08 And it worked.

Chris Williamson 5:08 "We're focusing on this." Yeah.

Jordan Peterson 5:10 Right, right, so that was proof. I mean, maybe it was fluke the first time, which it wasn't, but coming back and doing it again a second time showed pretty clearly it wasn't fluke.

Chris Williamson 5:18 Same with, same with Elon, right? He's refined down what he does to a couple of very, very tight parameters.

Jordan Peterson 5:25 Well, he seems to have, although, uh, his hi- the enterprise he's put together is unbelievably high functioning. I mean, to produce a, an automobile sub-industry that's actually competitive and to bring down the cost of space exploration by a factor of 10, and to invent reusable rockets, and to have developed this boring technology, it's, it's miraculous.

Chris Williamson 5:53 P-

Jordan Peterson 5:53 He's probably an alien.

Chris Williamson 5:54 Yeah, probably.

Jordan Peterson 5:55 Probably, yeah.

Chris Williamson 5:55 Uh, there's only two-

Jordan Peterson 5:56 Probably a reptilian, isn't it?

Chris Williamson 5:58 ... American car companies, I think, that haven't gone bust, Ford and Tesla.... and Tesla came very close a number of times.

Jordan Peterson 6:05 Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's an amazing accomplishment. So, go Elon, as far as I'm concerned. Yeah, he's a remarkable person.

Chris Williamson 6:13 What color skin emoji do you use?

Jordan Peterson 6:17 (laughs) If I used one, it would be black.

Chris Williamson 6:21 (laughs) Why?

Jordan Peterson 6:23 Why not? It's so preposterous, all of that. You know, everything that's happened to Rogan, all this idiocy around race. This insistence that we can be reduced to our, our race, our ethnicity, our sexual identity. It's so appalling and it's so, uh, destructive, and one of the reasons that I... I had a lot of reasons for making my political stance in relationship to Canada's compelled speech laws. I had a lot of reasons for making my views about that known. One of them was the fact that my government had introduced a bill that required me to say things a certain way, which was an unparalleled move in the history of Western democracies, and something the Americans had made strictly unconstitutional, I believe, in 1942. So, that was part of it. Part of it was I knew that this, uh, top-down mandated belief that confusion around gender identity was a positive occurrence to provide that freedom, let's say. I knew that for every person that's saved, that would doom 1,000 people, primarily girls, to a kind of psychological contagion as confusion about sex and gender identity ramped up. I knew the literature on psychological contagion. Uh, it was-

Chris Williamson 8:02 What is that?

Jordan Peterson 8:02 It's quite nicely detailed.

Chris Williamson 8:02 What's psychological contagion?

Jordan Peterson 8:05 You can think about them as psychological epidemics. So the last one, the last one of any real size was the Satanic daycare scares in the 1980s. Wha- You're probably not old enough to remember that, but the largest, longest sentences in US criminal justice history were handed out often to women who were accused of late-onset female sexual predation of children in daycare centers. Um, the FBI invented a whole new category of perpetrator, a category that didn't exist, 'cause (clears throat) there are no late-onset female sexual, child, child sexual predators. They don't exist, but there were women who ob- obtained prison sentences of several hundred years for hypothetically being involved in these Satanic daycare abuse rituals, and there was a... It just swept across the whole country like the Salem witch trials, except at a much larger scale. There's a book called Satan's Silence that was written by a lawyer and a social worker that documents it. It's just unbelievable. There were stories about underground tunnels where children were being taken down and being... Well, every possible thing you could think of was happening to them, all in the name of satanic ritual. It was a contagion and those things happened. It happened with cutting behaviors, happened with, uh, eating disorders. This is almost all among girls because their teenage girls are most prone to this. Um, they called it hysteria back in Freud's time, but there's a book by a man named Henry Ellenberger called, uh, Discovery of the Unconscious that traces back psychogenic epidemics to about 300 years. And I knew that, you know, people in adolescence, es- especially people of a certain personality configuration, um, have some trouble settling into a stable identity. And for a variety of reasons, it can be high negative emotion, which is associated with low self-esteem. Those are more or less the same thing. And then, in all likelihood, high trait openness, which is the creativity dimension, and the high trait openness people, they are the ones that are more likely to have green hair and red hair and lots of piercings and lots of tattoos and dress in a somewhat... In, in a nonstandard manner, let's say. That's all associated with creative behavior, and they have trouble catalyzing a single identity. And then if you throw in categorical confusion, which is exactly what you're doing when you declare that there's, you know, an endless number of gender identities, then people who are prone to identity dissociation and to psychogenic, uh, um, contagion, they're... You're gonna demolish them.

Chris Williamson 10:56 There is an obsession-

Jordan Peterson 10:56 Abigail Shrier has documented that quite nicely in, in her book, uh, Irreversible Damage, and it's way more girls than boys, and it's thousands and thousands and thousands of them. So you think, "Well, perhaps a few people who are transgender benefited from this new reality," but for everyone who's benefited and, you know, I'd like to see the data just showing how much they actually benefited, but that'll take a long time to accrue. There's 1,000 people who've been just demolished by this. So... And then, what else on, uh... Well, that, that's basically that on the political front. I could see all that coming. I talked to the Canadian Senate about it when they put in the legislation. They didn't listen. They just thought racism, bigotry, sexism. It's like, "Yeah, have it your way," but, you know, so what all these girls that have rapid onset gender d- dysphoria and are disfiguring themselves and taking hormones and, you know, wreaking havoc with themselves and their families and the broader culture, these people that were so woke and so permissive, do you think they're gonna have that on their consciences? They're onto something, some other noble venture. So...

Chris Williamson 12:13 Give me your thoughts on the modern dating market.

Jordan Peterson 12:16 Well, I'm too old to really have any thoughts on it in some sense.

Chris Williamson 12:19 Not from a personal perspective?

Jordan Peterson 12:21 (laughs) Well, e- e- I don't understand it at a level of detail, you know? Uh, I, I do know some things that are happening perhaps at, at universities where there are far more girls than boys, more women than men. Um, what happens in those institutions (clears throat) , this is what it looks like anyways, possibly. So females are hypergamous, which means they'll mate across and up hier- hierarchies, uh, socioeconomic hierarchy, but competence hierarchy is really at the bottom of it. And so, when you set up a situation where there's far more women than there are men in a given domain, say where mate selection can take place, most of the men still don't do very well because most of them are still rejected by women. But a small minority of men do extraordinarily well, if you think well means unlimited sexual access. And so what's happening in the universities is that a small minority of men have sexual carte blanche in some sense, and most men are in the same position that most young men are always in, which is they're in a state where they're not particularly desirable to women. And then the women, of course, are terribly frustrated because the minority of men that they would really like to have long-term relationships with, it's, it's a, it's a seller's market for those men.

Chris Williamson 13:43 They're not settling down. That's the sex ratio hypothesis.

Jordan Peterson 13:46 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 13:46 And the reverse happens, right? That you see whoever the more scarce sex is gets to determine the rules of the game.

Jordan Peterson 13:52 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 13:53 So the men, if they are in high demand-

Jordan Peterson 13:56 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 13:56 ... because there's short supply-

Jordan Peterson 13:58 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 13:58 ... you get, uh, more short-term mating.

Jordan Peterson 14:00 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 14:01 You get, um, an increase in relationship dissatisfaction from women. And when the reverse happens, you get, um, more dates before sex.

Jordan Peterson 14:11 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 14:11 You get more long-term mating. Uh, you also get more sexual violence in that situation as well when there is a, a surplus of men and a, a scarcity of women, but I think there's also-

Jordan Peterson 14:21 You also get far more unstable societies. You know, I was pilloried a few years back for my comments about enforced monogamy because they were taken out of context and twisted in exactly the way that things like that get twisted now. But every s-

Chris Williamson 14:34 What did, what did you mean by that?

Jordan Peterson 14:35 I mean that one of the... one human universal is the construction of societies to both mandate and reward monogamy. And there's all sorts of reasons for that. It's because it's the best long-term solution, fundamentally. But one of the reasons for that is that when women are scarce, men get violent. Now, you know, that was read to say, well, I thought that s- this society should be distributing women to undeserving men, which is, of course, absolutely-

Chris Williamson 15:06 And, uh-

Jordan Peterson 15:06 ... and utterly preposterous and n- bears no relationship whatsoever to anything I ever said or thought or anything anyone sane would ever think or say or has ever thought or said. Because I don't know anyone politically ever who was insane enough to think that the state should distribute women to men. Like, that's just never happened. So to be accused of that belief and then for that to, you know, be put forward as a credible representation of what I thought was just one of the preposterous things that, uh, has happened to me.

Chris Williamson 15:38 It's an unfortunate name, enforced monogamy, 'cause it's a term from anthropology, right? But it, what you mean is culturally celebrated monogamy, culturally and norms that are supporting people and raising that up as an institution.

Jordan Peterson 15:52 Well, supporting and, supporting and punishing both, but mostly supporting. I mean, the punishing is that there is, there is a moral, uh, disapproval applied to, say, cheating, right? To adultery, to especially running around behind your partner's back if you're married, particularly that. But even if you're, even if you're in a l- long-term stable relationship, it's like, well, that's all enforcement. It's not police with jackboots, but that's not the only type of enforcement. It's not the only type of sanction or threat or punishment or disappropriation or disgust or contempt or shame or frustration or disappointment, all of those things. And all of that because monogamy is a good long-term solution, but in some sense, a troublesome short-term solution (clears throat) . If you have other options, then all of those elements of social support, let's say, need to be put into place. And that is it, as far as I've been able to determine by looking at the anthropological literature. N- norms surrounding monogamy are a hu- human universal. There are exceptions, but they're very, there are very specific situational reasons for those exceptions,

Jordan Peterson 17:10 so...

Chris Williamson 17:11 You see the ONS data that came out a couple of weeks ago that said for the first time ever since records began, 50.1% of women are childless by 30, so there are more women without children at 30 than there are women with children, for the first time ever?

Jordan Peterson 17:24 Yeah, well, so, uh, this is, uh, somebody clipped a part of one of my podcasts, I believe it was, where I was talking about what, what our society does to 19-year-old women, or 18-year-old women, 19-year-old women. We just lie to them all the time. You know, the first lie is there's nothing more important than your career, more or less by definition. So that's the first lie. The second lie is there will be nothing more important to you in your life than your career. And so that's the second lie, and then the third lie is there should be nothing more important in your life than the c- your career, so that's the third lie. And then i- implicit in that is the idea that children are a burden and that the idea that women should have children is part of the oppressive patriarchy and should be resisted, and who are men to tell me what I can do with my body? And hey, fair enough, and et cetera, et cetera.Now, I've worked in female-dominated occupations my entire life. I worked, for example, I worked as a daycare, uh, worker way back when, that was like 19, probably '80, something like that, and there were no men doing that. But I really liked kids, and so that was fun and I worked for social services in Alberta in the, in the childcare department, and, uh, then I've been working as a psychologist, either training or as a psychologist since then, and that's been a female-dominated enterprise increasingly as the years went by. But even when I was first, when I first entered it, so I've, I'm in the post-female-in-the-workplace generation firmly. I never experienced the world except as that, and so I've watched women progress through their professional careers at every level of attainment, from the lowest to the highest, and observed what happened, and relatively, I would say bias-free because I didn't know. And what I've seen is that as women progress towards their late 30s, no, late 20s, they... There's a psychological transformation and what happens is that they place less emphasis on their career and way more emphasis particularly on having a child, and that really reaches a crisis point around 29 or 30 for the vast majority of women and, and their attitude flips, and I've seen it flip very dramatically with many women. Um, and I suppose the most signal- single most, uh, convincing evidence of that, I worked with high-end lawyers in Toronto for about 10 years. I was part of an organization. We went to law firms, high-end law firms, and said, "Send us your most productive people and we'll help them iron out whatever wrinkles there might still be in their life, and the advantage to them is that things will go better for them, and the advantage to you is they'll be even more productive." And there's a good management dictum which is pay the most attention to your most productive people 'cause they're bringing in the bulk of your revenue disproportionately, and so I worked with men and women who were at the peak of their careers in a very difficult enterprise, and so these were women who were generally very attractive, um, well put together physically, pretty stable psychologically, extremely conscientious, very, very smart, and high achieving from, like, junior high all the way through high school, university, law school, onto, uh, the top firms, rocketing up through the ranks, full partnership by the time they were 29 or 30, and all the law firms, all the women bailed out, all of them. The law firms couldn't keep them. And I, I was really... And I talked to the women a lot about lo- a lot about this because I was very interested in it because I knew the law firms were bending themselves over backwards and tying themselves into knots trying to retain these women because w- why wouldn't they? You know, just, just being greedy capitalists is enough, you know? They don't want to lose their high-performing women because they're performing at the highest level and they couldn't keep them. The women wanted to have nine-to-five jobs. They wanted to bind the job so they could have a life, and that was especially true once they got interested in having a child or had one. And what, what they really came to was a very, uh, interesting realization, so because they were highly conscientious women, they sort of did their duty and, and worked hard and diligently and didn't pop their head up to ask questions. They're in junior high, they got the best grades. They were in high school, they got the best grades, and so on all the way through, right till they reached partnership, but that's sort of an apogee, right? You hit partnership in a senior law firm, it's like you're at, you're at the top of your profession. Well, then what? Well, so then they looked around and they thought, "Hmm, here I am with all these, like, hyper-competitive men, perfectly willing to work 80 hours a week nonstop to stay at the top. What the hell are they doing?" 'Cause that's the real question. What is it... What is it that characterizes this small percentage of hyper-competitive men? It's not... Y- you can assume that that's how everyone should be, but first of all, that isn't how everyone is, or you can flip that and say, well, there's only a small minority of human beings that are willing to do this, to work flat out eight hours a week. I mean, they're getting... They're certainly being paid for it, let's make no mistake about that, but, well, what about the rest of life? Well, that's what the women ask. "Why am I doing this?" And that's a great question. Well, for men, there's a different answer than for women. It's a really different answer, and it isn't like the men are exactly thinking this through. It's, it's more like this is an integral part of male motivation. The more successful you are as a man, the more women like you.

Chris Williamson 23:35 Well, the problem that you have now is that as women are getting better educated with more employment, more status, more prestige, they compete themselves out of their ability to find an attractive mate. As women raise up through the dominance hierarchy, and this is-

Jordan Peterson 23:50 Competence hierarchy.

Chris Williamson 23:51 ... competence hierarchy, sorry.

Jordan Peterson 23:52 (laughs) That's okay.

Chris Williamson 23:54 Uh, who's going to tell women the equal access to opportunity that you have recently just acquired, actually what that's doing is it's making it more difficult for you to find a mate that you're fundamentally attracted to?

Jordan Peterson 24:05 Yeah, well, it, it, it does a lot of things. I mean, it does provide women with a lot more, uh, opportunity on the economic front. It does decrease their dependency on their mate in relationship to economic security, and educating, educating women-... countries that are willing to educate women, that's the best predictor of their future economic success. So if you look at developing countries and you want to find out what about a developing country is most likely to predict the fact that they will continue to thrive economically, it's their attitude towards the education of women. And, but, couple of more things. Women's educational status predicts their children's educational status, but men's educational status doesn't, so that's also an important multi-generational effect. Um, I, I released a video. I, I was gonna conclude that other story. I released a video or someone released a clip of me talking about some of the things we just talked about, and it went out on YouTube Shorts and it's got, like, five million views in a month or something like that. And the comments section is unbelievably vitriolic. It's every single comment is vitriolic, and it's all from women. It's like, "Who is this old white bastard telling us what we should do with our bodies?" You know? And I wasn't being judgemental. I was just saying exactly what I said to you, which is, well, I've watched women over the entire course of my life with, I would say, an affectionate eye. You know? I love my sister, I love my wife, I have a daughter, I love my mother. I'm pretty happy about women, all things considered. I don't have an ax to grind in relationship to how they should conduct their lives. I don't even know how they should conduct their lives. I've watched what happens, and I've also watched what happens to women who hit 29 or 30 and then can't conceive, and that is not a fate I would wish on anyone. It's awful. And 30% of couples fall into that. 30% of couples have difficulty conceiving. It's a lot. And the probability that you'll have difficulty conceiving increases with age. And so, you know, c'est la vie. And, but it, it's very interesting to me to see how vitriolic those comments have been and how, how uniform that is, because usually, on my YouTube channel in particular, 95% of the comments are positive. And this is completely the opposite of that. So, and then, so you brought this up at the beginning, you said 50% of women now at 30?

Chris Williamson 26:30 30- 50.1 are childless by 30.

Jordan Peterson 26:31 Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, that's, uh, that's not good. That's a sign of something profoundly wrong with the entire culture at an extremely deep level.

Chris Williamson 26:42 I don't think that women need to take it as us trying to tell women what they should or shouldn't do, but I think that it would be very fair to say that you need to be an incredibly unique woman to make it to 50 without a family and look back and think, "Yeah, I did this right." That's not to say that those women aren't out there. They absolutely are. I know some of them, but I think overall that it's, I mean-

Jordan Peterson 27:05 Well, it's the same with everyone, for everyone.

Chris Williamson 27:08 Mm-hmm.

Jordan Peterson 27:08 I mean, thi- this is another example of how our culture has just lost its moorings. It's like, well, what's life? Well, you have a job or a career, and hopefully you're productive and you contribute something to the community and you provide yourself and your family with the necessities of life. That's a quarter of your life, or a third of it, something like that. You have an intimate relationship, you have a family. That's life. And if you don't have one of those, that's one third of your life you don't have. Now, some people, maybe they're doing so well on the other two fronts that they can cope with not having that. Or maybe they're doing so well on one front, they can cope with not having two of them.

Chris Williamson 27:50 Compensates.

Jordan Peterson 27:51 Yeah, maybe. It's pretty hard, because if you want to have a great career, it's hard to do that if you're alone and without a family. Right? I mean, the, the people that I've seen who've been best situated in their life, all things considered, es- even in relationship to their career, have a pretty solid monogamous relationship that stabilizes them, and then they have a family that also stabilizes them and broadens out their life. And, uh, you know, exceptional people do exceptional things, and good for them, but they're, by definition, given that they're exceptional, they're a tiny minority. Me- this is always the argument between conservatives and liberals, right? Because the liberal types, they're more tilted sometimes towards, what would you call it? Uh, uh, compassion or appreciation for the exceptional. And fair enough. The exceptional is necessary. But on average, what everyone does on average is the thing to do. And so you just look. You see, well, what do people do? Well, if they have a job or a career, they have an intimate relationship, and they have a family. And if you don't have any one of those things, well, then you're treading water harder. Doesn't mean you can't do it, and it doesn't even mean possibly that you shouldn't try. But as a default presumption, it's just utterly foolish. What else are you gonna do with your life? Well, maybe you're wildly creative. F- fair enough, you know? That's extraordinarily rare as well, subject to the power law problem in any case, which is even if you're hyper creative, the probability that you're gonna be successful at that economically is extremely, extremely tiny, to the point where it's almost nonexistent. It's so difficult. Now, it does happen and some- and you can have spectacular success if you become successful, but-

Chris Williamson 29:44 Wasn't it that you- Did you say last night of the 100,000 most recently printed books, only 1,000 have sold more than a million?

Jordan Peterson 29:51 Yep, something like that. It's something like that.

Chris Williamson 29:53 Power laws all the way down.

Jordan Peterson 29:54 Yeah. Everywhere. Everywhere. Power law, that's, you know, a tiny minority of people do all the work, a tiny minority of people get all the benefit. A tiny minority of athletes score all the goals. A tiny minority of men get all the women, et cetera. A tiny minority of stars have all the mass. A tiny minority of rivers have all the water. A tiny minority of cities have all the people. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Everywhere. Always. You know? And, and we're so clueless in our culture that we blame that on capitalism. It's like, how, how does that account for the mass of stars, people-... so, or the, you know, the volume of rivers or the population density of cities,

Jordan Peterson 30:32 or...

Chris Williamson 30:33 Rolling the clock forward, you and Elon tweeted recently about population collapse.

Jordan Peterson 30:37 Yeah. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 30:37 What do you think is gonna happen there?

Jordan Peterson 30:39 Oh, well, I've thought for at least 10 years that the biggest problem in 50 years will be that there's just not enough people.

Chris Williamson 30:46 I remember hearing you say a few years ago that you thought we'd peak at about-

Jordan Peterson 30:49 Nine.

Chris Williamson 30:50 ... nine billion.

Jordan Peterson 30:50 Yeah, we probably won't hit nine. Yeah. And I do the stats because-

Chris Williamson 30:54 Think about this. Th- think about how crazy it is to think that we might be living on Earth right now at a time with the most number of humans that are ever going to exist at one time ever.

Jordan Peterson 31:04 Yeah. That's highly probable. And, you know, and the population-

Chris Williamson 31:07 That blows my mind.

Jordan Peterson 31:08 ... the population collapse in developed countries is precipitous, right? It's like it fall- we fall off a cliff because there's no kids.

Chris Williamson 31:15 Because it's the same as the- everyone knows this from the pandemic, the R naught number.

Jordan Peterson 31:18 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 31:18 If fewer people are reproducing, next generation you'll have fewer people to reproduce as fewer people are reproducing-

Jordan Peterson 31:24 Yep. Yep.

Chris Williamson 31:24 ... and it whoof.

Jordan Peterson 31:25 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I-

Chris Williamson 31:28 And you think-

Jordan Peterson 31:28 ... I worked on a UN committee, oh, it's gotta be 10 years ago now, um, to help draft the UN Secretary General's report on sustainable economic development. And so I looked at all sorts of things like that. I was very curious, for example, about... Because people have been beating the overpopulation drum since, well s- it really kicked in, in the 1960s, you know, 'cause there were dire predictions. By the year 2000, the Club of Rome came out and said, "Well, there'll be riots and mass starvation and mass movement of, of migrants and all the things you hear about climate change, because there's too many people on the planet." And that just didn't happen at all. That was just, that... It wasn't just wrong, it was anti-true. It was absolutely wrong. What happened instead was that everyone got way richer and the, the bottom section of the population in terms of economic distribution got lifted out of poverty. Inequality still exists, but that's that power law phenomena we already talked about. Not that that's trivial. It's just unbelievably difficult to determine what to do with. There are solutions, but certainly getting rid of (laughs) capitalism isn't the solution. Um, and so I looked at population trends and first of all found, not that this is an act of genius or anything, that soon as you educate women, e- th- the, the size of family shrinks precipitously, like below replacement. And that's partly because women have other options. That, that's a huge part of it.

Chris Williamson 32:54 But seeing this play out.

Jordan Peterson 32:55 Mm-hmm. Oh, yes. I mean, all the, all the countries in the West are way below re- replacement. Korea's way below replacement, South Korea. Japan way below replacement. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 33:05 I think the number one-

Jordan Peterson 33:06 It's, it's not good.

Chris Williamson 33:06 ... uh, number one on the planet is, might be Chad. Chad the country. Uh-

Jordan Peterson 33:11 In terms of growth?

Chris Williamson 33:12 Uh, eight children on average.

Jordan Peterson 33:14 Yeah. I think Nigeria will have more people in it than China by the end of the century. So, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And Musk, you know, he's a far-looking man and, and so he's looking around the apocalyptic corner, let's say, and, like, "Uh-oh, we're running outta people." And what that means, of course, is that you run out of young people, right? You don't run out of old people first, 'cause everyone who is here now is gonna be 30 years older in 30 years, and it'll be young people we don't have enough of. And of course, young people are the ones who do the innovation and are going to do most of the heavy lifting, et cetera. And so there's gonna be a terrible shortage of young people.

Chris Williamson 33:53 Well, you see this with some of the things that, uh, I posted the, that O&S data, the 50.1% of women are childless by 30. And both men and women are replying to that tweet saying, "Well, good."

Jordan Peterson 34:05 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 34:05 "There's too many people on the planet in any case." I'm thinking-

Jordan Peterson 34:07 I know. I know.

Chris Williamson 34:08 ... how this NPC midwittery is so dangerous because it makes people believe that they actually have something grounded backing up their claims.

Jordan Peterson 34:19 Yeah. Yeah. Well, and th- this idea that the planet has too many people on it, this is... I, there's no sentiment more implicitly genocidal than that statement.

Chris Williamson 34:30 (laughs)

Jordan Peterson 34:32 So what do you mean too many people exactly? And what do you mean the planet? And what do you propose to do about that exactly? Mass abortion, is that your answer? Or should we do something a little more dramatic? Maybe we'll just shame people out of having children. And I've seen people do that literally. I saw a professor when I was at an, um, um, uh, a TED, I think it was a... It doesn't matter. It was a number of professors talking to couple hundred students and one of the professors who was an environmentalist activist type, and he got up on stage and shook his finger to the whole young crowd saying that him and his wife had only decided to have one child, which was in my opinion one child too many for him.

Chris Williamson 35:14 Mm-hmm.

Jordan Peterson 35:14 And told all the young people there if they had a shred of ethical decency that they would lim- severely limit their reproductive potential. And I stood up and said that I thought that that was the most, one of the most appalling things I'd ever heard anyone in academia say to young people, which is really saying something 'cause they say plenty of appalling things. And it was a very uncomfortable moment, and he huffed off the stage, but, you know, in a frenzy talking about how you couldn't talk about such things without being pilloried on ethical grounds. And yeah, that's for sure. You come out as a, well, emissary of the academic establishment and you tell young people that humanity is so corrupt that they should seriously consider not propagating because that violates the deepest of ethical norms and you think that's a good thing and that that's your right and it was just beyond comprehension. It's beyond comprehension. But it's associated with, like, a deeply rooted existential self-hatred. I mean, and, and I- I mean, hatred at the level of humanity is like a virus on the planet, that we're a cancerous growth going on.

Chris Williamson 36:16 Alex Epstein calls this human racism.

Jordan Peterson 36:19 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Right. Right. Right.

Chris Williamson 36:22 And it's that.

Jordan Peterson 36:22 Yeah. Well, we're a cancer on the planet, you know, unchecked growth, just like a cancer. It's like, that's us, eh, a cancer. It's okay. We know where your heart is located.... 'cause what's, what's the implications for, for a doctrine like that? What do you do with a cancer?

Chris Williamson 36:39 Cut it out.

Jordan Peterson 36:40 Yeah, (laughs) that's for sure. Poison it or whatever. Whatever. There's nothing you don't do to a cancer, so you're gonna use a metaphor like that? There's too many people on the planet, you're gonna use a metaphor like that? You know, and then you're gonna, you're gonna also decide that you're virtuous while you're using it because you're on this side of the planet, whatever the hell that means. So yeah, it's, it's unbelievable, and a huge part of it's rooted in this existential shame and, and, and horror at the condition of being human and the fact that life is rife with suffering and a lot of it's unjustified. And, you know, it's a Mephistophelian position. So Mephistopheles was laid out, portrayed in Goethe's Faust. Um, that's the story of a man who sold his soul to the devil for knowledge. It's a story of intellectual pride. And Goethe stands in relationship to German literature in the same manner that Shakespeare stands in relationship to English literature. And Goethe's Mephistopheles says straight out twice in, in the play, once in the first... There's two books and once in the first book and once in the second. Goethe has him restate it twice. "Existence is such a foul thing" because of all its suffering, essentially, that it would be better if it was merely an- annihilated. And that's the Mephistophelian stance. This whole show should just come to a halt. Look at how corrupt people are. Evil reigns everywhere. It's nothing but will to power. We're destroying the planet, um, with our unchecked ambition, all of it rooted in greed and, and, and Machiavellianism and jockeying for position. And we're so contemptible that we should just roll up and die. And we should shame women into not having children, and we should shame men so they never manifest any planet-destroying ambition. And it's, it's unbelievably appalling. It goes all the way down to the bottom, the bottom of things. That's what's tearing our culture apart, this dispute about the nature of existence at the most fundamental level. So... And the universities have come out on the wrong side,

Jordan Peterson 38:48 so...

Chris Williamson 38:49 Talking about the individual, one of the things that I see holding people back is comfort. So it's easy to get life to a stage where it's not that bad, but it's not that good either. At least when you have a full-on breakdown, there's only one way to go, right? You're only going to go up from there. But I think it's possible to wallow for years in a just-about-passable life, right? Sedated by comfort. And I see this temptation in myself as well, to give up the good for the great. What would you say to people who are trying to escape this curse of mediocrity?

Jordan Peterson 39:23 Well, if you're satisfied with it in some fundamental sense. I mean, there's, there's something to be said, I suppose, for walling off a private space for yourself if you can maintain it, and detaching yourself to some degree from the troubles of the world and maintaining your own little private garden. The problem with that is the snakes tend to seep in from the outside, right? It's, it's pretty difficult to wall yourself off in any real sense from the concerns of the world. So it isn't clear to me that that's a viable solution. It also means that you might justify to yourself lack of civic engagement, you know? "I shouldn't go to church. I shouldn't take part in the political process because it's all so corrupt. I should hide myself from all the annoying, uh, noise that's generated constantly on the media front." And I have some sympathy for that viewpoint, but I don't believe it's really possible because you can't have... Y- you can't have a walled garden independent of, independently of the health of the broader society. It's just not possible. Maybe you can have it for a very short period of time, but... So... But if you're, if you're comfortable with what you have and t- it's gen- it's genuine comfort, then okay.

Chris Williamson 40:33 I think-

Jordan Peterson 40:34 But generally, it's not.

Chris Williamson 40:35 ... I think for the most part, it's, it's people that have become sedated. You know, they've forgotten their dreams, but they've forgotten that they've forgotten them. Pink Floyd's Comfortably Numb-

Jordan Peterson 40:42 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 40:42 ... is about this, right? They've become comfortably numb.

Jordan Peterson 40:44 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 40:45 I think most people... So I had, I have this friend, and this, this story really hit me. So, um, during the pandemic, running a podcast, I was able to have the thing that I feel I'm good at, my out- artistic pursuit and out- outlet. That was available for me to continue. It was actually increased because I didn't have other stuff to do.

Jordan Peterson 41:03 Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 41:03 And I have a friend that's a barber, and he got a job at a supermarket. Barber's shut down for a long period of time, and he got a job at a supermarket stacking shelves overnight. And I asked him, I was like, "Man, how are you, how are you finding the new job? You know, this is a big, a big change." He's like, "Do you know what it is? I actually don't mind the work, don't mind the people that I work with."

Jordan Peterson 41:21 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 41:22 "But man, I miss being good at something."

Jordan Peterson 41:24 Right, right, right. Well, yeah.

Chris Williamson 41:26 Dude, that hit me-

Jordan Peterson 41:27 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 41:28 ... so hard.

Jordan Peterson 41:28 Right.

Chris Williamson 41:29 "I missed being good at something."

Jordan Peterson 41:31 Yeah, yeah, well, pe- people need the opportunity to be good at something. It... So then you might ask yourself, "Well, what's the best antidote to the discomfort of life?" And you might say, "Well, it's comfort." And I suppose that's what you act out when you swaddle a baby, but a better antidote is something like adventure to excellence. And that's far better antidote to suffering than the mere absence of suffering. So not to say that the mere absence of suffering, that's not nothing, you know?

Chris Williamson 42:10 Stepping out of that sedation from comfort's difficult, though, especially if you've become routinized to it.

Jordan Peterson 42:15 Yeah, well, that's the difficult, difficulty of maturity. You know, the Freudians said very wisely that the good mother necessarily fails.

Chris Williamson 42:24 What does that mean?

Jordan Peterson 42:25 It means she stops providing the comfort that insulates people against the need for adventure.

Chris Williamson 42:31 I heard you say recently that, um, a mother's ability to let her child go out into the world knowing that they're still vulnerable and that it's now-

Jordan Peterson 42:39 Absolutely.

Chris Williamson 42:40 ... down to them and the world to look after them, that's one of the bravest things that they can do.

Jordan Peterson 42:43 It's the female crucifixion.

Chris Williamson 42:45 That's what I meant.

Jordan Peterson 42:45 So, and, and that's exemplified best in, well, the best...... portrayal of that I've seen is Michelangelo's Pieta. You know, it's, it's a statue of Mary, uh, and she has Christ's body on her, as an adult, on her lap.

Chris Williamson 43:00 Yeah.

Jordan Peterson 43:00 And He's broken and destroyed and, you know, she's displaying that. And that's, that's the bravery of a mother to allow that to happen, but not only that, to, to facilitate it. Facilitate it.

Chris Williamson 43:17 So what about from the-

Jordan Peterson 43:17 There you go, kid. Away you go. Away you go. "But why? It's dangerous out there." It's like, "Yeah, no kidding." It's more dangerous here if you stay with me, by a lot. So you might lose your body out there in the world, but if you stay here, you lose your soul.

Chris Williamson 43:40 How do you see that? As an individual, let's say that there isn't the mother there that's pushing you along.

Jordan Peterson 43:46 Well, you know, one of the things Jung, Carl Jung, uh, was very interested in the Oedipal complex, and that's basically that overprotective maternal... And he, he criticized Freud for presuming that it was really something the mother did. This is more relational than that. First of all, it would be something the father would allow to happen, assuming there was a father around, so let's not forget about the paternal contribution to allowing that to occur. 'Cause in some sense, it's the father's role to serve as the antithesis of that maternal overprotection. So a woman is extremely bonded with her infant, say, between zero and nine months, and the infant is utterly helpless. And so complete compassion and the provision of comfort is the only job that matters, and that's really the case, and then the woman has to switch gears to some degree. The mother has to switch gears as the child starts to become more, uh, more mobile, fundamentally, and more independent. She has to let go of the infant, which is a real grieving process, and she's has to start to facilitate this movement towards independence, but that's a hard shift. And so partly the role of the father in that is to be an advocate for the child's independence and to comfort the mother, to let her know that that degree of security provision is no longer necessary, but also to act as an advocate for the child's outgoing, uh, outgoing desire. And so, so it's... The Oedipal situation is not only the mother, it's also, say, the weak father, but then it's also the child, so you can imagine, 'cause you- Jung believed that these negotiated agreements were, were relational. So, you know, you're six. You're in grade one. Maybe you're feeling a little ill, maybe you're not. Maybe you're playing with being a little ill, and maybe you're playing with exaggerating how ill you are, and your mom comes downstairs and says, "You know, you've got a test today at school. Maybe you haven't quite prepared for it. Maybe you know you should've." And she says, "But, you know, you s- you seem to have a tummy ache. Um, maybe you're too sick to go to school." And the kid thinks, "Well, maybe I could just stay home and, you know, Mom could tuck me in, and I wouldn't have to take that test, and I wouldn't have to confront the world." And he says, "Yeah, uh, uh, yeah, Mom, my stomach really hurts." And, and away we go. And the child has made a choice, and you think, "Well, that's..." And that's a catastrophic choice. And you think, "Well, children shouldn't be held accountable for choices they make at that age." It's like...

Chris Williamson 46:36 That child's soon gonna be an adult that's going to make very similar decisions.

Jordan Peterson 46:41 The c- the choice has consequences, and to be held accountable for that is to recognize purely that the choice has consequences, and that it is a choice. Now, you know, you could say, "Well, 95% of the blame is to be put on the mother," and maybe that's an overestimate. I think it probably is. But the child could say, "Mom, you don't have to worry about me. I'm gonna get up and go do this." And that's choice, and that's the right choice. So these are always chicken and egg problems, obviously, but that, that fleshes out the complexity of the situation, you know? If you're, if you're being enticed down a pathological road, you can accept or reject the invitation. Now, some people are better at enticing, and some people enforce it more harshly, and, you know, there's all sorts of individual variability in situations like this, but just because you're offered the bait doesn't necessarily mean that you have to take it. So... And I'm not a determinist. I do believe that people have free will, whatever that means. That's a murky subject, and it gets complicated the more you look at it, but whatever. It's still a good shorthand way of describing the fact that we seem to be cursed with responsibility for our own destiny, at least to some degree.

Chris Williamson 48:03 How do you advise people that are dealing with imposter syndrome?

Jordan Peterson 48:06 Oh, everyone deals with that. Every time you make a status shift as you move upwards, of course you have imposter syndrome, because when you first make a transition into a new role, you are an imposter 'cause you're a beginner. You don't know what you're doing, and that doesn't mean you're a liar or a fake. And it doesn't mean you should presume more knowledge than you have. It's o- What did Nietzsche say? "Every great man is an actor of his own ideal." And that's, that's, that's... That feeds into the imposter syndrome in some sense. If you wanna move to the next stage, at some point, you have to act like you're already there when you're just barely started, and that's not a lie, you know? It's, it's the willingness... It can be, and it can degenerate into a lie, especially if you presume more than you know. But if you move... You know, let's say you move from being, uh, an undergraduate to a graduate student.Well, every- all the other graduate students and the professors know that you're just a beginning graduate student. They're, they're not going to expect as much from you as they would from a more seasoned graduate student. So y- you have some leeway that's genuine, but you are, you know, the low-rung occupier of that role and of course you're gonna feel like you're an imposter if you have any sense, because you're just barely there. You, you just made the transition. That's okay, you know? That's not a problem. Y- first of all, you have to understand that everyone with any sense who isn't narcissistic feels that, and it's actually an indication of your mental health and your competence, as long as that doesn't become crippling. It shouldn't knock you out, "I'm such a phony." Well, don't be a phony. That's the first thing. I- if you're dealing with competent people and you admit your ignorance, the competent people never judge you harshly for that as long as you've been paying attention. So in my classes, for example, people were often afraid to ask questions, and so sometimes I would point to people and ask them if they had a question, especially the quieter types, and they'd be afraid to ask the question because, well, they're revealing their ignorance and they would assume they're the only person in the room that's that ignorant, but they're not. Because if they were paying attention and they had a question, the probability that half the class had that question was really high. It's different if you're not paying attention. And so you can be ignorant. You can be an ignorant newbie and you can even ask the questions that are necessary to ask in that position and sort of reveal your inadequacy, and as long as you're dealing with competent people and you've been paying attention, they're, they're just gonna answer your questions. Then you only have to be ignorant once. That's the thing about asking a stupid question. You only have to ask it once, then you're no longer stupid. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 50:48 To well-balanced people, that intellectual humbleness is endearing.

Jordan Peterson 50:52 Right.

Chris Williamson 50:53 Really endearing.

Jordan Peterson 50:54 Yes.

Chris Williamson 50:54 So one of the things that I, I want-

Jordan Peterson 50:56 It's 'cause they're always asking questions, too.

Chris Williamson 50:58 (clears throat)

Jordan Peterson 50:58 They always have imposter syndrome, too, if they have any sense. Like, what are you- what- are you more what you know or what you don't know? Well, if you're competent, you know you're more what you don't know. And so you're always asking questions. You see someone else asking questions, you think, "Oh, you're asking questions. (claps hands) You probably are competent." So ...

Chris Williamson 51:17 And there's the trajectory, that's the trajectory of a person that will become competent or more competent-

Jordan Peterson 51:21 Right, right.

Chris Williamson 51:21 ... in the future, too.

Jordan Peterson 51:21 Right.

Chris Williamson 51:22 So the ... What I would hope with imposter syndrome, and this is something that I noticed, first off in myself, but then in other people as well, um, I've bro-scienced my way into something called imposter adaptation. So hedonic adaptation is the phenomenon where your happiness level tends to reset after a change in circumstances. So you buy a new car or get a new house or get the job promotion, and it feels good for a while, but then it resets. Imposter syndrome being that you never feel fully worthy of any achievements that you get in your life and you don't feel like you are worthy of being there. Imposter adaptation is a real nefarious version of this, where no matter how many times you disprove your lack of self-belief, it continues to persist in the real world. And this, there is a kernel of truth in this because of what you said. If you're trailblazing, if you haven't done this thing before. But you also have to think, "Well, how many times have I done something analogous to this? How many times have I done something that's kind of like this, but not, not quite this?"

Jordan Peterson 52:20 Yeah, well, pe- people who are high in trait neuroticism are more likely to feel that way because ... So neuroticism is the negative emotion per- personality trait, and it's a index of sensitivity to threat and punishment, essentially. So imagine that it's very difficult to calibrate how many units of physiological preparedness you should manifest per unit of threat.

Chris Williamson 52:46 Mm-hmm.

Jordan Peterson 52:47 Right? 'Cause how big's the threat? And the answer is you don't know. You wake up in the morning and you have an ache in your side. Is that nothing, or is that the cancer that's gonna kill you in six months? And it's pretty low probability that it's the latter, but the probability is not zero. So why shouldn't you be panicked out of your mind? And the answer is some people are, and sometimes they're right. So the calibration of threat, especially when it's associated with novelty, is virtu- an- an im- impossibly difficult computational problem. We have, like, 10 different mechanisms to try to solve that, and one of the mechanisms is, well, there's tremendous variability in response. And if you're higher in trait neuroticism, you're gonna have the problem you described all the time. You're gonna be doubtful about your competence and the validity of your position. And the only treatment we really know for that is to expose yourself to things that you're afraid of voluntarily and to become braver as a consequence of doing that. But some people have to live with that more than other people.

Chris Williamson 53:49 The thing that I realized was that after a while, if you continue to disprove your imposter syndrome-

Jordan Peterson 53:54 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 53:54 ... in the real world-

Jordan Peterson 53:55 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 53:56 ... you have a challenge, you're adamant that you probably won't or might not or don't deserve to get past it, and then you do-

Jordan Peterson 54:01 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 54:02 ... after a while, you have to admit to yourself that your imposter syndrome has nothing to do-

Jordan Peterson 54:07 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 54:07 ... with your capacity and everything to do with your addiction about feeling an im- like an imposter.

Jordan Peterson 54:11 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 54:12 And-

Jordan Peterson 54:12 Well, and, and th- that, that does change as people age. Generally speaking, they become more agreeable, more conscientious, and lower in negative emotion, and some of that is that adaptation. You see that you've survived through various challenges, and then you can review that evidence to yourself, but also the people around you bolster you because they have confidence in you and so their anxiety doesn't trigger your anxiety, and they'll remind you, too, uh, "You know, you got this. You've done things in the past-"

Chris Williamson 54:43 You have such a wealth of data, you know?

Jordan Peterson 54:44 "... or more difficult."

Chris Williamson 54:44 You've done it so many times.

Jordan Peterson 54:46 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 54:46 And yeah, I think-

Jordan Peterson 54:48 And that, and that does help. I mean, it, it does help. People get more confident as they get older and they accrue experience because of that, but it's subject to that underlying trait variability and sensitivity to negative emotion. I mean, there, there's been good psychometric analysis of self-esteem scales and neuroticism scales.And they're the, pretty much the same thing reversed. And so, are you confident in yourself? Self-esteem. Do you lack confidence? Trait neuroticism. And so it is harder for some people, because it takes more evidence for them to dampen down their, their response to threat. So, and, and it's partly because we're all adapted, to some degree, to the failure of induction, right? Just because something happened multiple times in the past does not mean necessarily that it will happen the next time. And that's a big br- it's the farmer and chicken problem, right? Farmer's always feeding the chicken. Chicken thinks the farmer's his best friend, but one day, the chicken is dinner, and that's induction. There was a stable pattern in the past. You come to rely on it, but at any time, that axiom can be disproved. And so, the fact that we have variability in trait neuroticism is a consequence of the, the, the probability of the failure of induction. It's, it's a very difficult problem to solve, how to regulate negative emotion, you know, and, and, uh, but I would say that the best way we know is to keep facing challenges voluntarily, pay attention at a rate that works for you, develop your competence. That actually stabilizes the environment around you, so it's ac- it actually is less predictable and less threatening, plus you accrue that evidence and you get the social support for doing so. That's your best pathway forward.

Chris Williamson 56:39 You said that a harmless man is not a good man. A good man is a very dangerous man who has that under voluntary control. How should people become more dangerous?

Jordan Peterson 56:49 Oh, becoming more articulate is definitely, I would say, that's the primary array of weapons. So, I mean, physical prowess is something and, and it's not nothing, that physical confidence that comes along with that as well. But the same thing replicated at the level of the ability to communicate and to think, uh, that's, uh, way broader field of, of battle and opportunity. So this is one thing that isn't taught well, especially to boys. Um, it's more important to teach it to boys, I would say, because they're more, uh, skeptical of such, of the educational enterprise in general, generally speaking, partly 'cause they're less obedient, partly 'cause they're less agreeable. That's particularly true for disagreeable boys. And agreeable boys get higher grades independent of their IQ and their, and their academic achievement 'cause they're easier to deal with. So what do you tell disagreeable boys? There's nothing that makes you more formidable than verbal competence, than being able to articulate, be able to think, to marshal your arguments, right? Some battlefield metaphor, get everything in order, get all your information straight, you know, to marshal your forces. And so, I mean, that's part of the reason that rap artists are so popular, especially among disaffected young men, Black and white alike, because they're unbelievably articulate, right? They have this incredible verbal prowess. It's unbelievably attractive. You know, and it's associated with genuine artistic, um, and redemptive activity, often focusing on something that's approximately the voice of the underclass, let's say, but a powerful voice, right? And it's interesting to see how many young white guys identify with that.

Chris Williamson 58:51 Was it Aldous Huxley that wrote Doors of Perception?

Jordan Peterson 58:53 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 58:53 Yeah, so this is kind of an equivalent of that, right? That you have a experience which many people struggle to articulate. You take the best of us, the one that has the most precise, most articulate-

Jordan Peterson 59:06 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 59:06 ... erudite language.

Jordan Peterson 59:07 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 59:08 You drop them in, and you say, "Okay, show us what you've learned."

Jordan Peterson 59:11 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 59:11 This is the equivalent, but for just a different community, a different sort of life-

Jordan Peterson 59:15 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 59:15 ... that maybe you don't have the ability to describe what it feels like to live on a council estate in Manchester or in, you know, the, one of the neighborhoods in Brooklyn or whatever it might be, and then this person can.

Jordan Peterson 59:28 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 59:29 And it feels like it's your voice.

Jordan Peterson 59:30 Yeah, well, you're still, if you're a young man, you still feel alienated from your place as rightful heir of the proper kingdom. I mean, that's an existential truism for everyone, for every, p- particularly for every young man, 'cause he is an outsider in many ways. He's young and juvenile and not very highly valued, and, and then is, is in some sense hurt by the inadequacies of the current king, the current culture, and, and is easily turned against it because of that. And that's the machinations of the evil uncle. That's the King Arthur story. That's the story of Horus, Hor- Horus, and Osiris. It's an ancient, ancient story. It's the story of Sauron and, um, it's there all the time. And you see in that, in rap music, in hip-hop, the, the, all of that alienation being given an articulated voice in, in an artistic sense, and that's a good example of the power of verbal facility. And that's the route to, let's say, marketing education to young men. It's like, you wanna, you wanna take your rightful place in the kingdom? It's like, get your tongue straight, man. Get it under control in the highest possible sense. We went to a comedy club, Tammy and I, in, in, uh, New York at Comedy Cellar. It's a great comedy club, and the last comic was an English guy, and, uh, he was, uh, not particularly physically prepossessing and he, he made a lot of jokes about that, and it was quite funny. And then he divided the audience into five sections, and he asked each section to toss up a topic, just yellow the topic, and they were, like, random topics like the Kennedy assassination and...... electric lighting before 1890. Those were two of the topics, and the other three were just as diverse. And then he put on some beats, and he did a, about an eight-minute rap, wh- every verse rhymed, and he tied the whole thing together at the end, and ended at the end of the music, all spontaneously. It was unbelievable. And that's the logos, man. That's the redemptive power of the logos right there, the magic word, the sacred word. It's just manifesting itself on stage. It was-

Chris Williamson 1:01:45 Some-

Jordan Peterson 1:01:45 ... very impressive.

Chris Williamson 1:01:46 ... something about that that does feel dangerous as well. In, not in a, "I need to be concerned, and this should be contaminated and walled off," but in a way that you think, "That person has so much competence-"

Jordan Peterson 1:01:56 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:01:57 "... that it, it's flowing out of them."

Jordan Peterson 1:01:59 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:01:59 And you almost feel competent by being around them.

Jordan Peterson 1:02:01 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:02:01 So all-

Jordan Peterson 1:02:02 I mean, you certainly feel competent by appreciating it.

Chris Williamson 1:02:04 Yeah.

Jordan Peterson 1:02:04 Right? 'Cause it speaks to the part of you that is capable of appreciating such things. You think, "Wow, that's really something. That's really... That's an amazing display. That's an amazing thing to see." Amazing, right? A very interesting word, amazing, yeah. You're, you're trapped and you're trapped by the charisma of that. And that charisma, that's not nothing. That's, that's a signal of something redemptive occurring. That, that accounts for virtually all of the attraction of hip-hop and rap is the articulate, articulated voice of the struggling, but worthy, underclass. I suppose that's a good way of putting it. But those who are alienated from their rightful place, and so that verbal prowess is one of the ways they struggle up towards the light in a... And, and that, that's a good example of that, uh, of having that danger under control, 'cause it's a dark genre in many ways, right? It's, it's, uh, there's a, there's a, there's a real undercurrent and air of violence that surrounds that and its culture, like the punk movement in the, in, in, in the UK back in the late '70s. Same, same sorta thing. But that, that capacity to express that in a poetic manner and a compelling manner. Sid, or, uh, Johnny Rotten was great at that. He was so intense. His... He worked with PIL afterwards, Public Im- Pu- Public Image Ltd., is that it? Public Image? I think so. He has a song called Rise which I used to show my, my clients all the time when I was starting, uh, of, uh, assertiveness training with them. I'd put on Johnny Rotten's Rise, and the line in there is, "Anger is an energy," and he's got these unbelievably intense eyes.

Chris Williamson 1:03:48 Anger is an energy.

Jordan Peterson 1:03:49 You bet, and John Lydon, man, he could channel that like almost no one I've ever seen. He'd get that anger built up inside him, and then it was completely under control, and he expressed it in his music, and he's absolutely captivating. Unbelievably charismatic, and I really liked his music, that raw anger in the music that... But it was, it was in the bloody music, wasn't it? It wasn't some random riot, you know? He transmuted that into something, you know, you can argue about the poetic merits of, um, of punk rock, although I don't think you should. I mean, uh, I Did It My Way, Sid Vicious' version of I Did It My Way, my God, that's a work of genius, that. It's so, it's so brilliantly satirical.

Chris Williamson 1:04:31 What someone's doing is they're refining it, they're distilling it-

Jordan Peterson 1:04:34 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:04:34 ... down, and then they're directing it. So I went to a, uh, powerlifting competition a couple of years ago. There was this one guy there lifting. He holds a bunch of records in the squat, and he's a, a normal working-class guy from a normal working-class town on the outskirts of Newcastle, and watching that man warm up is something else.

Jordan Peterson 1:04:52 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:04:52 He's got a, a sacred playlist.

Jordan Peterson 1:04:54 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:04:54 He never listens to the songs apart from when he's about to step onto the lifting platform.

Jordan Peterson 1:04:58 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:04:59 And he's got these headphones on, and he's just walking up and down, in the same way that you'd see a bull-

Jordan Peterson 1:05:04 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:05:04 ... ready, ready to go out, ready to go and chase something, and he steps out on stage, and the hairs stand up on the back of your neck.

Jordan Peterson 1:05:12 Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:05:12 You're watching this guy channel-

Jordan Peterson 1:05:15 Rage.

Chris Williamson 1:05:15 ... fury.

Jordan Peterson 1:05:16 That's the god of war. That's Mars. Yeah. He's in touch with that. Hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:05:21 Unbelievable.

Jordan Peterson 1:05:21 And words, man. You go to war with words. And you'd think, "That's what young men should be taught." There we go.

Chris Williamson 1:05:29 Bit of fury.

Jordan Peterson 1:05:30 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:05:30 Um, I want to talk about your recovery.

Jordan Peterson 1:05:33 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:05:33 Can you explain how it felt in the first few days when you realized that it might be over, when the clouds were lifting?

Jordan Peterson 1:05:41 You know, it happened very incrementally, and over a period of months. Well, things were slightly less catastrophic in the morning. Like, it was taking me three and a half hours to stand up, and then it was only taking, like, three hours. So that looked like maybe something had improved. It was very slow.

Chris Williamson 1:06:06 Like the question about, when did you get old?

Jordan Peterson 1:06:08 Yeah, (laughs) yeah, exactly.

Chris Williamson 1:06:10 One day at a time.

Jordan Peterson 1:06:10 Exactly, so... You know, and I still have a lot of pain. I mostly feel like I have a bad flu all the time, but that's way better than it was, so...

Chris Williamson 1:06:24 What's changed on the other side of that? Do you view the way that you should be in the world different? Do you feel like you have a, a new purpose after being ill for so long?

Jordan Peterson 1:06:39 Hopefully, I'm more grateful for the mere absence of catastrophe, you know? And I'm, I guess I'm possibly more pleased to be out, say, doing this lecture tour. I mean, I was really pleased about it in 2018. I was already pretty damn happy about... Happy isn't the right word. Um, overwhelmed, grateful, uh, in a state of constant disbelief, thrilled about the fact that people were responding so positively, amazed about the fact that this had, like, a religious dimension, um...... overjoyed to see people come and tell me that they had got their lives together, and that they were very happy about that. Uh, uh, uh, I had all that already. Maybe I feel that more now. Uh, I wouldn't say that I've learned so much that all the pain was worth it, but, uh, that's, that's, I suppose, in some sense, putting a happy ending on something in a way that's just too trite. It's like, it, it was, uh, er- most of that time, I would've, m- far rather been dead for all sorts of reasons. So, now I'm perfectly happy that I'm not, but I haven't forgotten what that was like. (metal clanging)

Chris Williamson 1:08:08 So there's a lot of people that are very glad that you're not.

Jordan Peterson 1:08:11 Yeah. Well, that's, that, that's great really. That's great. You know? And I'm thrilled that I'm back being able to be, uh, not terrifying to my family, let's say. And I'm really happy to be back out in public and to be, to be doing what we're doing. My, you know, along with my daughter and my wife, and with the support of my family. It's great. I love this tour. Uh, it's so nice to meet all these people. It's so positive. It's ridiculously positive. And in a world where (metal clanging) so much is negative and ridiculously negative, um, that's, that's a lovely thing to see. And to see these thou- I'm gonna see 150,000 people in the United States, you know, between when the tour started, which was about two weeks ago, and the end of, think it's the end of April, before we go to Canada and then to the UK, and then to Europe, and then to Australia and New Zealand and Southeast Asia and Russia. All of that's on the table. And to see 150,000 people who are committed enough to trying to make their lives better to come to the lectures and to listen to them, even though they're essentially philosophical treatises, or at least the best I can manage in an hour, and to watch people be committed to this and to hear their stories, it's i- d- y- you can't imagine anything could be more positive than that. And so, that's wonderful.

Chris Williamson 1:09:37 If there's something to come back to after-

Jordan Peterson 1:09:39 Yes.

Chris Williamson 1:09:39 ... having that-

Jordan Peterson 1:09:40 Definitely.

Chris Williamson 1:09:40 ... there's not much better that you could've arrived back into a world to find.

Jordan Peterson 1:09:44 No. No. I mean, the, the, the downside of it is that there's such a need for it, you know, because part of what I think I have to offer perhaps is encouragement because I don't think the planet would be better off with fewer people on it, and I don't think that the ambitious motivations of young men are nothing but the manifestation of the corrupt will to power, et cetera, et cetera, and the fact that so many people are pining away nihilistically in some sense, in no small part because of such accusations, because they're being taken out by their own conscience. I think that's absolutely appalling, and seeing how positive people are in relationship to what I'm doing has that as its shadow, which is, well, isn't it so awful that that's necessary?

Chris Williamson 1:10:35 Yeah.

Jordan Peterson 1:10:36 So ... But it is necessary, by all appearances, at least to the people that seem to be listening to me, and so c'est la vie, and, you know, I do believe, and I think my family is firmly behind me in this belief, that, you know, this ... The idea that the planet has too many people on it, it's sort of a group idea, you know? There's too many people is like the mass of people, and it- the mass is too big. I don't think of people as a mass. I think of people as individuals and so there are not- there's not a mass of people. It's the wrong level of analysis as far as I'm concerned. The right level of analysis is each person, and, and I, I think that that's a core tenet of the- of Western civilization to the degree that the West is actually civilized, let's say. The more it's civilized, the more the emphasis is on the individual, and the idea that the individual is sovereign is the core axiom of Western civilization, of democracy itself, and I believe that that statement is as true as any statement we've managed to collectively formulate. And so if it's true, then it is the real battle is at the level of the individual or even within the individual, and that's fine with me, and so mostly what I'm doing is attempting to make connections with individuals even though I'm talking to thousands and thousands of people. I'm never talking to them as a group, ever. I don't even look at them as a group. I never look at the crowd when I'm talking to the- my audiences. I always look at one person, or, you know, it's not always (laughs) the same person because that makes them uncomfortable. They're happy to be singled out for a second or two, but gets weird if that's all there is. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:12:35 10 minutes, yeah.

Jordan Peterson 1:12:35 So I'm always looking at, you know, one person or another, but I'm always talking to one person. I learned that, in part, from Kierkegaard, you know? 'Cause Kierkegaard believed firmly that as soon as a truth was embodied by the mob, it was no longer a truth. A truth was, in and of itself, something that was always manifested at the level of the individual. That's nature.

Chris Williamson 1:12:54 People know this in their- they know this in their own lives, that you have wisdom on your own. You go into a group and you compromise that wisdom for some reason, social norms or the way you've dealt with past traumas or the, the things that you think other people want to hear from you.

Jordan Peterson 1:13:07 Yeah. Well, that's diffusion of responsibility, right? Because when you're- when you're buried in the mob, you can do and say things that, that the mob hides from you and the world, whereas if you're just operating on your own, then the consequences of your actions are manifested pretty quickly.

Chris Williamson 1:13:24 No place to hide.

Jordan Peterson 1:13:25 So ...... we have to keep... You know, every group of people isn't a mob either. I mean, there are groups of people that are decentralized, highly functioning aggregates, hierarchies composed of individuals and th- that's working at every level of analysis. And that's a properly functioning society. That's not a mob at, at that point. There's a dynamic that permeates the entire hierarchy that keeps the individuals, let's say, at the bottom of the hierarchy completely in touch with those smaller, that smaller number of people who are at the top. And a, a good, a well-functioning democratic political state has that nature, is that there's constant communication upward and downward, just like the way the brain is organized. The brain's a hierarchy, but information doesn't just propagate from the bottom-up or from the top-down, even with your visual system. So for example, when information first enters your brain from your eyes, at the foveal level, each foveal s-... and that's the center part of your vision that's high-resolution, every cell in your fovea is represented by 10,000 cells at the first level of visual processing. And so there's a tremendous amount of input from your eyes to your brain bottom-up, but even at the very bottom of visual perception, there's more top-down connections from your brain. So the visual system is hierarchical, but each level of the hierarchy communicates all the way down the hierarchy and a good political system is structured that way. And so you can have a group of people that's not a mob and it's a different way, it's a different organization and a democratic, a democratic polity is not a mob, not if it's functioning properly. You know, it was something that was really brought home to me when I went to England because I went into the lobby of the House of Parliament, this great domed building that's more or less at the center of the Parliamentary Cross, and that's where citizens of, of Great Britain can come and lobby to, to, to speak to their representative. So that's where the voice of the people meets the voice of the representatives. And that's how it should work, is in some sense, there are emotions and concerns that are stirring in an un-... inarticulate manner at the bottom of the, uh, the hierarchy where, where the problems first manifest themselves 'cause they always first manifest themselves at the bottom of a hierarchy, and those problems aren't necessarily easy to articulate and so people stumble forward with their concerns and the job of their representatives is to take those stumbling concerns and aggregate them and to give them voice and to transmit them up the structures of power to transform the laws into the new body of laws, which is what we act out to, to reconcile the bottom with the top and that has to just happen continually because it's, it's a living... It's like a living organism. Well, it is, in a sense, it is a living organism 'cause it's a meta-organism that consists of living organisms so, you know, for all intents and purposes, it's something that's alive. That really, really hit me in the lobby. That's where the word lobbying comes from, by the way.

Chris Williamson 1:16:28 So it happened there?

Jordan Peterson 1:16:29 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And, and, uh, people are cynical about lobbying, but people are cynical about lots of things and it's not that helpful.

Chris Williamson 1:16:40 Is it possible to have too much responsibility, to take too much responsibility for yourself? Like, one thing that I've been thinking is that the victim mindset where you want to... uh, you believe that you have no control over the outcomes in your life, I wonder whether there's an opposite where you believe that you have an infinite amount of control over them and you lose faith in your innate ability to just carry you through. I've been thinking a lot about releasing the tiller, which is a Jed McKenna quote, and he's talking about the fact that the best way to, um, ride a boat through a storm is to actually release the tiller and it allows the boat to maneuver best through the swells. And I think that-

Jordan Peterson 1:17:19 Mm.

Chris Williamson 1:17:20 ... a lot of the time, going back to the imposter syndrome thing that we were talking about, as you start to accumulate more and more competence, the higher level of overthinking, the higher level of neuroticism, the more of an attention to detail that got you from naught to 50-

Jordan Peterson 1:17:35 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:17:36 ... isn't necessarily the thing that's going to get you from 50 to 100. You know, you had to get across a river and it was, it was bad and difficult. You don't need to carry that boat across ground to then get you across the next one. And I wonder whether the opposite of a victim mentality where you take responsibility for the things that occur in life, I wonder whether you can overshoot that?

Jordan Peterson 1:17:55 You can, for sure. Yeah, definitely. I mean, you know, Dostoevsky said that every man was responsible for everything he did and for, and for everything that everyone else does, which is kind of an insane statement, but also somewhat it's true in, in, in a certain sense. You do have an indefinite responsibility and you do have an indefinite capacity to bear that responsibility, but that doesn't mean it can't be crushing and then I would say the antidote to that is that you're not in this alone. As your responsibilities mount and your opportunities increase, you have to delegate more and more. There's enough for every... There's an... It's important that you do everything you can, but there's enough for everyone to do and so you might say, "Well, the heroic path is one that leads to universal redemption." And that's true and you might say, "Well, that's all on you." It's like, it is in a sense, but then the problem that you just described comes up, which is-

Chris Williamson 1:18:59 Shouldering too much burden.

Jordan Peterson 1:19:00 Well, it can crush you. It, it can be unsustainable, right? You can torture yourself for not doing it well enough and it is up to you, but it's not up to you alone. It's not up to you alone. So you delegate. You f-... And you, you build... you help build people around you so that w-... they're all working in the same direction. You're... It's an effort, it's an effort multiplier in any case, and you make sure that they get credit. They... And I, I... They get, they get... Credit isn't exact... Credit's good enough. It's, it's not exactly right. The rewards are...... are in accordance with their efforts, and you can distribute that, you know. Because there's also a narcissism that can come along with, with that, which is, "Well, it's all up to me." And even if you're working in a very competent manner, it can seem that way, but there's plenty of work to go around, and there's plenty of credit where credit is due. And so what you do as you attain more responsibility and opportunity is you delegate more of that, and you do that continually. I mean, one of the roles of a good manager is to make him or herself irrelevant.

Chris Williamson 1:20:07 Obsolete, yeah.

Jordan Peterson 1:20:08 Yeah, right. So if you're not a good manager if your company would collapse if you disappeared, that should all be delegated out. And it's not because you're abdicating responsibility, because also what happens is that if you can routinize someone... something and parse it off to someone else, say, "Here's a little kingdom for you," and it doesn't have to be little, and it's something that can grow, but, "Here's a kingdom for you," well then you can go off and do the next thing you need to do, which is extremely important. You know, and you might think there's, there's a kingdom and then it's broken into little kingdoms, and so the farther you are down the hierarchy, the smaller the kingdom you get. But that's only true if you think the world's a zero-sum game, because you could also think of it as a place of indefinite... a place with an indefinite number of the largest kingdoms possible.

Chris Williamson 1:20:53 Yeah.

Jordan Peterson 1:20:53 And I think wha- why do we think this is exhaustible in some sense, what we're doing? Doesn't look exhaustible. You know, that's the limits to growth mentality. It's like economists don't believe in that 'cause they think, "Well, no, we can just get more efficient," which we certainly are. We're way more efficient than we once were, and those gains in efficiency, when they're not being interfered with, are increasing at more than an arithmetic rate.

Chris Williamson 1:21:19 Why do you think people have a tendency toward that zero-sum mentality? I... When I find myself thinking that, it's one of the first things that I check myself on, like, that is, that is cancer.

Jordan Peterson 1:21:33 Yeah, well, I mean, there, there are elements of life that have a zero-sum element. I mean, if you're competing with another man, for example, to marry a particular woman, that's a zero-sum game if-

Chris Williamson 1:21:43 Yeah.

Jordan Peterson 1:21:43 ... you only think of the game as including you two and that woman. So you can set up circumstances that are zero-sum, but-

Chris Williamson 1:21:52 And port them across into situations which aren't.

Jordan Peterson 1:21:55 Yeah, well then, but to take, take that metaphor of zero-sum game, where there has to be winners and losers 'cause there's a finite number of resources, is to assume that the rules of that game are the rules that govern all game, the set of all games, and that's just not true. There's... Games are infinitely multipliable. I mean, you can invent a new game. People do that all the time. The man who invented Catan, which is a game I really like to play, it's a very popular board game, m- that didn't exist until he invented it. Now, you know, thousands and thousands of people play it, and he made a fortune from it. It's like that game never existed. So there doesn't seem to be any limit to the number of games we can invi- invent, and it's a complicated problem because we are on a single planet and, and some resources are more zero-sum than others. But we haven't really run into any actual zero-sum limits in terms of our... you know, the probability of us living an abundant life on the planet. We've, we've stewarded some resources very stupidly. We've, we've done a very bad job of, of managing oceanic production, for example. Although fish farms have alleviated that on the production side to some degree. But it's a tragedy of the commons that we could address and should address, as far as I'm concerned. One of the good things the Trudeau government has done, I think, to give the devil his due, let's say, is to put a lot of the coast of Canada into marine protected areas, and that's smart. We have to be smart about our resources, but that doesn't mean they're zero-sum, and certainly doesn't mean the world is a zero-sum game. And that's a Malthusian idea, you know, that population will grow till it consumes all available resources and precipitously collapse. And then why do we think apocalyptically? It's, well, because things do come to sudden ends. People die. People get fatal illnesses, like, the world you so carefully constructed can be blown apart at any moment by a random occurrence, genetic mutation that causes the cancer that kills you. Like life has a... Like, life has a fundamentally apocalyptic aspect, and we do understand that because we're self-conscious, and then it's very difficult not to apply that kind of apocalyptic reasoning to things as such. The world's gonna burn up. The climate's too hot. What about runaway positive feedback loops 'cause that's what the climate types are afraid of? It's like, "Hey, they happen." How do we bind our apocalyptic thinking? That's a good question, man. That's a good question. We do that through truth. We do that with the truth. That's how we do it, through dialogue, through investigation, through exploration, through discipline, all of that. The logos is the antidote to the apocalypse. Of course that's central Christian dogma, isn't it, that the logos is the apoc- is the antidote to the apocalypse. Hmm. Me fancy that. And so what does that mean? Well, love and truth is the antidote to the apocalypse, not the planet has too many people on it.

Chris Williamson 1:25:01 You said to me when we went out for dinner a couple of months ago... I asked you what I should be doing with my life, and you said, "What you're doing right now, I think, is pretty good." And then you said, "Truth in the service of love."

Jordan Peterson 1:25:18 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:25:19 What do you mean by that? Can you just bring it up again?

Jordan Peterson 1:25:24 Well, it's a hierarchy of virtue, I would say. You know, there's an old idea that God is the sum of all that's good. I don't think sum is exactly the right metaphor. It's more like imagine there are eternal verities, truth, beauty, justice, love, courage.... fortitude, compassion. Think of all those things as virtues. So virtue is what all virtues have in common. Virtue is what all virtues have in common. That's the relationship of God to the good. God is the essence of the good. So, well, we put that aside for a moment. Or you may think, "How would that manifest itself in your life?" Well, that might be pursuit of the good, and that's the pursuit