Jordan Peterson on Rules for Life, Psychedelics, The Bible, and More

1. 0:00 – 2:07

   Start

   1. TFTim Ferriss0:00

      [upbeat music] Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, where it is normally my job to deconstruct world-class performers of all different types from all different disciplines. And I am thrilled to have as my guest today a polymath, I would certainly consider him a polymath, Jordan B. Peterson. He has taught mythology to lawyers, doctors, and business people, consulted for the UN secretary general, helped his clinical clients manage depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, anxiety, and schizophrenia, served as an advisor to senior partners of major Canadian law firms, and lectured extensively in North America and Europe. With his students and colleagues at Harvard and the University of Toronto, Dr. Peterson has published more than 100 scientific papers transforming the modern understanding of personality. As his book, Maps of Meaning, subtitled The Architecture of Belief, revolutionized the psychology of religion. His book, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, was published in 2018 and has sold more than four million copies internationally. His newest book is Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life. You can find him online at jordanbpeterson.com, on Twitter @jordanbpeterson, Instagram @jordan.b.peterson, Facebook, you guessed it, Dr. Jordan B. Peterson, YouTube, Jordan Peterson Videos [chuckles] and you can find his personality assessment at understandingmyself.com and the self-authoring program at selfauthoring.com. Jordan, welcome to the show.

   2. JPDr. Jordan Peterson1:43

      Thank you. God, it's hard to hear my name so many times without becoming-

   3. TFTim Ferriss1:46

      [laughs]

   4. JPDr. Jordan Peterson1:46

      ... somewhat nauseated.

   5. TFTim Ferriss1:48

      It's [chuckles] yeah, it's how I feel when I listen to my, my own playback in this podcast. And, uh, I'm thrilled to finally have you on the podcast. We are going to run out of time before we run out of material. And [laughs]

   6. JPDr. Jordan Peterson2:04

      Well, that would be nice.

   7. TFTim Ferriss2:05

      That would be a good thing.

   8. JPDr. Jordan Peterson2:06

      That'd be a good thing.

2. 2:07 – 5:26

   Early mentor

   1. TFTim Ferriss2:07

      And I wanna start in maybe, uh, an odd place, and that is asking if you could describe to my audience who Sandy Notley was.

   2. JPDr. Jordan Peterson2:21

      Oh. [chuckles] Well, I grew up in a small town in northern Alberta. Uh, I heard you and my producer talking about cold in Minnesota, and I was sort of smirking in the background. I thought, "You guys don't know what cold is."

   3. TFTim Ferriss2:34

      [laughs]

   4. JPDr. Jordan Peterson2:35

      Uh, when I went to college there about 60 miles away, we had 30 days in a row one winter where it didn't get above minus 40. So anyhow, I grew up in this small town and in a, in the province of Alberta, so that's the Canadian equivalent of a state. And, uh, we had a provincial government, the equivalent of a state government, and it was all conservatives. Progressive Conservative Party. Every seat in, in the house was progressive conservative except one New Democratic Party member, socialist, uh, Grant Notley, who was the leader of the NDP. And he wasn't elected so much because he was a socialist, I don't think, because most of the people in my small town were conservative. But because he was a really good man. Anyways, he was the only opposition in the entire province for like decade, a decade or more. Um, his wife, Sandy Notley, was a New Englander and, uh, somewhat of an anomaly in our small town. And she, she was quite outspoken, a New England intellectual. Um, and she was our librarian in our junior high school. And all the delinquents, and me as well, and maybe I was in that category, hung out in the library weirdly enough, um, because she treated us like adults. And I started to work for the NDP when I was 14. Um, I ran for vice president of the party when I was 14. That was my first sort of public exposure. But she was a good guide for me. She introduced me to a lot of books. I was an omnivorous reader, but mostly I read science fiction. I didn't know what the hell to read. I used to spend all-- You know, I'd hide my, the books I was reading behind a textbook in class and read away during school. But I was reading mostly science fiction, and she started to hand me books that she thought would be good for me. Um, she introduced me to Ayn Rand, um, interestingly enough, despite the fact that she was a socialist. Um, not Ayn Rand obviously, but Sandy Notley. She said she thought I would be smart enough to see through Rand. Um, uh, Huxley, Orwell, Solzhenitsyn, uh, a lot of serious material. And I developed a real friendship with her and her husband, and I worked with the NDP for four years. So she was a pronounced influence on me. And, uh, that's Sandy Notley. Oh, and her daughter, Rachel Notley, who was a friend of mine, a girlfriend of one of my close friends at one point, became Premier of Alberta, um, many years later. She was defeated in the last election, which was only about three years ago. But, um, she followed in her father's footsteps and, and became premier of the province. So that's that story.

3. 5:26 – 14:40

   Favorite books and Nietzsche

   1. TFTim Ferriss5:26

      On your website, you have an extensive list of recommended books. I've looked at it, looked at it multiple times.

   2. JPDr. Jordan Peterson5:33

      Yeah.

   3. TFTim Ferriss5:34

      It's, it's close to 100, I would say. And they're, they're put into different categories, different genres. Are there any books on that list or can you think of books that were introduced relatively early in your life? Some of the early exposures that have stood the test of time for you.

   4. JPDr. Jordan Peterson5:54

      Well, Huxley and Orwell, I would say. Solzhenitsyn as well. I read One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich when I was 13 or 14. That was one of the books Notley recommended And so they, they certainly had an impact on me. Uh-

   5. TFTim Ferriss6:08

      What was that impact if, uh, if you, if you don't mind me following up?

   6. JPDr. Jordan Peterson6:12

      Well, you know, I started to think in broader terms as a consequence of being introduced to books like that, and started to think more seriously from a political pers- from a political perspective and a psychological perspective, I, I suppose. It was my first introduction into serious thought, and so... And it was extremely exciting. I mean, I, I, I read a lot of English literature, uh, from-- till I was about 25, and then I started reading nonfiction more once I started my graduate studies. But, um, it opens up a world of ideas, and that was really exciting to me. Incredibly exciting to me. So-

   7. TFTim Ferriss6:46

      And, and the reason I'm asking so much about books is, is I'm-- I, I am really fascinated, uh, by you, and I'm fascinated by everyone I have on the show. But the formation of your-

   8. JPDr. Jordan Peterson6:58

      Well, that sort of [laughs] decreases my, my, uh, pleasure at being the object of current fascination.

   9. TFTim Ferriss7:05

      Well, right now you're the most fascinating person in the world to me, and I, uh, I find that books are a sort of a wellspring of value for listeners because it's something they can model very well, something that they can reach out for. Uh, so, so let's-

   10. JPDr. Jordan Peterson7:26

       Yeah. Well, people can get a whole education if they read those 100 books that I have on my website. I mean, you're not gonna get an education in every, every discipline, but there's a whole education there under recommended books. That's been fun because lots of people have-- That, that's been an unbelievably popular list. It sells hundreds of books a month-

   11. TFTim Ferriss7:44

       Oh, I believe it. I believe it

   12. JPDr. Jordan Peterson7:45

       ... on that list. And people email me constantly and say, "Well, you know, you introduced me to Dostoevsky. Thanks a lot." It-- I'm, I'm, I've been s- They're, they're so enthralled. If you're psychologically minded and you like dark, the darkness to some degree, you know, if you like Gothic imagery and, and film noir and that sort of thing, Dostoevsky's an unbelievable treat, and he's so incredibly deep psychologically. Enthralling. Crime and Punishment is an absolutely engrossing novel as, as well as being a, a stunning work of philosophy.

   13. TFTim Ferriss8:18

       Uh, another name that shows up not once but several times in that list is Nietzsche, if I'm pronouncing that remotely correctly. I've always wondered [laughs] .

   14. JPDr. Jordan Peterson8:27

       I never know. I s- I pronounce it like a northern Albertan, Nietzsche. I know that's wrong. It's Nietzsche, I believe, but I never get it right.

   15. TFTim Ferriss8:34

       So, uh, I've, I've read you highlight, in a sense, or at least mention that, uh, Nietzsche pointed out that most morality is cowardice, if we're making the leap from some of this list of books to specific ideas. Could you please elaborate on that?

   16. JPDr. Jordan Peterson8:50

       Well, if you don't have the courage, if you don't have the courage to commit a crime, it doesn't mean you're moral for not doing it. It just means you're afraid. You can see this, I suppose, to some degree in, in mob violence. People will riot because they don't think they'll get caught. And so they're not law-abiding under normal circumstances because they're moral, they're law-abiding because they're afraid of punishment. And so N- Nietzsche was very, uh, careful to distinguish mere obedience from morality, and he thought of obedience not always as a form of cowardice because it can also be a source of discipline. But, you know, s- not committing a crime because you're too afraid to, I mean, it's probably better than committing a crime, but it, it doesn't speak to the essence of morality. You know, and I, I've talked a fair bit about this, is that there, there's, there's a certain utility in being able to do virtually anything and then to control yourself, and that's something I learned in part from Nietzsche, I suppose. You know, the best people I've ever met are dangerous people, but they keep themselves in check. I have a close friend who's been real, uh, rock to me over the last couple of years. He was also born in northern Alberta. Uh, he came from a pretty poverty-stricken background. Tough guy, worked in lead smelters and oil rigs, and he went to university, which is where I met him, and, and he was a social worker for a long time, and he's tough as nails, you know? He's worked with delinquents all over Canada, and he's a good disciplinarian, but he's, he's also a very compassionate person, and he, he's a, he's a moral person as far as I'm concerned because there's a real danger to him, but he keeps it under control, and it's-- He's not a coward. He's not afraid. He's not weak.

   17. TFTim Ferriss10:44

       How do you, how do you cultivate or suggest people cultivate? You can, you can tackle either [sighs] both the ability to keep yourself in check or under control and to be courageous. And just, just to provide a little context for the question, when I s- uh, when I see you in the, the many interviews that you've done, there are instances where people are very adversarial and aggressive, and one thing that has struck me is your ability to maintain composure while still standing up for and not rolling over with respect to your, your arguments or your positions. How do you cultivate that, or how have you cultivated that?

   18. JPDr. Jordan Peterson11:31

       Well, I have an advantage, I suppose, in that I'm a clinical psychologist and I've spent 20,000 hours-- Although I'm not practicing anymore, I've spent 20,000 hours listening to people and maintaining my composure, sometimes under very stressful circumstances. Um, and so I've had a lot of practice doing that. Um, and then I did do some TV work, um, at a local station here for a couple of years, and I had a good producer, and he helped me realize that anger plays very badly In a public forum, like video ins- particularly. Now, I didn't have a tendency then, I suppose, to fly off the handle either, but it's not useful. Like, to g- to lose your temper, it's not useful. I mean, I'm boiling inside. I'm a very emotional person. Way too much. So it's not like it's not stressful. It's unbelievably stressful. But I can detach myself from that to some degree. And I'm really curious. I suppose that's another part of it. I like to watch. And when people really go after me, this is where the clinical practice is handy. Uh, I can snap into a different mode, which is, "Okay, I don't know what you're up to, so I'm just gonna watch you, and then I'm gonna figure out what you're up to." Because I can usually figure out what people are up to if I want to. I d- I don't do that all the time because I actually don't wanna know sometimes what they're up to. I mean, look, people-- lots of people have treated me extraordinarily well, don't get me wrong. I'm-- But, um, and normally, you know, when, when you talk to someone, you accept their persona. You don't look behind. But if people mistreat me in some way or, or become adversarial, then I'm able to look behind the scene and think and see what they're up to, if I can remember to do that.

   19. TFTim Ferriss13:34

       Do you look behind the, the mask or see what is behind by deducing where they're trying to leave-- wh-where they're trying to lead you with the breadcrumbs? I mean, I see-- I've seen you do that very effectively.

   20. JPDr. Jordan Peterson13:49

       Yeah, that's part of it.

   21. TFTim Ferriss13:51

       What other forms does that take or might that take?

   22. JPDr. Jordan Peterson13:54

       Hmm, it's really hard to describe. I, I guess I-- I, I think it's useful to draw a distinction between thinking and paying attention. If you th- if you're thinking, you're kind of walking down a programmatic trail. If you're paying attention, you just open your eyes and let your mind go where it will, and ideas will occur to you. They'll pop up in your field of consciousness, and for me, that's often informative. I'll, I'll get insight that way. I suppose I'm paying more attention to nonverbal communication and to, um, you know, uh, facial expression and posture and, and, and tone of voice, and I can pick up patterns, I suppose.

4. 14:40 – 33:32

   Resentment and meaning

   1. TFTim Ferriss14:40

      You mentioned earlier that at times you're, you're boiling inside. Uh, I certainly have experienced that personally. Now, anger, how, how would you distinguish, and, and I sort of intuitively know these are different, but I would struggle to maybe on the spot separate the two, anger and resentment? Because, uh, one of your quotes that I have here in front of me with my notes is, "Consult your resentment. It is revelatory." And I'd love to unpack-- I'd love to unpack that, uh, but if you could walk us through.

   2. JPDr. Jordan Peterson15:15

      Yeah. Well, in my new book, I have a chapter which is Rule 11: Do not allow yourself to become resentful, deceitful, or arrogant. It's kind of the evil triad as far as I've been able to determine. Resentment in particular. It's bad. It's a, it's a bad emotion. It's useful. You can learn a lot by noticing that it occurs. Resentment tells you one of two things. Um, one is that, um, you're-- that someone's treading on your territory and something needs to be done about it, or that you need to grow the hell up and stop complaining. And it's hard. It isn't necessarily obvious when you feel resentful which of those it is. But you need to figure it out, you know, because you can, you can harbor resentment for, for unlived life for, for a very, very long period of time. And all it does is corrupt you. It hurts you. It hurts you physically because it's a stressful emotion. Anger is a stressful emotion, um, because your body hyper prepares for action if you're angry because you might get into conflict, so-- and that's a high-- that's a dangerous situation, and so you burn off a lot of psychophysiological resources in anger. Um, if you're resentful, there's probably something you need to say. There's certainly something you need to figure out. And so you can, you can use it as a guide to further development. It's very much useful to, to aim at a resentment-free existence. And that means, I suppose, that you're taking up enough space. You know, you're not-- There's always a struggle between your domain and the domain of other people. Everyone competes for everyone else's attention. Everyone competes for everyone else's time. You compete for your own time. And if you're resentful, it's highly probable that, well, as I said, either you're not standing up for yourself sufficiently or someone is legitimately on your case, in which case you, well, you need to do something about that or, you know, live with the consequences, which is very unpleasant. It's not optimal. Sometimes I suppose it's unavoidable. But, you know, generally there's something that can be done about it. Maybe you need a new job.

   3. TFTim Ferriss17:42

      Hmm.

   4. JPDr. Jordan Peterson17:43

      It's easy for people to think that they're better than they are. And it's not surprising that everybody wants to think that. I probably wanna think that about me. So then you'll get angry about something. You know, maybe your partner puts you down in public, doesn't show you the respect. Maybe you're married, say, and husband and wife owe each other a certain amount of categorical respect, sort of independent of the individual personalities. You know what? If you have decided that you're going to devote your life to someone and vice versa, they're now in a category that- requires a certain amount of respect to g- and to maintain the relationship over time. It's good for your partner and it's also good for you. Maybe you've taken a shot in public and you're really angry about it and, but you don't notice it because you wanna think that you're better than you are. That sort of thing doesn't upset you, and so you don't say anything about it. You don't do anything about it, and then you don't fix it, and that's a mistake. It's much better you could say to your partner, "Look, you know, we were out for dinner tonight and, uh, you said something snarky, which I didn't think was appropriate. Now, I might be hypersensitive, um, I might be hypersensitive and touchy and immature, and maybe you hit me in a weak spot, or maybe you're playing some power game. Why don't we figure that out?" Now, that's messy, and people don't like conversations like that, and I think that's one of the things that's peculiar about me. For one, I don't know why exactly, but I don't like that. I, I won't let those things go.

   5. TFTim Ferriss19:22

      So the peculiarity is that you'll, you'll open those conversations. You don't have an aversion to it.

   6. JPDr. Jordan Peterson19:27

      Well, I have a horrible aversion to it, and I don't like conflict. But I've learned, and I-- this is partly, I suppose, clinical training, but it's not just that. Some things, if you don't address them, they just get worse.

   7. TFTim Ferriss19:43

      Mm-hmm.

   8. JPDr. Jordan Peterson19:44

      And I've, I've been able to see where things are going to go. It's kind of like what I mentioned to you earlier, that if I watch someone, I can generally figure out what they're up to. I also can see where things are going. And so, you know, if, if, if I walk into someone's house and there are things out of order in a particular way, if I pay attention to that, that's in, in-- that's often indicative of something not right in the relationship. You know, maybe the kitchen's a mess. It's like there's n- there's food that isn't fresh in the fridge, for example, or, or there's packages up in shelves that haven't been opened for like two years, or since the wedding, let's say. Um, that's too much chaos in the kitchen. Something's wrong. Well, what's wrong? Well, there's something wrong in the domestic relationship. There-- the bargaining about who does what in the kitchen hasn't been fought through. And so you have to have those fights to put things in order, and if you don't, then you end up with a worse fight in the future. And so the reason that I call things out, as far as I can tell, the positive reason, who knows what the negative reasons are, is because I don't want more conflict. I'd rather have genuine peace, which is very, very, very hard to obtain. People generally obtain peace by sweeping things under the carpet. I have another chapter in this new book called "Don't Hide Things in the Fog," and it-- that's what it concentrates on, is pay attention to your negative emotions. Resentment particularly. It's like it's so, it's so, uh, informative. You find out where you're immature. Well, do you want to? Probably not. Who wants to find out that? Or you'll find out who's oppressing you, and maybe then you can learn to stand up for yourself.

   9. TFTim Ferriss21:48

      Hmm. Well, let's, let's dig into the new book. I wanna do it in a particular way, uh, which is starting with a quote of yours that a close friend of mine has, has committed to memory. Now [chuckles] please fact-check me on this. Perhaps it's Abraham Lincoln or Oscar Wilde or one of the other ubiquitous attributions on the internet, but, but here we go, and I'm fond of this as well. Quote, "It seems to me that the purpose of life is to find a mode of being that is so meaningful that the fact that life is suffering is no longer relevant." Uh, now I have a, I have a follow-up, just a segue from that, but is that an accurate quote?

   10. JPDr. Jordan Peterson22:27

       Well, I don't know if it's an accurate quote, but it sounds like something I probably said.

   11. TFTim Ferriss22:31

       [laughs] Accurate sentiment. A, a, a, a more or less-

   12. JPDr. Jordan Peterson22:35

       It's accurately attributed.

   13. TFTim Ferriss22:36

       Accurately attributed. All right.

   14. JPDr. Jordan Peterson22:38

       It seems to me that it's true. I mean, yeah, it, it isn't necessarily the case that you can do it.

   15. TFTim Ferriss22:45

       All right. Yeah. So it's, it's-

   16. JPDr. Jordan Peterson22:46

       Right. It's hard to do. I mean, and it-- that of course, it's hard, I suppose, in proportion to the suffering that you're undergoing, and it isn't necessarily the case that you can always manage it. But, but, but sometimes you can manage it, and, and it's good if you can.

   17. TFTim Ferriss23:06

       So I want to, uh, use your book as a [sighs] I mean, prop isn't the right word. A vehicle for exploring this. Uh, one of the books that you often reference is Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl.

   18. JPDr. Jordan Peterson23:23

       Sorry, I'm gonna, I'm gonna stop just for a sec 'cause I thought about some other things. So this is partly why I have a, a certain conservative bent, I suppose. See, people need to search for meaning because th- they get corrupted by suffering if their life isn't meaningful. That's how it looks to me. Because you can't torture an animal forever without it lashing out. And so if your life is nothing, if there's nothing in it that speaks to you, there's still going to be suffering. You can't talk yourself out of that. And so then I see people tearing, tearing down traditional structures, let's say, or they're casual about them. Another rule in this new book is, uh, "Do not casually denigrate social institutions or creative achievement." Well, why social institutions? Well, I've counseled lots of people who were lost, and so- If you came to see me and I was your therapist, I'm very practical. I'd say to you, "Okay, well, let's look at your life for a minute. Um, do you have an intimate relationship? What about your family?" And that could be, you know, married with kids or it could be the family of your birth, your siblings and your parents and so on. "How is that functioning? Do you have anyone there? Do you have a job or maybe a career even, if you're fortunate? But at least a job that keeps body and soul together and maybe where there's some chance of advancement and hope. Um, do you know how to use your time outside of work productively? Uh, do you take care of your mental and physical health? Do you manage the temptations, drug and alcohol use and that sort of thing? Do you manage those temptations effectively? Um, are you educated as, are you as educated as you are intelligent?" You know, have you... And those are standard, those are standard patterns of activity in the world. Do you have kids? Do you have a wife? Do you, or a husband? Do you have a job? I mean, it's mundane in some sense, but, and you can look beyond all those standard answers for meaning. But if you're overwhelmed by life, anxious and, and suffering, that's a good place to start. Put that together. Why? Well, the answer to that is 'cause that's what people do. That's what people do. That's the best we've been able to manage. And so, and if you don't have that, because you're a human being like other human beings, you're gonna suffer for it.

   19. TFTim Ferriss26:13

       Hmm.

   20. JPDr. Jordan Peterson26:14

       And so attacks on that, assaults on that aren't that helpful. Unless you have a better-- Like, I have this friend, he's an atheist or, and he's wavering about this. He was born a communist. He was raised in Poland, and he had objected at one point to the Christmas traditions of his family, who were also atheistic. And, uh, you know, he objected on the grounds of logical coherence. "Why are we doing this?" "Well, don't do it." "Well, then what happens?" "Well, then you have another weekday. You lose Christmas." "Well, great. It's like now you're logically coherent. Wonderful, but you've lost Christmas." You don't wanna throw these things away. You know, and p- I see this sometimes with young people when they're talking about getting married. "We don't need to get married. We don't need a piece of paper." It's like, really? That's your, that's the depth of thought you've put into this? It's like you're not gonna mark this permanence with conscious awareness and, uh, social celebration and the sanction of your community and a beautiful ceremony? That's just nothing? You're gonna let that go? Well, what are you, what are you gonna replace it with? Nothing. Well, you know, you can say it's, it's, "I don't wanna be married in a church. I don't believe in God." Fair enough, but good luck filling in the hole.

   21. TFTim Ferriss27:47

       So what is the template for constructive criticism of a social institution? In other words, if there is a wrong way to do it where you're creating a void and not offering a better solution, what is the, what is the better approach or what might be?

   22. JPDr. Jordan Peterson28:06

       You know, I got well known, I suppose in part because of my injunction to people that they clean up their room. My closet, by the way, is a mess. I haven't been able to clean it up for like three years.

   23. TFTim Ferriss28:18

       [laughs]

   24. JPDr. Jordan Peterson28:19

       So, um, there's this English common law principle with regards to the distribution of power. I think it's English common law. That there are certain responsibilities of the family and the community and the town and the state and the f- and the federal government and the international organizations and, but you want to have the most proximal level possible take responsibility for a given enterprise. And I think that's a good philosophy personally. You wanna make changes, start with what's under your control. Start with changing those things that will hurt you if the changes go wrong. There's a good one. You know, and it's better, I think, to put your life together than to go worry about parading around and being a social activist.

   25. TFTim Ferriss29:17

       Hmm.

   26. JPDr. Jordan Peterson29:17

       I think most of that's fraudulent, and I, I think it's appalling that students learn, or people learn to do that mostly at universities. I think it's, it's, it's, it's appalling. Fix up your own life. And that doesn't mean you shouldn't be involved in the community, but I believe that you, you have to earn that right. Not only, not because there's something more wrong with you than wrong with anyone else. It's just that you don't wanna... If you, if you operate at, at a level that's beyond your competence, all you're going to do is make catastrophic mistakes. Practice locally till you're competent, and then if you dare, well, move out a little bit, you know, as you mature and you gain some. When I, when I used to work for the NDP, the socialists back when I was 14 or 15, one of the things I came to realize, I think I realized this when I was 16 and went to university. It's like I woke up one day and I thought, "I have this ideology in my mind, you know, about how the world should be structured." And I woke up one day and I thought, "What the hell do you know? You don't have a family. You don't have any experience. You don't have a job." Like, you're a pup. I mean, I was smart enough. I verbally could hold my own, and my head was full of ideas. I could defend them. But, you know, at the same time that I was a socialist kid, I was-- I sat on the board of governors for the local college, and almost all the people on that board were local businessmen, most of them immigrants, because Northern Alberta was an immigrant... Like, it was only 50 years old. Everybody had moved there. It was a new place. It was the end of the frontier, literally. We, we were at the end of the railway, the northernmost tip of the North American prairie. And there was all these conservatives sitting on this board, and me, and what I found was I actually respected these people. Like, I didn't-- I wasn't-- My ideology, my explicit ideology was antithetical to theirs, but when I interacted with them one-on-one, I thought, "Hmm, these people have made something of themselves." And, uh, when I talked to the activists, I never got that impression. I thought, "You guys are resentful as hell, and you don't know anything. You've never done anything. But you're noisy and self-righteous." And so that put a lot of cognitive dissonance. That filled me with cognitive dissonance. So-

   27. TFTim Ferriss31:52

       I was gonna go to Viktor Frankl.

   28. JPDr. Jordan Peterson31:54

       Mm-hmm.

   29. TFTim Ferriss31:55

       But I'd like to pull a hard left.

   30. JPDr. Jordan Peterson31:58

       Oh, it's a dangerous thing.
5. 33:32 – 52:26

   Psychedelics and personality traits

   1. JPDr. Jordan Peterson33:32

      it crosses the blood-brain barrier like water. It bathes every cell. It has polysystemic effects. And so if you study alcohol from the psychological and f- and pharmacological perspective, y-you have to learn the function of the systems that all drugs affect. You know, all drugs of abuse affect fundamental motivational or emotional systems. That's why we take them. Um, although with the hallucinogens, it's more complex. You know, like, uh, benzodiazepines and barbiturates and alcohol, they're, they're anxiolytics. They reduce anxiety. Alcohol also has a dopaminergic effect for some people, kind of like cocaine or amphetamines. Um, there's the analgesics like heroin or cocaine. Cocaine is also analgesic, so whether the psychomotor stimulants are analgesic as well. But the big categories are pain relieving, anxiety relieving, and, and psychomotor stimulant, and, and most drugs of abuse fall into those categories. And then there's the hallucinogens, which are their whole oth- whole other, um, universe. And so I'm well-versed in, in, uh, psychology of and the physiology of drug and alcohol use. And so that's the context. That's part of it anyways. I'm, I'm also interested in religious experiences and for one reason or another, and it's a bottomless mystery, um, there are agents that reliably produce religious experiences, and no one knows what in the world to do about that. That's for sure.

   2. TFTim Ferriss35:07

      [laughs] There are r- there's a, there's a study ongoing at Hopkins also that, that's looking at the effects of, uh, serotonin 2A agonists like psilocybin's effects on worldview of religious leaders of different faiths, uh, which, which, uh-

   3. JPDr. Jordan Peterson35:30

      Oh, is that right? And how are they doing that?

   4. TFTim Ferriss35:33

      Well, they're do- they're doing it with, as I understand it, administration, uh, probably 30 milligrams of synthetic psilocybin.

   5. JPDr. Jordan Peterson35:41

      Wow. That should definitely be illegal.

   6. TFTim Ferriss35:43

      [laughs] Should be il-illegal or legal?

   7. JPDr. Jordan Peterson35:46

      Well, it's no wonder it was all made illegal. I mean, it's Pandora's box.

   8. TFTim Ferriss35:51

      In, in wha- in what respect? What would your, what would your concerns be w-with that particular Pandora's box?

   9. JPDr. Jordan Peterson35:59

      Well, look what happened when psychedelics were introduced into the culture in the 1960s. You know, it was, it was revolutionary. No one knew what-- No one know-- No one knew how to regulate or control it. And, and I don't mean control by clamp down. I just meant no one knew what to do with it. I mean, it, it knocked Timothy Leary off to the side, sideways, you know. And I had Timothy Leary's old position at Harvard.

   10. TFTim Ferriss36:23

       Okay.

   11. JPDr. Jordan Peterson36:23

       He had the same position as me. Yeah, so that was kind of interesting.

   12. TFTim Ferriss36:27

       Yeah, I th- I think the, I mean, the social dynamics are very different in, in the sense that, yes, there are a lot of risks, psychological, uh, i- in rare cases physical Uh, with psychedelic use. But, um, I'm, I'm very involved with the phase three trials both for psilocybin and, uh, MDMA-assisted psychotherapy quite separately.

   13. JPDr. Jordan Peterson36:48

       Is Griffiths running that?

   14. TFTim Ferriss36:50

       Griffiths is involved-

   15. JPDr. Jordan Peterson36:52

       Mm-hmm

   16. TFTim Ferriss36:52

       ... so they would be one site for the phase three trials.

   17. JPDr. Jordan Peterson36:56

       Yeah, well he's the real scientist.

   18. TFTim Ferriss36:58

       He's great. He's a, he's a close, he's a close friend. Uh, and, uh, he's-

   19. JPDr. Jordan Peterson37:02

       I met him at a conference on awe

   20. TFTim Ferriss37:05

       He's an excellent, excellent scientist with a lot of, a lot of exposure to, uh, psychoactives. Uh, expert in caffeine metabolism and all things caffeine, uh, among other compounds. Uh, the... I mean, you've spoken in, in the videos I've seen at least, of the changes in openness.

   21. JPDr. Jordan Peterson37:26

       Yes. They're pronounced.

   22. TFTim Ferriss37:28

       Would that not be a positive thing if that is a consequence of opening Pandora's box?

   23. JPDr. Jordan Peterson37:34

       Depends on how neurotic you are.

   24. TFTim Ferriss37:36

       [laughs]

   25. JPDr. Jordan Peterson37:37

       No, I mean it technically.

   26. TFTim Ferriss37:38

       Well with... Yeah. Okay

   27. JPDr. Jordan Peterson37:38

       This is a technical discussion. Openness isn't much fun if you're high in neuroticism.

   28. TFTim Ferriss37:43

       All right.

   29. JPDr. Jordan Peterson37:43

       'Cause you continually undermine yourself. Like openness is creativity, but let's, let's not be all Pollyanna-ish about this. There wouldn't be variation in creativity if it wasn't dangerous. There's lots of people who are very low in openness, and there's a reason for that. Now, it has advantages. You know, open people occupy a particular niche. They're on the edge.

   30. TFTim Ferriss38:05

       Jordan, would you mind defining openness in this particular context?
6. 52:26 – 1:05:07

   The Bible and religion

   1. TFTim Ferriss52:27

      You mentioned your son was not, uh, these are not the exact words you used, but brought up religious. You've also described knowledge of the stories in the Bible as, quote, "vital to proper psychological health." And you have a lecture series called The Psychological Significance of the Biblical Stories, so people can dive in there. But for those who have not studied the Bible, is this a study you recommend to everyone? And if so, why?

   2. JPDr. Jordan Peterson52:53

      Well, I, I don't know if I would recommend anything to everyone. Um, the biblical... Our culture grew out of the Bible. It's grounded in the Bible, for better or worse. And so if you wanna know who you are and why you think the way you think, like you think you know the way you think. You think you think. You don't, or very rarely. Like, the thoughts, thoughts are greater than you are in some sense. I mean, and it's very rare that you don't think that you think something that someone else hasn't thought. You know, I, I can't remember who said it. It might've been Alfred North Whitehead, that, you know, everyone's the unconscious proponent of some philosopher. They don't... Everyone is the unconscious proponent of some philosopher. So-

   3. TFTim Ferriss53:48

      Yeah

   4. JPDr. Jordan Peterson53:49

      ... now, thought exists in a hierarchy. Value, especially in relationship to value, and the more profound the thought, the more it deals with fundamental values, and the fundamental value is one upon which many other values depend. It's-- That's, that's a, like the technical definition of a hierarchy. I can give you an example. So, for example, imagine you're in a committed relationship, um, and you're, you know, you and your wife have an arrangement to do the dishes, and it's her turn, and she doesn't do them. Well, that's a minor league ontological shock because, well, it has implications possibly for her honesty, you know? And perhaps not. Maybe she was tired that night. God only knows. But it's a deviation from what's expected. And, you know, generally, those things are knitted up pretty quickly, and whether or not your wife does the dishes when she's supposed to once really doesn't destabilize you that much, because not much else depends on it. Now, if she did it 10 times or something like that, well, then you might start to question her commitment to your agreements, and then you might question her honesty, and then you might question your relationship, and, you know, the, you can go down a rabbit hole pretty quickly. But if your partner has an affair That tends to be quite a shock because you've modeled your plans for behavior and even for perception of the world on the assumption of fidelity. And if that assumption is demolished, then all those plans dis- dissolve, and then the uncertainty comes rushing in, and that's very hard on you psychophysiologically. And so anyways, there's a hierarchy of values, and the deeper you go, the more the values look religious, almost by definition. It's, it... In fact, you could say that that's a definition, is that the deepest values are religious. This is something I tried to impress upon Sam Harris. Now, you know, he didn't, didn't like the terminology religious, but doesn't-- to me, it doesn't really matter because you could replace it with, okay, deep then. You know? Like, have it your way. We have a word for the deepest of values, and that's religious. And so what happens when you encounter those values? Well, you, you tremble. And you might think, "Well, not me." It's like, well, huh, all that means is that you're protected to a degree you cannot possibly imagine. And one day, maybe not, maybe you'll be lucky and you'll go through life without being knocked ass over tea kettle, so to speak. But-

   5. TFTim Ferriss56:17

      [laughs]

   6. JPDr. Jordan Peterson56:18

      ... but perhaps not. You m- run into someone malevolent, for example, and then the scales will fall from your eyes. So anyways, the deepest values are religious, and our religious document is the Bible, and the Bible is an absolute mystery. So ath- I don't care if you're atheistic or not. I mean, and this lecture series was for everyone, and lots of, lots of people have watched it, weirdly enough. It packed the theaters that I was lecturing in, of all the bizarre things. And, you know, it was mostly young men coming to listen to some half-baked psychologist talk about religious matters for an hour and a half. Um, the deepest questions are religious questions, and the Bible is the best answer we have, and if you don't like that, well, fine. Do better. Good luck. I mean, there's wisdom in that book that's, it's unbelievable. The story of Cain and Abel, I have a whole lecture on Cain and Abel. That story's one paragraph long, and you can think about that for the rest of your life. You know? It's the first two human beings, fratricidal murder with a genocidal twist, all packed up into a story one paragraph long, and it's all resentment. It's like Cain, Cain's sacrifices are rejected by God. Okay, what does that mean? Well, that's easy. You make sacrifices to improve your future, and you do that on the basis of faith. You believe that if you conduct yourself in a certain way, fate is likely to smile upon you because why else would you make the sacrifices? And sometimes that doesn't happen. You make the sacrifices and the reward isn't forthcoming. And will that make you bitter? Well, in all probability, how bitter? How about bitter enough to destroy the ideal? That's all packed into that story. It's, it's-- I don't understand it. I don't understand how that's possible. I have a hypothesis, you know, that a scientific hypothesis is as a story is transmitted across time, everything that's superfluous gets stripped away because it's not memorable. And then all that happens after thousands of years of playing telephone is that what's absolutely not forgettable is retained. But I don't think that's a comprehensive hypothesis. It's partially true. And I think the story of Cain and Abel, it's like when it opened itself up to me, it just knocked-- I never recovered from that, I don't think.

   7. TFTim Ferriss58:58

      Hmm. When you think of stories and you use stories and you tell stories very effectively, when you talk about, say, Pinocchio, you use biblical stories. You're very engaging, uh, sort of interpreter and transmitter of stories. When you're working on, say, Beyond Order, this new book, how do you think of composing your stories or your messages so that they are not lost, so that they have some durability or transmissibility?

   8. JPDr. Jordan Peterson59:33

      Well, I'm always-- Mostly when I'm writing, I'm trying to figure something out. Although, as I've written for, uh, as the period of time over which I've been writing has lengthened, I'm spending more time communicating the ideas and less time figuring them out. When I wrote my first book, which was Maps of Meaning, pretty much all I was doing was trying to figure something out. It was just an exercise in sustained thought, and I worked on it for, from 1985 to 1999, about three hours a day. And I thought about it, especially when I was in my 20s, all the time. I was thinking about it like 13 hours a day, and the ideas were just running through my mind at a, at a rate far higher than I'm capable of now. Um, I was trying to figure something out. I was trying to figure out, I was trying to understand malevolence, uh, I suppose, among other things. But when I wrote the last two books, I, I was trying to communicate some of what I thought I had learned. And so... But it's still, a lot of it's still trying to solve a, to, to answer a question. When I lecture, for example, and I usually do that without notes, I have a question in mind. It's like, okay, well, in, in the biblical lectures, for example, the first one is, I think it's about two hours long on the first sentence of Genesis The question is, well, what does this sentence mean? And so the lecture is an exploration of what it means, and I'm trying to think it through, and at the same time I'm communicating that process of thinking it through, and that's what I'm doing with my books. And I, I-- The books are written to me, you know, which is why I think I've gotten away with giving advice. The books aren't really advice, or if they are, I'm included in the population of idiots who needs the advice.

   9. TFTim Ferriss1:01:26

      [laughs]

   10. JPDr. Jordan Peterson1:01:28

       So, you know, these are things I haven't-- There's a-- The last chapter is be grateful in spite of your suffering. You know, I've had real struggle with that. So although I know perfectly well that resentment, regardless of the cause, is not productive, it's certainly understandable.

   11. TFTim Ferriss1:01:46

       [sighs] You know, gr-grabbing what you just said and maybe going to a somewhat meta level, I am gonna shoehorn in Victor Frankl, 'cause I, I don't wanna leave that loose end for, for listeners. [chuckles] I-- Frankl talks about the desire to finish his book as one of the sources of meaning that got him through the concentration camps. Uh, did y- did your book, and I don't know the timeline for having worked on it, serve a similar purpose over the last 18 to 24 months?

   12. JPDr. Jordan Peterson1:02:17

       Absolutely. Absolutely. It was a life raft. I was, I was devastated when I finished it, which is common experience, you know, pe-people. And, and it speaks to the nature of human motivation. We often think, "Well, once I get to point B," that's where you're headed, "everything will be okay." It's like, no, that's not the case at all, is that now you need a new point B. So-- And that was really-- You know, because I don't work at the university anymore, and I don't have my clinical practice anymore, and, um, so that- those are losses to, of structure for me. And now I have the book to anchor myself while I was so ill and, um, it was invaluable.

   13. TFTim Ferriss1:03:00

       Hmm.

   14. JPDr. Jordan Peterson1:03:01

       And still is, for that matter.

   15. TFTim Ferriss1:03:05

       Uh, I, I wanna ask you about the title, Beyond Order, but before I get to that, I'm just planting the seed. I'd love to ask you, and this is a question that a friend of mine, several friends of mine wanted me to ask some version of, uh, and I would like to hear your answer. And that is h- how would you recommend someone think about meaning or constructing or finding meaning if they have reached the pinnacle of competence or a high level of competence in a certain area? Uh, I have a friend, I won't name him 'cause I don't know if he would want this public, but I, I asked him [chuckles] some version of this and he said, "Well, at some point you have to either find God or have kids, [chuckles] and having kids is easier," so I had kids. [laughs] Uh-

   16. JPDr. Jordan Peterson1:03:47

       Well, that speaks to what we discussed earlier. It's like there's many domains in which to obtain competence. You can find a new domain. But kids, for sure, that's like-- Look, life is quite straightforward in some ways. Find a partner and stick with them. You know? That's hard. Try to make yourself into better people if you can. It's a challenge. Have kids, have grandkids. Thank God I have grandkids. Thank God I have kids. You know, they, they, they're, they're, they're, uh, that's an-- They're of unquestionable virtue. And so then if you're lucky, you have other projects and, and you're healthy enough to, to undertake them. Um, with regards to how people should search for meaning, well, it's the first thing I do, like I said with my clients, is I do a, um, a scan of their life. And we have a pro-- You mentioned it at the beginning when you introduced me. I have a program, Self-Authoring at selfauthoring.com, that helps people with this. It helps you write an autobiography, sort of figures out who you are. It helps you assess your personality traits, positive and negative, and then it, it helps you make a, a plan for the future, and people have found that useful. So-

7. 1:05:07 – 1:13:47

   Jordan’s new book: Beyond Order

   1. TFTim Ferriss1:05:08

      Why Beyond Order? What is the genesis of that title? How did you arrive at that title?

   2. JPDr. Jordan Peterson1:05:15

      As far as I can tell, in the world of value... So let's think about value for a minute. If you move towards something, you value it. Otherwise, you wouldn't move towards it. You-- There's an old joke about the chicken, is why did the chicken cross the road? And the answer to that is, well, he thought the other side was better.

   3. TFTim Ferriss1:05:41

      [laughs]

   4. JPDr. Jordan Peterson1:05:42

      Well, that's, that's the case, you know? And in order-- We need a gradient of value to organize our action. And w- you have to prioritize because you can't do everything at once, and so you do the thing that's most important right now now, and that means you're in a world of importance. And that's a value. That, that's a value world, and the value world, as far as I can tell, has two broad components. The Taoists talked about it as yin and yang, and broadly speaking, it's order and chaos, and order tends to be represented with masculine symbols and chaos tends to be represented for feminine, with feminine symbols. That doesn't mean order is male and chaos is female. And you know, I've been pilloried for this even though it's hardly my proposition, but the, the idea of the patriarchy is a symbolic-- It's a, it's a use of s- masculine symbolism to represent order. So anyways, order is where what happens-- Order is-- You're in order when what you want to happen happens when you act. And so that's reassuring because not only do you get what you want, but the fact that you get what you want indicates that your theory about how to get what you want is true And every time you fail, you don't get what you want, but you also undermine the validity of the theory that you're using to organize your perceptions and your actions. That's partly why people don't like to fail, because you don't know how far back that can, uh, echo, how far down your hierarchy of presuppositions that can echo. If you're clinically depressed, every minor failure means you're a worthless human being. And you never know when a failure is going to demonstrate that. You know? It, it can. In any case, there's chaos and order. They're the two great domains, and you have to contend with chaos because too much of it overwhelms you. You drown in it. It's the flood. And that happens when your life gets beyond you, and you're somewhere where no matter what you do, nothing you want happens. It's a domain of terror and pain. Now, it's also a domain of unlimited possibility, because outside of what you know is everything you don't know, and there's untold riches to be gathered from the domain of everything you don't know. But that doesn't mean it, it, it still needs to be managed. It's dangerous. Now, the domain of order is the same way. It's like if, if order becomes too extreme, then everything becomes cramped. It becomes totalitarian, and then that starts to pathologize. That's the dying king. The king who's dying for lack of the water of life is the old tyrant who can no longer see beyond his own presuppositions. And so my first book concentrated more on pathologies of chaos, and, and the second book more on pathologies of order. And they're, they're a matched set in, in that regarding so far as I was successful at doing that. And you know, the liberal types, they're very sensitive to pathologies of order, and the conservative types are very sensitive to pathologies of chaos. But they're both right. It's just there's no final solution to that problem. You're stuck with it. It's an existential, uh... It's an eternal existential concern. That's why mythological language is standard across people, is no matter who you are, no matter when you live, you always have to deal with the fact that some things escape your competence. And no matter where you are, no matter who you are, you have to, you have to adapt to the fact of the existence of a value structure that's shared across a social group. It's the fundamental. So those are fundamental constituent elements of human experience, and we have symbols for them. And we all understand the symbols. So for example, in Pinocchio, this is, uh, now I'm not going to go into this because it's too complicated, but no one balks at a puppet going to the bottom of the ocean and being swallowed by a whale. Why? It makes no sense. There's nothing about that that makes sense. Right? It's not, it's obviously not an empirical description of the objective world, but it's so clearly real that a four-year-old can follow it. It's a mystery. You know, the whale breathes fire in Pinocchio. It's a dragon. And why? Why is that? Well, we face dragons forever. That's what a human being is. It's, it's a creature that faces the dragon. The dragon can burn you to a crisp, but it has, it has what you need. That's the world. It'll burn you up, but it has what you need. And so then the question is, how do you stop from getting burned up and get what you need? And the answer to that is that you mold yourself into the hero, and that's a religious story. And you may say, "Well, is it true?" And the answer to that is, it depends on what you mean by true. And y- you know, that's a weasel answer in some ways, but it's not. It's because it's such a deep question that it can't be put forth without discussing the definition of true. So it's as deep a question as what is true? Now, you know, it could be that the... I would say that part of the cultural war is a criticism of the motif of the hero. That's Derrida's phallogocentrism. Western culture is phallogocentric. I would say human culture is phallogos- phallogocentric. I think Derrida was wrong about that. It's human culture. It's, it's man, so to speak, against nature, al- although sometimes it's man against culture and sometimes it's man against man. It's man against nature, and we triumph as the hero, and maybe that story isn't true or isn't correct. But it, that's us, and if it isn't correct, well then we're a evolutionary abortion because that's who we are. And I would say, well, before you throw it aside, maybe you should try it. You don't have a better option anyways. And a lo- and, and, and there, there, there are, you... What does it mean to try it? Mostly, I would say it means, it means two things. It means to practice love, and that means assume that things are valuable and act according to that assumption. And it requires truth, which is don't say what you know to be untrue. And you know, when I tried to unpack the first sentence of Genesis, in the context of the broader biblical narrative, what appears to be happening is that- There's a proposition that God is guided by love and uses truth to create. It's something like that. And maybe love is something like the wish that all being would flourish. The, uh, there isn't a better story than that.

8. 1:13:47 – 1:19:44

   Malevolence

   1. TFTim Ferriss1:13:47

      What effect do you hope your new book to have? I know that's, that might seem like a lazy question, but I'm gonna keep it broad. I'd just be interested to hear your thoughts. What, what would, what would be success, a successful effect for this book looking back 12 months from now, 24 months from now?

   2. JPDr. Jordan Peterson1:14:09

      Well, I would like-- It would be lovely if it had the same effect on people as the last book appeared to have. You know, I'm, I mean, it's comforting to me to read through my YouTube comments, oddly enough, because that isn't generally a place people would go for comfort. You know, untold numbers of people have said to me in person but publicly in, in that way that they've put their lives together, at least in some ways. And you talked about Viktor Frankl. You know, when I wrote Maps of Meaning, I said, well, I was interested in malevolence. Uh, uh, I was deeply affected by the accounts I'd read of what happened in the Second World War and in Germany and what happened in Soviet Union and in China, these horror shows that characterize the 20th century. Constrained malevolence. And so if you study malevolence, you start to understand what the opposite of that is. The opposite of malevolence is something like the hero's journey. You know, and it's, it's easy to be cynical about that, but... Well, it's not that easy because if you're cynical about that, then you undermine your own life. And everyone knows this. This is the other thing that's so interesting. Everyone knows this. You never teach someone you love to lie. You're always appalled if you have a son or daughter, you're always appalled if they don't tell the truth. You know in the deepest part of your heart that if you don't tell the truth, the world falls apart, and that's actually true. You know, I talked about unearned wisdom. It's, it's no trivial matter to understand that. You know, Dostoevsky said everyone is responsible for everything that happens to them and everything that happens to everyone else as well. And, you know, that's an insane statement, and he was a very extreme person, but it's also true. And I think that's part of what people get a glimpse of when they have a hallucinogenic-induced religious experience. It's like there's a lot more resting on you than you think, and you know that. You don't wake up in the morning berating yourself for telling the truth. You wake up at 4:00 in the morning berating yourself for violating your conscience. You know, and classically, in, in at least in some strains of Christian thinking, conscience is associated with Christ or with the Holy Spirit. It's the, it's the voice of God within. And I'm aware of all the criticisms of ideas like that, but, you know, it's pretty-- it's really something that you can't control your conscience. So what, what is it exactly? It's not you. You're responsible to it. It holds you accountable. It transcends you. So what is it? Well, if you think it's nothing, well, violate it for a while and see what happens. So, you know, I hope what I wrote in Beyond Order is true. You know? And if it's true, it should do some good because what's true does good. At least that's the hope.

   3. TFTim Ferriss1:18:19

      Jordan, I think we're running up on time. I wanna be respectful of your schedule. I have sincerely enjoyed this conversation, and I'm glad you exist. I'm glad you write. I'm very excited for you and your readers with respect to Beyond Order: Twelve More Rules for Life, and I encourage people to check it out. Is there anything that you would like to add in terms of closing remarks or a question to my audience, a request of my audience? Anything that you would like to say?

   4. JPDr. Jordan Peterson1:18:56

      No, I, I've been thinking about, you know, I, my book is coming out on March 2nd, and I've been thinking about what to do about that, and I think the most appropriate thing to do is to thank people. The people who've watched my lectures and listened to them and who have bought tickets to my lectures and who've bought and read my book. Um, my family has received an unbelievable outpouring of support. Um, it's saved my life. So appreciate it.

   5. TFTim Ferriss1:19:40

      Thank you so much, Jordan.

   6. JPDr. Jordan Peterson1:19:41

      And thank you to you too. I appreciate the conversation.

Episode duration: 1:20:06