Joe Rogan Experience #1208 — Jordan Peterson Transcript

Transcript

0:00 Three people. Three, two, one. I mean, you've had your foot on the gas for like two solid years now. And, yeah, so Tammy and I have been to 100 cities since January. So everywhere, you know. Yeah, I guess that's it, right? problems at all um and then i have lots of people who are helping me with my scheduling and tammy and I'm communicating directly with the audience,

2:28 He'd stopped. And it's so fun because I have these conversations with people. And two of the guys that work behind the meat counter came out to talk to me independently. And so it's so exciting, so ridiculously exciting to go everywhere around the world And Jesus, like to be able to have that happen you know time after time day after day all over We had one heckler who was obviously not a fan of mine,

4:57 which is quite fun. And Sam's doing them with a lot of other people as well. Yep. way of being and they kind of fall into that or it's drugs or it's alcohol or whatever it is. You get pushed into this weird – what we were talking about before the podcast, by a small select group of people. So there must be something wrong about that. It's like, why isn't it 50% women? And so I've said

8:26 their thinking, and to be more responsible for themselves and for their family and for their and tells me one of these stories about how they put their life together, good person you would be looking out you would be trying to balance that out and then you wouldn't I've written that suggests that at all. I'm suggesting that human hierarchies are very complex and that the way that you win

11:08 you know, in that impulsive way, but not the person you're going to be. responsibility. you know, they're always basically saying, well, this is how you should act, because in some sense, and that's a manifestation of the instinct to imitate. Again, people are very imitative. interesting because it's as if it's as if everybody kind of knows this but that it hasn't crystallized

14:05 If you don't get your act together and you're subsumed by anxiety and all of that hopelessness. They shut their eyes when their eyes should have been open, even though they knew it. this country is turning towards this horrible situation where Jewish people Absolutely. or what to do and wanting to protect your family as well so not wanting to step out of line absolutely

16:18 You know, it's so hard to, to, to get your, to get a grasp on exactly what's going on. It's also your comprehension of what is your emotional reaction Bullying online has caused many people to commit suicide well the thing is you know when you the weird And so, you know, if you're a reasonable person, you're very sensitive to criticism. I must have done something wrong, because otherwise, why would all these people be here?

18:19 I mean, I've stopped, almost completely stopped reading Twitter comments in the last month. That's when it's about time to get out of Dodge. Perhaps because you're trying to get people to respond to you, but the alternative is Facebook, Respectable Lawyer? a few people going to them and doing some awful things and diseases and stuff like that. Well, they also might be the ones that are most, like we don't know exactly know what motivates people to respond on twitter and it might be that

21:07 to differentially reward impulsive behavior. its advantages and its disadvantages. From some monster that's deep in the abyss. You see that pinocchio for example but it's a very common idea and i towards the goal. And so the implication of that is the better the goal, the more full and rich your experience is against challenges. Okay, so all the clinical data indicates,

23:43 What you try to do if you're a behavior therapist evidence for this now that if you put yourself in a new situation, then new genes code for new That more and more of you, you get more and more informed, because you're doing more and more difficult things, ancestral wisdom that's locked inside of you biologically but that's not going to come out you're the consequence of all these

27:03 So think about it this way. And maybe you start with your own localized suffering, the place of maximal suffering okay so you accept that as a challenge not as a not as something that So that would be the other thing, he loses an eye, and this is why it's so useful to peer into the darkness let's say the optimistic part of that is is that although right like this is the ultimate goal that if you ask people, what would you like out of civilization?

30:57 well maybe see the other thing that i've been thinking along the same lines is that you know a bunch of people in the tyrannical state that want to take his wife. And so you can imagine So maybe what you want is an adventure, the greatest adventure that you could have. Because we're built for adventure and not for peace and happiness. Well, we to overcome the natural world the natural world is filled with that the natural world is filled

33:46 in misstating what you say this opposition to you this uh i mean like we were talking about this gq And the idea was like there was all these martial arts that are running around independently, and they were all claiming that they had the best technique and let's see what happens. launched this Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu empire Yeah. and they'd tap out, and they'd go, fuck.

36:16 you know and i went out of my way to do it and um she was hostile to me the second i walked into That's the right way of thinking about it. time the conversation started i was more impatient than i would normally be because one of the things coming two human beings interacting with each other yes yes on on on well on relatively professional and i thought god you know maybe i'm starting to run out of patience which isn't good right right

39:29 all of that and that's all true and that none of that is a complaint and i decided with tammy right Present. Present for. want to be sure that every single person that comes to meet me i'm you know present present And then they line up and it's not inexpensive because these venues are expensive and all of that. necessary part of this even though i don't find it pleasant like people think they accuse me of

42:19 i don't even know how people deal with it because, I mean, I'm being fortunate because although, you know, I've had a fair bit of negative press coverage, the comments on YouTube in particular, which is where the bulk of them are, and I would say among the general public, have been overwhelmingly positive. You just can't read those. healthy place and and most of those opinions they would not express it that way if they were talking

43:48 It could be a fool. Well, it's also healthy too, to not stroke your ego too much. Yeah, yeah. You're backing it up with real science. And I spent quite a bit of, there was a lot of interviews and a lot of discussion about the so-called gender paradox. And so that would mean that there's a wide range of talent across people regardless of their type, whatever that might be, sex, gender, race, ethnicity, there's talent distributed everywhere.

48:02 diverse and interesting your life is. So you can pursue equality of opportunity policies. There's dominance in the universities. the world, you see that one of the best predictors of the probability of economic development in And so, the ultimate equity utopia would be take every job, every conceivable kind of hierarchy that is impossible on the significant ones men and women and race well yeah but who's

51:51 But it's very rare that someone is elitist in terms of their cognitive ability. Actually, it doesn't even make sense now that I'm thinking about it. Of course they are. and elitist. I do believe that that's the case. And I think they're also, what would you call it, you're hearing out of universities now and safe spaces. that's often just, that's so difficult, it's almost unimaginable, because they're so good

54:19 I always start with behavioral principles. And anxiety can be a side effect of all sorts of physiological disorders or eating improperly or sleeping badly or not exercising, you know, enough to kind of keep yourself regulated. can work through an interpretation which is a tricky business and the dream will tell them psychologists have come to a pretty decent agreement about standard personality models, right?'s extroversion neuroticism agreeableness openness and conscientiousness

56:44 Conscientious people are dutiful and industrious and orderly, and the open people are creative. Okay, so now, as soon as you have the five basic traits, And with agreeableness that's also borne out by the clinical literature in some sense, the medical literature, sociomedical literature. enough to eat and people are starving then there's a huge cultural effect on people's intelligence let's say that's mediated by economic factors even though it's got a biological origin

59:30 between men and women by the egalitarian social policies. The opposite happened. and you had to bet that the woman was more aggressive than the man you'd be wrong and this is the one that gets biggest in the Scandinavian countries, is interest. Okay. Yeah. It's not possible. The optimistic viewpoint. crawl back under the rock that you came from well i thought she was making a joke about lobsters but

1:04:14 This is enforced. mathematical ability. First of all, it's very rare, so that's the first thing to keep in mind. You can look at it either way, and it's certainly possible. And there's lots of complex reasons like this. And so, you know, if men are more likely to pursue careers And if you work 10% longer hours, you make 40% more money. They're more likely to run full-time businesses rather than part-time businesses.

1:08:33 There's more risk in it. competition with men against women is often thought of as cruel yeah well that yes well and You can be a man or a woman. Yeah that you can be a man or a woman yeah you can be a man or a woman that's your choice and you can Doesn't matter. How's that? Because that's what it is. a tough woman can beat a variety of men oh yes but a really tough man can beat all women.

1:11:51 There's not a single woman that's going to be able to deal with that bone structure and that mind that that guy has had with testosterone pumping through it for 39 years. going up lately if you don't want to date a trans woman then you're some sort of a bigot association and you know you say but only up to a certain point. Well, that's... Because this new logic is kind of leaking into even sexual preference now.

1:13:43 You don't get to have any preferences? Right. Right. Sure. playing a game of chess with someone who only has a couple of pieces. It doesn't mean people shouldn't have rights. especially people like Foucault, When you go to hire someone like a plumber, well, the first thing you want to know is entirely predicated on competence and almost every enterprise in the west is like that because i keep

1:18:14 your hands yes that's what i'm saying is that if you're entering into a job straight out of college You're going to have people who do better. So we could agree on that. the rest of us are greedy and desperate it's like you know we want the people who are good at you're still going to have all this innovation is ridiculous. So that it's no longer competence, it's political machination and game-playing and tyranny that produce the positional differentiation.

1:21:22 of all hierarchies, right? Those are going to be people who are sick, mentally and physically, is to speak on behalf of the unjustly dispossessed. the only way to discuss this it is the only it's the only way of working it out and it is the case I mean, one of the things I really like about the psychologist jean piaget who's who i would say the world's foremost expert on games is that

1:23:19 That's cooperative. They all follow the same rules. of our team because we want to win games across multiple games so that's also cooperative and then that's for sure that's called a performative contradiction it's like well i'd like to i like and this is one of the things I've been trying to address, It's just not the only thing that's happened. So I would say that the entire history of, I mean, you look at it this way,

1:27:08 less than a dollar a day before 1895 and so the way i think that we should view the history of that you're part of the 1%? confines of her national border right right as soon as i said well no it's all you have to do If you make $34,000 today, you absolutely are in the top 1% of human race. Up until now. Yeah, for sure. If you make $34,000 today, are not one of the ones that's oppressing.

1:29:54 and as soon as you assume that you're a victimizer well then it's not so much fun you care about is their group and their background and their economic status, and if they're in the in one of those groups, you're a victimizer. is that you fragment your identity who anything more than they did all right now that you put those two groups head-to-head in a battle

1:33:11 you talk about it this way and i think it's really interesting when i see the resistance to you in the past and that it's not as simple as like you know uh you know you got this ann ryan thing we're assuming that you're not a psychopath and you're probably not because you probably wouldn't you think well they have more and more power it's like yeah but not really they have more and more

1:35:49 But even so, like, you know, even 20 years ago, like, if you didn't treat your customers properly, you know, and carefully, reciprocally in long-term relationships, you were going to be a failure. same degree but business people are always wondering well can i trust you can we enter It's one of the reasons why they like to use golf as a metric. dad was playing

1:37:29 He's a cheater. How you do some things is oftentimes how you do everything. hunt properly. Then you think, well, to hunt properly, you have to put the ball in the net And to win the championship, you have to win a whole bunch of games. So that's a stupid strategy too. on their own, you know, in sort of an egotistical way, then that wasn't such a good

1:40:39 necessarily the meaning of it doesn't matter if you win or lose it's how you play the game That's right. Right. Yes, okay. Yes. Right. incarnation of that ethic and so it's not surprising that that's why people get so excited like it was more important to play it properly than to win. And so that's very cool. you help them develop in a manner and the Marxist type so wrong,

1:44:40 situation where you very rarely find people who excel at competition and who have benefited And this is one of the things that So the other thing that I've been trying to explain in my lectures is that So, like, if you look at Neolithic grave sites, way before there was capitalism, keep keep that we do want to keep someone from accumulating so much wealth that they dominate

1:47:42 And we have to be alert to that. psychopathic and power obsessed that's attempting to take over the hierarchy by ill-gotten means. If you believe that all of our hierarchies are predicated on nothing but arbitrary power and then that's a natural consequence of masculinity and aggressive boys, just for this example, you want to take them and you want to socialize them intensely so that they take that aggressive competitive impulse and they're capable of

1:50:14 Yes. Exactly. And you're supposed to have extreme reverence for the people who taught you. because you should be um you should be properly subordinate to the people who are better at what it's winner-take-all and to hell with everyone else. They care about competence. gave them opportunities and he certainly did this for me has opened all sorts of doors for me and

1:53:25 This is not just like something that looks good on paper. And there's got to be some sort of an evolutionary benefit tear them into pieces so i don't care how strong you are three guys that are like two-thirds your strength are going to take you out. So you're much better situated in society and in your life if you're in an interactive network of reciprocally beneficial relationships.

1:55:11 you know like if you're not doing very well then it's really easy to think that the game is rigged people who are old and rich would trade it for young and poor fairly damn quickly well that's addicted celebrities and it isn't obvious always that more money is good for people you know i mean and not to try to chip them down and take away their accomplishments

1:58:25 And that's one of the reasons why, in contrast, it looks so ridiculous. not the person who doesn't deserve it. But then you see the person So this is where competition is so important because when they put themselves in comparison to these incredible people, Well, I think it speaks to what you were talking about earlier that we need adversity. that you should pick up your cross and stumble uphill and that's really what that means is that you you know you set your you set your eyes on some high level vision the city of god on the

2:01:27 There's a certain amount that you can tolerate. the human potential has not been developed to the point where you can overcome adversity. It's way deeper than that. And you see that in the weight room. but you're pushing yourself. and a consequence of the interaction between the negative emotion systems, This is worth doing. And you want to make sure

2:04:14 Because too much order means maximal meaning. And the only way to find out where that edge is, is to push it. Yeah. Now, Like, flat out. That's what a lot of people do, isn't it? the oldest guy at the disco you know it's not it's not fun being the 40 year old at the singles bar I said, well, one thing you could aim at, if you had any sense when you were young, is to be the most worth, you could be the most reliable person at your father's funeral.

2:06:49 a little self-respect out of that too, in a real sense, right? Because, you know, you're this sort They fall into these right-wing, left-wing sort of paradigms in this really weird way. resentful of the hierarchies and without contaminating it with jealousy for the successful And they had their flaws, obviously, but they put their money where their mouth was and they were trying to ensure that the hierarchies were open to advancement for for for

2:09:21 So I think if you build better people, hierarchical organizations can offer real solutions, socially and personally. So you can confront the problems courageously and you can solve them. the Russian psychologist called that the zone of proximal development, which I believe is where the in your own life. That's what the Taoists are on about, because they say, well, you,

2:11:49 Right? So we're both comfortable. We trust each other. We trust that the conversation is aimed that that focus happens without any consciousness. Right? And that's real. when you're doing that. It makes you stronger. And then the people that come to me after my talks and It's real. that moves and something new takes its place so and that's a little death and rebirth instead of

2:15:11 life. associated rationality with a proclivity to malevolence partly because rationality tends question it but the best thing to do is to actually pay attention to when it manifests itself because watch yourself for two weeks. oh man, I was engaged in something there for 10 minutes. Christ says, with that intrinsic sense of meaning and to realize it as a fact rather than than just as

2:18:07 It's like, yeah, well, you have to figure out what it was that you did to deserve it, so to speak. Like maybe you'll have a guy who is kind of a cliche, but who was, you know, socialized and kind of a pushover stands up to someone just once at work, I'm never going to be angry in my whole life. That's the old alchemical dictum. You know, like, it's actually really hard to put yourself together, and you have to do that in ways that you can't trumpet.

2:20:53 And you don't get a lot of social, you don't get a lot of quick social status for it. No, I mean, young people have a messianic impulse. There are only difficult routes to doing useful things and What about activists that want to shut down certain speakers? nice person. A lot of it is also just immature acting out. decides to scream out and they they do so under the guise of moral virtue yeah yeah well it's

2:24:54 And there's no—one of the things I realized about recently as well formulating an opinion that that's actually unique to, and that in dialogue we can mutually modify each other's that's preferable to any other way. And so, since I'm part of my group and I want to win because it's all about power, I'll just shut you down, because then I win. They are going after things that are so fundamental you can't believe it. There is no autonomous individual in the postmodern world.

2:28:37 There's your group, your identity, your struggle for power, and that's all. that's why he criticized the idea of logocentrism. So it's not like they're playing a game within you know you think well this is a game to enhance their argument to try to to push forth their ideas in a less less debatable way like why It's like, well, why? and you're seeing these differences in genders actually accentuate because of this. Do you think that maybe what we're seeing also,

2:32:05 right yeah like police universal provision of infrastructure yes yeah that's a good one this is part of the eternal debate right because we've already talked about the utility of hierarchies Yes. to solve those problems never goes You don't think about it. You don't adjust it. Well, you do a bit solution to breathing. You have a part of your brain that just breathes. You don't think about it.

2:34:51 unequally distributed it doesn't matter like as soon as you you invent basketball and instantly the poor will be with us always. Okay, so why? Well, it's a reflection of what we just described, Right hand is justice and the left hand is mercy. but then that can ossify, and so you want to hang on to that position, even though your competence no longer justifies it.

2:37:14 tyranny. And the reasonable left says that. Watch the hierarchies, because they tilt towards tyranny. That's a good question. there's other variables because the scandinavian countries are relatively homogenous, right? And more homogenous societies tend to be more peaceful and happier, not more diverse societies. Well, and those sorts of societies in some sense are easier to manage.

2:39:57 But the political system is skewed pretty hard to the Republican end of things at the moment. showing that, and it depends on how you calculate these things, but that the radical leftists and the radical right-wingers shrinking market share that's that's a very interesting take on and i wonder how detrimental yeah and so i tried to stay away from that it was better for my peace of mind and i often

2:43:11 I just think there's just an amount of data that's incomprehensible. No, definitely. Well, everywhere. It's this balance that people try to find It's like, well, you ain't seen nothing yet. Well, so we don't know how to adjust to that psychologically, but it's even worse than that because as soon as you adjust to the degree that you do, the technology changes on you.

2:45:26 lately about, about, uh, you know, maybe these are kids that are, are getting bullied on There's an outside of that. You try not using your phone for a whole day. Yep. And so, the friends come over the house, they want to like constantly be on the phone, And these kids are just doing this all day long. That's true. Well, have you been watching the Boston Dynamics videos?

2:48:09 Yeah. He said it was going to come out within, you know, X amount of months. And so, and I suspect that, you know, going to build. that you won't expect. but Jesus, you know, Have you ever watched Black Mirror on Netflix? Yes, which is quite frightening and reasonably probable. You're kidding. Oh, good. Yeah, well, I mean, part of the reason that i'm doing what

2:51:56 Yeah, collectively and what's the matter? And I think personally this is important and collectively it's very important. And the more people that that's happening to, People that find you Who saw this coming? You know, it's like you're an old friend, you know, and it's like, here's what my life was like. don't know how to react that's how to react i don't i never will learn that's how to react it's don't, I never will learn. That's how to react. It's like,

2:54:30 And it always feels flat. Absolutely. It's a pleasure to be here again.