Transcript for #1139 - Jordan Peterson

What I think of them as, yeah, because I'm discussing, I mean, you might think it's kind of perverse to be discussing with a 3000 person audience, but It's not because if you pay attention to the audience, they're constantly, and the individuals in the audience, they're constantly providing feedback. So it's a discussion as far as I'm concerned.

Yeah, well really what you want, if you're on track, if you're where you should be, then it's dead silent. and everyone's focused and listening. And so if that's not happening, I mean, you know, there can be laughter or that kind of thing, but generally speaking, you don't want to hear noise from the audience. So if you're on, if you're pursuing a complicated topic and you're paying attention, and I'm always looking at individual people in the audience, you know, in the first few rows, because that's all I can see because of the lights. I mean, trying to make sure that everyone's on track with the talk and you know there's people gesture with their face and they gesture with their eyes and they shake their head and they nod and there's lots of things to pick up and if you're not speaking with notes you can really pay attention to the audience and then you know if you're in the dialogue and that's where everyone wants to be.

That's right. Yeah, back to back. And yeah, so it was about five hours of intense discussion over two days. And, you know, we were supposed to talk for an hour each night and then go to Q&A, but we asked the audience Brett Weinstein, who was moderating asked the audience if they wanted to go to QA, or continue the discussion, and the response from the crowd was definitely continued the discussion. And so we ended up talking for about two and a half hours each night. And again, it was the audiences along for the ride. And they were good discussions as far as I'm concerned. You know, it was kind of marketed as a takedown in some sense, Harris versus Peterson. Right. But the discussion itself was an attempt on Sam's part and my part to further our thinking about the topic and to bring everyone alone for the right, you know, for the journey. So to speak.

Yeah, it was the first time I'd met Sam.

Yeah, we argued in on a definition and let it go. And so that wasn't so good. Yeah, and I wasn't in tip top shape for that first discussion well over the second one for that matter. But they've been getting each discussion I've had with Sam has been getting better. So as far as I'm concerned, I think he feels the same way. And I mean, we're trying to sort something out that's really, really difficult. And it's the relationship between facts and values, which is parallel to the relationship between, say, objective truth and narrative or parallel to the distinction between scientific, fact and religious truth, all of those things sort of are layered on top of each other. It's an extraordinarily difficult topic, and so it's not surprising that it's taking all of this discussion to even vaguely get it straight. It's been a central bone of contention among philosophers for, well, probably forever, but certainly since the time of David Hume several hundred years.

Yeah, well, one, one, one, I've really been trying to make sense of this, hey, because I'm thinking, well, what the hell's going on? Why am I selling out 3,000 person auditoriums? And then, but not just me, obviously, Sam is doing it. And you're doing something on a larger scale, but very similar with your long-form podcast. And then there's this whole rise of what Barry Weiss described as the intellectual dark web. That's actually Eric Weinstein's coinage. And so there's a group of us that have been sort of clumped together for reasons that aren't obvious. But I've been trying to figure that out as I do these lectures. Another thing I'm doing with the lectures or the discussions is trying to continually further the development of my ideas. I use the stage, let's say, as a opportunity in real time to think and I've been thinking well if you're surfing you don't confuse yourself with the wave right that's that's a real mistake you might be on top of the wave but you're not the wave and I think this long form discussion and the public hunger for that is best conceptualized like that there's a technological revolution it's a deep one The technological revolution is online video and audio. Immediately accessible everyone all over the world. And so what that's done is it turned the spoken word into a tool that has the same reach as the printed word. So it's a Gutenberg Revolution in the domain of video and audio. And it might be even deeper than the original Gutenberg Revolution because it isn't obvious how many people can read. But lots of people can listen. And now it turns out, so I mean, you got a little bit of that with TV, right? And you got a little bit of it with radio. But there was bandwidth limitations that were really stringent, especially in TV, where you could get 30 seconds if you were lucky in six minutes, if you were stellar to elucidate a complicated argument. So you can't do that. Everything gets compressed to a kind of oversimplified entertainment. But now all of a sudden, we have this forum for long-form discussion, real long-form discussion, and it turns out that everyone is way smarter than we thought. Right? We can have these discussions publicly, and there's a great hunger for it. And I see this parallels, and this would be what would you call it, supporting evidence for this hypothesis. The same things happened in the entertainment world, because TV made us think, well, we can handle a 20-minute sitcom. Or maybe we can handle an hour and a half made for TV movie. But then Netflix came along and HBO as well with the bandwidth restrictions gone. And all of a sudden it turned out that no, no, we can handle 40 hour complex, multilayer narratives where the character shift, where the complexity starts to reach the same complexity as great literature. And there's a massive market for it. And so it turns out that we're smarter than our technology revealed to us. And I think those of us who've been placed in this intellectual dark web group You know, there's some things we have in common. We more or less have independent voices because we're not beholden to any corporate masters except peripherally. And we've been operating in this long-form space. And the technology has facilitated that. And so all of a sudden it turns out that there's more to people than we thought and say, this episode is brought to you by Zippercruder.

Yeah, well, there's a couple of things going on, I think. One of them is that the technological transformation that I laid out, and then the other is that I do believe that especially for the radical leftist types, the whole notion of free speech among individuals is not only anathema, but also something that isn't possible within their framework of reference. I've been trying to think this through very carefully, because free speech in some sense has become identified as a right-wing issue, and I thought, well, how the hell did that happen? And then I thought, oh, yes, well, If you're radically left and you're playing the identity politics game, there's actually no such thing as free speech, because you're only the mouthpiece of your group, whether you know it or not. So you don't get to talk as Joe Rogan, you get to talk as Joe Rogan, patriarchal white guy. That's it. And your utterances aren't a reflection of your own opinions as an individual, but they're an attempt on your part, whether you know it or not, to justify your position in the power hierarchy. And so everything right now, and this is where the technology and the death of the mainstream media, and this political polarization all unite, everything is turned into a political conversation in the mainstream media. And media, and it has to be cast as left versus right. And if you're criticizing the left, then all of a sudden you're right. And right wing, and it has to be about politics. It's like, well, it doesn't have to be about politics. It could be about philosophy. It doesn't have to be cast in political terms and then it's also subject to a form of, well, it's made more stupid than it has to be by these terrible bandwidth limitations. I mean, I've been on mainstream TV talk shows and it's very strange experience because you're definitely content. You know, Marshall McLune said the medium is the message, right? The medium shapes the dialogue, and it does in great, in a tremendous way, powerful way. You go on a TV talk show, and maybe it's an hour long, something like that. There's five guests, and you've got your eight minutes, something like that. And you have to be bright and chipper and entertaining and intelligent and sort of glitzy. And it puts that facade of momentary charisma on you. And if you don't play that out, you actually fail. Because you can't start a long-form discussion when you've got six minutes. And if you're trying to talk about something that's deep and difficult, while you want to talk about it because you've got the access, then the opportunity. But you've got your six minutes. You can't help but turn into sort of a glitzy entertainer. And so it cheapens everything. And then the other thing that I think is happening is that as the mainstream media, television and particular dies, the quality people are starting to desert, like rats leaving a sinking ship. I guess they're good rats if the quality people. And then there's ever more enticement to use clickbait journalism to attract a diminishing portion of the remaining audience. It's like one of the things that's happened. So if you look at the five major indices of violent crime in the United States, They've declined by 50% in 25 years. It's absolutely beyond comprehension. It's so good. This includes violent gun crime, by the way. And yet, the reports of violence in media have gone up and up and up and up. I think, well, what's going on? It's like, well, it's clickbait. It's the equivalent of clickbait. And then to turn everything into a polarized political discussion, takes no real intellectual energy. But it's also driven by the death spiral of the classic media, I think. And I think that's actually why the polarization seems to be so acute now. Some of it is genuine, but some of it is some of it is the consequence of this underlying technological transformation and the death throws of the smoke signalers fundamentally.

Yeah, who is I blame I blame the universities and large part for this the activist disciplines, but that's only a partial answer because the universities are also responding to legislation like Title IX so and And so, and so they've been driven into, they've explained Title IX for people who started Title IX. Title IX originally was just a piece of legislation that insured that women would have equal access to sports events and so forth at the universities. That's what it was designed for, but it's become this umbrella legislation that pushes equality of outcome, essentially, across every possible dimension in the universities. And it's been used as a weapon by the radical left, but some of that's driven by legislative necessity. What's happening, the reason that I think this is coming from the universities is because I don't think that this could, well, there's all these activists' disciplines that are essentially subsidized by too high tuition fees and also by state funding and they've produced an entire substructure of activists and those activists are doing everything they can to lay out the theoretical structure for the radical left and that's a That's a structure that involves there's buzzwords, right? Diversity is one, but that means diversity by race and ethnicity and sexual preference, for example, as if those have anything to do with genuine diversity of ideation and they don't. And there's no evidence that they do inclusivity. I'm never even sure what that means. Equity. which is a marker for what would you call it? It's a code word in some sense for equality of outcome, which is an absolutely deadly doctrine. I think of all the mistakes that the radical left are making and the moderate left for not calling them out on it. The equity doctrine is at the top of the list. And then there's other associated things like white privilege. That's a good one. And systemic bias, which is a It's an absolute embarrassment from the perspective of a reasonable academic psychologist because psychological tests have been used to prove that there's this implicit bias that lurks everywhere. And the tests aren't reliable and valid enough to make that claim. That's even the people who've made the tests, the implicit association test, have admitted except for Mauser and Bonnishy, who's the chairman of the Department of Psychology at Harvard. They've admitted that the tests aren't reliable and valid enough to be used for the purposes there have been using for and there's also no evidence at all that these unconscious buying bias retraining seminars have any effect whatsoever that's positive. It's all nonsense pushed by this ideological what four minations of the radical left.

Well, I think that, well, that I think that happens. I mean, I certainly believe that there's space and necessity for a constant dialogue between the left and the right. This is also something that I've been developing more particularly during these lectures. So I'm going to lay out a couple of propositions. So imagine that you have to move forward in the world. You have to do things. And the reason you have to do things is because, well, if you just sit there and don't do anything, then you suffer and die. So that isn't an option. You have to move forward. You have to move forward towards valued things. So you have to have value hierarchy. It has to be hierarchy because one thing has to be more important than another, or you can't do anything, right? You're too split with your choices. So you have to do things. You have to value. You have to value some things more than others. Then you have to act out what you value in the social environment. because you're a social creature and you're not going to do things alone. Then as soon as you start to act out things of value in the social environment, you inevitably produce a hierarchy. And the reason you do that is because no matter what you're acting out, some people are way better at than others. And it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if it's basketball or hockey or plumbing or law. It doesn't matter. As soon as there's something valuable and you're doing it collectively, there's a hierarchy. Okay, so then what happens? Well, the hierarchy can get corrupt and rigid and then it stops rewarding competence and it starts rewarding criminality and power. And so there's always the danger of the hierarchy will become corrupt. The right wingers say, we really need the hierarchies and we should abide by them. That's sort of the motif of patriotism and positive group identity. And the left wingers say, yeah, but wait a second. There's a problem here. A, your hierarchy can get corrupt and might. And B, because some people are way better at it than others, you're going to produce a bunch of dispossessed people at the bottom. And that's not only good, not only not good for the dispossessed people, it actually threatens the whole hierarchy, so you have to be careful. You have to attend to the widows and the children, let's say. The widows and the orphans. Okay, and so now you can think about that as an eternal problem. You can't do without hierarchies. But, and that's the right wing claim in some sense. You can't do without hierarchies, and they're valuable. But, they're also prone to corruption, and they dispossess people. Okay, so now that's an eternal problem. The question is what you do about it, and answer to that is, there's no final answer to the problem. So what you have to do is you have to have left wing, and you have to have a right wing, and they have to talk all the time about whether the hierarchy is healthy, and whether not it's dispossessing too many people. And then the problem with that is that discussion can go too far. Because the right wingers can say hierarchy, uber all is, right? That we, the state is correct and everything's right. And so that's the right wing to tell it, Terry and Types. And the left can say, we'll flatten everything so there's no inequality. And so both left and the right can go too far. Now, the problem is we know how to define, I think one of the problems is we know how to define when the right goes too far. I think we learned that after World War II. I think if you're making claims of ethnic or racial superiority, you get to be put in a box and put off the shelf. You're not in the dialogue anymore. It's obvious that the left can go too far, even though there are necessary participants in the discussion, but we don't know how to define when they've gone too far. No, and you might think, well, that's the moderate leftists problem. It's their moral responsibility to dissociate themselves from the radicals, just as it's the moral responsibility of reasonable conservatives to dissociate themselves from the birch, John Birch, and Ku Klux Klantypes. That's a very important point. but but the problem but it isn't just the moderate left's problem because even the people on the right don't know what to point to when they say no you've gone too far as a leftist now I've tried to it's complicated because I think it's it might be more than one policy I think the really deadly leftist presumption is equality of outcome I think as soon as you start talking about equality of outcome you should be putting a box and put off the shelf But it isn't obvious. Why? That doesn't sound like white people overall. It doesn't have the same gutterl punch that the excess of the right has. Well, you're for equality of outcome. Why is that bad? Well, it's bad because when you play it out in society and there's endless evidence for this. It's an instantaneously murderous doctrine. And I think it's because it shifts so quickly into a victim, victimizer narrative. I've had a great opportunity in the last month and a half. I got asked to write the preface to the 50th anniversary edition of Solgenitz and School Igar Capallagal. And so I've been writing that. And one of the things Solgenitz and did, which was one of the things, one of the things that made that book arguably the greatest work of nonfiction of the 20th century. It's in the top 10 anyways. It was to point out very clearly that the excesses of the Russian Revolution started right away. It wasn't that Lenin was a pretty good guy and then Stalin came in and corrupted everything. It was like Lenin was not a pretty good guy. The Revolution got bloody really fast. And what seemed to happen, so imagine you started to divide the world up into oppressor and oppressed. Right, and you're going to do something about the oppressors. The problem is is that you can define people multiple ways. This is the intersectionality problem. And almost everybody can be defined in terms of their group identity in some way that makes them an oppressor. So like if you're a black man, well, you could argue that you're oppressed because you're black, but what about the fact that you're a man? And so does that make you an oppressor or someone who's oppressed? And the answer is, as the revolution progresses, if there's any dimension along which you can be categorized as oppressor, you end up dead. And so that's part of the pathology of the equality of a woman.

You end up rounded up, you end up being put into the oppressor camp.

Well, that's not just, that's not just, that's not imprisoned.

And in Mao's China, it might have approximated 100 million. That's just the internal repression. And so what seems to happen is, as soon as you decide that the hierarchy is unfair because there are oppressors in oppressed, then you can go after the oppressors with moral virtue. But the problem is, there's almost no limit to the number of ways that you can categorize someone as an oppressor. The category just starts to expand. Like the communist killed all the socialists. They killed all the religious people. They killed most of the students. They killed all the productive farmers. And they killed the productive farmers because they owned land, you know, and maybe little house and a few cows, you know, I mean, to be a successful farmer in Russia at the turn of the 20th century didn't mean you were rich, right? It just meant you weren't starving. It's like they killed all those people because they were oppressors because they had more than someone else.

Yes. Yes. Yes. And the definition kept slipping because, well, look, look even now. It's like, well, let's say we rally against the 1%. You know, and those would be the money owners. Let's say. It's like, okay, who's in that group? Well, everybody in North America is in that group. worldwide.

Right. Right. So does that make all of us oppressors?

Right. Right. And also by historical standards. And so the problem is the problem with the oppressor will press narrative is that you can multiply the oppressors endlessly. And there's no end to going after them.

Well, and you also see the interesting thing, too, is that this is complicated. So I've been thinking about this proclivity of the left to destroy members of the moderate left. It's like the game part of the game is that's being played as far as I can tell. The ideologically pathological game is I'm more virtuous than you. Now, look, if you're on the radical left and you say, well, you're more virtuous than a right winger, it's like, well, who cares? That's obvious because the right wingers are pathological. So being more virtuous than them, that's not much of an attainment. But if I have my moderate leftist compatriots standing right beside me, and he's pretty damn virtuous, but I'm even more virtuous than him. Then that's a real, that's a real attainment on my part. It's a moral attainment with no effort on my part. If I can figure out some way of classifying that previously virtuous person, as an oppressor, along some dimension, then all of a sudden I get an increment my moral virtue. And that happened all the time in these leftist revolutions run a mock. That was just a constant feature. So it's not good. It's not good.

Well, I think it's the dispossessed issue again. So imagine that We make these hierarchies and their hierarchies that are devoted towards a goal and that the sum total of all those hierarchies is something like the patriarchy. Even though I hate that word and I don't like that word at all, but that's what we're speaking within the confines of that theory.

Well, the patriarchy is the sum total of all Western hierarchies, let's say. It's the radical leftist vision of the sum total of all Western hierarchies.

Well, that's the theory is that it's male dominated, and you know, what is a patriarchy is a male dominated word. Well, and it's a funny thing because of course there's lots of elements, there's lots of sub-eliments of the patriarchy that aren't male dominated. So health care, for example, universities, the education system in general, there's lots of places where these sub-eliments are female dominated.

Well, it's a good question, Joe. I don't know what happens. If you have a sub-aliment of the patriarchy that's dominated by women, is that still the patriarchy? It's like the structure still intact. It's still performing the same function. Well, now the women are running it. Well, is that the patriarchy? And the answer to that is, well, we're all vague about what the definition is, so we don't need to address that issue.

Yeah, so I guess we could say, well, the patriarchy is all those elements of hierarchical structure that are still dominated by men, law enforcement, militant, male, mostly male. Right, but it's a peculiar definition, because it means you have to fractionate the patriarchy into pieces. You can no longer talk about it as uniform structure. If you're going to take out all those pieces that are dominated by women, say, well, that's not the patriarchy. But the thing is is that the whole concept is so we'll define that it's that it regards description. But so is you power though, right? I mean, well, that's that's the other thing. That's the claim. The other claim is that all hierarchies are predicated on power, which is a claim that's absolutely appalling. It's like plumbers. They part of the higher career hierarchy. You've got roaming bands of armed, aggressive tyrannical plumbers coming to your door saying, use our service or else. If that's not how it works. You go look when you're going looking for a plumber, you go look for a massage therapist, you look or a surgeon for that matter, or a lawyer. You go look for the person who's most competent. And one of the things the left can't tolerate is the idea that hierarchies are predicated in part, even, on competence, which they clearly are. The best predictors for success in Western hierarchies are intelligence and conscientiousness. Those are the best psychological predictors of success. They only account for about a third of the variation in success, maybe a third is probably about right, so there's still lots of room for randomness and even for systemic discrimination, but the notion that are our systems aren't predicated in part on competence is clearly wrong. Now you asked a question about the left is like why are the left always on the side of the people who don't fit in, let's say, or don't fit so easily at a night. I think that is a matter of the consequence of hierarchical structures is that so imagine in every hierarchy there are some people who don't do very well in any given hierarchy. Then imagine a Then imagine across all the hierarchies that there's a subset of people who are very likely to not do well in any of them. So you might say, well, they're systemically discriminated against. The left would be on their side because they're on the side, even temperamentally, of the people who are dispossessed. And the thing about that is that it's valid. Look, we need a spokesperson politically for the dispossessed. That's what the Democratic Party used to do when they worked for the working class. is the working class needed to political voice. It's like, okay, that's the Democrats. Well, why did they need a political voice? Well, to keep the hierarchy from degenerating into rigid tyranny, it's part of the political discussion. But now, the problem is, and the problem with the left is that, well, what's the hierarchy? It's a tyrannical patriarchy. It's like, no, it's not. It's partly corrupt, like every system. But it's less corrupt than most systems, and there's a lot of elements of it that are devoted towards self-improvement and self-monitoring. You have to be a little nuanced and subtle about these sorts of things. And you can't throw the baby out with the bath water, and the leftist rhetoric has got so intense that the idea is, and people believe this, while the world is going to hell in a handbasket, everything is getting worse in all possible ways, and their systemic racism everywhere, and it's utterly unfair, and it should be torn down and rebuilt. It's like, no, it's actually functioning unbelievably well, even though it still has its problems. You know, and there's a big difference between saying, there's systemic racism everywhere. And the reason that there isn't perfectly equal outcomes is because of prejudice. And saying, no, no, look, the system is functioning. Let's say at 75%. It's doing all right. It's got some problems, including systemic prejudice, which hopefully will work themselves out across time, and which show every bit of evidence of doing so. And so we don't need a radical solution. One of the things I've started to do with my Twitter account is to tweet out Good, non-nive news. Because one of the things that's happening in the world and there's been half a dozen books on this or more written in the last five years by credible people is that the distribution of the idea of individual sovereignty and property rights and free market economies, et cetera, out into the rest of the world is making the non-Western world. It's making the non-Western world rich really, really, really fast. So between 2000 and 2012, the rate of absolute poverty in the world fell by half. Half, it was the fastest period of economic development in human history. We beat the optimistic UN target by three years, staggering. You know, the rates of child mortality in Africa are now lower than they were in Europe in 1950. The fastest growing economies in the world are in sub-Saharan Africa. Millions of people, millions of people, a month, are getting access to this incredible technology that's embodied in cell phones. Right? People have access to fresh water like they've never had access before. The kids are getting immunized at a rate that's unprecedented. And yet we have this idea that's become rampant in the west that there's something ultimately corrupt about the patriarchal tyranny and that it has to be dismantled right down to its core. and a lot of that's being taught by the activist disciplines and universities and I just don't get it, it's not acceptable.

Right? And I also don't even think you can do it in principle because if you accept the proposition, the propositions I laid out, which is you have to pursue things of value. And if you pursue things in a social space, so you do it cooperatively and competitively, you do it with other people, then you're going to produce differential outcome because people will be differently good at it. Yes. It was like, okay, you don't believe that? It's like, okay, do you listen to random selections of music online? Or do you do what everyone else does? You go for the one tenth of one percent of songwriters, and you only listen to them. You only listen to the only read the productions of one tenth of one percent of writers. You only listen to the podcasts of one tenth of one percent of podcast broadcasters. When you watch sports on TV, you only watch the athletic contributions of one tenth of one percent of athletes. So like, where's the equality, exactly? Where's that in your life? You people who are pushing for equality of outcome. You manifest that in anything you do. You don't. You're unbelievably selective. Just like everyone else. And the reason you're selective is because there are things that are happening that need to happen or that are entertaining and interesting. And you want the best in all of those realms. That's how it works. And there is a best. That's the other thing that's so painful. And that actually is painful. This episode is brought to you by Rocket Money.

One way to not do very well in any hierarchy is to have a low IQ. And so IQ is normally distributed. And if you have an IQ of less than 85, it's hard for you to read well enough to follow instructions. That's about 10% of the population might even be higher than that. Okay, so given that lack, how are you going to compete? And answer is, you're not. because low IQ is a good predictor of poverty. Now, they spiral because, you know, if you're, if you're cognitively gifted, then And you have children, they're going to be in a less enriched environment. These things spiral, but you still have the essential problem. That's the essential problem of the dispossessed. It's like hierarchies are complex tools to attain necessary goals, but they dispossess people. What do we do with the people that they dispossess? The answer is, we don't know. So we have to talk about it constantly to figure out how to solve it, because it's an ongoing problem that transforms, and that's the reason the political dialogue is necessary. And then the danger is is that the political dialogue will polarize into the radical left, no hierarchies whatsoever, or the radical right, our hierarchies 100% right at all costs. And so those are the, we have the eternal problem and those are the two poles that we have to negotiate between.

Well, you can't have a soccer game without keeping score.

It's not a soccer game anymore. It's something else.

Yes, absolutely. And I think that's how it leads itself out temperamentally.

Yes. Yes. And it's well, and the radical left is is compassion going mad, although it's also envy. Let's not forget about that. And well, absolutely.

One reason to stand up for the dispossessed is because you're empathetic, you know, and empathy is not an automatic good. This is something we make a big mistake about. We think, well, I am feeling sorry for you, therefore I'm good. It's like, no, I might be feeling too sorry for you. I might not be demanding enough of you. So, and that's the terrible devouring mother, you know, from a psychoanalytic perspective. Well, everything you do dear is okay. It's like, no, it's not. Right. So, one of the things that John P. Ajay, the developmental psychologist, he was very interested in figuring out a way out of this, and it's very much relevant to your concept, your talk about athletics. Okay, so imagine this, because this is also something that points the way to a proper morality, which was actually something that John P. H.A. was very concerned about. He wanted to reconcile the distinction between religion and science. That's actually what drove him. Even though he was, people don't know that, he was arguably the world's greatest developmental psychologist. So here's the idea you know how you tell your kid to be a good sport You say don't it doesn't matter whether you win it lose it matters how you play the game Okay, so I've been unpacking that in my lectures because it's really really complicated It's like you tell your kid that and they look at you and they think Well, what do you mean by that? Aren't I supposed to try to win? It's a soccer game. I'm supposed to win. And you say, well, yeah, you're supposed to win, but it doesn't matter whether you win or lose, it matters how you play the game. You know that that's right, but you don't know how to explain it to your kid. You say, well, you want to be a good sport. Okay, so imagine this. This is how it works. And this is crucially important. So, first of all, life is not a game. Even a game is not a game. because a game is most of the time, a game is the beginning of a series of games. So let's say that you're on a soccer team. Well, there's a winning the game, but the game isn't the issue. The game is the whole series of games, so maybe the game is winning the championship, and winning the championship and winning ad game are not the same thing. And the reason for that is, well, maybe if you want to win a game, the best thing to do is to let your start player make all the moves. But if you want to win a championship, maybe the best thing is for your start player to do everything he or she possibly can to develop all the other team members. That's a different strategy and the reason it's different is because it iterates across time. Okay, so I'll tell you a quick story. So when my kid was playing hockey when he was about 12 or so he was in the championship game, just at a local arena, you know, and it was really fun to watch. The teams were pretty equal, which is something that you want so that everybody can expand their skills well their playing and it was like five seconds to to the end of the game and the other team made a breakway and came down the guy came down nice and scored it was beautiful goal and it was four three and that was the end of it right and all my kids team there is the kid who is the star and he was a pretty good hockey player He came off dice and he was very annoyed about what had happened. He smashed his stick on the cement and was complaining about the referee and acting as if he'd been robbed and his father came up and instead of saying, get your act together kid, that's no way to display yourself after a loss. He said, oh yeah man, you were robbed that the referees didn't refrate and you played the best and you should have won and I thought you absolute son of a bitch. You're ruining your son and then the question is why? Because his son was the star and was trying to win. Why was he ruining his son? Well, you're trying to train your son not to win the game. You're trying to train your son to win the championship. And so that's a series of games. But then life isn't the championship. Life is a whole bunch of championships. It's a whole sequence of them. And so what you're actually trying to train your son to do is to be a contender in the entire series. And the way you do that is by helping him develop his character. And the character is actually the strategy that would enable him to win the largest number of games across the largest possible span of time. And one way you do that if you're a kid is like, well, what do you want to do with your kid? You don't want to teach him to win. You want to teach him to play well with others. And that's to be reciprocal. So that means to try to win, but also to pay attention to developing other people around him and not to put winning the game above everything at all times. So then he's fun to play with. And this is absolutely crucial. You can help your kid become fun to play with between the ages of two and the age of four. If your kid is fun to play with, then what happens? Kids line up to play with him. And adults line up to teach him. And if kids line up to play with him, then he'll have friends his whole life, and he'll be socialized, and he'll be invited to many games, some of which he'll win, all of which he'll be able to participate in. And if he's fun to play with, then adults will teach him things, and then he wins that life. And so when you say to your kid, it doesn't matter whether you win or lose, matters how you play the game, what you're saying is, don't forget, kid, that what you're trying to do here is to do well at life. And you need to practice the strategies that enable you to do well at life, well you're in any specific game. And you never want to compromise your ability to do well at life for the sake of winning a single game. And there's a deep ethic in that. And it's the ethic of reciprocity in games. Part of the reason that we're so obsessed with sports, is because we like to see that dramatized. You know, like the person we really admire as an athlete isn't only the person who wins. We don't like the narcissistic winners. They're winners, and that's a plus. But if they're narcissistic, they're not good team players. They're only out for themselves. Then we think, well, you're a winner in the narrow sense, but your character is suspect. You're no role model, even though you're a winner. And it's because we're looking for something deeper. We're looking for that, the manifestation of character that allows you to win across the set of possible games. And that's a real thing, that's a real ethic. It's a fundamental ethic.

honest enough about the circumstances to not cry foul when it's gone the other person's way yeah well that's part of resilience it's right like you're not gonna win it you're not going to you you're not gonna score on every shot right doesn't mean you shouldn't take the shots doesn't mean you shouldn't try to hit the goal but part of part of being able to continue to take shots is to have the strength of character to tolerate the fact that that's In that instance, you weren't on top.

Yeah, so why do you think it's more important in fights than it is in games?

So what do you think it is the damages of the fighter if he complains about losing? Why is that a mistake? Why do the fans respond so negatively to that?

Okay. So that's a great example. So let's imagine what does the person who loses something important with grace do? And now it's fairly straightforward. He accepts the defeat and thinks, okay, what is it that I have left to improve that will decrease the possibility of a similar defeat in the future? So what he's doing is because the great athlete and the great person is not only someone who's exceptionally skilled at what they do but who's trying to expand their skills at all times. And the attempt to expand their skills at all times is even more important than the fact that they're great to begin with because the trajectory is so important.

Yes, and so part of that is the skill because they put in the practice, but part of that also is the willingness to push the skill farther into new domains of development with each action. And that's really what people like to watch, right? They don't like to watch a perfect athletic performance. They like to watch a perfect athletic performance that's pushed into the domain of new risk. They want to see both at the same time. You're really good at what you do and you're getting better. Okay, so you lose a match, which is not any indication that you're not good at what you do. You might not be as good as the person who beat you. But if you lose the match and then wine, what you've done is sacrifice the higher order principle of constant improvement of your own skills. Because you should be analyzing the loss and saying, the reason I lost in so far as it's relevant to this particular time and place is the insufficiency that I manifested that defeated me. And I need to track those insufficiency so that I can rectify them in the future. And if I'm blaming it on you or the referees or the situation, then I'm not taking responsibility and I'm not pushing myself forward. And so then you also take the meaning out of it. One of the things I've been doing on my tour People are criticizing me to some degree for saying things to people that are obvious. Well, first of all, it's not like I didn't bloody well know they were obvious when I wrote those things. Well, my book, for example, stand up straight with your shoulders back, treat yourself like you're someone responsible for helping. It's like, I know perfectly well that those can be read as clichés. The question is, cliché, let's say, is something that's so true that it's become, that it's widely accepted by everyone. Well, but we don't know why it's true anymore. And so this issue, the issue that we're talking about here, the issue of being a good sport, we need to figure out why that's true. And the reason that it's true is that you're trying to push your development farther than you've already developed at every point in time. And then that's the proper more latitude. When you see an athletic performance, where someone is pushing themselves beyond what they are, you see someone dramatizing the process of proper adaptation. It isn't the skill itself, it's the extension of the skill. And when you see someone acting like a bad sport, then they're sacrificing that. And so they're sacrificing the higher for the lower, and no one likes that. In the fights, it's got to be see the question is that's the thing I can't quite figure out is why that would be even exaggerated in the fight situation and you said it's because the stakes are so high yeah the consequences of victory or defeat they're just so much greater there's

So the more extreme victories and more extreme defeats are the morality that's associated with defeat is more extreme. Exactly. Because there's more on the line.

So my book, Rule Four, this is 12. This is from 12 rules for life. Rule four is compare yourself to who you were yesterday not to who someone else is today. Yes. Because you need to be, you need to have a hierarchy of improvement. You need to be aiming for something. And that means you're going to be lesser than people who've always already attained along that dimension.

And that can give rise to envy. So the question is, who should you defeat in the final analysis? And the answer is, you should defeat your former self. You should be constantly trying to do that. And you're the right control for yourself, too, because you're the one who's had all your advantages and disadvantages. And so if you want to compete fairly with someone, then you should be competing with you. And it is the case. And this is what we were talking about, too, with regards to the self improvement of the fighter. Is, well, if you're improving yourself, then what you are doing is competing with your lesser self. And then you might also ask, well, what is that lesser self? And that lesser self would be resentful and bitter and aggressive and vengeance-seeking and all of those things that go along with having a negative moral character. And those are things that interfere with your ability to progress as you move forward through life. So it's very necessary to understand that this is why, you know, I've been stressing this idea of personal responsibility. It's like, well, personal responsibility is to compete with yourself is to be slightly better than yourself the next day. And it better in some way that you can actually manage. And that's humility. It's right. Like, well, I'm a flawed person. And I've got all my problems. Could I be as good as person X? It's like not right question. The right question is, could you be slightly better tomorrow than you're currently flawed self? And the answer to that is, If you have enough humility to set the bar properly low, then you could be better tomorrow than you are today. Because what you also have to do is you have to say, well, here's all my flaws. And my insufficient season, the best that someone that flawed and insufficient could do to improve and actually do it is this, and that's not worth going out in the street and celebrating with placards. It's like, well, this is why I tell people to clean the room. It's not going to brag to someone that you did that, but someone as insufficient as you might be able to manage it. And that means you actually are on the pathway to self-improvement and you're transcending your former self. And you might say, well, what's the right way of being in the world if there is such a thing? And it's not acting according to a set of rules. It's attempting continually to transcend the flawed thing that you currently are. And what's so interesting about that is that the meaning in life is to be found in that pursuit. So I've been laying that out in these discussions too because it's said, well, the fundamental issue is that life is tragic and difficult. Very tragic and difficult for everyone. And it's also tainted by malevolutes because no matter how Things are tragic and difficult, but there's always some stupid thing that you could do or someone else could do that could make it even worse than it has to be. And so that's life. And you need an antidote to that because that can embed or you constant contact with that. Just the tragedy, but the tragedy combined with betrayal and malevolence. That makes it even worse. especially if it's self-induced. Okay, so you need something to set against that, so you don't get better and resentful. Well, what do you set against that? Doing something worthwhile by your own definition, say, you need some reason to get the hell out of bed on a terrible day, because you've got something good to do. Well, what's the best thing you can do? Transcend your current wretched and miserable self. There's meaning to be found in that and real respawn. And that's a meaning that's associated with responsibility. One of the things that I've been trying to lay out clearly is that Life is hard. It's tainted by malevolence and betrayal. That can make you bitter. You need a meaning to offset that. Where's the meaning to be found? not in rights, not in impulsive pleasure, but in responsibility. You take responsibility for yourself. So you take care of yourself. If you're good at it, you have some excess left over to take care of your damn family. If you're good at both of those, then you have some excess left over to take care of your community. Those are heavy burdens. You pick up the burdens. You find that's meaningful. The best way to pick up the burden is to continually improve yourself. And that's where the meaning is to be found. And so that meaning is in the continual self-transcendence. And that's letting your old self die.

New self be reborn. You did you watch when we were kings? That's an amazing amazing amazing movie right at the end of it so Ellie defeats Fraser basically by letting him defeat himself right because Fraser is angry and he's got a chip on his shoulder and he doesn't conduct the fight properly so he exhausts himself chasing Ellie and Ellie is basically just trained himself to take the damn blows, right? And to wear Fraser out, that's his plan. Then right at the end of the movie, he knocks Fraser down. And it's pretty much the end of the fight, but Fraser sort of struggles to his feet. He's just getting up off the mat, and Ellie's got his hand pulled back to just nail him, because he's completely laid open. And he puts his gloves down and turns away. That's the end of the fight. And Fraser said, and this is true, as far as I know, that that fight tamed him. Like Frazier had a big chip on his shoulder and he was kind of a dreadful guy up till that fight. And afterwards he was affable and he was civilized, Ellie civilized. And so that gesture that Ellie made was that great gesture because he could have flattened him right and he had every reason to man he got he got he got taken apart a lead took punches like mad in that fight and then in the final analysis when he had phrased your down and he was struggling to his feet he just let him go man nobility of character right there something impressive to behold so

No, I don't think so, because well, it depends on how much time you have to outline the ideas, but you know what, because even if things are going really well for you now, there's going to be a time in the future where things are rough, you know, you're going to be ill. Family members going to be ill. A dream is going to fall apart. You're going to be uncertain about your employment status like the flood is coming. The apocalypse is coming. It's always the case in life. And you have to be prepared for it. And the question is how to prepare for it. And the answer to that is to find a way of being that works even under the direst of circumstances. That's the issue. And so you outline, I mean, I am pessimistic about this in my approach in some sense because when I'm talking to my audiences in the same thing happens and happening in my book maps of meaning and in 12 rules for life, I'm laying out the worst case scenario. That's sort of like hell. It's things are going really badly for you. And there's just chance associated with that sometimes. And you and the people around you are doing stupid things to make it worse. It's like, OK, what have you got under those circumstances? You've got the possibility to slowly raise yourself out of the Maya. You've got the possibility to do just what the fighter does when he's defeated, which is to say, well, regardless of the circumstances that might have led to my defeat. Even if there were errors on the part of the referee, this is no time to wind about it. This is a time to take stock of what I did wrong so that I could improve it into the future. And that's the right attitude. You know, in the Old Testament, one of the things that's really interesting about the Old Testament stories is in the Old Testament, the Jews keep getting wall up by God. It's like, They struggle up and make an empire and then they just get walloped and then it's all crushed and they're out of it for generations and then they struggle back up and make an empire and then they get demolished again and it happens over and over and over and the attitude of the Old Testament Hebrews is we must have made a mistake. It's never to shake their fist at the sky and curse fate. It's never that. The pre-supposition is if things aren't working out, it's my fault. And that's a hell of a presupposition. And you might say, well, of course, you know, it's that that underestimates the degree to which there's systemic oppression, et cetera, et cetera, and the vagaries of fate. It's like it doesn't underestimate it. It's not the point. The point is your best strategic position is how my insufficient and how can I rectify that? That's what you've got. And the thing is, you are insufficient. and you could rectify it. Both of those are within your grasp.

Well, let's say you've got a kid and you want the kid to improve. You don't set them a bar that's so high that it's impossible for them to attain it. You take a look at the kid and you think, okay, this kid's got this range of skill. Here's a challenge we can throw at him or her that exceeds their current level of skill, but gives them a reasonable probability of success. And so like I'm saying it tongue and cheek to some degree, you know, it's like, but if you're, but I'm doing it as a need to humility, it's like, well, I don't know how to start improving my life. Someone might say that. And I would say, well, you're not even low enough. There's something you could do that you are regarding as trivial. that you could do that you would do that would result in an actual improvement but it's not a big enough improvement for you so you won't lower yourself enough to take the opportunity incremental steps yes and so this is also what is achieved through exercise it's one of the most important Well, what do you do when you go and lift weights? If you have a bench press before you don't put 400 pounds on the damn bar and drop the bar through your skull, you know, you think, look, when I started working out when I was a kid, I was I was weighed about 130 pounds and I was six foot one. So thin kid and I smoked a lot. I wasn't in good shape. I wasn't a good physical shape. And I went to the gym and it was bloody embarrassing. You know, people would come over and help me with the goddamn weights. Here's how you're supposed to use this. You know, it was humiliating. And maybe I was pressing 65 pounds or something at that point. You know, but what am I going to do? I'm going to lift up 150 pounds and injure myself right off the bat. No, I had to go in there and strip down and put my skinny god damn self in front of the mirror and think, son of a bitch, there's all these monsters in the gym who've been lifting weights for 10 years, and I'm struggling to get 50 pounds off the bar. Tough luck for me, but I could lift 50 pounds, and it wasn't very long until I could lift 75. Well, you know how it goes? But, and I never injured myself when I was weightlifting. And the reason for that was I never pushed myself past where I knew I could go. And I pushed myself a lot. You know, I gained 35 pounds of muscle in about three years in university. I kind of had to quit because I was eating so God damn much. I couldn't stand it. I was eating like six meals a day. It was just taken up too much time. But there's a humility in determining what it is that the wretched creature that you are can actually manage, aim low, and I don't mean don't aim, and I don't mean don't aim up. But you have to accept the fact that you can set yourself a goal that you can attain, and there's not going to be much glory in it to begin with. Because if you're not in very good shape, the goal that you could attain tomorrow isn't very glorious. But it's a hell of a lot better than nothing, and it beats the hell out of bitterness, and it's way better than blaming someone else. It's way less dangerous. And you could do it. And what's cool about it? There's a statement in the New Testament. It's called the Matthew Principle. Any economists use it to describe how the economy and the world works. To those who have everything more will be given. From those who have nothing, everything will be taken. It's like what's very pessimistic in some sense, because it means that as you start to fail, you fail more and more rapidly. But it also means that as you start to succeed, you succeed more and more rapidly. And so you take an incremental step and, well, now you can lift 55 pounds instead of 52.5 pounds. You think, well, what the hell is that? It's like it's one step on a very long journey. And so it starts to compound on you. So a small step today means puts you in a position to take a slightly bigger step the next day. And then that puts you in a position to take a slightly bigger step the next day. And you do that for two or three years, man, you're starting to stride. You know, when I have so many people coming up to me now, this is one of the things that so insanely fun about this tour, which is so positive, it brings me to tears regularly. It's mind boggling. Because people come up to me, and this is happening wherever I go now, and they say, They're very polite when they come and talk to me. You know when they're always apologetic for interrupting and so it's never it's never narcissistic and it's never annoying I'm really happy to see people and they come up to me and they say well I know you've heard this lots of times before but I've really I've really been putting my life together since I've been watching your lectures Then they tell me a story about where they were in some dark place, too much alcohol, too much drugs, not getting along with her father, not getting along with her mother, not having a vision for the life, being nihilistic, playing too many video games, you know, like being suicidal, that happens a lot, having post-traumatic stress disorder sometimes is a consequence of combat. Whatever little slice of hell they were occupied. They say, look, I've been listening to your lectures and I've been developing a vision for my life and I've been trying to take responsibility and I've been trying to tell the truth and things are way better. And so that's absolutely perfect. It's the right way forward as far as I'm concerned. And those are people who they took stock of themselves. They said, I'm in a dark place. And I'm a dark person. And here's some things that this dark person in this dark place could do. Little things that they could actually do. I'll clean up my damn room. I'll make my bed. I've had, I don't know how many people have come and told me. It's so strange. He said, well, I started making my bed and that made all the difference. It's like, well, yeah, you decided to aim up, man. And the first concrete instantiation of that was that you made your bed. And you think, well, that's nothing heroic. It's like, no, but aim and up is heroic. That's something. And then lowering yourself to the point where you're not above the mess in your room. You're not super ordinate to that. You lower yourself so that you straighten up. You're grateful for what you have right in front of you and you take care of it and you put it in order. It's like, all of a sudden, things start to get better. And so wonderful to be doing this. tour because I see so that's what this tour has been about for me. It's not political. I never talked to people after the talks. For example, I talked to about 150 people in the night. We never talk about anything political. It's always this. I wasn't doing very well. I'm putting my life together. I'm getting along better with my father. I'm getting along better with my wife. I'm getting along better with my kids. I've got some meaning in my life. Thanks a lot. It's way better. It's like yes. That's

You're also told that you're okay the way you are. That's self-esteem. Yeah. You're okay the way you are. It's like, no you're not.

Well, that's it. You're a position and it's trajectory. Yes. Right. And when you say to someone, you're okay because of your position. That's not good enough because you have to say, well, wait a second, you need to trajectory and maybe you're okay if you're okay in your position and your trajectory. But the self-esteem movements and all of that will accept yourself the way you are. It's like, hmm, no, because you need a trajectory. And one of the things that I think, one of the reasons that audiences are responding to what I've been saying in my lectures and what I've been writing about is that I don't tell people that they're okay the way they are. Now, I say, no, no, you could be way more than you are. And they're relieved about that. You see, because if you're in a dark and terrible place, and someone says, you're okay the way you are, then you don't know what to do about that. It's right. No, I'm not. I'm having a terrible time, and I'm hopeless. You're okay the way you are. Well then what? That's it? That's it? That's where I am? And what do you want to tell a young person? You're 17. You're okay the way you are. It's like, no you're not. You've got 60 years to be better. And you could be way better. You could be incomparably better across multiple dimensions. And in pursuing that better, that's where you'll find the meaning in your life. And that will give you the antidote to the suffering.

That's why you have to import and pose order. People have asked me in my book why I wrote it as an antidote to chaos. There isn't anything technically wrong with chaos. Chaos is a place of great potential. The question is what's the proper balance between chaos and order? Um, while the answer is, look, when you're a kid, you're all potential. It's chaotic potential. It can manifest itself in any number of ways. And you maybe you don't want to give that up. So you're like Peter Pan, you want to be a kid forever because you don't want to give up the potential. And you look out in the world and all you see are Captain Hooks, you know, who've lost a hand who are chased by death because that's the clock in the crocodile. It's already got a taste of them. It's terrified by death and he's a tyrant. Why don't want to grow up to be that? So I won't be disciplined at all. Well, that's no good because the way the potential transforms itself into actuality is through discipline. And so then as you said, this is the trick though. You have to pick a path of discipline. Whether what path of discipline you have to pick is a different issue. So there could be a rule. The rule could be the rule might not be followed this rule. the rule might be you have to follow some rules so it's a matter rule and the matter rule is you have to discipline yourself and the issue is well how that's not really the relevant question you can pick a disciplinary path it's why often tell my clients especially young people they say well I don't know what to do it's like that's okay Nobody does. Go do something. Do the best thing that you can think of. Put the best plan you have into practice. It's not going to be perfect and it will change along the way, but it will change partly because you become disciplined pursuing the path and as you become disciplined you become wiser and as you become wiser you become able to formulate better and better plans. So you can start vaguely and confused and develop a plan that's not so great and you start to implement it and then you accrue incremental wisdom as you implement your flawed plan and that enables you to fix the plan. And so that's part of that process of incremental self improvement as well.

Imagine you only got a hundred, you only have a hundred thousand dollars to go buy a house. And so you go, look at this house and it's like Jesus, this house man, it's like it needs a lot of work. It's like, well, that's all you've got. While you're going to pretend that the house is okay the way it is, we're going to look for where it's rotten and where the plumbing doesn't work and where the stove doesn't work, you have to go and look and see where everything needs to be fixed and that's like that is harsh man. But and then in order to do that properly someone has to have taught you it's look you aren't your problems. Well you are, you're most fundamentally that which if it confronts its problems can solve them. And that's the hero myth in a nutshell, by the way, the hero is the person who confronts horrible chaotic potential and teams it and makes something of it, right? That's the fundamental human story. But the problem is is that you have to face what you don't want to face in order to fix it. And so you look at all the things about yourself that need to be burned off, that need to be dispensed with. And that man, especially at the beginning, especially if you're screwed up, that may be like 95% of you just has to go up in flames. And it's painful. Even some of that stuff that you have to burn off doesn't want to die, and it'll scream in agony while you're burning it off. It's not pleasant. But if you know that you're the thing that can transcend your problems most fundamentally, if you know you're the thing that if it faces the problems can transcend them, then you have the faith that would enable you to take stock of who you are.

Well, that's an interesting thing, too, because right there you've got a bit of a measurement system. We have this system set up online called the Future Authoring Program. We've implemented it, because we've tested it three times. We implemented that Mohawk College in Canada. We had people write about their ideal future and also to put in measurement strategies. It's like, OK, here's your ideal future. Here's how you're going to break it into goals. Here's how you're going to mark progress towards those goals because you've got to be playing a fair game with yourself, right? Because when you make progress, you want to reward yourself. So you have to identify what the progress is and you have to reward it. The consequence we had people write a future plan for only an hour when they came for their school orientation in the summer before going to it's a it's a community college and the it dropped the dropout rate among young men by 50% and it's yeah no kidding 50% yeah and what that meant was to me what that meant was just think about that what that means is that these kids being educated for 12 years and no one had ever sat them down and said okay what the hell are you doing and why And how are you going to get, like, where do you want to go? Why do you want to get there? How are you going to get there? How are you going to mark your progress? Have never walked them through that exercise. You walk people through that exercise just to get them to do that increases the probability that they'll stay on track by 50%.

Yeah, well, that's what partly what's so fun about doing this lecture to her because that's exactly what I'm talking to people about. One of the things I talk about is, well, why do you think? Why bother thinking? It's like, you think, well, that's obvious. It's like, no, actually, it's not so obvious. It's like the issue that I discuss with my students at university a lot is, well, why write a good essay? Why bother? Well, to get the grade. It's like, no, that's not why. And if you think that, well, that's better than not thinking that there's any reason for writing. But it's a bad reason. Why right? Well, writing is a form of thinking. It's actually the most demanding form of thinking I would say. There's other forms that are demanding. So how do you write a good essay? Pick a topic that matters to you. Because if you're not writing about something that matters to you, it's like you're not living something that's meaningful. It's wrong. You're not going to write a good essay because you're wrong right to begin with. It has to matter to you. Well, why does it matter? What does it mean that it matters? Well, it means that it's going to affect how you make decisions in your life. Something that matters affects how you make decisions in your life. Well, why does it matter how you make decisions in your life? Because if you make so stupid decisions, You're going to increase the sum total of suffering, a lot. You're going to do stupid things to yourself. You're going to do stupid things to other people. And you're not going to be as good a person as you could be. So not only will you do stupid and terrible things, but you won't have manifested the good in the world that you could have manifested. So that's the lack. So you're right in essay so that you can think and you think so that you can live properly. And so you write damn carefully. You make sure that every single bloody word is a word that you want to use. And you make sure the phrases that you put the words in are as solid as they can be. And you make sure the sentences are well constructed. And that they're organized into proper paragraphs. And the paragraphs are sequenced. And the content of the thing matters. And you put your soul into it. And you know when you've done that because it's gripping when you write. It's meaningfully engaging. And this is another thing that I've been sharing with my audiences. Meaning is actually an instinct. Like you think, okay, so we already decided that incremental self improvement is the proper route. Okay, so how do you know when you're incrementally self-improving? Properly in the answer is it's deeply engaging. It's deeply meaningful, and the reason for that is you're actually adapted neurologically to identify the pathway of maximal incremental improvement. That was a discovery conceptually by a guy named Vigotsky who was a Russian neuropsychologist who coined the term zone of proximal development. You hear now, and then people say they're in the zone. That's the zone of proximal development. And that's that place that you occupy when you're improving at the rate that's optimal to you. And your sense of intrinsic meaning signifies that. That's how your bloody brain is wired. And so then you might say, well, what's the antidote to the tragedy and malevolence of life? And the answer is to put yourself in the zone of proximal development because that's where the maximum meaning is. And that actually does prepare you for life. And so the question, why think is, well, you think before you act, and you act to put yourself in the zone of proximal development, and you do that to, as an antidote to the catastrophe of life? Well, that's the answer. And the thing that's cool about that, then this is a thing, part of what I've been telling people that's sort of novel is, well, where's the meaning? The meaning is in responsibility. You know, because people avoid response, that's Peter Panigan, avoid responsibility. It's just a burden. It's like, no, it's not. It is a burden, but voluntarily hoisted. It's the place of maximum meaning. And the more responsibility you take, the more meaning you have, and that's the antidote to the catastrophe of life. And everybody also knows this, because just look, it's so simple. When you use sick of yourself. Well, that's when you're being useless and irresponsible for yourself and for your family and for your community. You're not even taking care of yourself. Well, you can't sleep with a clean conscience unless you're psychopathic, if you're not taking care of yourself. And then when can you, when are you not awake in the morning and three in the morning, tearing yourself apart with a guilty conscience? It's when you've done something useful, at least for you, You know when you can say, oh well, check one on my side. You say, okay, so fine, you adopt a little responsibility for yourself and you can sleep with a clean conscience. What happens if you adopted full responsibility for yourself? And then for your family, lots of the people who are coming to talk to me say now, I've been really trying to put my family together. I've made that a goal. I'm trying to heal my family and bring it together. And it's working. So here's a story. I love this story, man. It just killed me. I was in LA at the Orphium. And you know, it's rough downtown in LA places around the Orphium, too. And Tammy and I my wife, because she's traveling with me. And it's a big help, by the way. we're wandering around downtown LA that morning after the talk and we're walking down the street and we're on streets we probably shouldn't have been on but in any case because what the hell do we know being stupid Canadians and so we're walking down the street and this car pulled up beside us and this kid hopped out and it's good looking latino kid twenty twenty one something like that he jumped over and he said it's all excited he said are you doctor Peterson said yeah yeah he said I'm really really happy to meet you. I've been watching your lectures for like a year and a half and I've been trying to put my life together and it's really working. I'm really doing way better. I really want it to thank you. And so it's lovely when you're walking down a kind of rough area and somebody pulls up beside you and they jump out of the car to tell you how much better their life is. That's a pretty good morning. And so but then that isn't all that happened. He ran back to his car. He said, wait a minute, wait a minute, went back to his car and he got out of his dad and They came over together and his dad was just smiling away like a real smile, you know? And so as the kid and they had their arms around each other and they said, look like we've really been working on our relationship for the last year and a half and it's gone just great. We want to thank you and the father said something like, I'm really happy that you got my son back to me. It's like, yes, that's what this bloody tour has been like. It's great. and everybody that's coming to these talks. That's what they're trying to do. You know, I go 3,000 people in each audience and what they're trying to do is figure out how can I take maximal responsibility for my own life? How can I ambute it with the meaning that helps me withstand tragedy and suffering? How can I be a better person? And wouldn't it be great if that was of optimal benefit to my family and the community? You get a very emotional about this. Well, it's something, Joe. Jesus, I've seen like 150,000 people in the last two months. You know, and this is what it's, well, you'll have a chance to talk to Ruben about this, too. This is what it's been like. It's so positive. I can't believe it. And it's just one person after another saying, like, look, I was having a rough time. I'm really happy that I've been encountering what you've been talking about. I've really been trying to put things together and it's really helping.

Well, and I've been thinking about that, too, because you know, like I said at the beginning, if you're surfing, you do want to take responsibility for the wave. You know, I mean, first of all, a lot of what I've been telling people are things that I've gleaned from the clinical literature. It's not like I'm coming up with this of my own accord, right? I'm transmitting information that I've learned from very, very wise people. And so there's that. But also, we don't want to underestimate the utility of the technology, right? Because we have this long-form technology now. And it's enabling us to have this discussion. And so we can get deeper into things publicly and socially than we were able to before. And I see this I see this as a manifestation of that. And I'm hoping too that maybe what's happening because we're going to have a lot of adaptation to do in the next 20 years as things change so rapidly we can hardly comprehend it. And hopefully the way we're going to be able to manage that is to think. And hopefully these long-form discussions will provide the public forum for us to actually think, to actually engage at a deep enough level so we'll be able to master the transformations. And I think that's possible. I knew part of the reason that I wrote this book and well part of the reason that I'd be doing what I've been doing for the last 30 years is because I really have believed since 1985, something like that, that the way out of political polarization, the way out of the excesses of the right and the left is through the individual. I think the West got that right. The fundamental unit of measurement is the individual. And the fundamental task of the individual is to engage in this process of humble self-improvement. I believe that's the case and that's where the meaning is and that's where the responsibility is and I think and I'm hoping that if enough people in the West and then and then the rest of the world for that matter but we're very polarized in the West right now if enough people take responsibility for getting their individual lives together then we'll get wise enough so we won't let this process of political polarization put us back to the same places that we went so many times in the 20th century I don't see another antidote for it. It's not political it's ethical

People who think the proper unit of analysis in the world is a, political and b, group oriented. The identity politics types don't like me at all, and they have every reason not to. because I'm not, I'm not a fan of identity politics.

There's other reasons. I mean, I came out against this bill in Canada bill C-16 that hypothetically purported to do nothing else, but to increase the domain of rights that were applied to transsexual people. But there was plenty more of that bail band. Let me tell you, and I read the policies that went along with it. And it was a compelled speech bill. And so I opposed it on the grounds that the politicians are not supposed to leap out of their proper domain and start to compel speech. It's not the same as forbidding hate speech. I think hate speech should be left to hell alone personally for all sorts of reasons. to compel the contents of speech as a whole new thing. It's never been done before in the history of British common law, English common law. And it's actually the Supreme Court in the 1940s and the US said that that was not to be allowed. And so it's a major transgression. And they said, while we're doing it for all the right reasons, it's like, no, no, you don't get it. You don't get to compel speech. I don't care what your reasons are. And why should I trust your damn reasons anyways? What makes you so saint-like? So that you can violate this fundamental principle, and I should assume that you're doing it for nothing but compassion, and that you're wise enough to manage that property. It's like, sorry, no, I read your policies. I see what you're up to. I don't like the collectivists. I think they're unbelievably dangerous, and I have reason to believe that. So I think that when push comes to shove if your unit of analysis is the group and your worldview is one group and its power claims against all other groups that that's not acceptable. It's tribalism of the worst form and it lead to nothing but mayhem and disaster. And part of the reason you're doing it isn't because you're compassionate because you're envious and you don't want to take responsibility for your own life and I'm calling you on it. And so you don't like me. So I must be an alt-right figure. I must be a Nazi saying your house needs a lot of work, man. There's a lot of rot in the floorboards. The plumbing is leaking. The water is coming in. You're not the sage and saint you think you are. There's so much work you have to do on yourself that it would damn near kill you to take a look at it.

Well, I think it's certainly the case that the vision that's being generated of me is that

Oh yeah, there's that too, but why is layers say there's well part of it's the political polarization You know at the moment we're viewing almost everything that happens in the world through a political lens at least the journalists at least first of all first of all I got it I got to make this clear First of all I've been treated well by lots of journalists really well Like the best journalists in Canada have been on my side since about two weeks after the Bill C-16 thing erupted. And those would be the journalists that have an independent voice and that have created their own following. And they're in a number of different media places. Mostly in print. And there's a coalition of newspapers in Canada, the post media group, 200 newspapers. They came out fully in support of my stance on Bill C-16. And so there's lots of times that I've been treated properly by journalists. There's a small number of journalists, very noisy, and a small number of activists, very well organized, who have been on my case right from the beginning. And those are people who are generally driven by a very radical, leftist, progressive agenda, and I am not on their side. I'm on their side as individuals. I'm on their side as people who could struggle forward, but the collectivist vision, it's deadly.

Monogamy, yeah, because polygamous society stand to become ultraviolet. And that's been known in the anthropological literature for a hundred years, and certainly leftist anthropologists were among those who discovered it. She knew the journalist knew perfectly well what I meant by enforcement on me.

It was also two minutes out of a two day conversation.

We just glance to, well, it's so, that was funny in some sense because my sense is if you want a pillory someone, you should attribute to them views that someone somewhere has had. And the implication of that part of the New York Times article was that I wanted to take new-bile young women at the point of a gun, under state enforcement, deliver them to useless men. It's like no one has ever believed that.

Well, there were, they just didn't make it into the piece.

Yeah, it's a real problem. That's a real problem because that's that that is so it's so ridiculous because an inaccurate definition of who you are one of the things I've said continually I mean this is on record in multiple places. It's like okay, so you're a young man and all the women are rejecting you Who's got the problem? It's not all the women That's a bad road to go down if all the women are rejecting you

Well, it's the solution to the, it's the solution to the relationship between men and women. Fundamentally, is monogamous social norm.

But they need to do that in the society where monogamy is the social norm.

Well, that was partly my point, although to the degree that we deviate from that, we tilt towards a more violent society. I was making a very minor point.

How's it going to help them? Well, because what happens is if a polygamous society develops, which is the alternative, then a small minority of men get all the women. That's what happens.

And also making the women unhappy, right? Because the women don't have any access to a genuine intimate one-to-one relationship over any long period of time.

Well, the only, I was making a minor point. The minor point was that one of the ways that societies around the world have figured out that you keep young male aggression under control is by enforcing monogamous standards, because it gives everyone a chance in some sense.

Yeah, well, you see this happening in universities where women outnumber men. So the men hypothetically have more sexual opportunity, but that isn't what happens. What happens is that a small minority of men have all the sexual opportunity, a fairly large minority of men don't. The women are unhappy because they can't find a committed relationship. It's bad for most of the men and the men who have all the sexual opportunity get cynical.

Well, I think the fundamental reason it's bad is because it's bad in the long run for children.

But that's the fundamental issue as far as I'm concerned. And I think it's the answer. Look, to give the journalist credit, that is the point she was making, you know, apart from pilloring me and and and and caricaturing my perspective, that was the point she was making. Well, first of all, I'm not in favor of unbridled hierarchies. I've already said that, you know, the proclivity of a hierarchy is that all the spoils go to the person at the top and that can destabilize the whole structure. So we have to have a dialogue about how to rectify that.

Well, I think you tilt the society so that it serves the interests of, well, that's a good question.

I know. That was her point, too. To the degree that she had a point, that was her point. Now, but it's not, it doesn't run contrary to my opinions that the issue of outcome has to be addressed. I already said there needs to be a reason for the left and the right. And then the problem with hierarchies is that they can get too steep and destabilize everything that does happen. Now, particularly happens in the sexual domain and there's plenty of anthropological evidence for that. But you still might say, well, who cares? Because the man who are winning should be allowed to win and the women should be allowed to choose. It's right. Yes, except that there's the problem of children, and so society steps in on behalf of the children, and you can say, well, lots of people don't want to have children, yes, and that's true and now that it used to be, although many of those people end up having children anyways, you know, the guys who sit down around all the time, so that doesn't circumvent the problem. But the issue here for me isn't the man or the women, it's the children. If we're trying to set up societies where the probability that children will be raised in something approximated and optimal environment is optimized. And that's going to mean sacrifice of opportunity and choice on the part of the adults. It's just necessary.

That's true. Well, that's why I also look, you see this. Women are hypergamous, which means they meet across and up dominant hierarchies. And so if you're a male who's successful in a given hierarchy, the probability that you're going to have additional mating opportunities is exceptionally high. It's an unbelievably good predictor of that.

Yeah, well, what women do is like, mate choices is a very difficult problem. So how do you solve it? Well, here's how women solve it. Throw them in and ring. Let them compete at whatever they're competing at. Assume that the man who wins is the best man, marry him. Yes. It's a brilliant solution. It's a market-oriented solution. It's actually the solution that appears to have driven our evolutionary departure from chimpanzees.

Well, the cost is the cost is polygamy. And so we rain that in within force monogamy.

I think so, because it looks like, and this is another point I was making that didn't get covered in the article, or the wrote about it, somewhat extensively on my blog, is that societies tilt towards monogamy across the world, as human universal. Now, that doesn't mean that people don't have polygamous or polyamorous tendencies, because they certainly do. And it's certainly also the case that one of the women, women, gerrymandered this system is that the number of women, children who are in a Say you're married and you have children with your husband, but you also have an affair. So you have a child by another man. That's more common than anyone suspected. So part of the way we weigh that women solve the problem that you're just describing. And I'm not saying anything for this or against this. This is a purely factual biological claim. Is they pick a monogamous marriage and they cheat with high status guys. Now, you know, obviously in the confines of the marriage, that's a terrible thing.

But it's common, but it's not the norm. Right. It's still the norm not to do that. The norm is fidelity.

Well, enforce monogamy is this. It's like, OK, so my son's getting married in September. And so let's say he comes to me in a year and he says, hey, Dad, guess what? I've had three affairs in the last year. And they've all been successful. I haven't got caught. Aren't I a good guy? What am I going to say to that? No. What the hell are you doing? That's not what you're supposed to be doing. That's enforced monogamy.

Yes, it's built deep into the cultural norms. And if that starts to destabilize, then there's trouble. And that doesn't mean that it's not prone to all the problems that you laid out. Look, there isn't a bigger problem than successful reproduction. It is the big problem and all of the solutions that we've generated for it are full of flaws. Like here's an example, the gender pay gap. Okay, there's no gender pay gap. There's a mother gap. There's other reasons too, but women really take a hit when they become mothers. Okay, that's unfair. Fair enough, man. What the hell are you going to do about it?

So it's about 10 reasons or 20 reasons for the gender pay gap. Right. One of them being motherhood, but there's a whole slew of them. But it's more dangerous jobs, men work outside, men are more likely to move. But it's never discussed. It's discussed. People don't like multivariate problems.

Yeah, they want them to be binary in the way they already understand. They want everything to fit their ideological lens and things are more complicated than that.

Warren Farrell's book on, he wrote a book called, Warren Farrell is the guy who's most, what would you call, being most pilloried for pointing out the real reasons for the gender pay gap. He wrote a book called, why man make more? Who do you write it for? His daughters, why? Because he wanted to help, now he obviously, he was doing it for public consumption as well. But one of the motivations was, well, man do make more. Well, why? And if women want to make more, well, could they learn from the men who make more? How to make more? And the answer is yes. The question is whether or not they'll do it. And the probable answer is most women won't. Because how much you make isn't the only hallmark of success in your life? It's like it's one measure. And it might be a measure that really competitive men compete for. And they do. And that's partly to provide access to increase mating opportunities. Because that's built into the structure. Something we never talk about either, although we could. So Warren wrote this to lay out all the reasons that men make more, but it was so that his daughters, at least in part, so that his daughters could figure out how to be socioeconomically successful. It's like, yeah, but that's not the only hallmark. How much socioeconomic success are you willing to sacrifice to spend time with your kids before they're three years old? Right. Well, the answer to that shouldn't be none, right? Because what makes, look, we already know this. For example, once you make enough money to keep the bill collectors at bay, So that's kind of lower upper working class, say something like even centrist working class. Keep the bill collectors at bay. Additional money doesn't improve your quality of life. Other things do. So maybe it's a rational response when you're like 30. See the irrational man. Here's the irrational man. Maybe they drive the world, but they're the irrational man. More success is always better along this unidimensional axis of achievement. Well, there's a tiny percentage of men who are hyper-competitive along those single axis of competition. And maybe they drive most things. They probably do. But that doesn't make them right. It also doesn't make them most people.

Well, happy is the whole different issue, right?

Yeah, well, domination, domination, power, but that's charisma prestige.

Yeah, well, often a flawed equation, you know, like, What happens, look, I worked in law firms with law firms for a very long period of time, and I worked for lots of high end women, lots of them. And they were like, they were usually extremely attractive, they were extremely intelligent, they were extremely driven, they were very, very conscientious. They varied in how agreeable they were somewhere disagreeable, litigator types, and somewhere more agreeable. They often had a harder time in the law firms, but the law firms lose all their women in the 30s. They all bail out at partner level. A lot of them. Well, Jesus, it's a huge percentage, and it isn't because the law firms don't want them. The law firms want them because you can't find people like that. They're really rare, especially if they're also rainmakers if they can bring in money. So the law firms bend themselves over backwards trying to keep the women. They can't keep them. Why? Well, the women decide that, oh, I'm working 18 hours a day. Flat out all the time, seven days a week. My husband makes a fair bit of money. If I made half as much money as I made, we'd still have plenty of money. Why am I working 18 hours a day? Well, that's not the question. The question is, why would anyone work 18 hours a day? That's the mystery. And the answer is, a small minority of men are driven to do that. And so they'll do that. No matter where you put these guys, that's what they do. Yes. Okay, but does that mean it's correct? Think there's something wrong with these women. They hit 30. They've hit partner. They've hit the pinnacle. I mean, they could keep going if they wanted to, but they've accomplished their goal. They've definitely shown man their bloody well in the game. And they wake up at 30 and they think, Wait a minute. I want to have a relationship, and also I want to have some time to put into that. I'd like to have kids, and I'd actually like to see my kids.

Well, it's partly to because I've made the case that there are differences between men and women. Yes. But like why that isn't a feminist case is beyond me. It's like no, they're exactly the same.

It's confusing. It's confusing. And then thing is the data in. So look. And people have accused me of pseudo science, you know, which I really think is quite comical, because the studies that I'm reporting aren't, who's accused you of pseudo science? Oh God, journalists, journalists of all stripes, especially when I talk about differences between men and women. It's like, oh, that's pseudo science. It's like, actually, no, it's not. It's bloody mainstream science, both biology and psychology. But why do they like to do that? Well, because it seems to be, there's a reason that goes along with the radical leftist agenda, that if there are that a world of equality of outcome could not be achieved, and that's the desirable world, if there are actually differences between people, actual differences, like they aren't just socioculturally constructed, so that you can gerryment it. There's also something as well. If you're really power mad, You want to believe that human beings are infinitely malleable because then you can mold them in whatever image you want. And if you say no, they actually have a character, right? There's something built in. Then that interferes with the totalitarian regime. But here's what's happened is like, look, we've got a good personality model. We've had it for about 40 years, something like that, the big five model, five dimensions of personality. And they were established statistically, atheoretically, by left-leaning psychologists. And I'm not saying that they're ideologically contaminated. But what I am saying is there's no evidence whatsoever that right wing leaning psychologists produced the big five because there are no right leaning psychologists. So enough of that. That isn't why the big five came up. Okay, so once you have a good personality model, you can say, okay, well, do men and women differ. And answer is, yeah, it turns out they do. There's quite a few differences, but the biggest ones are, women are more agreeable. So that's one of the traits, agreeableness, and it's the compassion, politeness dimension, and they're more prone to negative emotion. Anxiety and emotional pain. And that mirrors a psychiatric literature that shows worldwide that women are more likely to be diagnosed with depression and anxiety. Just like men are more likely to be imprisoned for anti-social behavior, which is the reflection of low-agrealness. This is true worldwide. okay so there's no evidence of any bias unless you say everything's biased everywhere in the world fine could be but we've also controlled for that so now there are personality differences between men and women now the first thing we might point out is they're not that big So if you draw a random woman and a random man out of the population, and you had to bet on who is most aggressive, least agreeable, and you bet on the woman, you'd be right 40% of the time. Which is actually quite a lot. You'd be right quite a lot. But if you take the 100 person who's most aggressive, at least agreeable. There's an overwhelming probability that there'll be male because the differences get more extreme at the ends of the distribution. People don't understand the statistics. You can have two populations that are quite similar and still have radically dissimilar outcomes if only the extremes matter. So like who are the most powerful physical fighters in the world? All of them. What does that mean that there are no women who can be the man in a fight? No. It also doesn't mean that there's plenty of women who are more aggressive than men. But if you take the most aggressive, physically powerful people, they're all men, all of them. Because they're like one in the thousand people or one in ten thousand people. So you can have walloping differences at the extremes despite most similarity at the middle. People don't understand that. But then the next thing is, okay, well, there are differences between men and women, personality wise, apart from the biological ones. Are those caused by cultural differences? Hey, turns out we can answer that. How? Ranc order countries by how egalitarian their social policies are. Does everyone agree? Yeah, yeah. The Scandinavians are at the top. Everyone agrees. Left right doesn't matter. Everyone agrees. It's like, okay, so you stack up the cultures by how egalitarian their social policies are. And then you look to see how big the differences are between men and women up that hierarchy of egalitarianism. And if as the societies become more egalitarian, the differences between men and women disappear, then it's sociocultural. That isn't what happened. What happened was, is that as the societies got more egalitarian, the differences between men and women got bigger, not smaller. It means the socio-cultural construct people, and I'm talking to you, socio-cultural construct people, you're wrong. You're wrong. You make the societies more egalitarian men and women get more different. Who makes the argument an opposition to this? All the social constructionists, all the radical left wingers, and what do they use as fact? They don't have facts, but then they criticize the whole idea of facts. Then they go after the whole idea of science as a Western patriarchal construct. What's their motivation? The motivation is that if people are different, then the quality of outcome isn't neither desirable nor achievable.

Well, part of it is, part of it is actual compassion. Look, round. It's not good that some people lose, and it's certainly not good that some losers lose all the time. Who wants that? You happy when you walk down the street and see homeless people? It's like, hey, look, the hierarchy's working. Look at these homeless people. No one's happy about that. Right, okay, so the fact of failure within a hierarchy of value is painful. And so to give the devil his due, you give the left, it's due just like you do the right, it's like, yeah, it's painful that hierarchy's produced dispossession. Bloody right, okay, what's the cure? Get rid of the hierarchy. Hey, well, wait a minute, man. You get rid of the hierarchy, get rid of the value structure. You get rid of the tools that allow us to generate absolute wealth and stop people from starving its catastrophe. okay so there's there's the problem you have to have the hierarchy but then also it isn't just compassion on the left it's envy it's like okay If I'm so, if I'm standing for the dispossessed, what makes me so sure that I'm not just standing against the successful. And maybe that's because I'm bitter and jealous and envious and resentful. And certainly it's highly probable. If you look at what happened in the leftist societies that tried to pursue utopia and you don't read envy and resentment into that, you're not, you don't know the history. Because that's clearly why else did they become murderous? This is the question. It's clearly the case that the Soviet Union, for example, was motivated by the desire for equality of outcome. As a primary motivation, what happened? 25 million people were killed. Why? Why? Well, was it all compassion and love for the dispossessed or was it absolutely bitter resentment and hatred for anyone who had any shred of success whatsoever on any possible dimension of evaluation?

That's the danger of compassion. That's exactly. Well, look, what happens if you get beat? You think, oh, look at how isn't it lovely that the mother grizzly bear takes care of her cubs? Yeah, it's lovely, man. Till you get between her and her cubs, then it's not so damn lovely. And that's the flip side of that affiliate of agreeableness. It's like if you're on my side, you know, if you're the infant who's sheltering under my wings, it's like I'm the absolute epitome of maternal love and care. But if I've identified you as a predator, you better look the hell out. And that's playing out in our political landscape at a very, very rapid rate. That's the female side of totalitarianism as far as I can tell. The feminine side of totalitarianism. It's not just that. It's not just that agreeableness motivates aggression because it certainly does. It's also that it's that the envious and the resentful can use compassion as a as a camouflage for their true intent, which is to tear down anyone who has more than them. That's the why you notice like when there's discussions about the one percent we already talked about this. Well who's the one percent? Well, I'm in the park in New York, demonstrating against Wall Street, down with the one percent. It's like, wait a second. You're in the one percent. They're a Mr. Protester. No, no, you don't understand. The rich are those who have more money than me. Yes. Right. That's the definition. Who's rich? Someone who has more than me. Not me. It's like, well, why isn't the one percent North America? Why not? Because it's inconvenient. That's an inconvenient fact. So that's part of it. But the envy and resentment, this is the real pathological end of the full compassion that motivates the radical left. It's like, yeah, you like the poor, do you? What makes you think you just don't hate the successful? And that's a question. It's like, because you're not perfect, man, there's hatred in you. And the probability that it's more powerful than love is pretty damn high. So look to your own viewpoint. Before you go out there and try to fix the hierarchies of the world, just exactly what it is. And it's worse. Like, look, in the Russian Revolution, for example, let's say just for the sake of argument, that the first rung of revolutionaries were only driven by compassion. Maybe they were. They all got killed. They got killed by the people who came after. And they weren't so interested in compassion at all. They were interested in ferriting out everyone who had a modicum of success on any dimension and doing them in. And that happened in way after bloody wave. They killed all the successful farmers. Those were the coolaxe. They killed all of them, run them all up, kill them, rape them, stole the property, sent the remnants to Siberia, froze them to death. 10 years later, 6 million Ukrainians died because they couldn't raise crops.

Well, some of it's just complicated, Joe. It's like, well, let's say there are differences between men and women, just for the sake of argument. The biggest differences seem to be an interest, by the way. And so what's going to happen is that if we let men and women sort themselves out, there aren't going to be very many female engineers and tech types, and there's going to be a lot of female nurses. There's not going to be many male nurses and health care types. There's not going to be very many male elementary school teachers. But is this a bad thing? Well, that's the question. Who knows? Do we know? I don't know.

Yeah, well, that's a problem because that's a major quality of outcome. Well, it's also, it's, yeah, the equality of outcome thing is a non-starter. Whether it's okay with, like, if men and women sort themselves into different occupations, which looks highly probable, I don't know if that's okay. And then it's also, well, like, okay, compared to what alternative? Right. Like, you shouldn't every elementary school teacher be female. Should every psychologist be female? Because that's what's happening. And the answer to that is, well, I don't know. But there's another answer, which is, well, what do you propose as an alternative to free choice that isn't going to cause more trouble than free choice? Because I would say, well, okay, let's say I'm a feminist for the sake of argument. All right, so I think while there are differences between men and women, there are actual differences. And so some of those are biological. Some of them are our strategic in some sense because women pay a bigger price for reproduction and so that's going to lead them to make different choices. That's just rational based on its rationality based on biological differences. So it's like a second order biological difference. There's differences in temperament and interest. They're going to lead them to make different choices. Is that a pro-feminist stance or anti-feminist stance? It's only anti-feminist if you assume everyone has to be exactly the same and the outcomes have to be exactly the same. If your goal is, no leave people the hell alone as much as possible, let them make their own informed and free choices, then you let the differences manifest themselves in the world and you take your knocks because of that.

We're metaphysically equal. Right. But every other dimension, we're radically unequal. And then there's pain in that.

It's the pain in that is real. The only thing that's worse than the pain of inequality is the pain of forced equality. And I'm not being fast on about that. It's like, look, I see the IQ issues that is the killer one for me. It's like, look, if you have an IQ of less than 83, you can't be inducted into the American military by law. Why? Because there isn't a damn thing you can do that isn't counterproductive, despite the fact that the army wants you because they can't get enough manpower. That's what they decided. It's like, okay, so you're on the low end of the cognitive distribution. What are you going to do? Not much, and it's gonna get worse. Is that good? It's not good. It's horrible. Do we know what to do about it?

Well, people say, well, the IQ tests are valid. It's like, well.

He was annoying so I got kind of hurt and that was probably my strategic error. Makeup is that the one you're talking about?

He knew everything. He knew everything. Well, it was just in his attitude.

Right. Right. Eyes up. It's like, like, A, I know more than you and B, you're probably that reprehensible person that I've thought about.

Yeah, but it wasn't even that it was left leaning. I've talked to a reasonable left leaning people. It was built right into his attitude. And so it made me a little testier than I might have been, which was my strategic error. And you know, you asked earlier, well, why do I get pilloried with some regularly? And some of it is probably my own inadequacy. You know, it's not, it isn't that I've handled all the opportunities that I've had perfectly. You know, and I can get hot under the collar. It's a mistake. It's a mistake because the right approach in these situations is to use minimal necessary force and to allow myself to get irritated let's say even minorly when I'm faced with someone who's doing this is not productive doesn't work well and so I really need to keep that under control and when I do keep it under control it works better.

It's an interesting conversation. I said and they didn't put this in their initial cut. I said I'm not saying that women shouldn't be allowed to wear makeup in the workplace.

Yeah, well, I think the vice people actually released it, but other people took the full release and clipped it with the clipped release and showed how it was being misrepresented. Yeah, but so okay. So the makeup thing, it's like, all right, look, here's the first of all. I make a mistake sometimes in treating journalists like I would treat my graduate students. So when I'm having a conversation with my students and we say, well, here's a problem. It's an intellectual exercise. A sexual, sexual behavior. How do we regulate? What are the norms around sexual behavior in the workplace? It's not the question. It's a question. We don't know. Okay, here's a bunch of possibilities. Possible rules, right? No flirting. No hugging. No eye contact for more than five seconds. That's net flex, right? No hugging.

NBC, no hugging. Was that real? It's real.

Yes, yes, it's real. It's real.

Yeah, it's a terrible idea.

That's what you say, but you're a potential rapist and you're a manifestation. Yes, you get a little picture. Yes, you get the whole picture. So, so if you have a discussion, you say, well, look, what are the rules of governing sexual behavior in the workplace? Okay, can you come to work at a negligee? No, how about boxers if you're a man? No. Okay, so there's some sort of short skirt. Well, this is the thing that devils in the bloody details, right? It's like, okay, you can't come to work naked. You can't come to work in boxer shorts. You can come to work in a suit. Okay, so the line is somewhere between boxers and suit, where exactly is the line? Exactly. Can a man wear shorts?

The way that men in professional organizations the way that men solve this problem was that everyone wore a uniform and a uniform makes you uniform. That's why you wear it and the uniform is the suit and it's a derivation of a military of military garb and so the idea was what we want to get rid of excess diversity, right? In clothing, wear your damn suit, then we know you're playing the game and we don't have to be distracted by what you're wearing. Okay, so that's what men did. Okay, so now women come into the workspace. It's like, hmm, what do they do? Well, there's business professional dress, right? And there's some rules around that, but what are the rules exactly? Exactly. And I was thinking, well, we're worried about sexual misbehavior in the workplace. You can't look at someone for more than five seconds. You can't give them a hug. Okay. What about makeup? Do we have a discussion about makeup? Oh, I don't know. We kind of a discussion about that. It's like, well, does makeup sexual signaling? It's like, Well, if you're a, if you're an evolutionary biologist, the question is make-up sexual signaling? That's not even a question. It's like, well, obviously that's what it is.

Well, and maybe it's not even me. Well, that's right. That's right. What does that mean? Well, everyone knows what that means.

Well, he, this is what he did. Oh, women wear makeup because they want to look good.

Oh, but the way he did it was like, oh, Dr. Peterson, it's obvious what it means for them to look good. Like everyone knows that.

I think he felt, I think he felt that. I think he felt that it was necessary to challenge me that that was his role as a journalist. But fundamentally, he was smug. He thought he came out the entire conversation with an era of intellectual condescension. He was built right into the discussion right from the beginning and he never dropped it at all. It's like, well, I know what you're doing and I know what's up. And I know how to take you apart. And I know that whatever you're talking about is just an attempt to defend your absolute rightful opinions. Oh, God, about an hour, something like that. How much do they use? Oh, in the clips hardly any of it. I don't even know a couple of minutes. So yeah.

Yes, of course. And it's the problem of deviating from the doctrine of minimal necessary force. Like the best times, the best interactions I've had with contentious journalists is where I've absolutely kept my cool, you know, but I can't the Newman.

Exactly. And I know what you're saying is. Well, that's what he was like. It's like, I know who you are and I know you're covering it up.

Like, if you're taking someone out for dinner on a business dinner, it's like, even if it's guys going out together, let's say, it's not like they're working to find each other unattractive. And I don't mean sexually. You want to manifest yourself as a blind judge. Yes, you do when you want to be charismatic and you want to be withy and all of those things. And that shades, especially when you add assuming a heterosexual environment, you add a heterosexual component to that. The borders become fuzzy. And so I was talking about border conditions. So while we're going to have a conversation about this, let's talk about the border conditions. Oh, no, we can't do that. It's like, why don't that's the discussion you guys wanted?

Oh, well, that's a good question.

Yeah, well, I was probably wrong in everything I did in that part of the discussion because I hadn't thought that issue through enough to actually give a good answer.

No, and it's actually complicated, right? I mean, obviously, the whole, I won't serve you because your black thing is not good. But then again, you have, you also have the right to choose who you're going to affiliate with. But then that's complicated because it's a commercial circumstance. And then if you're making a cake, is that the same as serving or is that compelled speech? It's like, oh my God, these are border cases that cause a lot of controversy. I don't mean serving black people, obviously. That's not a border case. But these cases that cause a lot of controversy is where two principles are at odds and it isn't exactly clear where to draw the line. And I'm not happy with, you know, I'm not happy with my answer to that. But I hadn't spent the like week would take to think through the issue and really have a comprehensive perspective.

Oh, I think about 45 minutes, maybe an hour or two minutes.

Yeah. Well, my my daughter has told me and and my wife as well. My son as well in these discussions. We've been thinking about how to handle media, which is go out of very complicated question. And one hypothesis being don't do interviews that will be edited. And I've thought about that, and being thinking about it, and that might be the right answer. It might be the right answer going forward. I think it is the right answer. Well, it could easily be.

Yes, well I guess the only counter argument is this and I mean a lot of these opportunities come I've had opportunities that are coming at me at rate at a rate that doesn't allow me to think them through as much as I could optimally but but then there's another thing which is it isn't necessarily a mistake to lay yourself open to attack because sometimes it reveals the motives of the attackers Like, that's what happened in the county, Newman interview. Now, that could have gone really sideways. Like, I was lucky there to some degree because she interviewed me for 40 minutes or whatever. And something like that. And then they did chop it down to seven minutes or three minutes. And it was exactly what you'd expect. And that is what I expected after I walked away from the interview. I thought, oh my God, they're just going to chop this into reprehensible segments and pillory meat. But I walked away from it because there was 50 other things to do. But then it was so funny because they did do that. And then they put up the whole interview. And the reason they put up the whole interview was because they thought the interview went fine. It isn't that they knew that that was going to cause commotion, not at all, not a bit, not a bit. And I know this is for a fact. So they put up the whole interview and then what happened was what was actually happening revealed itself. And that was very, very effective. Now that But having that happen meant that I had exposed myself to substantial stress and risk, because that was stressful. I mean, first of all, there was the interview. Second, afterwards, I thought, oh my God, I'm going to get pilloried for that. Then they did release the cut. Then they released the whole thing. Then there was all this response to it. And then the Newman people who were absolutely flabbergasted by the negative response said, Peterson is unleashed his army of trolls and poor Kathy had to go into hiding. It's like there's no evidence of any credible threats. They said they called in the police but you can do that without there being reason. You can just say that which is what they said. They played a victim narrative instantly although one thing Kathy Newman is not even though she might play it at the behest of her employers is a victim. She's one of the most powerful people in Britain. She's no victim. So to play the victim card in a situation like that, it's absolutely reprehensible. But that's what they did. And then like it doesn't newspapers did it and said, well, Peter, since trolls are attacking poor Kathy and I thought, oh, no, I don't agree with you.

Well, it's also foolish. Well, how many million people do they have to be before they're not all trolls? Yeah. Because that was the real issue there. It's like, okay, 10,000 people commented on the video. Trolls. Okay, what about 150,000? Well, what about 10 million? Well, now if you look at the video, which is about 10 million, plus all the clips, it's like 50 million. And the comments, the pro, the comments that are critical with regards to Kathy Newman's conduct are running about 50 to one. So that's all trolls, is it? I don't think so. It's preposterous. That narrative's posture. But you see that was that was a good example of taking the risk. And I'm not saying it's about justified. And I think that it's very, very stressful. You know, but, you know, you take the good. You take the bad along with the good. And maybe maybe it's time for me. It might be time for me just to disappear to some degree altogether. You can say about being over exposed. Oh, definitely. I've been worried about that for

Well, and I don't want to turn into a parody of myself. And all of that. I mean, I think, and I am trying to handle this. And I've got people who are advising me. We're trying to figure it out. I think that this tour is a good thing. Yes. But that's very controlled.

Yes, exactly. It is.

Yes. And I think that coming on your podcast and talking to Ruben on his shows and so forth, I think that's good. that the interaction with the journalists, I'm certainly not taking anywhere near the number of opportunities that I have in front of me, right? We are trying to be very careful in picking and choosing, but that doesn't always go well. And it like it could be that it could be that I shouldn't do anything that is edited at all. That's certainly possible.

Look, I went to the Aspen ideas festival last week, which is a whole story in and of itself. But I was interviewed there by a journalist from the Atlantic Monthly. And it was a relatively long form interview. I think we talked for 40 minutes, something like that. And it's going to be edited. Now, I trusted her. I trust her. Now, whether that'll be how that will play out in the final edit. I don't know because she won't be the only one making the decision. The question is should have I done it? Well, look. It was the Aspen ideas festival. It's a different audience. It's left-leaning. I thought, well, maybe I'll go talk to a left-leaning audience. People are always criticizing me for not doing that. I usually don't do it because I don't get invited. But so I went and talked to them. It's like a very wise interviewed me in front of the Aspen ideas festival and that was a long form uncut and put on the web. And so maybe that was useful. The Atlantic thing? Well, it might be good. We'll see. It does expose me to the risk though because it'll be edited. So, and it wasn't wise to do it. Look, I've been fortunate so far. Despite the fact that I've been taken out of context at times and fairly significant proportion of times, but not the overwhelming majority of times, the net consequence of all of that has been to engage more and more people in a complex dialogue as far as I can tell. That's the good. It doesn't mean that this strategy that I've implemented so far is the only strategy that will work into the future.

Yeah, well, so that can see not there's no precedent. No, well, it's partly, you know, that's also part of the consequence of this technology. It's like, you know, like in 2013, I thought, huh, wonder what'll happen if I put my lectures up on YouTube? It's like, Beware, man. And that's what I thought when I made Bill C. 16 videos. I got up at like two in the morning. I thought, this is Bloody Well, driving me crazy. That damn university is going to force unconscious bias retraining, which is not a validated process by any stretch of the imagination on its employees. And I work for the university. And I'm a psychologist.

Oh, I think there's two reasons. I think that there's some genuine concern for the dispossessed. And then there's some hatred for the successful and some envy and some resentment. It's like everything that people do. It's complicated, you know? But the pathology is, well, that the HR types, for example, at the university think it's okay for them to retrain other people about their hypothetical views on the off-chance that they might be racist. and forcing them to admit that they're racist by making them agree to participate in the training. I don't think that. But for me, that wasn't even the issue. Although it was any issue, the issue is we can't measure unconscious bias reliably and validly. I'm a psychologist and a research psychologist. I know the literature. That's a misuse of it. It's a misuse of it. And the damn university was doing it. They were hiring consultants who didn't know what the hell they were talking about.

Well, that's the thing. That's the thing. It's part of, for me, it was part of the hegemony of the radical left. It's like, no, no, you're not going to do that at the university I work at without me telling people that there's no warrant for that from the psychological community. So anyways, I got up at two in the morning and made these videos. I thought, well, let's see what happens if I make these videos. It's like, well, this is back to the technology issue. It's like, I didn't know what YouTube was when I put my videos on it. You didn't know what YouTube was? Well, you know what, I know what YouTube is. That's the thing. Well, look at what happened to you. You have a million, billion and a half downloads a year. It's like you're definitely writing a giant wave. Like, would have you predicted this 15 years ago? No. So, you know, you're in the right place in the right time and you're very interesting interviewer because well, especially for long form because you're very, very curious but also very very tough like it's interesting watching you because if you don't understand something you will go after the person and you're not doing it in a vindictive way but you're quite a formidable interviewer and and I've been trying to figure out why you're so successful and like your lot smarter than anyone might think which is quite interesting so you're a weird combination because you know your persona doesn't shout intellectual but your damn smart and your tough as a bloody boot and you ask really pop provocative questions and not because you're provocative And so your personality and this long form seem to suit each other really well. You're also really good at pursuing things you don't understand instead of assuming that you know what you're talking about. So you take the listeners on a journey, right? It's an exploratory journey, but fundamentally what's propelled you to superstar them in some sense is not just your ability, which is non-trivial, but the fact that you're on this technological wave, and you're one of the first adopters. And I'm in the same situation. We're first adopters of a technology that's as revolutionary as the Gutenberg printing press. And so that's all unfolding in real time. It's like, look at what's happening. Yeah, well, the spoken word is now as powerful as the written word. That's never happened before in human history. And we're on the cutting edge of that for better or worse.

Well, or stuck in traffic, you know, or or and here's another possibility. Maybe 10 times as many people can listen to complex information as can read complex information in terms of their ability to come. Sure. Could he's we don't know maybe it's maybe it's the same.

Yeah, well, so the question is for how many people is that true? And I would say it might be true for the majority of people. And then people are doing hybrids, you know? So because you can sync your book with audible, right? So read when they have the time, but then when they have found time, which is also a major component of this, that's the time when you're driving on the time when you're doing dishes. Now, all of a sudden, you can educate yourself during that found time. This is a big revolution. And the ban blowing out the bandwidth makes a huge difference because while we talked about that at the beginning, looks like people are more intelligent than we thought. And you and I are both in the rest of this intellectual dark web. That's kind of what unites us. Hey, is everybody has an independent platform, virtually everybody. They have an idiosyncrotic viewpoint. They're interested in having discussions and pursuing the further roots of their knowledge, even though they might have a priori ideological commitment, Sam does. And I suppose I do, and Ben Shapiro certainly does. But they're still interested in having the discussion. But more importantly, they're capitalizing on the long form. And the fact that that's possible is a reflection of this technological transformation and the technological transformation might be utterly profound. It looks like it. And so that's, you know, I've been trying to sort this out because I keep thinking, why the hell are these people coming to listen to what I'm saying? It's like, well, I'm a guru, you know, I'm a sage, it's something like that. It's like, don't be thinking that first. Think if there's situational determinants first. Take your damn personality out of it. Okay, what's going on? Oh, yes, this is all fostered by YouTube and fostered by podcasts. What's so new about that? no bandwidth restrictions, no barrier to entrance, possibility of dialogue because people cut up the YouTube videos into chunks and make their own comments on it. It's a whole new communication technology.

Yeah, well, and that's all part of the reason you're so popular too is like you just put this on. Like so you've got exactly the right balance of a competent production, because there's nothing excessive about it. It's competent, but no more than that. I know that's by design, but you also don't add it. It's like what you see is what you get. It's like everyone's relieved by that. We can make our own damn decisions.

It's just, well, that's partly also why I deal with the press the way I do. Yeah, if I'm going to have a full conversation, it's like I'm willing to take the hits.

Yeah, well, that may also be the position that I increasingly find myself in.

But you know what the thing is, you know, you made a point there that's quite interesting is like we are in a new media landscape. So now if someone comes out as a as a media figure with some institutional credibility and misrepresent, it's exposed. And so then the question is, how much risk should you shoulder to expose the proclivity for media misrepresentation? And the answer to that might be some. Now it might be moving, you know, maybe I've done enough of that. I mean, it would be easier for me in many ways if I just stop doing it. But there's some utility in having it play out. And so, well, so I'm trying to, I'm trying to only take those opportunities that appear to have more benefit than risk. And when I'm defining benefit, well, the question is then what constitutes benefit. And I guess what constitutes benefit is. Well, that would further the attempts that I'm making to bring information to a vast number of people that could conceivably help them stabilize and improve their individual lives. That's worth a certain amount of risk.

He took, they quoted me, it was a sentence. There's like the first phrase was in quotes and then there was some joining words and then the second phrase was in quotes and there were some joining words and then the third phrase was in quotes and the three quotes added up to a statement that bore no resemblance whatsoever to what I was saying.

I don't think they can, Joe. I think they're killing their brand so fast that they can't... But it's so disturbing to me as a person who's been a fan of the New York Times forever.

It never did put my book on the New York Times bestseller list. It was quite comical.

Oh, they have rules, which they don't disclose, but one of them apparently is, well, if the book is published in Canada and distributed in the United States, then it doesn't count, even though they've had books like that on the New York Times bestseller list before. And I think, okay, well, is this bad or good? It's like, well, it's bad because to the degree that I might want to be on the New York Times bestseller list, although I haven't been losing any sleepover.

Yeah, it's basically being the best selling book in the world since January. You know, it's going up and down to some degree.

So they have their reasons. But I look at that. And I think, oh, well, you can only do that 10 times until you're done. Like, because it's a fatal error, you have the gold standard for measurement. You're not measuring properly. You're burning up your brand. You think, well, where the New York Times, so we can burn up our brand. It's like, No, you can't. Newsweek is gone. Time magazine is a shallow, is a shallow, it's former self, like the big things disappear, and they disappear when they get crooked and ideologically rigid. And so that's what's happening at the New York Times. Not with everyone there, but with plenty of them. It'll die faster than people think.

It's hard to say like because maybe see it's weird because you don't have to resort to clickbait because these long-form discussions are the antithesis of clickbait, right?

Oh, absolutely. Every newspaper in Canada went cap and hand to the federal government for subsidies about six months ago because they're dying so fast. And so some of it is they're being supplanted by technology. That's a huge part of it. But as they are supplanted, they get more desperate. They publish more polarizing stories. That works in the short term to gardener more views, but it alienates people from the brand and speeds their demise. Classic death spiral of a big organization. And that's going to clean things out like mad. I mean, I don't know where CNN is in the cable news rankings. Now our cable show rankings, but it keeps falling, but it's falling in the rankings as cable itself disintegrates and ties. Why do you need cable TV?

No one needs cable. The only people who have cable TV are the people who haven't figured out yet that you can replace it entirely online for like one tenth of the price with much less hassle.

Well, it might be that as the technology is supplanted, the ideological polarization increases as the thing dies.

And I think what's happening on the other side, which is the side you occupy say is that a new technology that's long form that deals with many of those problems is emerging and it's going to emerge. It's going to be victorious. But in the mean might already be victorious.

Yeah. Well, okay. So then the sense is, well, do you have fundamental trust in the judgment of your fellow Man, let's say my answer to that is yes, because although I've been pilloried to a great degree by the radical types in the commentariat and in the classic journalists. The comments with regards to me on YouTube are 50 to one in my favor. And that's even the case when the ideologues put up videos about me they're designed to get discredit me and I've sold a million and a half books it's going to be published in 40 countries and thousands of people are coming to my lectures and so I would say the attempts to discredit me aren't working. So and that I think that's because that even like even if you go to YouTube, you can see Jordan Peterson smashes leftist journalist, you know, as a clickbait thing, someone's taken a two minute clip from a video and they put it out and they're using that clickbait headline to attract attention. It's like it does attract attention and that probably even further is polarization. But I think that most people enough people, that's the prayer enough people are going for the long form thorough discussion. So that the sensible will will triumph. That's what I'm hoping for. The sensible will triumph.

Right. Well, and that's a good, that's a good motif for the entire conversation. It's like, try hard to, too hard to win. You kill yourself. You were talking last night when we were, when we were over dinner, you said that one of the most deadly things for a fighter to do is to overestimate his own position. You're going to get underostimate your abilities.

That's bravado, right? I'm trying to prove how possible. I'm so powerful. I'm so powerful.

Yes. Okay. So I want to preface that with something. I am not a dietary expert. So I'm not speaking as an uninformed citizen.

I've been on a pure carnivore diet for about two months and a pretty very very low-carb greens-only modified carnivore diet for about a year. So in the year and a low carb diet for two years.

Well, all of the motivation for this has been my experience with my daughter because she has an unbelievably serious autoimmune disease. I just talked to her this morning.

Well, it's arthritis. But there's way more to it than that. But the arthritis was the major set of symptoms. She had 40 affected joints. And she had to have her hip replaced and her ankle replaced when she was 15 and 16. And so she basically hobbled around on two broken legs for two years in extreme agony. And that was just a tiny fraction of the whole set of problems. I just talked to her this morning. She's in Chicago. Looks like she has to have her ankle replacement replaced. So that's next on the horizon. But apart from that, she is doing so well now. It is absolutely beyond comprehension. So she's very trim. She had a baby, but she's very trim. She's down to about 118 pounds. She's about five foot six. She's just glowing with health. All of her autoimmune symptoms are gone. All of them. And she was also seriously depressed, like severely depressed. Way worse than you think. She couldn't stay awake for more than about six hours without taking riddle in. And she was diagnosed. And I had a cousin, my cousin's daughter, she died when she was 30 from an associated autoimmune condition. So there's a fair bit of this in our family. It was bloody bleak. I'll tell you. And my wife always had a suspicion that this was dietary related. You know, and I Well, we did notice that when Michaela was young, if she ate oranges, or strawberries, that she'd get a rash. Like, there were, and then when she developed arthritis, if she ate oranges in particular, that would definitely cause a flare. It was the only thing we could see. The problem is, is that in order to identify a dietary component, the response has to be pretty quick after you eat the thing. Like, if it's two days later, how the hell are you going to figure that out? A lot of these responses appear to be delayed for four days. and last a month. So good luck figuring that out. Anyways, Michaela noticed about three years ago, no more than that. Now five years ago, she was at Concordia University and struggling with her illness and all the associated problems. She noticed that around exam time, she was starting to develop real skin problems. And my cousin's daughter, who I mentioned, had really bad skin problems and wounds that wouldn't heal and that was partly part of the process that eventually killed her. And she thought, oh, it must be stress and then she thought, wait a second, I really changed my diet when I'm studying all I do is eat bagels, all I do is eat bread sandwiches, she thought. Maybe it's the bread. So she cut out gluten first and it had a remarkable effect, like a really remarkable effect. And then she went on a radical elimination diet all the way down to nothing but chicken and broccoli. And then her symptoms started to drop off one by one. Like one of the things that happened is she started to wake up in the morning. She started to be able to stay awake all day. And when you're only staying awake for six hours with Riddle and staying awake all day, that's like having a life. And so a whole bunch of things improved, then her depression went away. And I've had depression since I was 13, probably, and very severe. And I've treated it a variety of ways. Some of them quite successfully. But it's been a constant battle in my father had it, and his father had it. And it's all just rife in my family. And my wife has autoimmune problems in her. And he said depression defined it. Oh, oh, how would you define it?

Yeah. Well, imagine that you wake up and that you remember that all your family was killed in a horrible accident yesterday.

Yes, just just worse than that because one of the things Michaela told me was she thought well, what's it like to be depressed? Well imagine you have a dog and you really love the dog and then the dog dies and then about three years ago our dog died and that was Michaela's dog and she really liked that dog and she said that was bad, but it's nowhere near as bad as being depressed. And I asked her to at one point when she was about 15 or 16. I said, look, you've got a choice, kid. Here's the choice. You can either have depression or arthritis. Which one? I'll take the arthritis. Well, that was after she'd lost two joints. So it was no joke. It's no joke, man. There isn't anything. No, I wouldn't say that. I wouldn't say there's nothing worse because worse is a very deep hole. Right. But it's bad.

Oh, yes, definitely worse is a deep hole. Anyways, her depression went away. All these symptoms went away.

Well, she kept experimenting and she got very sensitive to all sorts of foods in the aftermath of that, too. So this is why I wouldn't recommend that anybody does this casually because we don't understand much about it. But the upshot was that, well, she kept experimenting and she started to add things back and take them away. And sometimes when she added things, the results were devastating. She was like, done for a month. She ate the wrong thing, done for a month. All the symptoms came back. The depression came back. She thought that her whole dietary theory was wrong because it lasted so long and was so extreme. It's like it took her two years to figure out that really what she could eat was beef and greens and then she figured out that she could only eat beef. And so greens themselves. Well, look, so what happened? Okay, so two years ago, she said, Dad, you have tried this diet because you have a lot of the same symptoms as me. Now, I didn't have arthritis, but I had a lot of the other symptoms. And I thought, oh, Christ, okay, Michaela, I can try anything for a month. She said, try it for a month. I thought, okay, whatever. I can hang by my fingernails from the window sill for a month. It's like, it's just not that big a deal. And so I eliminated, I went on a really low carb diet. Okay, so this is what happened. I had gastric reflex disorder, and I was snoring quite a lot. I stopped snoring the first week. I thought, what the hell? That's supposed to be associated with weight loss, because I had gained some weight. I weighed about 212 pounds, and I'm about 6-1.5. So that was my maximum weight. I stopped snoring, which was a great relief to tell me. So that just quit, and that's a big deal, right? Because if you snore you have sleep out in, then you don't sleep right, and it's like not a good thing. Okay, next. I started waking up in the mornings. I'd never been able to wake up in the mornings my whole life. I always had to stumble to the shower and then maybe I could wake up, took me an hour, and I felt terrible. And so all of a sudden I woke up. I was like, oh, look at that. I'm awake in the morning and I'm clear-headed and things aren't gloomy and horrible. It's like, well, isn't that weird? Then I lost seven pounds the first month. I thought. Seven pounds, that's a lot in the month. And I'd already gone for a whole year on a sugar-free diet. I didn't lose any weight. And I'd be nexusizes.

No, no. It was just no desserts, no sugar. No, and I thought that might do it. Didn't make any difference at all. Seven pounds. Well, then I lost seven pounds the next month. Then I lost seven pounds the next month. I lost seven pounds every month for seven months. Like I'd throw away all my clothes. I went back to the same weight that I was when I was 26. And my psoriasis disappeared. and I had floaters in my right eye and they cleared up. The last thing that went away for me, I was still having a bitch of a time with mood regulation and that sucked because when I changed my diet I wouldn't respond to antidepressants properly anymore. They weren't working. And so although I was getting better physically on a variety of ways, like radical ways, I was really having a bitch of a time regulating my mood and I was having sporadic, really negative reactions to food when I ate something I shouldn't. So that took about a year and a half to clear up and I was still really anxious in the morning up to three months ago, like horribly and then it would get better all day. People said, well, you're under a lot of stress. And I thought, yeah, yeah, I've been under a lot of stress for like 10 years. It's like, it's a lot, but it wasn't any more stressful than helping my daughter deal with her illness. That's for sure. That no, this is something different. And she said to me, quitting greens. And I thought, oh, really, Jesus, McKay lie, meeting cucumbers, lettuce, broccoli, and chicken and beef. It's like, I have to cut out the goddamn greens. It's like, try it for a month. Okay. Within a week, I was 25% less anxious in the morning. Within two weeks, 75% and I've been better every single day. I'm better now, probably than I've ever been in my life, and I haven't been taking anti-depressants for a whole year. So, I don't know what, and I weigh 162 pounds. Like, I have no, I'm, and I've actually gained musculature. I've been doing some working help, but not a lot. And so, I can sleep six hours a night. No problem. I wake up the morning. I'm awake. If I take a 15 minute nap, that used to take me an hour to recover from, that's gone. Here's the coolest thing. I've had gum disease since I was 25. That's been serious enough to have, I've had to have minor surgical interventions scraping and that sort of thing to keep it at bay. It's gone. I checked with my dentists before this last tour. No inflammation. And that's associated with heart disease by the way gum inflammation and gingivitis. It's a good risk factor. Heart disease. It means the systemic inflammation is gone. And it's not supposed to happen. You're not supposed to recover from gingivitis. And my gums are in perfect shape. It's like, what the hell? So here's what happened. I lost 50 pounds. It's like, that's a lot, right? I'm nowhere near as hungry as I used to be. My appetite's probably formed by 70%. I don't get blood sugar dysregulation problems. I need way less sleep. I get up in the morning and I'm fine. I'm not anxious. I'm not depressed. I don't have psoriasis. My legs were numb on the sides. That's gone. I'm certainly intellectually out my best at the moment, which is a great relief, especially doing this tour. Depression has gone. I'm stronger. I can swim better. And my gum disease is gone.

No, I'll get that done again when I go back. You take any vitamins. No. No, I eat beef and salt and water. That's it. And I never cheat ever, not even a little bit.

I drink club soda.

Well, you know, when you're down to that level, though, it's not great. Joe, Joe, there's there's club soda, which is really bubbly. There's periate, which is sort of bubbly. There's flat water, and there's hot water. So it's just dangerous things. Those distinctions start to be kind of important.

Hey, man. Like I'm not, uh, disclaimer number two. I am not recommending this to anyone. However, I have had, however, I have had many, many people come up to me on the tour and say, look, I've been following your daughter's blog and I've lost like a hundred pounds. I think what you lost a hundred pounds. See, I lost a hundred pounds of six months. I talked to a woman yesterday. She lost fifteen pounds in one month. She was seventy. It's like, this is, uh, here's a question. Why is everyone fat and stupid? That's a question, man, because it's new. Is it something new? Yes, it is. It's new. And it's not sedentary lifestyle. That hypothesis doesn't seem to hold water. There's something wrong with the way we're eating. And the, what's wrong is that we're eating way too many carbohydrates.

Yeah, that's a big one man. Yeah. But like, I, yeah, like, well, really, I can go on six hours to sleep now. And I'm so interesting to, I can't believe I can wake up in the morning. That's never happened to me in my whole life. And when I was a kid, 13, 12, I had a bitch of a time waking up in the morning. It was just brutal. I just thought that's how it was.

Well, I have a negative story. Okay. Okay. One of the things that both Michaela and I noticed was that when we restricted our diet and then ate something we weren't supposed to, the reaction to eating what we weren't supposed to was absolutely catastrophic.

Well, the worst response, I think we're allergic to it's allergic, whatever the hell this is, having an inflammatory response to something called sulfites and we had some apple cider that had sulfites in it and that was really not good, like I was done for a month. That was the first time I talked to Sam Harris. You were done for a month. Oh, yeah, took me out for a month. It was awful. Really.

And so this is right before this whole truth conversation with Sam Harrison during the month during you know, I think the day I talked to Sam was like the worst day of my life, not because of talking to Sam. But it was just physical. Oh, Jesus. I was so dead. But I didn't want to not do it. Apple cider. Like what was it doing? What was it doing to you? Oh, it it produced an overwhelming sense of impending doom. And I seriously mean overwhelming. Like there's no way I could have lived like that if that would have lasted for. See, Michaela knew by that point that it would probably only last a month. And I was like a month. Yeah, a month. Fucking cider. Well, I didn't sleep that that month. I didn't sleep for 25 days. I didn't sleep at all. I didn't sleep at all for 25 days. How is that possible? I'll tell you how it's possible. You lay in bed, frozen in something approximating terror for eight hours, and then you get up. Oh my god.

Yeah. I mean, look, again, I don't know what the hell I'm talking about. Okay, this is all a mystery to me. The fact that my daughter was so sick, see the one thing that I did know, because I scoured the literature on arthritis when she was a kid, the scientific literature. And because we were interested in the dietary connection, and the only thing I could find that was reliable was that if people with arthritis fasted, their symptoms reliably went away. And that's actually a well-documented finding. But then if they started to eat again, then their symptoms came back, and I thought, well, what the hell? Does it not matter what they eat? They can't be reactive to everything. No, but they can be reactive to almost everything. And the difference between everything and almost everything, that's a big difference. And so, Michaela seems to be maybe me too. And Tammy's on the same diet because she has autoimmune problems on her side of the family. And so, Michaela seemed to inherit all of them. Your skin looks better. Oh, Jesus, Joe, I'm pretty better.

Your body becomes accustomed with... Well, one of the hypothesis that we've been pursuing and there's some justification for this in the scientific literature is that the reason that you lay on layers of fat is because the fat acts as a buffer between you and the toxic things that you're eating. Because fat is actually an organ. It has functions other than merely the storage of of calories, and maybe when you strip out that protective layer, then you're more sensitive to what you shouldn't be eating. This is all speculative hypothesis, right? Or maybe you sensitize yourself by removing it from your constant diet. Well, I don't bloody well know.

Well, I think that the layering of fat on might be part of the tolerance mechanism. So it's not merely a matter of caloric intake. It's a matter of toxic caloric intake, buffered by whatever it is that fat is doing as a neuroendocrine organ. But again, like I said, I'm out of my depth here, but you know, the whole, everyone's out of their depth that God damn food pyramid was made by the Department of Agriculture, not the Department of Health. It wasn't predicated on any scientific studies whatsoever. We shouldn't be eating massive quantities of corn syrup. We ate way too many carbohydrates. Michaela posted a paper the other day, a doctor, a successfully treated type 1 diabetes with a carnivore diet. Type 1, not type two. So that's bloody impressive.

I mean, I'm not just sure. And it's the same with all these stories that I'm collecting as I'm touring. You know, people, lots of people have come up to me and said, look, I lost 45 pounds in the last three months. I think, I think, well, it's shocking to me. I think, well, what do you make of that? Say, well, I can't believe it. Well, who can, well, I couldn't believe it. 50 pounds. It's like, first of all, I didn't know I had 50 pounds to lose. You know, I thought I was maybe 20 pounds heavier than I should have been. I should have been 185, something like that. I guess that's 25 to 30 pounds. That was the maximum. I thought, no, no, I lost. I meant 162 and I was at 212. So what's that? 50. 50 bounds. It's a lot of weight. Jesus. I threw all my clothes away. It's I can't believe it when I saw you.

But that's another thing I should say to people if you want to try a diet like this. You eat enough meat and fat so you're not hungry. You can't get hungry. You're not eating enough if you're hungry. And if you're hungry, you're going to cheat. And it's going to drive you start craving mad. The other thing that was really cool is like I really liked sweets. I kind of lived on peanut butter sandwiches in chocolate milk, not really. But that was my go-to food, you know, both of which were terrible for me. But after I stopped eating carbohydrates for a month, the carbohydrate cravings went away. You know, last night when we were out for dinner somebody ordered bread pudding and I bloody love bread pudding with caramel and ice cream and so it was sitting there and I could smell it. You know, I thought I could go all fantastic Mr. Fox on that bread pudding and just tear it down in about 15 seconds. But it wasn't, it wasn't as intense as a craving for a cigarette if your next ex-smoker. It was like probably really nice to eat that. But like my appetite declined by about 75% and that's been permanent. That's been so there's a perverse thing for you. I eat way less and now I'm not as hungry. Okay. Well, how does that make sense?

I'm doing the best not to be hungry. Although it didn't look like it was 30.

No. No. There's a small 30 ounce steak.

Yeah, well, I eat fatty cuts of steak and Makala is buying fat directly from the butcher store and we cook that up cut it into small pieces and fried up till it's crispy.

It's actually quite delicious. It's not bread pudding with ice cream, but it's not funny.

Well, those are the thing about clinical studies with diet or virtually impossible to conduct because you just can't conduct a proper randomly distributed controlled experiment. It's too hard. So a lot of what we're trying to do is pull out information from correlations. Right. He can't do it.

Oh yeah, and they have different lifestyle profiles. Sure. There's just endless numbers of confounding variables. And you only need one confounding variable that's relevant to screw up the study. Right. You can't get that information with correlational studies. We try because it's impossible to do the studies.

Oh, everybody. Everybody, well, you are not, but you know, you're interested in this sort of thing, but they should be incredulous. Like when people make absurd claims is like, oh, well, I had 50 health problems and I stopped eating everything, but meet and they went away. It's like, oh, sure. It's like, yeah, well, wasn't you dying? So, and I see the results and I know it's an anecdote. I bloody will understand that and I'm highly skeptical about all of this, but I tell you, so that's why I'm telling you what happened to me and what happened to my daughter and also what happened to my wife because she's, Tammy was always in good shape and she's exercised a lot and she reduced to the pure carnivore diet about a month ago. She lost like 12 pounds and she was already slim. She's back to the same way she was when she was 21. She's like 58. You know, and she doesn't look 58. I can tell you that.

Like vitamin C, for example.

Turns out if you don't need carbohydrates, you don't need vitamin C. Huh? Who would guess that?

I don't remember Michaela outlined a paper for me. Vitamin C is necessary for carbohydrate metabolism. But if you don't, if, again, remember everyone listening, I am not an expert in this field. Right.

Yeah, I'm getting a little cramping and my toes from time to time. So I'm not sure about potassium or yeah, or magnesium.

Yeah, well, this is all like look.

You could take plenty of well, there are people who basically lived on meat. You know, the anyway did the mess I basically did. Yeah, there's some supplementation but not a lot. Yeah, and apparently if you do a carnivore diet you're supposed to eat more organ meat and I do some of that but not a lot But I can tell you like I'm I'm in Well look I wouldn't be doing this if it wasn't producing positive results. Yeah, it's not like it's fun right mean for a while Well, it makes you a social pariah Like let's invite the Peterson's over. Oh, yeah, they don't eat anything. Oh, we have other friends It's like, well, that's how it works.

Just if you're a pain, no one invites you out. So I'm a social pain, an ideological pain, and now I'm a nutritional pain.

Well, lots of times when we're traveling, we cook. So we usually stay in places where you can cook. But most places you can get a steak. And so that's mostly what we do. We've been traveling in a motorhome, and so we've been cooking in the motorhome. And so not carry beef jerky with me, which we make. So yeah.

We have a dehydrator, and you just basically put salt on them, throwing the dehydrator. So that works pretty well.

Well, I'm forever. God forever is a long time. I'd like to be able to eat more things, but I'm going to experiment with that very, very, very, very, very cautiously. I'm going to add mushrooms next because maybe I could eat them.

Well, it's certainly possible. Well, certainly eventually this diet will kill me.

Well, you're right.

So it might be that for some people of vegan diet, there's vegan diet, is it preferable? Well, certainly to a standard American diet.

Yeah, well, that's why I don't want to universalize for my experience. But this is what's happened to me, and this is what's happened to my wife and my daughter. So, and all of it's been, well, with Michaela, it's miraculous. I cannot believe it. The last time I saw it, made me cry. I've never seen her look like that. She looks so good. She's so healthy and sober.

And she's taking no immunomodulators at all. No medication. None. And she was on him for her. Oh, Jesus. Yes, more medication than you and shake a stick at. Method, track, state, which is basically the use it to treat cancer. It's what's what the cancer treating drugs called. Whatever. I don't remember at the moment. She was on enrol, which really, really helped. But later, open to bacterial infections. So she always had pneumonia in the fall. Um, but in real, really helped. Um, and then heavy doses of antidepressants and riddle in and Jesus, it was just how was she been on this carnivore diet? Oh, God, she's only been eating meat. It's got to be least six to eight months now.

Uh, yep. And her blood work. I won't comment on that. I don't know the details of her blood work. Um, so I don't know the answer to that.

That's the trick there. Try it for a month. See what happens. You what the hell a month, you know? Just a month.

The IDW?

The hell it is. It's like, I've been trying to puzzle it out. I mean, I think what it is is a loose collection of early adopters of a revolutionary technology. That's what it looks like to me. And we found each other because we're all doing the same thing.

Well, and also I think interest didn't long form discussion, right? And able to engage in it because otherwise we wouldn't be having the relative success that we're having in the in the in the milieu. You know, and it got a name and that's kind of interesting and that's Eric though. Yeah, that's right. That's Eric.

Definitely definitely.

Yeah, well, and Scott, this funny conspiratorial element there that's sort of true and sort of mostly dramatic and, well, as a mathematician, he's always looking for patterns and codes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know what to make of it. I mean, things get a name, and then you think, well, why did that get named? And well, someone named it, but yeah, but the name stock, so it seemed to have proposed, as some degree. And well, what do we have in common? Most of us are entrepreneurial. Most of us have our own platform so we can speak independently. Most of us are interested in long-form philosophical discussions, primarily not political, but bordering on political. Well, bands more political obviously. Yes, he's the most. Yeah, but he's also very sophisticated political commentators. So he borders on both the philosophical and the religious. Yes. And then we're all the newly new adopters of this new technology. So that's enough to put us in a group. And then, well, it turns out that we've all been talking to each other, but part of the reason for that is while we're all doing the same thing on the net. So it's not surprising that we're talking to each other. So I always go for the simple explanations first. You know, it's not a movement, exactly. What it is, it's the manifestation of a new technology. And then, well, do we have anything in common that's worth discussing that would make this a viable group, let's say, and answer to that is, I don't know. You know, I've been touring with Ruben. That's been good. It's been good to have a comedian along. And he's also a good interviewer. He does the Q&As with me. And it's nice to have some levity in the mix because the conversations with the audience are very serious. Though I can crack a joke. And I can't tell a joke. But if something funny occurs to me, I can say it. And sometimes it's funny. So that's something. You know, and we've been discussing a fair bet, and I had good conversations with Shapiro and Harris for that matter. So there is lots of interplay between us, but I think that's more because we inhabit the same technological space, more than the same ideological space, apart from the fact that we are actually interested in dialogue fundamentally. So we'll see. I mean, I'm watching it with curiosity.

Well, there's lots of downsides too. Sure. There's lots of downsides. I mean, first of all, you know, most of us are on an individual, individualistic path. I'm not really much of a group guy. You know, so am I in this group? It's like, well, I'm pleased to be associated with you guys. That's for sure. But I don't really know what it would mean or if it should mean anything or if it'll screw up what I'm doing or if it, I don't know anything about it, but mostly I'm curious. It's like, huh? this is a group I thought this is the rat pack I thought what I walked into the restaurant because we wrote last night was Ben Shapiro Sam Harris, Eric Weinstein, Dave Ruben, Joe Rogan and me, right, and my wife Tammy and so we're all walking in there and I thought well this is kind of like being in the rat pack in the 1950s I thought well I know maybe it isn't but that's what came to mind so I thought that's funny and it's it's kind of cool and it's interesting and it's edgy and all of that but I'm not I'm not taking it seriously. I'm not also not, you know, I'm not taking it not seriously either, but I'm just watching. I'm watching everybody interact because it is a very motley crew of people. It is. So, and they're very different and so But it was a very enjoyable thing. Well, you okay. So why did you think it was enjoyable?

What did you be part of the New York Times article?

Okay, so your take on it is that it's, well, it's interesting. Yes. Well, this is the, this is probably another thing that unites that group of people. Everyone in that group of people is likely to get in trouble because they find too many things interesting, right?

That's another thing that unites all of us. Yes. And so, you know, curiosity killed the cat and so, Yeah, but we're not cats.

It did did and it saved a lot of cats too.