It’s the premiere episode of THE BEN SHAPIRO SHOW: SUNDAY SPECIAL!! Watch my hosted interview with Dr. Jordan B Peterson, and look out every Sunday for new episodes featuring key newsmakers and public figures!
Date: 05-06-2018
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This is an unofficial transcript meant for reference. Accuracy is not guaranteed.
There's lots of times in your life you're not going to be happy, and so that's not gonna work. You wanna have something meaningful, that's the boat that will,
take you through the storm,
here we are with Jordan petersen and I could not be more excited to talk with you best selling
author of twelve rules for life and they will talk with them. But first I want to pay for sponsors over helix leap cell,
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But we say you ok, so I could not be more excited to speak with Jordan petersen work, as Jordan knows before the show we talk for now.
before they are just that interesting things they should have caught on tape, but now rushing in and get a chance to do it live so here
the Jordan's new book, the haven't bought it. Yet everybody on planet has bought this book. I was walking through the office today we didn't have a copy in the office person the front desk.
here, but you sitting, I heard of tasks
the way this works at twelve rules for life, an antidote to cast fantastic book, obviously topping all the bestseller lists all over the world. Jordan thanks so much for joining the show, really appreciate it. Thanks for the invitation,
Obviously your you're providence has just blown up in the last year and a half we're talking before the show about why that is and why there are so many people who suddenly are very angry about you. I notice there is an article in political suggesting that young angry white males your now.
Their leader, so congratulations. We have- and I want to ask about that. Why do you think that number one your profile has become so big of late and number two
Why do you think it is that so many members of the of the left are so angry about that? Why are they characterizing people who listen to you as angry and enraged young white? Well, we could. We could look at the characterization to begin with. You know because
I think it speaks to the pathology of the radical left instantly. There are out
will incapable of viewing the world, except through group identity terms, no one.
If someone comes out and disagrees with them, then they have to correct.
Eyes them by their fundamental group attribute whatever that happens, to be maybe
gender because that's a favorite or may
its race and so angry white men, young there we go sexist ages and re assessed all once right. There angry young white man well
ass to be that way if you're gonna be the. If you gonna play the lead
this game- because that's the only
that you can look at the world and then
You can't make your opponent reprehensible in some manner and it strange that they would attempt to make them.
reprehensible on the grounds of race age. That's his axe, since that's precisely what they stand against hypothetically, but if you can
your enemy, reprehensible along
dimension. Then you have taken
and with them seriously and so
no, if I'm not an all right fascist, like hitler or milo, you, nautilus, which was, however, characterized in Canada, because the radical left this can't even get their bloody insult straight he's like hitler or milo. You not bullets. It's like this. There is no difference between them right at the lobbyists difference. It's just another attempt to pillory
far as I can tell, and I think that its its dreadful, I really think it is. There was an article written by
but I believe the editor of the new york review of books. It was just republished in the globe and male talking
the emergence of hyper masculinity and how I was somehow response
without contributing to it. Like mussolini- and I read that- and I thought you liked misleading and I thought
ok. So what are you doing? Icy you're, you're, defining
masculinity or conflicting masculinity and hyper masculinity. At the same time,
your virtue, signalling by being against hyper masculinity, but really what you're trying to do is bring down whatever it is. That's masculinity and what
Skill is in in this frame is something like competence, and so it's part of the
article leftists general war on competence at all as well, which I think is one of the most pernicious.
The elements of the culture wars
the dissolution of hierarchies they. The assumption,
Every hierarchy has to be based on power and serve the needs of your group, whatever that happens to be that, there's no such thing as competence, and so.
and then the other thing that's reprehensible about it, because that's not enough is that it's just wrong like theirs,
not tens of thousands of letters from people and people come up to me all the time on the street
if you an example, this is a great story. This is really touching. So I was in l a about a month and a half ago
because downtown outlined downtown, always kind of rough
I was wandering around and with my wife and this.
One guy pulled a car up beside me hopped out, and he was kind of a stylish look and twenty one year old, latino guy guy somethin like that is all,
did, he said he asked me who I wasn't and I told him and he you know that's what
presumed so he was kind of excited about that. He said. Look I've watched all your lectures and it's really help me and have been straightening up my life and trying to get my
I'm clean me laughed about that, but you know developing some aims and trying to tell the truth and look. I've really fixed up my relationship with my father, and so then he said: wait, wait, just wait a minute and I thought sure what shirt, and so he went back
car? He got his father out of his car and he came over with his dad, like they had their arms around each other and he said. Look we've really improved our relationship and they're both smiling away- and you know that's mad
if you're going to target me for that, just go right ahead. It sounds real white supremacists, oh yeah yeah, and it's wherever I go now, and this is one of the things
This is the thing that so wonderful about that. All of this, as far as I'm concerned, is that people come up to me,
all the time and that's exactly what they say. They say look. I was lost, aimless, depressed nihilistic, anxious drug addicted alcoholic
wasting my time masturbating too much of a
general use that particular example
loss of essentially and
and hopeless in some sense and I've been watching your lectures and they ve really helped, and I've really been putting my life together. I've been trying to say what I believe to be true and
provision and it's really helped and the like, and it so
overwhelming. You know like if I'm doing book signings after a talk,
then they'll be a dozen people or more who- and these aren't. I can only talking to people for about six
seconds, but you can have a very intense conversation and sixty seconds
and they ll say, look in all like I was suicide. Man like I was really hanging onto the edge of the earth by my fingernails and I'm better
and they have tears in her eyes like
that's my little about those long way now lie. I think that when I look at your rise and look, I talk to people who love what you do.
Every time I go on the road, none speaking at a campus you're, the number one name that gets mentioned at people by people who come to my lectures and I think that
the reason for that that I've that I've seen is really twofold. One is that one of the things that you really talk a lot about
the notion of self discipline and purpose in your wife and control and the idea that you are in control of your decision making in their decision making matters. That's one and the other is that you have. You have a unique capacity to to say no to things that
somebody says something to you. That is illogical by popular vote,
the capacity to say no, that's what happened in that Cathy newman interview that somebody was saying something to you that made no sense, and he just said well no and then
stood on that now and when you stand on that now, I think it gives people a lot of courage, yeah. Well I mean that the gender issues really an interesting one, because one
professional domains
parties as individual differences. I'm I'm a personality psychologist, and so I know the gender difference. Literature and its
It's a very solid literature. Well, first of all its very solid
has a thirty year history, one spurs psychologist:
the personality models, doubts that would be the big five model. All in
we derived straight statistics reich brute force empiricism nobody had a theoretical axe to grind with the big five except to say
maybe there are human traits, maybe there
calculated in language we can use statistical.
makes to find out what they are, that was it. That is the whole in so very
very neutral as far as ideologies go five traits emerge, ok,.
are there differences between the sexes turn
there. A right.
massive, although a few some them across all the traits. You concept
men and women with about seventy five percent accuracy. So it's not trivial, but you have to
across all the traits. Then another question comes up.
What are those differences? Socio, cultural or biological? Ok, we can,
that will go around the world will look at cultures,
rapporteur them in terms of the gender equality of their sociological policies. We can do that with.
broad agreement from the right and the left. Then
what is this would be if gender
it's a decrease among more egalitarian societies.
Then the gender differences are socio, cultural or at least more socio, cultural. That's exactly the
percent of what was found repeatedly that pseudoscience it's like. No, that's me
strange psychology those papers have found.
since of citations and write the average humanity's paper
has zero psychiatry, that's right and I'm done its most common one has won three thousand: that's that's an unbelievable classic and and
the other bit of brutes, like you say. Well, how do you know that you can trust someone's judgment about a fact? The fact emerge
despite their ideological presuppositions. Ok, so
its well known that the sole
sciences and the human
these have a have a left tilt and law.
That's temperamental and the till
become more pronounced, but as
If, in height is pointed out, there are no conservatives among social personality, psychologist or or or none to speak, I feel very few vanishingly seal and if the field has a bias is definitely and india
notably a left wing bites. Ok, so you have to fight that if you're, if you're a scientist right, even if you are left wing scientist, you have to fight that because you want to get to the facts.
it was these social scientists to generate the doubted that suggested that the gender differences not only were real, but that we're bigger, indigo, egalitarian societies. They did
do that to grind the radiological acts, because their ideological, the illogical presupposition, was nano.
Make the society you'd. Egalitarian, men and women get more of the same, like no big it more different. Oh,
Isn't that something? And so then there's a corollary there, which is all right you
still say, and their kind
washing in this direction in scandinavia,
boys and girls are different men,
women are different.
spire biological, but because people are malleable
push the socio cultural structure harder and harder to minimize the biological differences. Ok, what
First of all, maybe- and maybe not, maybe you get a rebounded they'd get even like the kids would rebel. That could easily happen, but, let's say ok, you could the problem
the fact is that
If you see that much power to the state
like your basically giving the state the right to socialize you, kids rights, like you really.
It. Really you really want to do that. I mean like people in Israel couldn't do that with a kibbutz us right, it didn't work, so people aren't going to give up their children to the state and, thank god for that law I mean this is one of the big questions that we were discussing earlier is that we are talking about here. The polarizing
in politics between right and laughed and obviously you're you're,
as a psychologist, esther philosopher, but you ve- been dragged almost kicking
screaming into this political sphere, because everything has been so politicize, and so, when you see when you cite social science detest necks and they are scientifically based your called a racist
the sexist, recalled the homophobic and all my will you not exactly so. Why is it that? So? Why do you think it is that so many
on the left. You purport to be all about reason in science and an objective fact or so willing to throw those
the window. I the minute
it becomes a politically inconvenient wrong because imagine them
the cognitive systems. An interpretation of the world has levels there
magic wabbles, some fundamental presupposition
are more fundamental than others.
you could say well the leftists historically, maybe because of their atheistic rationality
are more on the side of science than say the fundamentalism of any sort. But when push
comes to shove. You find out
how the axioms are our nested,
deeper, axioms underneath out, which is that
all hierarchies are based on power and all powerful,
these are based on group identity, tribal I'd essentially, and that
Entire history of the world is nothing but a power play between between
different identity groups, it's like okay! Well, if the science indicates that
that's wrong, then do alter
those beliefs, or do you all to the science and the answer that question is well. It depends on how you ve hierarchically, arranged those if the sciences at the bottom, then you walter your beliefs by if
scientific facts are the axiomatic some structure than you
then you ought to your beliefs. If your beliefs are the axiomatic substructure, then you order the science. While we ve seen how that place up and one of the debate
I've tried to do so to speak as to diagnose the axiomatic structure. It's like! Ok, what's the? What
the metaphysical presumption structure of the radical left, while what what it is you,
sickly. Your group, your group,
are basically engaged in warfare right.
or fairies, arbitrary, except in so far as it serves your group
Ok, I don't buy any of that. I think that's, I think, that's a route to certain disaster like it's a degeneration into tribalism and that we will
seriously pay for it, not only because it returns to tribalism and tribes fight as the anthropological evidence, for that is overwhelming, wellmere tribes fight, it doesn't even matter if their chimpanzee tribes, even
in pansy tribes fight so
Not only do we regret
the tribalism
but you also invalidate the one proposition that been able
help us a rise above the tribal which is the idea
that the individual should be sovereign and so on
the culture war is about. What's the
proper framework within which to view
identity and
what's the relationship between the individual and the group in
sure too. That identity and the leftist answer is it's all group and it's all power like ok,
so just a second, I want to ask you a little bit about some of the.
The more enlightened minded thinkers who are out there right now because it seems like we ve, been discussing the big gap in
in western civilization right now, which is between the collectivist and the individual has secured hood broadly. But I wanna talk about some of the divisions among individuals and just the second person I wanna say thanks to our sponsors over at work,
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jordan. One of the things that we ve been talking about, obviously, is the big gap that I think we certainly agree on between the collectivist, identity, politics and ending
sublimation of science, in favour of subjective politics there.
There is a power group, but
we talk a little bit about a division that
it is also now breaking out among those of us who, I think, would consider ourselves friends of the enlightenment. So I you consider yourself, a friend of the of enlightenment style thinking, at least in the essence, that individuality matters and that the individual, sovereign scientific, and
and this use, then the a matter of data are useful annually and in this group I consider myself as part of this group, people started to call the intellectual dark web sound, Harris's, part
this group there there there
a wide variety of folks with a lot of broad political differences that are part of this group, but there's
real differences there broken out even among people who consider themselves part of this group, bread, Steven, pinker, hesitant,
back of the world then than you do I've different perspective than sam Harris as you and I have our differences, probably on matters matters of of philosophy. So where do you
The vulnerability lies in the in the
possibility of a vilifying white mentality, because it seems to me that one of the big problems- that's that's popping, etc.
but the water now is there
action of the enlightenment in favour of this old style tribal, isn't that you ve been talking about that. We're not going to repeat history because we ve benefited so much from the enlightenment that we face
the things don't have to be. This way remove got so much nice stuff. We live in so much freedom that we forget
if we just toss those enlightened ideals out the window, things get really ugly.
can. I think that's what unites well that that's! The question is what what? What do you
boss out the window before things get ugly right and the enlightenment proponents
you could say harris, you could say pinker Charles taylor
in canada, they'd traced,
back the development of the modern self? Let's say, taylor wrote a book
sources of the modern self to the enlightenment and
quite interesting, because if you look at the typical
mix ecologist say their historical knowledge generally runs
talk about fifteen years and so
Is there are concerned with the with the modern literature and there's some utility in that, but that
the downside. Is they don't have any historical context? So you read someone like taylor and you think, while always stretching it back five hundred years. You know, but
there's this reading. That goes way beyond that. To look at the sources of the self and the source of them.
water ethos, and this is a huge bone of contention between people. Like me say- and people like harris- and I think be between people like you and people are careless- is that
my sense is that the enlightenment values themselves are grounded in an ethos. That's much deeper and much less articulated and now
be uneasy.
Of metaphor: image, drama, ritual religion, art, music,
was that dance even for that matter, the nonverbal, the the the pattern, recognition and mcgilchrist is written
called the master and is emissary which lays that out point night nicely with regards to hemispheric specialization. It's gonna
get it on
conan goldberg observation that the left hemisphere specialised for what we know and the right hemisphere specialised for what we don't know. That's an order, chaos dynamic and
The rough idea would be that the left hemisphere generates paradigm attic systems, so that would
like the enlightenment system, axiom predicated right, even
stable axiom predicated, but that there
entire axiom
Ic system is based in a non verbal in the non verbal domain, that's associated with
would be associate with right hemisphere, but would also be associated with d.
motivations, biological motivations and emotions and
so because here here is one way of looking at it. You think what
How do you validate an axiomatic system of ethics and the answers
straightforward, jumpy, azure figure. This out is you played out in the world literally you acted out in the world and then you-
watch each other's emotional responses and if the thing that you're
if is the axiomatic system, that you're playing out so
I despise the motivations and the emotions of the people who are engaged in that system. Then the sis,
is justified, and then you say: well it it's not just that their motivations and emotions are satisfied. It's more complex, it's that,
the motivations and emotions of each individual are satisfied,
not only now, but
now next week next month and next year. So you have to stay extended across time and not only my emotions and motivations,
but yours is well now next week next month
cross time, so this is terribly tight constraints the or place
one and our axiomatic systems vote
now the way jumpy a thought of that. He said well, think about it, like a child's game, a bunch of kids get together and they decide
play. Pretend ok and pretend
let's mortal the world right and and as a place to act,
to pretend you are outright so the kids get together and they assign rules and they say
you're gonna be mom, you're gonna, be dad you're gonna be the dog and we're
play house and then they they act.
out and what they're doing we see it
if they can regulate the manner in which their constructing the game.
Everyone's emotions and motivations are so well satisfied that they want to convey
the game, and for that
so cool. So what it shows you is there.
How and ethical system is, is
acid and justified it's like. You play it out new see. If everyone wants to keep playing
and so that's a whole different methodology than the scientific domain. Soap.
the axiomatic system isn't the ethical axiomatic system
the justified by reference to the scientific method, its justified by rare
and to the emotional and motivational well being of all the players of the game. Now
game emerges. This is the second
this this is so cool. Then the question is: how
That game emerge.
And the answer is the same way that children
games emerges so,
What piaget noted is that kids would get together and they play marbles,
and if they were young kids, they can all play marble, say six, six years old they can't play marbles and and if they are in
group. They were playing marbles and it all worked out. Fine squabbles
although the kids would keep playing right, validating the gates.
You took the kids out of the game and you said one of the rules of the game they would give
quaintly disparate accomplished, so they knew how to do. It was like the wisdom was in the group, the
and was fragmented enough among the individual. So if you pull the individual's out, they give disparate accounts, but if you put them altogether, they could play the game. But then, if you
did until they were eleven or twelve, and you pulled them out of the game. Then they could tell you the rules, then, at fourteen or fifteen
they they would be willing to this
more sophisticated games, they would be more willing to regard themselves as makers of the rules
Ok, so here's how it happens in an evolutionary since people
going all the way back to our primate forebears, organise themselves into functional hierarchies, ok and that the hierarchies are complex and then
just based on power, despite what the idiot marxist say. Even the wall has noted that
chimpanzee hierarchies are unstable. If they're only based on power, they don't lacks, they degenerate into violence. So you have a hierarchy. That's that works.
But it's acted out. No one knows why it works, but it works
Everyone seems to be happy with it.
ok, and so those hierarchies get more complex and more sophisticated and then people
to observe them and talk about them. It's like a lot. We ve got this hierarchy here, what's it like, and then they
been off dramas about the hierarchy, here's a hero who climbed up the hierarchy and here's what a hero looks like ok. So then you get the idea of hierarchy and then
get the idea of the hero was the person who moves up the hierarchy and generates it. Ok,
then out of that you get this
structure of the idea of the hero, and then you get development of that idea, and it's out is that you get the monotheistic religions, and so it's like
the procedure and the hierarchy come first. No one knows what the rules are all played.
The same way that wolves play about an impact or chimpanzees play it out in the troop. Then we wake up
Take all we live in a structure. Here's
but that would be all cyrus in the egyptian authorities. Here's the structure. Here's
the structure goes wrong. Here's what
structure does here's its tyranny tyrannical aspect here is what you have
the due to generate the structure and to thrive it. Ok,
even more important the hierarchy,
important enough, but what we want,
was how to master the hierarchy. Ok, that's where you get the mythologies of the hero. Ok,
So then this generates offered
different heroes, because this different ways of being successful him, then you have a
notably of heroes, menu
ok. Well now we ve got all these heroes.
that's a sad weaken
go back and say: ok, something about all these heroes is what
some heroes. That's when you extract out the the
want to see savior
why in christianity, Christ is the king of kings. It's actually
can think about it as a literal statement
forget about the religious soberly, it's like. Ok, you got a bunch of people, some
what kind of king like? Ok,
You admire them like, for whatever reason that is right: it's not easy
to figure out what you admire. Someone that's complicated, but let's say
you ve got a marble, admirable people start telling stories about
That's why you go to a movie right, wanna watch someone! You don't care about your board by now. You wanted to watch someone admirable an interesting, or maybe the opposite of that, but doesn't matter it's the same thing menus
Ok, what we ve got all these admirable people, their generating the world properly. That's what makes an admirable there's a pair
simple, they embody
principle. Is the process
which the admirable world is generated. That's the logos
the thing that's operative at the beginning of so here's, my here's, my question about about all this, because now we were really not time, not troubles rising
maps meeting, which was your first by which are you're, doing, need the audio around an out and out it's it's definitely a harder book. I then twelve
was for life and much more complex book in a lot of ways than than twelve rules. For so how universal are these systems meeting? Why is that?
white men only arrives at one time in human history. One place in human history, as opposed to its human biology, is essentially consists.
across across humanity. Then why is it that that if at the at the
impacts of the levels you undoubtedly enlightenment idea, which we have started. This particular question, then, why
that it only arrives in one place, one time as opposed to arriving in Iraq.
It places in rotten, guided different, cried forestall drown, that's ok! The first thing we would say is the problem
by which this the hierarchy,
itself and six
within the hierarchy- is generated, that's too
accounted over millions of years at least
one hundred thousand of thousands of years, but I would push it back because you can see analogs in the chimps. So twenty million years, let's say that's a long time on that timescale, the fact
that the enlightenment values arose in Europe five hundred years ago before anywhere else. It's like one who cares if it's five old man long
if you put five one hundred, render old men in line it's like its yesterday,
this morning, so we we
evolved these hierarchical structures? That's our culture
We ve evolved ways of maneuvering within the hierarchical structure that are successful
and now we started to evolve ways of mapping r r adaptation, not just adapt.
Mapping, it ok, try
mapping occur first
admiration. Second,
imitation of admiration, and that would be drama. It's like you.
Rheumatiz, shakespeare extracts out, what's admirable uninteresting and plays it
So that's the use of the body as a representational structure of the body. So we act out. What's admirable, you think. Ok, now, he's kind of got the drama down are captured by the strata,
within the literary critics, come along the philosophers and they say: oh, what are the principal
by which the admirable people operate.
If chimps, woke up and said, oh well, some chimps are more successful than others
What are the rules of six thousand there's like? While there were no rules because they weren't running by rules right? There are rules until you described the patterns, then you have a rule of cats, what happens with Moses bite,
Moses has a revelation. Here is the rolls right now we ve been living out those rules forever. Yet we didn't know what they were. Who because they weren't rules, they were customs right. Ok, so you start by map
near customs, in drama and story,
where you can represent them and you can transmit them, then once you have them in your grip sake
the represented now not just acted out. Well then you can.
Move, one step backwards from them and you can say what
the the commonalities among these. What are the general principles of that would be the development of something like the code of hammurabi right. It's like what
one of these customs, what are they write rebel?
sure. It's like. Oh, here's how you map the customs? That's the deck along its the same idea, so
took human beings a very long time
to evolve their hierarchies
to evolve their structures of success.
and then to have enough people around with enough spare time
to engage in the cultural process of the artistic
through a process of mapping the adaptive structure
that only merges in mythology and drama. Then that lays the groundwork for philosophy. Then the philosophers could come in special
it's written, likened the galileo christian pantheon. It's like all. Now we ve got it written down, oh well. We don't have to
Remember it right. We can read it and while we're reading, we can think about it, and so
then out of that starts to come. The semantic codes will then get the enlightenment
Well, here's amongst bunch of codes, psychology
a great service. This really interesting, because if you re pinker or regional Goldberg's new book, essentially
A tribute the the enlightenment to juggle because of the miracle,
It is, though it accidentally occurred in a certain place in certain time. John doesn't Michael. Quite that far, I think to be fair to him, but I think that that philosophy,
this sort of sprang up randomly care, I is, is very much
embedded in a lot of jam, Harris's thinking a lot of programming and your team.
It further back. But I do wonder if, if this may be an area of actual disagreement, the two of us should be fun. Are you attributing the growth of the judeo christian ethic that
urges into the enlightenment
also accidentally just pushing timeline further back than me all. I don't think it's accidental, ok and are not making a reductionist argument. So the first thing is, I'm going to say this is how religion evolved,
but I'm not saying I'm not saying that this x,
nation exhausts. The phenomenon
because it's a very strange phenomenon, very, very strange, but but that does,
When we can generate a plausible evolutionary account, so I
if you have a bunch of motivated emotional limited beings
buying the same talk territory and compete
in cooperating for the same resources,
including the resource of cooperation
we can generate more resources- are not a zero sum game
there are going to be patterns,
of adaptation that emerged from that there are similar so here
We are thinking about it. If you put a bunch of
its together they're gonna
evolve games read while which games, while bunch of different games,
yeah, but they're all dames right. So, even though,
that's the moral relativism element
a bunch of different gapes, ok, but the moral absolutist element is yeah yeah, but they're all gates and the games have to be playbill, which
They have to continue right in an integrated way. Right. That's a big constraint. People have to
want to play them. So not only
have to be games. Not
comprehensible to everybody and enjoyable, but people, but they have to be self maintaining and everyone who has asked to want to play them. Ok, that's that
answered the post, modern conundrum, a plethora of potential.
if the goal implications of the world, an infinite variety, yeah, ok, fine, not an infinite variety of pregnant.
Fully applicable interpretations. Union instantly constrain the universe to walter to what
This is why there's commonalities in mythologies is like, if you put in
people together in enough different places
commonality of the groups of people there because of the grounding in common motivation and emotion and embodiment, because we're embodied mean
They're gonna generate hierarchy,
is, that are broadly similar with
strategies of success within those hierarchies that are broadly similar with disk.
Options of the strategies that are broadly similar
and so you could say in some sense the ethic that gave
rise to the enlightenment is in place.
More or less everywhere now it's tricky because
not every higher
Legal system is, this function was every other higher are just some of them can be generated to tyranny. We're talking about the set of all voluntarily pliable gapes rights, or something like that and that can degenerate out of
You're gonna get common hero, miss you have to, and then
That's not laid the groundwork that
is the groundwork for even our ability to communicate right right. So so, as this is the delight, my guys, they just there now
getting that so that in this gets too, I think the broader question that I know you and SAM went on for three hours about about the nature of truth, because pretty
the truth in the moral sphere, I think that what we
we further sending you guys agree on the idea of truth in the scientific spare the dead. You know if something is that
such a thing as objective proof or
are you I won't say we agree on a lot of that. But the question is
to some degree. Why does scientists accept the idea that objective truth is true? And then I would say we probably don't agree about that, because I would ground that in pragmatism, Ratan
sam would ground out in the idea of an independently existing objective world right now is a leap
more like my own, actually than the pragmatists be right that if you believe that there is a god whose out there in the universe, who created the structures in particular certain way, then what he created is. The truth
this apart from you, and if you mean
we didn't exist and they were able to utilise the truth. That truth would still exist out. There were the pragmatism right say. Its truth is in the
is that it has regularly. Well that exact, that's the thing is that you know I don't know if we would consider scientific truth. True,
this we are also simultaneously accepting the idea that science,
The truth is good for people, salt, theirs
the thing I wanted to bring up their debts relevant because you, but
the idea of god, so here's a way of thinking about it.
And- and I dont know what to make of this- because this is stretching me- this is stretching my thoughts out beyond, where I ve been
But to develop them, so
This is the intuition that I have based on a variety of,
experiences I've had so imagine that.
There is a very wide range of human behaviors.
some subset of those: are both admirable and not admirable. So let's call them good and evil at this at the extremes. Ok,
then, we might say well
pattern that characterizes all the actions that are good and a pattern that
characterizes all the actions that are evil and that's it
his personal pattern, because it's not just
You were me it's about everyone, ok, and so then that gives personified. That's cool,
stan satan. Let's air came enable right targets, personified and then
bad guy, good guy in a moving like its personified all the time. It's thor Loki, marvel movies, you know so,
Now you have the lead state, you take the idea of christ and you think. Ok, so that's the ebb.
auction of everything- that's that's
admirably good about this
of all. Human behavior is ok and then you think what
What sort of reality does not have this
poles, back into the reality of the idea of the local, said the idea that it was the logos that god used at the beginning of time to extract order out of chaos. So you think well, it's trans personal, the goodness, because it's not
just characterize, stick of any one person, its moral
something that inhabits a person
If a person is, you can really see this, for example, on the other end too, with a satanic again, because if you read the writings of people who do absolutely horrific things like the shooters, you can see that possession extraordinarily clearly if your eyes are rope, it's like and it's shocking, so people don't usually look at it and
they even say that themselves, like that the columbine carry their writings, are hair raising you know when they were called clearly possessed by an evil that you only encounter if you sit in a dark,
eyes and brood on your hatred for money.
And years right you
places that.
you go places where all the dark people go right right, then that it that
makes you over. Ok, so the good
can take you over as well. Ok, so there's this there's this
of good, let's say and what
Spirit of good. Does is act in the world on the
potential of the world too? General
the actuality of the world and the judeo christian
opposition is, is that if you confront the potential of the world
good in mine, using truth proof
communication, then the order that you extract is good and then
jack, odin genesis when god is using the word and he cried
cosmo, sort of potential and every time he does that he says, and it was good, which is
it's so investing because there's a
opposition there in the proposition there is that if you encounter potential with truth, the cosmos you create is
shelly good! Well, that's it! That's just an hour
the overwhelming idea it's like if it's true, if it's true it's the greatest idea of the river walk naked, your your your! Your thoughts on this actually from maps of meeting helped generate to what we in the injuries and cubs of our torah hebrew, leading the eighth, a thought about the about the the bible, but it this
merged with a little bit chilean thought. Let me
the idea that, when it comes to the mystical notion of the tree of good and evil in in Eden, what is that support
what did what people do wrong by eating from the tree of good and evil, and my feelings
What they did wrong is that god created a universe in which the value was embedded in the object,
in the same way that you in your in your book, talk about if you're teaching a child about
object. The rules of the object are embedded in the teaching about the object to use the example of a vase were discussing this earlier. But
is the example of a vase where you teach your child? Don't touch the vase cause base will break so that the rules embedded in the object in the same way in aristotelian thought. The rules for behavior are embedded in the nature of the universe, meaning what makes a man good is what makes man unique, which is the reason they they
is the reason, is what makes men unique so acting in accordance with right reason is what makes something is what makes an action good. So if you believe that
created the universe along these lines and that what natural law is just the few
to understand the wives along which created god, created the universe. Then, where are you
things what wrong is when they decided to separate values from the universe when we decided to take
values and say this is a completely separate things. This base has no rules attached to it anymore. It's just events,
and we can instruct the rules arbitrarily as to what to do with this base and so eating from that
of knowledge of good and evil. Changes
nature of good and evil from the euro
comes along with a set of rules to human beings,
I think that they can use their own intuition to supplant gods rules at supplant universal rules with their own.
the killer, vision of what the universe ought to be an adapt. What they have to be expelled here? Well, ok, ok! So that's also associated to some degree. I would say with
warning in Paradise. Laws because milton basically portrays lucifer who's, the bringer of light weirdly enough as-
spirit of unbridled rationality, which accounts for
say the catholic church antagonism, the catholic churches and
Words, rationality. The idea was same idea in the tower of babel that human beings have
proclivity to erect there
We dogmatic, matic ethical.
Systems and then to expand them into a grand the osity, the challenges the transcendent and that that's it
how a tyrian catastrophe for me.
Satan was the spirit. That eternally does that right who says,
everything I know is enough.
Plants. What I dont know that supplants the treasury lip and that's a catastrophe, how there
tangled up with the with the north,
good naval, while you're making some headway towards towards sorting that out I mean it
a cataclysm, that's that's it.
waned in in
the story of adam and eve right there
article is amazing. The coming to two wakefulness.
And its associated, partly with recognition of nakedness, which is recognition of vulnerability and mortality and the discovery of death and then also the discovery of good and evil. That goes along with that. So you said well, that's partly that that the car
and of division of ethics from the facts of the object. So I have to think that through,
I also recommend to people. I think I've mentioned this before as Ian mcgilchrist spoken, the master and his emissary, because he looks at this neural psychologically right and and looks at the the
hemisphere as the hemisphere, that's dealing with the explicitly axiomatic systems and the right hemisphere, that's dealing with what
systems are embodied in ok, so far,
what happens with with the emergence of good and evil is, as far as I can tell it, took me a long time to think about this. Is that
and this is different than the than the hypothesis
does that you laid forward, which is why can't reconcile exactly as yes, you recognize your naked
You know you can be hurt.
You know your vulnerable and insufficient
you hide from god
happens. Next in sudan, and the reason you hide from god, say: god is your destiny or god is the you're walking with? God is a manifestation of your ultimate proper destiny? You you
whether you are capable of that, because now you realize your embodied senate
you're, nakedness and insufficiency. So you hurried and you're ashamed. So there's that
You also realise that you can be hurt and suffer and that kind of goes along with gods command, that you're going to work in the sweat of your brow and that you're going to die and that women are going to be subjugated to men, which is put on as a curse
not as a moral imperative right right, but then what emerges out of that is that as soon as you, you know that you can be hurt. This is what differentiates us for animals.
and you really think that through here's all the myriad ways I can be hurt. Then you're angry about that, because you can be heard
but even worse, you can figure out how to herd other people, and so
It's part of that knowledge of good and evil. You associated with this dissociation of the of the object from its ethical
I'm tired of the union has created by gone from our interpretation of the universe, that there is a gap between the two and that, once human beings begins
where their own rationality for attila
right in the resolution that the tv teleology we end up doing is creating all sorts of awful systems that end up, destroy
ass in the other side, but as something about that that's right, I mean part of what
opens in the new testament. As far as I can tell you that what price says so,
trying to transcend the rule structure of might not because there is anything wrong with the rules are necessary. Precondition for discipline is actually white rope, twelve rooms and disliked with you need rules, but there but rules, conflicts,
and they don't always apply and soldiers,
to be an ethic underlying the rules, and you should have more respect for the ethic than for the rule, right, ok, price
idea. This is part of. The idea of the reestablishment of Paradise is that you should
and yourself towards the good and that
something like an alliance with god and then that you,
to tell the truth about. That's the ethic degenerated, the rules they begin with, ok,
we could be serious about this. You know we could say well
how do you duplicate the reality of that claim
right. So then we might think
what we already walk through the fact that,
the heroes of the past acted on potential to extract
the world of actuality and if they did that properly, then the world they extracted was good and that that
is a divine principle,
and then we might say well, isn't a divine principle,
and you might say what what is it that acting through people in the good. We like the christian, illogical answered. That would be the logan's right there
The idea that the idea of the holy spirit, roughly speaking right, my think, believes that a real thing cycle to me,
it's real the same way that consciousness is real and
no, no, the role of consciousness in determining reality, even but even if you're, an evolutionary biologist and this is so enter,
because the evolutionary biologists actually description
differentiated themselves from darwin on this point
Darwin was very very forthright in his claim that section
Selection was as powerful as
your life and are even more some and so that so here's where this that those in and because that was because that brought point
this into the world as an active player. The material
pick evolutionary biologist ignored. That is like a hundred and fifty years and only concentrated on natural selection, where they could play while this,
all chance rights, like section
selection is not chance. Okay, so here's a hypothesis, human being
separated themselves from chimpanzees
One of the reasons they did. That was because human females are sexually selective. Chimps aren't chimps,
what female chimps investors will meet with any jim
the main chimps. The dominant ones chased the subordinate males away. So there are more likely to have offspring, but it's not because a female choice right now female
When females have done this whole different thing, is they ve theyve?
They have hidden fertility.
and they are much more likely to go after
guys who have climbed up the higher
so let's say heroes, it'll, give the women some credit for intelligent s right and santa that's what thereafter, even
they're using wealth and so forth its status as a marker. There
so using those as a marker for competence is younger than and- and I think that's I'd angry. Evidently I think the evidence for that is clear. Ok, see, you might say, oh well, it was human female, conscious choice that selected us.
Ok, you think. Well, that's not random! That's not random!
Oh it's. The farthest thing from random that there is, and that means consciousness, is making its choices with regards to what propagates, but then it's even more complex than that.
So here's what happens among men, the man
get together in their hierarchy.
positive value door, they walked
That is the goal, because otherwise they wouldn't be.
Warp rating right, then they arranged themselves into a hierarchy and they let the most
but a guy's lead, because they want to get too they want to get to the promised land they want to get the most competent leaders, leaning right
competent defined by that value. Ok, so here's
happens essentially the men
get together and vote on the good man
and the good man are then
chosen by the women and those are the people who propagate and so
It's like men are voting on which men get to reproduce, and women are going along with the vote and being even more stringent in there in their choices, let's say, and so then
You get is that the current
business that, through its act,
The expression transformed
potential of the world into actuality, also selects that
direction of evolution
right and that's where the meme doc
stern turns into the biological reality its
and so it yeah. This is something that is so poor. Darkens is like. I've often thought this about doc.
Ass. If he would pushes thing
into the limits here?
right into young, while the men had been
was that's a whole other universe, but if you pay that mean seriously like- and I mean really seriously yeah there's some ways of cars
actualises that become so
all encompassing the earlier
they start to become an actual force of evolution itself, and so then here's the
as you can make consciousness extracts the proper world.
being from potential through truth and then it's good. Ok guys are hard. One man
that manifests itself in human beings at the individual level of individual consciousness.
The logos with it. That's the metaphysical foundation of the idea of natural right and responsibility. That's a bloody killer idea. That's it
stressed in the hero of heroes. Tat idea that
hero of heroes, is the driving force behind human evolution. So not only do you get the action
the logos metaphysically as the process that extracts order? Out of
at the beginning of time you also get it as the major driver of evolution, and so then you last ok,
and what kind of reality does not have, because you chase com
business back to like disappears into the mystery,
passed and we have no idea what its relationship with matter, but it's the first
that gives rise to the cosmos and drives evolution like you're, getting pretty
to god there, yet even just pragmatically envy and you're, certainly not close you but
in the midst of it. Have an argument about free will, because, obviously, if you, if you make the hard determinist argument that free will doesn't exist in the consciousness, is merely a sort of trick that your brain is playing itself. Then how exactly
does a how does cultural,
the gate. How do they have any means propagate? How are people choosing whom sexual selection, a natural selection, become one of the same as it is? You boil sexual selection down to natural selection
also, I think that the free will argument. I mean I see why harris gets tangled up in that. You know because well, first of all be
mystic arguments or unbelievably powerful, and when we use deterministic models for many things,
they really were right. So you could say well we're gonna use that by default like fair enough, we're gonna deviate from that with care, but
we'd see people as driven like clocks, winding down first of all
we don't wind down in any simple way, were dissipate of structures.
To use here!
floating one is like a human being. Is dissipated structure we're not we're not an inch
big structure like a ploy
running down. We are in some sense, but as living beings, we pull energy in and so we're not winding down like a deterministic structure where something other than that and the
we treat each other is.
As logos. As far as I can tell you the way I treat myself right
if I'm going to be good to myself in the proper sense, is that I'm an active agent of choice
Confronting an infinite landscape of potential and casting not potent
into a reality for good or free right, ok, and if I treat
it. That way, then I have proper respect for myself and proper fear of myself,
because I can make bad decisions and work the structure of reality. My think, if you read frankel, for example, or solzhenitsyn, and you see how your bad decisions could work the structure reality, then that weeks you up right. Ok, so there's that
If you don't treat yourself like an active agent,
dude with logos, then your life.
go where, but more
If you don't treat other people that way they do not want to play with you if we
up societies that are predicated on the idea that people are like that, then the societies become
dissolve or they become totalitarian, almost instantly?
so then I would say: well you ve got to the point.
if determinism is like fair enough man, how do you,
reconcile the fact that if you
lay out a society at every level of analysis on strict deterministic grounds. It fails.
so does and does not mean you're hypothesis has a flaw means, maybe not maybe you can say. No. The facts are independent of the ethical conrad contacts, right that this is where the truth to turn this, where the truth pragmatism question back into being ranking samples they worlds through, regardless of what the effect is room, and you say well, it's obviously not true if morals are concerned,
for pragmatic reasons, and if this pragmatism doesn't work that falls into nothing at all. So it also depends to some degree on what you're willing to how you're willing to test your hypothesis, because I might say well, if you're here,
office is factually correct. Wouldn't you assume that if people based there, there
there's no behaviors individually and familiar and socially on that set a fact which is basically what so
claims about facts. To begin with, if you base your athos or not those facts
wouldn't work,
Why he claims the doubts of past, yet I'm so well, then it fails that text it doesnt work. We have to
each other, like divine centres of consciousness, in order for society to work. Yes, I think. Well, that's
I can't see any way out of those arguments yeah I I can't either obviously, which is why you and I agree on so much about this kind of stuff, and I think that it's also the reason why people find your work really inspiring. Yet, while the left wants to claim that you are an angry person or they'll claim. Similarly that I'm a deeply angry person, I don't think, has been quite an angry conversation. I'm pretty sure it has not been, but
horrified by what the radical left is capable of, but that doesn't make me henery exactly, and I think that its its demonstrated the why so many people find what you doing inspiring because, unlike the radical last wishes,
Soon the idea of victim and victim ology were victims of the system, like marxism makes the claim that the only way that people sock
is the clear democracy makes, but the only way to cure people of sucking is by changing the entire system, which will ensue
magical fashion, transformed the nature of humanity very late in the proper direction. Right declared that exactly the claim that you're making- and I hope that I am making is well- is that human beings do so
unless they decide to stop socket. Who write in it in your whole goal is to tell people exactly how does the bacon and clean up their roads nor venice, raised here what they might as well start with? What right in front of them? It's a lot harder than it looks because too
up your room means to accept
that is actually necessary for you to take that little bit of chaos, it's in front of you that chaotic potential and tat
into habitable order, and then you
to develop the right attitude towards that's like ok. Well, I'm gonna put my room in order.
What what do you mean
order is in relationship to something like if your desk is ordered, it mean
have ordered it because you're going to work there and you're working there on something valuable, and so the order is conceived of in relationship to a t loss. It's like okay, you're, going to wear to your room. Well, what are you going to do in it
What's your room for the purpose through? What's the purpose, you can't order your room without
falling into purpose, and I would
what you gonna fall into purpose, it's like try it out on local scale. First right, you don't want to go
it change? The system like what the hell do. You know, leave this system alone see what
who can do locally see if you
put yourself together, see if you can put your immediate environment together, you'll find if you're gonna take.
The council and a chaos,
what would be one where
no one has any discipline. No one has any aims and there's a terrible battle between kane enable going on all the time right. So so,
if socks and everything's miserable and more cynical and that's what wisdom is it's like and
there's no point trying out anything because everything's meaningless and who the hell's going to care in a million years, and you are a fool to move forward. In any case,
There's your housel okay. So now you decide no.
Despite all that, I'm going to put my room in order
you will have a war on your hands, because the first
in the people around you who are aiming down will do is think, oh, you are really you think you're so much better than we are to you. You really think that you and your fancy- god damn plans. It's like we're going,
every psychological obstacle we can possibly think of in your weight, because if you succeed even in something
trivial, you shed a very dim light on our existence and so we're gonna put
to do everything we can to take you out, and so this people think
well cleaning the room. That's just ducal shades like a really I just go,
try it. You see how much
a policy that is and if
got your room in order, then put your office in order.
Say and then you're going to encounter the soon as you do, that you step out into the social world, you're gonna encounter that an
I see between men and women, you're going to encounter the identity politics in the workplace, you're going to encounter how you regulate your sexual morality, while you're working with people of the opposite sex you're going to
counter the f.
That are necessary to move your business forward. It's like the whole
it's a microcosm been really is so to take those micro cosmic chasms seriously. But that's what I mean.
people to do- and I am saying look-
It isn't only about you being happy like yeah, whatever
There's lots of times in your life, you're not going to be happy, and so that's not gonna work. You want to have something meaningful. That's the the boat that will take you.
Through the storm right. When you battened down the hatches,
there's more just even that it isn't even me
meaningful engaged life will see you through the catastrophes. Even though that's a big deal right, that's a great proposition, and I really believe it's true, because you can save yourself
it's worth it right, right and great down
those are the other part of the two which is don't be.
king, that you're errors aren't linked to hell because they are. If
Look at what happened in the twentieth century. The the brilliant commentators on me
twentieth century totalitarian states and all
atrocities said the same thing over and over it isn't pop
our evil leader manipulating innocent masses. That's not it it's the
moral failings of every single individual unwell.
To say their truth, unwilling to act out what they know to be right. That accumulate and produce the count of straw.
State, and so when you're
fussing about with your life
when you're not manifesting your potential when you're
falsifying your speech and your actions in the service of short term expedients, you are working to bring about hell on earth and that's true, it's true literally
And then it's true. I suspect it's also true meadow,
Fourthly- and that's a real truth ban, when you get the literal in the metaphorical working at the same time, it's like that's that's real,
Is it just that you have to fix up yourself? So you know you can have a better life like who cares about you? For a moment, you know if you have to
up your life, because if you dont every time, you make a mistake, but you know to be a mistake: you are leading the world towards Hell and I believe that I think it's true, while Jordan Peterson's book is full rules for life. Honestly,
if we could do this all day long and will certainly have you back. I really appreciate the time. There's a reason. So many people follow jordan, there's some reason. So many people are buying this book. The book is fantastic and his other book maps of meaning is also fantastic, said I'll get a copy of that as well. Jordan thanks so much for stopping by
appreciated. Thanks, been most great.
Dementia, Piero shows sunday special was produced by Jonathan, hey, executive producer, Jeremy, boring associate producers, math is lover and Austin Stevens edited by Alex Angora audio is mixed by micro. Meta karen make up is by just one other. The Ben Shapiro show sunday special is a daily wire forward. Publishing production copyright for people,
in twenty eighteen.
Transcript generated on 2023-03-07.