[Dr. Peterson presents the next slide]
...Stromboli is not happy with the tangled mess, but then the crowd reacts very positively;
and then, that confuses the conscience [aka. Jiminy Cricket], because he thinks:
"Well look, this is horrible. This guy's a tyrant".
Like, Pinocchio is making a fool of himself, everything turns into a tangled mess - but the crowd goes crazy.
And, well...
Being a fool - that can be entertaining, right?
So, it's hard to tell when a crowd,
especially at a spectacle, cause that's- this crowd is at a spectacle,
you just don't know, exactly, why it is that they're responding positively.
But you've definitely given them what you want, and you can see this look on Stromboli's face.
It's like, this false- Again, it's false kindness and generosity.
Public-facing, and... Oh well, anyways,
The Conscience is very confused, and I really think this is an important thing,
cause I- I've often thought, [and] I spent a lot of time thinking about Hitler, and I was thinking:
"Well, how do you get into a state like that", you know?
And you think "Well, he's a dictator, and he led his people down a bad path".
It's like, that's not right. That is not what happened.
They... had a conspiracy together, and went down a bad path. Now, think about it this way:
*clears throat*
If one person thinks something about you - it's like "whatever". Right?
But if FIVE people tell you that,
well, what? Then... then, to stop-
To start not taking that seriously, is kinda narcissistic, right?
And if it isn't 5, let's say it's 15 people, [who] tell you the same thing or act the same way towards you.
It's like, probably, you should clue in.
Well, what if you're a politician?
*clears throat again*
And you're trying out a bunch of different ideas.
And uh, you're good at interacting with the crowd.
You're charismatic, you watch the crowd, but you're not necessarily all that articulate.
You don't have your values all straight now, but you're kinda angry, too.
And maybe, that's cause you spent a bunch of time in World War I in the trenches,
which was like, no joke, and all your friends got blown up.
And then you were unemployed, and then you tried to be an artist,
and that didn't work out, even though you were moderately talented.
And then, maybe the economy fell apart, completely, on you. Hyperinflation.
And then, maybe there was a Communist menace, coming in from the East. And there genuinely was.
And so, you're not the "World's happiest clam", at that point.
And, you're talking to people who aren't that happy either,
cause they were also badly defeated in World War I,
and then, they had a terrible treaty they had decided, [in which] they lost part of their territory.
And so, the crowd's not happy and neither are you. And there's reason for it.
And so, you start talking to them. You don't know, what you're upset about - and neither does the crowd!
So, you start to articulate some things, about why you might be upset.
And, some of them fall flat. But you're paying attention to the crowd.
So you stop saying those things.
And some of the things make the crowd really wake up and listen.
And so, you start saying more of those things, right?
[stutter]
It's an unconscious dialectic, between you and the crowd.
It's mediated by consciousness, but it's not like you're sitting there, saying (although you might be):
"I'm gonna tell this crowd more of what it wants to hear".
It's more sophisticated than that. And so, you do that... 1000 times, and you do that to ever-increasing crowds.
And the crowd REALLY starts to go mad.
And they basically tell you, that you're the Savior of the nation.
It's like, at what- How many bloody people have to tell you that, before you start to believe it?
You know, I would say - with a typical person, a hundred will do it.
Now, that'll get you going, man.
A hundred people tell you, specifically, why you're special -
- you're gonna be thinking- Even if you're kinda humble to begin with, you're gonna be thinking:
"Geez, there's gotta be something to this, man!"
But if it's a MILLION people, and they're ROARING their approval - well...
And then, when it's a whole nation - - it's like, good luck withstanding that.
There's just not a chance. How are you going to withstand THAT?
Now, you could be like Gandhi. And you could've taken that into account beforehand.
Because he did. He read Tolstoy, by the way.
He was a student of Tolstoy, and that's- It's very interesting,
because Tolstoy was the person who developed the techniques of non-violence, that Gandhi used.
And Tolstoy was also a deeply religious writer, [clears throat] apart from his novels.
Um, which are not - I wouldn't say - really in the religious category, although they're profound.
Um...
Tolstoy stressed humility with non-violence.
He really stressed it, and that's what Gandhi took to heart.
So he lived a very, very, very, very simple, bare-bones, aesthetic life.
And that was to kinda see, if he could keep his damn ego tamped down,
while the groundswell was building behind him.
You know, and he dressed really simply, and he didn't own much, and he ate very simply,
and, he just tried to stay away from the whole materialistic "success element" -
- that would be an element of what would turn him into an actor, and also inflate his ego.
And you know, he seemed to do that... pretty well, you know. He certainly...
Well, he led a non-violent revolution, that resulted in the in the independence of India.
It also produced a terrible Civil War, in the separation of the Muslim Indians from the Hindu Indians, and...
But... I don't think you can precisely lay that at the feet of Gandhi, right?
But...
But what I'm saying, is that you have to be an extraordinary person, you have to be extraordinarily wise,
and you have to take ridiculous precautions, if you're gonna put yourself in the public sphere like that,
and expose yourself to that kind of adulation, without becoming a puppet of the crowd.
And that's what happened to Hitler
I mean, it's not like he wasn't also a conscious manipulator,
and surrounded himself by people who were propagandists, and all of that.
So there was a conscious element, but - you gotta think these things through, and see how that dialectic develops.
Like, he learned how to appeal to the darkest fantasies of the crowd.
He was really, really good at it.
And that was a dialectic process, right? The crowd told him, what they wanted to hear;
and the crowd's a mob at that point.
So: "I don't have to take responsibility for the fact, that I'm screaming my approval,
when I'm surrounded by a million people".
So, I can scream my approval for whatever I want,
for whatever dark, revengeful fantasy might be playing out in my imagination.
Because, I'm not gonna be held accountable for it.