Jordan Peterson psychology professor at
the State University of Western Ontario
but no University of Toronto been there
some years fast got involved because we
we were sent the letters that dr.
Peterson's Dean and then vice provost
him and they worried us so tremendously
as people concerned about academic
freedom and the integrity of teaching
the the letters warned dr. Peterson to
stomp saying publicly that he would
refuse requests to use non-gendered or
or you know additional pronouns and this
is for us that was that was a very
serious matter very seriously incursion
on the freedom of teachers to teach as
they will teaching has a lot to do with
the rapport between the professor and
the students between classroom dynamics
and the honesty and sincerity that
teaching requires we thought were
infringed by by these orders and
especially orders coming from from
Dean's and department that the
department had and so we wrote two
letters to University of Toronto about
this so we're very privileged to have
dr. Peterson with us today to talk to us
about these things maybe also some more
theoretical and abstract things than his
own particular case he's going to talk
to us about why freedom of speech is not
just another value Lex Peterson thanks
[Applause]
so I thought I'd start I'm going to
approach this from three directions but
I went three sections I thought I'd
start by just letting you know why I was
objecting specifically to Bill c16 I
made three videos in late September and
one of them criticized Bill c16 one of
them criticized the University of
Toronto administration's the Human
Resources people's decision to make
so-called anti unconscious anti bias
training mandatory for their HR staff
which I thought was and still think was
reprehensible and I don't even remember
what the other one was about but it
doesn't really matter those were it was
the first one the one on Bill c16 that
caused most of the furor surprisingly
enough and I said I wouldn't use the
made-up what I consider neologisms that
purport to describe the status the
status of people whose sexual identity
is ambiguous because that isn't how it
looked to me it looked to me like these
words like Z and Z and so forth were the
linguistic vanguard of a intellectual
movement that I would say detest is
probably the right description and
that's this strange blend of
post-modernism and Marxism that has
emerged to occupy the bulk of the
humanities and a good chunk of the
social sciences and so that was the
first thing is that I'm not using those
words that was the first thing that was
personal right is that that's not a form
of linguistic game that I'm willing to
play and I have my reasons for that
the second was I regard the any
legislation that compels people to use a
certain kind of language as a very
dangerous
of all dangerous piece of legislation
directly but also a very dangerous
precedent I mean there are limits on
free speech that are already reasonably
well instantiated in the law you can't
incite a crime you can't threaten
someone bodily in a believable manner
you can't libel someone we already have
reasonable restrictions on on what you
can't say but we've never had
legislation that required you to use a
certain language except in certain
commercial applications so for example
if you sell tobacco you have to put a
warning on it but the United States
Supreme Court decided I believe it was
in the 1940s that similar attempts to
compel speech on the part of individuals
in non-commercial settings was
unconstitutional and and I know that
that doesn't have any direct bearing on
Canadian law but certainly the principle
does and then I was also very see one of
the problems with a piece of legislation
and this is I suppose the problem with
interpreting a text as the post
modernists would say is that it's not
easy to get the level of interpretation
right right because interpreting a text
you can look at this look at the letters
that happens with biblical
interpretation very often you can look
at the individual words you can look at
the phrases you can look at the
sentences you can look at the paragraphs
you could look at the work as a whole
and then you also have to look at the
context within which the work is being
interpreted in order to come up with an
interpretation of anything that's
complex and so when you see a piece of
legislation it isn't obvious what the
legislation is actually intended to do
despite what it's purported to do and it
isn't obvious what level of analysis to
pick when you're going to criticize it
and in some ways bill c16 you could
regard it as innocuous just as an
extension of Rights they've already been
granted to certain let's say protected
groups although I'm not so thrilled
about the whole notion of ascribing
rights to groups to begin with we're
already far down that path but and you
know I've been accused of making a
mountain out of a molehill but happily
enough the University of Toronto after I
made the videos immediately produced two
letters that were informed by their
legal department
wisdom stating that what I had done with
the video was perhaps in conflict with
the university ethical guidelines if you
forget the ones that had to do with
freedom of expression and that they
might that my actions and even in making
the video might have violated that the
tenants of the Ontario Human Rights Act
as its are they at least as its
interpreted by the Ontario Human Rights
Commission and so that helped put to
rest any suggestion that I was actually
scare mongering because as soon as I as
soon as I made the videos the legal
department at the U of T immediately
validated my fears and so that was a
perverse was a perverse effect of their
of the letters they sent to me so the
other thing that I there was other
elements of the legislation that I
object to and objected to and still do
and if you read the policies within
which the legislation will be
interpreted as the federal Justice
website indicated that it would be
interpreted in within the policies that
the Ontario Human Rights Commission is
already established of course this close
crosstalk between Ontario and the
federal government because the Liberals
are empowering both and the radical end
of the liberal parties in power in both
situations and no it turns out that it's
illegal for like you're liable as an
employer for example if any of your
employees say anything that can be
construed as harassment say on the
grounds of sexual or gender identity
even if what they say has unintended
consequences and even if you don't know
that they said it and so that kind of
legislation I just think is just
absolutely reprehensible and then
because it's designed to cast the
broadest possible net to catch the most
fish and it's clearly being implemented
by people who are not precisely Pro
employer let's put it that way and then
there's another little ugly secret
hidden underneath the policies and
that's manifest most clearly in the form
of what's come to be known as the gender
unicorn which I would recommend that you
look up which is an animated character
designed to indoctrinate small children
into the social constructionist
worldview which claims that biological
sex gender identity gender expression
and sexual proclivity vary independently
which they most certainly do not now and
that's what I said in the video that's
partly why I've been accused of say
being a transphobic
I also complained that the university
was taking policy advice from the people
who started black lives matter and I
don't have anything against black lives
matter particularly but the two people
who started it are not the sorts of
individuals let's say that the
university should be basing its policy
decisions the advice they shouldn't be
taking advice from those people with
regards to their policy and apparently
that makes me a racist so the first part
of the argument about what happened with
my videos was actually whether or not I
was racist at transphobic and all of
that but the point that I was making the
technical specific technical point was
that they claimed that those four
phenomena very independently was just
patently false and it is by any
reasonable definition of false and I
know that it's part of a much broader
propaganda exercise as evidenced by the
gender unicorn for example which gets
children to indicate on four sliders
their sex assigned at Birth their gender
identity their gender expression and
their sexual proclivity and you can look
at the animation or at the at the
cartoon and decide for yourself by its
graphic style what age people it's aimed
at so is this a bill to protect
transsexual rights or is it a bill to
further a postmodern neo-marxist agenda
well god only knows but as far as I'm
concerned having analyzed the context
within which this bill arose and within
which it will be interpreted I'm going
to go for the furthering the postmodern
Neel Marxist agenda until I'm until
that's thoroughly disproved I would also
like to inform you that I've had plenty
of letters from transgender people at
least thirty and only one of them was
critical of what I'm doing because they
they acclaim and as have
as have many of the people I've talked
to that the idea that a group of
activists self can self nominate as the
representatives of a given group and
then speak for them as if they have a
modernist voice is absolutely absurd and
it is it is completely ridiculous and
most of the transsexual people that have
been contacting me have said the same
thing which is these people don't speak
for me
I wish they'd shut up because they're
doing a lot more harm than good and I
don't buy what they're doing anyways so
you know I think that the claim of the
activist types to speak on behalf of the
groups that they purport to represent is
weak at best and I don't know why we
ever assumed that it that their
representation is valid except that
we're afraid to criticize that
particular presupposition you know I
mean there's nothing more ridiculous
than assuming that someone is because
someone is black that they speak for
black people I mean I think I can't
think of anything that's more
particularly indicative of a
fundamentally racist attitude than that
you know well those people they're all
the same it's like yeah well sorry it
didn't work out that way so I wanted to
clarify all that so that you know you
have a little bit clearer idea about why
I was doing what I was doing I mean
people have asked so to speak why I
chose to die on that particular Hill and
the answer is every every massive
conflict of ideas let's say manifests
itself in the minut and that's why it's
often difficult to gain any headway
because no matter where you draw the
line it's arbitrary and and subject to
criticism and you know the fact that
this happens to be about gender-neutral
pronouns regarding transgender people to
me is just more or less an accident it
could have been about almost any number
of other things and but I would also
like to suggest that what should have
happened with what I did was nothing
right I made some videos that was
relatively obscure academic and I made
some videos in my private time that were
you know pretty badly produced because
they're just amateur and
I was trying to straighten out my
thinking about a couple of issues the
anti unconscious bias training for
example and also this legislative mess
and obviously it struck a major chord
and that to me is indication that my
original supposition was correct and
that there was far more going on under
the surface than there was at the
surface I mean I you know like I said
it's very difficult to pick the proper
level of analysis but one of the ways
you justify your choices by observing
the impact of your choice of level of
analysis and seeing if it's if the
consequences are commensurate with your
original hypothesis and I thought well
just because people say they're doing
one thing with a piece of legislation
doesn't mean that that's what they're
doing and of course a lead piece of
legislation is a Hydra in any case it
does all sorts of things that people
don't intend it to do so that's a little
background and I'll leave the background
at that and then I'll talk to you now
from a practical perspective why I
believe that the idea of freedom of
speech is not just another value among
other values and I would say that the
simplest reason for that is that speech
isn't precisely a mechanism it's a it's
a process it's a it's a it's a it's a
it's a generative process speech free
speech is the process by which all ideas
are generated and and I want to make it
clear why I believe that to be the case
with speech specifically because you
might say well no that's thought but but
but I don't think that's right because
the thing is that thought is a far more
collective Enterprise than people
generally understand first of all most
of the thoughts you have aren't your
thoughts you know I don't remember who
it was that said that everyone is the
unconscious exponent of a dead
philosopher but that's definitely the
case you know are the very linguistic
mechanisms by which we formulate our our
grip on the world our collective
constructs and in some cases almost
entirely because creative thought is far
error then people generally presume and
what that means is that when we're
speaking and when we're thinking we're
usually using if not cliches which is
very frequently the case as you know
perfectly well if you've ever graded a
particularly bad undergraduate essay
but even among more sophisticated people
it's generally the case that they're
acting as avatars of ideas that they did
not produce and so it doesn't mean they
can't further the ideas but the point is
is that you know we're born into a
linguistically mediated culture and it's
it's mediated at all of the multiple
levels of analysis that I already
described and were shaped in the way
that we view the world with regards to
the input that that we receive that's
collective we learn language from other
people we use the words that other
people use we use the phrases that other
people use it's an intensely collective
exercise but even more specifically so
that's from a general perspective let's
say but even more specifically the
problem with thinking is that you're a
very narrow channel right I mean there's
a lot of world and here isn't very much
of you and that means that there's a lot
more that you filter out than there is
that you take in and your filtering is
very very intensive it's dependent to
some degree on your embodiment it's
dependent to some degree far more than
people generally realize on your
motivations and your and your
temperament which is a topic we'll
return to and then it's further narrowed
by your position in society and by the
people that you have around you and by
your particular domain of expertise or
lack thereof
and and then there are sets of darker
motivations as well that blind you to
certain things that you should be able
to see but either don't or won't and so
the problem with thinking is that a
yeren arrow Cannell be you're not very
good at it see you're incredibly biased
and there isn't much you can do about
that except listen and talk to other
people because they're I mean they're
not the only source of correction but
they're a pretty intense source of
correction and I mean we're blasting
corrective information at each other all
the time right I mean even in a
situation
like this which you could think of as a
monologue but isn't it's a dialogue if
it's the reason I'm watching all of you
is to see you know are you paying
attention and if not I better adjust
what I'm saying do your facial
expressions indicate that you're
understanding what I'm saying and
following it maybe you're nodding your
eyes are open you know in some specific
way you're you're actually facing me
your eyes are on me I can read your
facial expressions which is always why
I'm looking at individuals in the
audience and I'm constantly calibrating
what I'm saying if it's a dynamic
conversation to ensure that the
information flow is maximized and the
reason I look at your eyes is because I
can tell where they're pointing and the
reason I look at your face is because
you're broadcasting motivational and
emotional information non-stop at me
while I'm speaking and so even in a
situation like this which like I said is
more monologue than than otherwise
there's a tremendous amount of
corrective information continually
flowing between speaker and listener and
if that stops you know if you hear a
speaker who's detached from the audience
often someone who's reading for example
it's much more difficult to listen to
them as everyone knows and that's
because there's a deadness about reading
something in front of an audience and I
think the reason for that is that that
living let's call it spirit isn't
manifesting itself in the same manner as
it is when when the speech is both
spontaneous and self-correcting and so
the thing about free speech is that like
I'm not a free speech advocate let's say
I'm a true speech advocate which is to
say that I believe that people should
say what they believe to be true I think
that's that's your obligation it's also
your right but it comes with an
obligation but I don't believe that true
speech is possible without free speech
because you're just not very good at
thinking and so you have to stumble
around when you're first formulating
ideas and wander into territory that's
not necessarily productive and manifest
your biases and in short you have to be
a fool and the only way that you you
improve upon that performance is by
first of all stumbling through it to
begin with and then second by observing
carefully what sort of reactions you're
getting and having a dialogue around it
so that you can start to sharpen up your
ideas
improve their focus and find out where
you've made a mistake and all of those
things so a lot of what's necessary with
regards to thinking is the freedom to
make mistakes because what are you going
to do it right the first time I don't
think so and you know that's why for
Carl young for example the fool was a
mythological precursor today to the hero
the tricksters the mythological
precursor to the hero because unless
you're willing to stumble around badly
to begin with you know and to be a fool
when you first start doing something
which is always the case when you're
learning something new then you're not
going to make any progress and so
practically speaking free speech has to
be as untrammeled as possible so that
people can be wrong and they can be
biased and they can still express their
opinions including their darker ones and
then allow themselves to be subject
partly to improvement by the world
because if you say things that are too
stupid and then act them out the world
smacks you a good one
but there's also the social
intermediaries the other people that
you're communicating with who will also
do the same thing no one it's we're
always broadcasting information at each
other constantly trying to shape each
other's behavior and what we're trying
to do is to bring forth from other
people that which we would like to see
them manifest and so there's an implicit
ideal as well that people are
broadcasting at each other all the time
and there's tremendous social pressure
generally speaking to manifest that
implicit ideal as closely as possible
because otherwise people disapprove of
your lack interest in what you're saying
or criticize your and so on you have to
be allowed to be exposed to that kind of
corrective feedback because otherwise
you drift and and you become subject to
your own idiosyncratic insanity
and I mean I've seen that very many
times in my clinical practice because
well first of all I have some isolated
people that come to see me and all they
do is talk I just listen I mean because
they don't have anyone else around and
they need someone to run their narrative
by to keep their minds organized they
can't do it themselves
they can't do it without listening to
themselves talk even because for most
people talking is how they think and
talking socially is even more how they
think and I mean that literally
don't mean that metaphorically is that
and I think that's true for almost
everyone you know I mean there are
people who are trained academically who
can actually think but to think you have
to divide yourself into sub
personalities I suppose each of which
has a different opinion a well
elucidated differing opinion and then
you have to let those different elements
of your personality have an internal
dialogue and you have to draw
conclusions from that it's very very
difficult for people to do that and we
radically overestimate the degree to
which they do young said at one point
that people don't think so much as as
thoughts appear in their head and they
believe them which i think is a much
more accurate way of describing the
general because true thought is not only
that the thoughts arise in your mind
it's that you look at the thought and
then you critique it right you have to
separate yourself from the thought and
decide whether or not it's valuable
that's more like an editing function and
you know it takes a long time to be a
good editor a tremendous amount of time
and it just doesn't happen generally
speaking so well so I would say well
without free speech there's no true
thought and then you might say well who
the hell cares whether or not we think
and I think the answer to that is fairly
straightforward I mean you might think
it's so obvious that it doesn't need
explanation but there very few things
that are so obvious they don't need
explanation so the reason you think is
so that the world doesn't smack you as
hard as it might fundamentally you know
and I really mean this technically
because the way that people evolve the
capacity to thought for thought was that
the prefrontal cortex which mediates a
lot of voluntary linguistic ability
actually emerged over the course of
evolutionary history out of the motor
cortex and so that's a very interesting
thing to understand because it means
that you know animals basically think by
moving and the problem with that is if
you think by moving and you make the
wrong move then you're dead whereas what
human beings can do is they can generate
fictional avatars of themselves in
fictional worlds and they can run the
avatars as simulations and the ones that
get killed they don't express in
behavior and I mean you could do that
with words too although people you know
originally would have done it mostly
with images they'd do the same thing
with
drama and so the reason that you think
and I think it was George was a Alfred
North Whitehead that said this I think
that I'm not absolutely sure the reason
you think is so that your thoughts can
die instead of you and that's a
brilliant brilliant brilliant phrase and
absolutely the case so if you think
properly then you kill off the ideas
that if you acted out would kill you or
at least cause you suffering or perhaps
cause suffering to the people around you
and since it's more or less obvious a
priority that suffering is worse than
not suffering under most circumstances
it seems reasonable to act in a manner
that will minimize it to the degree that
that's possible
and so you need clarity of thought
because that helps guide you through a
world that's enshrouded in fog and full
of sharp objects and if you don't want
to stumble into them and impale yourself
then you should have sharp vision and
sharp capacity to communicate you know
that's one of the things I tell students
when I'm trying to teach them to write
because they no one ever tells them why
they should learn to write it's like you
learn to write so you can think and you
learn to think so that the world doesn't
treat you any more harshly than it
absolutely has to and that's no joke you
know and if you if you're a person who's
been around a bit you see very rapidly
that people who sharpen their arguments
properly and can articulate their
position and defend it are always always
the people who are most successful and
most compelling in that and that changed
the way structures function and and that
also helped things continue in the
proper path when they're running down
the proper path it's no joke to be
articulate and to be able to think there
isn't anything that's more powerful than
that and that's a good segue into the
second or the third part of what I
wanted to talk to you about see since I
made those videos I've become I guess
the word is popular on yeah well in many
ways by about November by the end of
November last year there were more than
200 newspaper articles about the
consequences of the videos that I'd
produced and and that those were like in
press printed Artic
I'm not talking about anything that
happened on YouTube and YouTube is a
very strange phenomena let me tell you
it's far more powerful than you think so
just as an aside I was on a program last
week
hosted by a guy named Joe Rogan I don't
know how many of you know who Joe Rogan
is Joe Rogan gets 1.2 billion downloads
of his podcasts a year you think about
that like that's absolutely unparalleled
and everybody under 30 is getting their
news from either Facebook or from
YouTube the old conventional media
sources they're dead is they are so dead
you can hardly believe it so YouTube and
one of the reasons I'm bringing it up is
because YouTube is the first platform
that's produced for people the capacity
to make the spoken word as far-reaching
and permanent as the written word right
that's a complete cultural revolution
it's the first time it's ever happened I
mean it wouldn't have to be YouTube it
just turns out that that's the platform
that got there first but it's a big deal
and anyways the reason that that that my
that I became popular I think was partly
because of the political philosophical
videos that I made but then when people
came to my website to watch them they
stayed generally speaking to watch the
lectures that I had been posting on
there since 2013 and those were derived
from work I did on a book called maps of
meaning which I published in 1999 and
see what I was trying to do with that
book was to sort something out that was
very complex and that was when I was
growing up and the Cold War was raging
I couldn't understand precisely why we
had divided into two armed camps around
our respective ideological positions
either why those ideological positions
were so important that people would risk
the destruction of the world to protect
them let's say or why it was those two
particular ideologies or whether or not
this was just a difference of opinion
right which would be that would be a
more postmodern view as there's multiple
ways that you can organize societies in
the West we haven't organized
society one way but that's one of a
plethora of potential ways of organizing
society and let's say the Communists had
decided to organize their society
another way and human beings are
infinitely malleable and so you know the
social structures that we occupy are
arbitrary in some sense and matter of
opinion and may be collective opinion
but nonetheless still a matter of
opinion and I thought well is it the
case that the values that we hold to be
true in the West are merely based upon
opinion and so I started to investigate
that and and the conclusion that I came
to as a consequence of hitting the
question from multiple different
perspectives was that that was not a
reasonable way of formulating of
interpreting the evidence and so I
looked at neural evidence from neuro
psychology and neuroscience mostly
mostly based at least in part on the
work of someone named Geoffrey gray it
was a very good psychologist very
interested in anxiety I looked at
general behavioral psychology looked at
literature and I looked at mythology and
I could see a pattern emerging across
all of those which i think is a nice way
of determining whether or not something
exists like it's one thing to see a
pattern in one set of data but if you
can see the same pattern and another set
that's quite historically distinct from
the first and then see the same pattern
in another set and then another set then
the probability that that's a spurious
pattern starts to decrease quite
radically and so I don't think the
pattern was spurious and so I'm going to
tell you what I think I what would you
say
extracted this is very complicated and
makes a difficult transition in the talk
so I'm going to read something first
this is from the from the Gospel of John
it's one of the most famous lines in the
Bible in the beginning was the word and
the Word was with God and the Word was
God
it's very strange idea because from a
cosmological perspective because it
posits that there's something
conscious or cognitive about the origin
that there's a necessary cognitive
element to the origin and I think about
that essentially as something associated
with consciousness and of course we
don't really understand the relationship
between consciousness and being we don't
understand consciousness at all but it
seems integrally associated at least
with our individual beings because one
of the things that we seem to not doubt
is that we are in fact conscious and
that's or other people and if I treat
someone as if they're not conscious well
they tend not to be very happy about
that so they'll certainly object to it
so despite what we might say we believe
we certainly act as if we regard all
other human beings as conscious and and
the consciousness is that prerequisite
further for the existence of their
experience so anyway so that there's
this emphasis in in this book that is at
the root of our culture that there's
something about verbal communication in
particular that has to be regarded as
foundational and I think that's actually
to some degree in keeping with the
postmodernist claims that everything is
a language game let's say that
everything is constructed by language
now I don't believe that everything is
constructed by language but I'm just
pointing that out because you can take
this particular perspective and you can
look at it from very a variety of
different intellectual sources and still
derive an analog of the of the claim
from it so and then so that that was so
I want you to keep that in the back of
your mind for a moment now that idea
that that the word was there at the
beginning of creation that's a very very
old idea it's older than the
judeo-christian context from which I
extracted it so for example in Egypt
there was a god named Fatah who's a
major god I may be pronouncing that
wrong but as far as the Egyptians were
concerned he was the original creator
and he created as a consequence of
thinking but more specifically as a
consequence of speaking so again there
was this idea that there was this
primacy of speaking as a force that
brings being into existence and then you
see the same thing in the Mesopotamian
context too
their creation myth was called the ANU
malysh and there's a God in that story
and that story apparently is one of the
places from which the creation story in
the in that Bible was extracted that God
is named Marduk and mardik is a God that
fights chaos and creates the world out
of the consequences and he he has a
variety of different attributes one of
which his head is ringed with eyes so he
can see in all direction so there's very
much emphasis among the Mesopotamians on
the primacy of attention let's say but
he can also speak magic words and it's
the fact that he's equipped with this
massive capacity for tension and the
ability to speak magic words that
enables him to go and fight the dragon
of chaos roughly speaking and to cut her
into pieces and make up the world one of
Martok's names for example is he who
makes ingenious things out of the combat
with time out and time at is this
primordial goddess of chaos that
represents the sort of the formless
protomatter of things from which
consciousness extracts structure no
that's one way of thinking about it so
that idea is quite widespread to vary in
fact it's an idea that informs
mythological structures everywhere as
far as I can tell there's this idea that
there's a dynamic between what you know
and what you don't know you can think
about those as different domains of
reality what you know and what you don't
know and the thing that mediates between
what you know and what you don't know is
this thing that has the attribute of of
spoken wisdom it's something like that
and here's here's a way that's a very
complicated idea it's very difficult to
understand and it's extraordinarily
difficult to understand but the I can
give you some sense of it it's a
phenomenological idea I suppose imagine
that you that I don't know maybe you
have it yeah maybe you're a medical
student the medical pre-med student
right you want to go to medical school
and so you're busily beetling away on
your on your courses you're doing all
right you know then you go take the MCAT
and you score it to say twentieth
percentile which of course 20% of people
do and that will
as quite a shock to you no doubt because
you go in there in the world that you
understand and in that world you're
competent let's say to become a medical
doctor and when you open the envelope
and you look at the number then well
then your world crumbles and collapses
and what it collapses into I would say
is equivalent to this formless chaos
that the ancients believed was the
ground of being and it's this place
where confusion reigns right in fact the
word for the chaos that God orders with
the word at the beginning of Genesis is
often translated as chaos or confusion
now when you think well you've
formulated a world that you inhabit with
a particular link with grass and a
logical structure it's predicated on
certain axioms of belief like that
you're competent to be a medical doctor
and then you receive a piece of
information that makes not only your
present understanding of yourself no
longer relevant or correct but also your
past understanding of yourself and also
your future who gone right long gone
where gone into what well gone into
chaos roughly speaking and then you're
in very rough shape as a consequence of
that and if you do manage to lever
yourself out of that chaotic condition
that you now find yourself in you're
going to essentially do it with thought
and dialogue right because you're going
to talk to people what did I do wrong
what's wrong with the way I thought how
could I have been so misled by what I
believed what should I do now who
actually am I all of that is a way of
reconstructing yourself from the ashes
so to speak I would say that and you do
that with with with with speech and you
do that with true speech and so through
speech is what what redeems you from the
chaos of unstructured being and so so
then that's that's another thing to
think about for a moment and then I'm
going to bring up this final piece and
we can think about it too
so I've been trying to figure out how
these ideas came to be because they came
to be over a very long period of time so
the god Marduk for example he was
assembled you could say as the empires
of the ancient Middle East as the tribal
people of the ancient Middle East came
together and they each had their own
deities that represented their highest
values and when they came together those
deities had to be amalgamated and so
tribe a has its highest value and tri B
has its highest value and they're
embodied that's the deity element and
they come together and then the deities
and some sense have to have a war to
figure out who's the top god and so if
you assemble a few hundred tribes out of
that comes a conceptualization of the
top god that was Marduk for example in
Mesopotamia and he usually absorbs the
names of all the previous gods and as he
sort of emerged as the king of a
hierarchy and so so you think about this
if you think about the expression of the
deity as the projection of the highest
ideal of the tribe and that's something
that's being worked out over perhaps
millennia especially with people who
have an oral tradition and then you
bring those different tribes together
what happens is the highest ideals in
their embodied form have what you could
think of metaphorically as a war and the
war of gods in heaven by the way is a
very ancient and widespread mythological
motif and out of that war arises what
you might describe as a met have value
and so the meta value would be the
highest value among a set of values and
the question would be well what would
that value be what would that highest
value be is there something about it
that's it's recognizable and say
somewhat constant so that if you took a
hundred tribes here and amalgamated
their ideals and you took a hundred
tribes here to Malaga mated their ideals
if the two sets of amalgamations would
have a structural similarity to one
another and as far as I can tell the
answer to that is yes and it's a logical
answer because you'd expect structural
similarity if you extract out a common a
common element from a very large number
of constituent represented so for
example if you take
a large number of female faces and
average them so I'm not talking about
the average face I'm talking about the
average face it's not the same thing
the averaged female face is attractive
and so is the averaged male face and so
because it kind of constitutes the
central human form and if it takes 64
women and you extract out an averaged
face and you take another 64 you get the
same face well then maybe it takes more
than 64 but you get the point
and so well so I was I was thinking
about how that that process came to be I
decided to look at it even like to go
back farther in time to try to
understand how it is that we formulated
our values per se and especially given
that at some point we weren't linguistic
creatures at all right we separated from
the common ancestors between us and
chimpanzees about 6 million years ago
sometime during that six million year
process we started to be able to imitate
ourselves first and then represent
ourselves in image and action and then
only after that to start to articulate
ourselves and so a lot of the knowledge
that we have is grounded in our
embodiment but also in the shaping of
that embodiment across extraordinary
long periods of time so like there's an
implicit way of being in your form in
your embodied form but more importantly
there's an implicit way of being that's
a consequence of the fact that we've
existed within hierarchical social
structures for far longer than we were
even sharing a common ancestor say with
great apes so that's for maybe hundreds
of millions of years with regards to
being embedded in a hierarchy so then
the question is something like if we're
embedded in a hierarchy and we have been
forever that's about 350 million years
by the way is there a set of attributes
that tends reliably to move you up the
hierarchy because if there is you see
being going up the hierarchy increases
the probability of repres accesing more
important to determine over the course
of three hundred and fifty million years
in sign of hierarchy then how it is that
you ratchet yourself up the hierarchy
reliably and you can think about that in
some sense as the source of ideals um
here's a kind of a concrete way of
thinking about that you know if you get
a hundred men together they're going to
they're going to organize themselves
into a hierarchical structure they have
to where they're going to stay chaotic
and fight that that's the other
alternative and so but the way that that
the people who are going to rise to the
top they might rise to the top because
of their sheer physical prowess and
power but they also might rise to the
top because they're very competent at
certain things and it's as if all the
men are going to get together and vote
and maybe that would actually happen to
determine who best embodies the spirit
of the group and who should be granted
leadership and in an evolutionary
context by the way that would also help
ensure that that person would propagate
their genes into the next generation
it's not a trivial effect especially
among men it's a big effect because
roughly speaking half half of all men
are are not represented ly successful so
there's a wicked there's a wicked
culling let's say among men well you can
see this among chimpanzees as well
they have dominance hierarchies some
sort of chimps rise to the top you might
think well that's the like caveman chimp
who's best at pounding out all the all
the rivals but it turns out that that's
not exactly the case and Fran's de Waal
has done a very good job of detailing
this with his work on chimpanzees in
particular and he's found that the
power-hungry tyrant sort of chimp can
rule for a while but he tends to have a
very unstable Kingdom and the reason for
that is is he got very good at mutually
grooming he's not that it's socially
connecting with other males and he isn't
popular among the females and doesn't
attend to the to the young essentially
and so what happens is even if he's like
the meanest toughest guy on the block to
subordinate chimps team up they make
friends they groom each other and they
have each other's backs and in a one day
he's having an off day because he ate
too many fermented bananas the night
before and like they just tear him into
pieces and chimps are unbelievably
strong and unbelievably brutal
they seem to have absolutely no internal
regulation whatsoever of their
aggression that all seems to be
manifested outside in terms of dominance
hierarchy control and we know that
because they go on raiding parties into
other chimp territories and when they
find chimps that aren't part of their
hierarchy they just rip them into pieces
and so that's a scary thing if you think
about our similarity with chimpanzees
because we like to think we have
internal controls over our aggression
but it's not so bloody obvious I can
tell you that anyways what do all found
was that it's actually chimps that are
more you might say humane although Jim
Payne I don't know what the equivalent
is let's say humane that managed to
produce hierarchies that are more stable
and actually managed to stay alive on
top of them for much longer periods of
time and he thinks about that is the
emergence of an implicit morality right
so morality that's acted out so then you
think well there there are different
ways of climbing up a hierarchy there
are worse in better ways the better ways
allow you to live longer in a more
stable hierarchy and the evolutionary
payoff for that is that you leave more
more descendants and so the hierarchy
itself becomes a very powerful shaping
mechanism that determines how it is that
people are going to adapt because it's
the primary method of selection so
there's an ethic in there there's an
ethic that emerges from the social
interactions but that's rapidly
transformed into a biological selection
device and so we're selected and that's
especially true among human beings
because with chimps the females are
indiscriminate mater's which is to say
that a female chimp in heat will mate
with any male chimp
now this the dominant males chase the
subordinate males away so they're still
more likely to leave offspring than the
subordinates but it's not because of the
females but human females are different
human females exert choice and quite
brutal choice you might put it that way
they're very choosy and it's one of the
things that seems to have distinguished
us from chimpanzees and what roughly
seems to happen is that the male
dominance hierarchy elects men to the
higher say rungs of the hierarchy and
the females peel from the top
and so that means that what you can say
is that human beings are the consequence
of intense male dominance competition
it's not necessarily dominance but it's
competition for the upper rungs of the
hierarchy by female selection and so
that's produced as far as I can tell a
powerful a powerful pattern of behavior
now the question is what's that pattern
of behavior I would say well it's
encapsulated in mythology in two forms
and the question is well who should lead
let's say that's the question who should
lead that is the question who should be
sovereign or maybe when it becomes
abstracted what should be sovereign -
the first question from an evolutionary
perspective is who should be sovereign
but once you can abstract then the the
principle of sovereignty can be detached
from the leader and become a principal
all on its own and that might be first
expressed in mythological or imagistic
form dramatic form like the the good
guys versus the bad guys or good versus
evil we could say it like that but
obviously it's embodied and acted out
far before it's extracted and turned
into an abstracted representation well
what seems to have happened is so one of
the common themes for example in
mythology is what's roughly being
described as a hero myth and a hero myth
involves someone who's part of a
demolished community community under
threat
the threats usually signified by
something vaguely like a dragon
the dragon comes out it's eternal it
comes out to attack the village the hero
comes out and confronts the dragon and
then frees the virgin for example or
gets the gold and to me that's a very
very well that is a very old story it's
in the annuity lish for example it's
it's the story at the basis of very many
what would you call it widely dispersed
myths around the world the dragon for
example is a very common symbol and I
think the reason for that is it's so
complicated but I think the reason for
that is something like this is that
human beings learned to understand over
time that the most reliable leader was
the person who could step outside the
structure when it was damaged to
confront something that was chaotic and
dangerous in whatever form that might be
and then to
bring something valuable back as a
consequence and you see that principle
being elevated continually in
mythological stories like the ANU malysh
for example where the main hero Marduk
is elevated among the other gods and is
characterized by this intense capacity
for vision which to greet which the
Egyptians also worshiped in the form of
Horus and this capacity to speak which
has this ability to to to formulate and
reshape the world well that's the thing
is that it's as if what we've discovered
as a species in some sense is that
there's that the person that should lead
the thing that should be sovereign is
the thing that can step outside the
structured order incorporate something
new and dangerous and then produce
something valuable out of it that's one
phase another phase is another hero myth
is the person who who who criticizes the
power elite when it becomes corrupt and
points out the corruption and then
restructures the society that happens in
the prophetic books for example
continually in the old testament because
you could think that the historical
enemies of humanity are twofold in some
sense one is the chaos that comes from
outside and that disrupts the standard
order and that needs to be dealt with
and the other is the chaos that comes in
the inside when when our institutions
and hierarchies become corrupt and then
the thing that transforms that is the
thing that has enough courage either to
stand up against the chaos or to say
something about the corrupt institutions
and what's happened as far as I can tell
is that over time those principles have
been extracted out from this much more
embodied domain and raised to the
principle of highest sovereignty now one
of the things that happened in Egypt was
called the democratization of Osiris and
Horus
what seems to happen this is this is
what happened in Egypt is that the power
to manifest that sovereignty let's say
is first only regarded as an attribute
of the sovereign the king and the king
is actually only king in so far as he
can manifest that so in Mesopotamia your
only Emperor if you were a good Marduk
you'd go out on New Year's Day and
reenact the entire cosmogony and you had
to be a good representative of Marduk
otherwise you didn't deserve your
sovereignty and in Egypt unless you were
a good avatar let's say of Horace and
Osiris the combination then you didn't
get to be Pharaoh so you were embodying
this principle this principle of
sovereignty and what happened in Egypt
was that first of all the principle of
sovereignty the images of sovereignty
could only be used by the Pharaoh and
then it became the aristocracy and then
what seemed to happen after that they
were using the symbols what seemed to
happen after that
this was maybe a transmutation in part
via the Greeks and in part via the Jews
is that the idea that that's sovereignty
that was inherent in the Pharaoh and
then in the aristocracy was actually
something that could be attributed to
everyone that was human and that was I
think that that that manifested itself
most completely in some sense at the
beginning of the Christian era because
there was an emphasis then on the idea
that every single individual carried
within them a spark of the divine let's
say and that was the proper source of
sovereignty and so then the question is
well what is that source of the divine
and that's why I read you that section
from John to begin with because the the
source of the divinity is the capacity
to speak and transmute the world as a
consequence of speaking and that's the
proper principle of sovereignty and as
far as I can tell it's also the reason
why in the West people have an
inviolable right the reason they have an
inviolable right is because our society
figured out and based on these
unbelievably deep and decedent's
precedents that that each individual had
the capacity to contribute something to
the group without which the group would
be less it's something like that and so
your
you're regarded at the base of our law
as the what as the avatar
that's exactly right as the avatar of a
divine principle and that divine
principle is the capacity to use your
speech to give order to the chaos of the
world and to criticize structures of
order that have become corrupt and
reformulate them and so you you have
this territory that surrounds you that's
in violet it's something about you that
transcends even the reach of the law
which is a very strange thing you know
because in our society even if you're a
murderer even if everyone knows it you
still have inviolable rights but you
think of all the things that are
unlikely to have emerged as a concept
that's got to be like number one it's
been a very long long struggle for human
beings to understand that we embody this
principle let's say that continually
generates the world out of chaos and
revitalizes it when it becomes corrupt
and dead and that's the cut as far as I
can tell that's what's expressed in in
John is that there isn't any difference
between that and the capacity to
carefully articulate the nature of your
experience to other people and then to
respond to the corrective feedback
that's the way that human beings
progress through the world and that's
the ultimate principle that should be at
the top of what I think of as the set of
all human dominance hierarchies right
something will move you up a hierarchy
something slightly different will move
you up a different hierarchy you take a
huge set of hierarchies and say well
what's the principle that's going to
work best over across all those
hierarchies it's something like the
capacity to speak the truth and so
that's how it looks to me and that's why
I think apart from the practical reasons
that I already described I know that's a
tremendous amount of information to
process and my hope that made some sense
it's a very difficult thing to boil down
in a short period of time I mean I've
been trying to do that for like thirty
years to get it coherent enough to
represent it in a short period of time
but there's the practical issue which is
that's how we encounter what we don't
understand and turn it into habitable
space and how we communicate
about it and reach consensus but then
there's something much deeper underneath
that which is that we know that and we
know it really really deeply the whole
human race is being aiming at that for
god only knows how long but it's it's
hundreds of thousands of years certainly
and it might be far longer than that
and so it's not a principle that we can
dispense with and assume that we'll
construct something okay in this absence
because it's actually an expression of
the fundamental nature of human beings
and we we mess with that are at our
extreme peril and as far as I can tell
that's exactly what we're doing now so
so that's part of the reason why I
objected to Bill c16 because I don't
think that it's reasonable for
government authorities to put their
goddamn words into their citizens mouths
and as simple as that I think there
isn't there's almost nothing you could
embark on that would be more dangerous
than that and the fact that this had to
do with purportedly had to do with the
rights of a small minority of people I
think is a complete sideshow I think
it's almost irrelevant in relationship
to the broader context and I think that
if that wasn't the case then there
wouldn't have been any furor whatsoever
about what I said because who the hell
cares what I have to say so anyways
that's my take on it so that's all I've
got to say
[Applause]
so you mentioned the form of dialogue so
we're giving a lecture you mentioned
that you're not in fact engaging in a
monologue because by looking and seeing
our reactions you're constantly
modifying your speech I was wondering if
you could speak up because I'm probably
the only millennial in this room or no
note one more one more but as someone
who's kind of grown up in the Internet
and who in fact has social media do you
think sites like Facebook and not so
much Twitter but basically Facebook
today
stop this dialog or how do you learn the
ramifications of such things as people
are communicating with each other
without really being in the same room
what for you is lost I think it's sort
of analogous to the danger of
derivatives in the financial market you
know because like a derivative is
something that can amplify the degree to
which the market moves right because
it's an abstraction from the underlying
reality so it's more powerful for good
and it's more powerful for evil and I
would say so to speak you know if you're
thinking about metaphorically well it's
an amplifier and that can be a good
thing but it can also be a bad thing and
I think it does often amplify the
proclivity of people to disappear into a
self-reflective bubble and that's aided
by the algorithms that feed to you what
you want to see so and we don't know
exactly what that's going to do it's not
it's a very dangerous thing because
we're building an unconscious into the
Internet and no one's going to
understand how it works because it gets
more and more complex especially when
any eye kicks in in a big way because
you can't understand how those systems
work even though they work and the
problem with that unconscious in the
internet is it filters information and
you don't know what the filtering is
maybe you don't know what your own
filtering is you know because you're not
conscious of your underlying processes
but this adds a whole new dimension to
it and the fact that it's
self-fulfilling in some sense increases
the probability of positive feedback
loops that will go out of control maybe
in your life because I'm not a freak
freaking on a frequent pushing the
easter by Diana hi it has no people
forcing of themselves there is a
relationship it indicates constant
feedback lose that it's kind of like
them thinking of us absolutely this is
the dialer narcissus narcissus looking
at your own reflection in the mirror and
a RSS well I think what happens is with
you does allowing other I think that is
a danger I also think though is that you
also fall prone to the implicit
narcissism of all the other Facebook
users and and well because people
generally post glowing reviews of their
own life and you know to some degree
that's understandable because who wants
to be subject to a constant barrage of
misery I mean there's reasons that
people do it they post themselves when
they're having fun when they're doing
something spectacular but that also
means that you're being blasted all the
time by these endless images of other
people having a far better time of life
than you are and so I think that that we
do know that there is some evidence that
more exposure to Facebook means more
depression now it's hard to pull out
correlation and causality there but but
then in the political sphere you have
the same problem because you're you're
not being fed an unbiased sample of
information and your own initial biases
are multiplied by the algorithms that
select for you what you're going to look
at and we don't know we have no idea
what the consequence of that is so thank
thank you very much
incidentally I have a question that
concerns something similar but I'm
talking about the real face-to-face
conversation you said how important it
is for you as a speaker to get the
feedback of your audience now having
grown up in East Germany we have learned
to look this
no expression whatsoever it's the most
outrageous stupid things because the
consequences of like rolling your eyes
when they were talking about us being
well ahead economically of the West
would be just very negative so we didn't
do that and I see something very similar
happening here in especially certain
political lectures so if somebody tells
you that what you are do or tells an
audience what you are doing a solvable
and I'm in that audience I wouldn't own
my eyes unless I know what's that so the
consequences are now of course in those
are microaggressions yes yeah really I'm
not kidding you know it's exactly what
it is yes I rolling in particulars is it
sign of contempt exactly so but of
course if I if I never do that to you
you now get the impression that what you
say is just wonderful so you don't get
the critical feedback that is as you
pointed out lightly very important for
you yes sir Klaus said goes both ways
it's actually one of the fundamental
defenses of free speech is that you're
deeply if you constrain it you're
depriving people of corrective feedback
and that's a very bad thing because
people people cannot maintain sanity in
isolation you you outsource your sanity
to other people if you're vaguely
socially acceptable what that means is
people can tolerate having you around
and then they will provide you with
corrective feedback and as long as you
react to that you don't have to worry
about being sane because they'll keep
you that way and you might think well no
you can manage your sanity by yourself
but no it's too complex you can't it's
not possible so the problem is not just
and give it
ultimately natural reaction
absolutely while suddenness spontaneous
reactions right because a lot of those
facial gestures those aren't those
aren't precisely conscious and that's
actually good because they're
untrammeled expressions of your initial
instincts something like that you know
it's like having dogs around you know if
you're agitated and upset the dog will
get all nervous it's like well you can
trust that the dog doesn't have an
agenda you know and people are like that
in their initial responses too because
that doesn't mean they're correct but at
least it means that it's not mediated by
like an ideological bias are not so
straightforwardly
just before we hear from eva i wanted to
mention that we let our hypothesis die
in our stead yeah Karl Popper Harlan my
favorite flower I first proper yes so
just to talk a bit first of all I want
to thank you for a most interesting
presentation and on a line which a lot
of us here haven't heard before so I
thank you for that and I've did two
things that I wanted to ask you about
one the concept that you've enunciated
of the emergence of an extremely long
period of time of the idea that we all
have somewhat of the divine intervention
I suppose also implies that we have
somewhat of the opposite as well yeah it
also by that leads directly to the idea
of individual rights versus group right
yes and a lot of the troubles that all
of us here faced is that we have become
the target of these group demands for
group types rather than individual
rights at all attaining or not that that
march towards the higher hierarchies of
society based on our own efforts and our
own performances and so on so that's one
but that's also the other side of
another thing that you raised which one
really hears in any of these kinds of
meetings the biological basis of our
behavior and I was really interested to
hear you bring this into the discussion
because it is seemed to me over the
years and I've been around this business
since the 60s I think when it all
struggles seem to have started if that a
lot of the feminism nonsense is involved
with the denial of differences between
males and females a lot of the problems
with the performance and affirmative
action and so on
if the denial that there may be
biological basis to some of the
performance differences that we see in
various fields of activity around the
world and also this idea that we can
decide what gender we are tomorrow
morning is edit III must have never
heard of this so what did you call this
the gender unicorn and I will say look
it up how when I go and the ice fairy
instruction rolls and six-year-olds
would be subjected to this it's
positively alarming so I just have to
comment yeah well the they call that
biological essentialism right and so
that's a that's a that's a curse word
essentially right it so and again that's
partly why I objected to the legislation
and surrounding policy because it
doesn't allow for a biological influence
and so which is preposterous in my
estimation and I mean the biology
actually is much more useful than people
even realize so you know one of the
things we were talking about earlier
today was say the distinction between
conservatives and liberals I can tell
you one of the things that produces
right-wing authoritarianism it's very
interesting and you wouldn't guess this
in a million years prevalence of
infectious disease so there was a great
paper published three years ago it was
brilliant prevalence of infectious
disease so it was published in a journal
called plaus won and these researchers
were interested in this hypothesis
called the behavioural immune system and
so you know very frequently when
heretofore isolated human groups come
into contact that
either one group or the other dies like
maybe maybe all of them or virtually all
of them that's essentially what happened
to the Native Americans when the
Spaniards hit Central America right
because they didn't have any built-in
immunity to smallpox or chickenpox or
mumps or measles and like successive
epidemics just wiped them out the
estimates vary but it could be as high
as 95% and so it appears as though the
the border idea the idea of thick
borders let's say which is a
fundamentally conservative idea the
liberals want open borders and lot of
information flow and the Conservatives
want close borders and more restriction
and protection at every level of the of
the conceptual hierarchy it's not just
political borders its borders around
everything but that seems to be tightly
associated at least in part with the
prevalence of infectious disease both at
the country level and at the at the
local level within countries and the
correlations like 0.7 it's not trivial
and it's not with governmental
authoritarian attitudes it's with
individual authoritarian attitudes at in
the locales where the infectious
diseases are prevalent and it seems to
be associated with the emotion of
disgust so Hitler wasn't afraid of the
Jews conservatives aren't afraid of
others that isn't how it works
they're disgusted that's not the same
thing it's associated with a personality
trait called orderliness and so hit I
read once this is being sorted out by
psychologists over about the last 10
years let's say and when I was plowing
through the literature and working on
the relationship between disgust
sensitivity and personality I happened
to reread Hitler's table talk which was
a collection of his spontaneous speeches
collected at dinner time lunch times by
secretaries from 1939 to 1940 two and
one once I knew this other information
just left out at me you know so Hitler
was admirer of willpower that makes him
a conscientious type of person very
obsessed with order washed his hands
continually was hyper clean and disgust
sensitive and his primary metaphor for
the German people was a body Arian body
pure body under assault by Paris
pure disgust and contamination language
and it's mediated by disgust sensitivity
and that's one of the things that
predicts that kind of right-wing close
the border attitude and that's also
heightened in places where it's such as
diseases are a real problem so if you
want to eliminate right-wing
authoritarianism that actually looks
like one of the things you could do is
as promote public health programs
everywhere to rid the world of it to the
degree that that's possible of
infectious diseases well you know you
want to impede the flow between people
if there's infectious diseases
everywhere obviously and that manifests
itself in political attitudes so there's
the biology reaches way deeper than then
people are willing to like to assume
that some of the things that it tells us
are unbelievably useful to know being
terrible to know in some sense but
useful to know and so I'd like the walls
work on on the stability of primate
hierarchies is incredibly important I
mean he's been looking at the emergence
of proto morality among chimpanzees and
that seems to be driven in large part by
the dominant hierarchy structure it's
not exactly a dominance hierarchy there
that's probably not exactly the right
way to think about because you know
dominance implies pure power but lots of
human hierarchies aren't dominance
hierarchies and all their competence
hierarchies or something like that
so it's very different I'm a libertarian
so I in favor of freedom but unlike a
lot of libertarians I don't think that
there's kind of a natural affinity to
freedom among human beings that
evolution has actually trained us to be
conformists much more than
freedom-loving individualist absolutely
and and as a result of that I mean
because because in our evolutionary
history
it was often much more important to roll
all in the same direction the clan the
roughly related genetically related
clans that were roaming that it was much
more important to row in the same
direction than to roll in the right
direction as long as you didn't roll off
the off the cliff or we're going to run
off the cliff
that would be as bad but but as long as
you were muddling through it was better
for everyone to be in the same and so
therefore we evolved to be very much
conformists and people like you and to
less extent the rest of us in this room
are the disruptors we're the ones who
are non conformists were the ones who
say hey wait a minute that doesn't sound
right to me and and we're the ones who
want to lead society back to chaos the
state of chaos where everyone's got
their own little little view of how
things should go instead of following
the leader and just doing what everyone
else does and that's why people like you
attract to meet to my way of thinking
that's why people like you attract such
a visceral you know angry reaction is
that you're leading us back into chaos
and if we don't all ignore you and shut
you down and you know we're all going to
be you know in the state where the clan
is fighting amongst each other instead
of rolling in the same direction I mean
I know if you have any thoughts on that
well I think certainly one of the things
I've learned see I already knew before
all this happened that people were
primarily conforming I actually don't
have much of a problem with that because
most of the time the tradition is
correct but sometimes it's not correct
at all that's the problem is that so you
know one of the things I always tell my
clients and my students for that matter
is you should do what everyone else does
unless you have a really good reason to
vary and one of the things I learned
from young Carl young was that and if
you do vary you should try to only do it
in a couple of directions because you
probably can't handle doing it more than
that it's just too much - too much
psychologically but you know the problem
is is that sometimes the group is
rolling off a cliff and then it's then
you know that's partly why the
individual in some sense is the eternal
savior of the group because the group is
it has the aspect of sheep let's say and
the sheep are doing fine they've got the
whole herd thing going for them it
decreases the risk of individual
predation they've got all their nervous
systems in tune so there's real utility
in the herd but they're also subject to
all the problems that herds have like
herd panic
and so so that's not good enough that's
what human beings figured out was that
being part of the herd
although necessary isn't good enough
there has to be a balance between the
tradition the old dead tradition and the
revivifying force of the of the law of
the living essentially that's those are
actually how the God split up in need
you because Horace was roughly a
representation of the living and osiris
was roughly a representation of the dead
and it was the combined combination of
those two that made up the sovereign
very intelligent like dramatic political
philosophy so but you know one of the
things I have seen since September is I
mean I knew that people were conformist
but I really had I really had no idea to
what degree that was true you know like
I mean I've got very very few letters of
support from people who are academics
for example and they I get secret
reports really you know people come and
say well we agree with what you're doing
but we wish you could be a little nicer
about it which which you know it's a
funny thing for people to say because it
implies that if they did what I was
doing they would do a better job you
know and which is fine but you know you
can always try it out see how it goes so
when I hate talks - on the climate
definitely one of the most common
comments I would get after the thing is
over and people I find really around and
shaking amanda's I agree with everything
you said that I would never yeah yeah
well it's no wonder it's no it's not
surprising you know I mean there are
real reasons not to stick out from the
herd if you if you mark a zebra so that
you can identify it against the herd the
Lions will kill it right and that's that
then I tell you knowing that you need to
take this because they can't they can't
organize their hunt unless they can
identify the individual that's right
well they're camouflaged against the
herd zebras so that's man that's worth
knowing it explains a lot that oh sorry
thanks very much for elaborating very
very compellingly the fundamental
significance of thought and speech
almost impossible to at our point and
development to separate and the the
trance issue which is the particularity
that isn't very important yeah you know
I you know would agree with you but I'm
a sex researcher so people are going to
ask me the trance issue I think is an
appropriate lightning rod for social
constructionism and you know as as a
researcher in this field I can tell you
that John money was wrong
kids are tabula rasa and you know Mickey
diamond was right and etc and now you're
in trouble
yeah the presence of police officers
here was actually a very interesting
underscoring of the power of thought and
speech and the millennial issue of the
Internet and reminds us that we don't
choose our audience in the Internet
you're basically exposed to the world
and your tendency to self-center to
avert being trolled is probably great at
any rate that's just just just
background my colleagues are going to my
colleague Ken Zucker one of your
colleagues at the University of Toronto
was recently fired yeah for his
departure from common wisdom and it
wasn't much of a departure and in fact
he represents common wisdom on the
trance phenomenon having said all that
my colleagues are going to ask you two
questions ask me two questions if he met
Joan who was you know trans feminine
okay you know male to female transsexual
would you refer to her as Joan yes okay
it Handler and the other issue is
midst all the garbage and the hype and
they let's reassigned a three year old
and you know stuff that I think all of
us would regard as nonsense many of us
some of us in this room deal with trans
individuals every day you know
like some gay individuals that's just a
way they emerged in life they're genuine
they're not particularly begging special
privilege my colleagues going to say
would you you'd call her Joan and would
you would you
accord her effective city or reality or
where is she socially constructing
herself where will she blend that with
well the devil is always in the details
you know I mean one of the things that's
emerging right now although this is a
fringe viewpoint is like imagine that
you're dating
well you're prejudiced because people's
prejudices shine forth most clearly in
their choice of partners right they
choose people who are sorry oh people's
prejudices shine forth most brightly and
their choice of of sexual partners right
we prefer young people generally
speaking we prefer healthy people we
prefer people of our own race we prefer
people of our own religion we prefer
high the highest performing individuals
we can get our hands on generally
speaking and so though that's deeply
prejudicial and one of the things that's
emerging
I wouldn't say in the trans community
because there isn't such a thing as far
as I can tell but among certain
individuals is their dubious of your
right to choose your sexual partner
based on their genitalia let's say
because that's a form of discrimination
so yeah well you know look I could tell
you in Huxley's brave new world and this
is worth thinking about you didn't get
to it was it was a social faux pas to
turn down a sexual request because it's
discriminatory it's like well it is
discriminatory
really I'm not kidding man it's the
deepest form of discrimination you know
you're basically saying you're basically
saying yes exactly that's exactly it and
that's what you had to do in Huxley's
brave new world and you also weren't
allowed to have a long-term monogamous
relationship because the exclusionary
element of that was regarded as
prejudicial which it is that's the thing
that's the thing and so the question is
well I could say well I would I wouldn't
discriminate it's like well it depends
on exactly
what you mean by discriminate and then
of course the argument is about exactly
what right I have to discriminate and
increasingly the answer is none like
we've already sacrificed freedom of
assembly we're pretty much on the way to
sacrificing freedom of speech it's a
it's a logical conclusion to all of this
that another issue they were very much
on the same page I'm going to be a
psychology graduate yes what is your
view of the authenticity that is some
reason like I've always identified the
opposite gender now a little much matter
that I've transitioned yes well that's a
part that I'm more skeptical about
because the evidence isn't all that
clear that people do feel better when
they transition so but it's look it's
consumed yes it is first of all there's
the fact that there are categories
doesn't mean there aren't exceptions
okay there's exceptions now what those
exceptions signify well that's generally
to be dealt with on an individual to
individual basis and that's fine with me
you know I'm a clinician I've dealt with
all sorts of people who don't and who
fits in the categories nobody like to
become socialized what you do is you
mangle your square peg into a round hole
and I mean for some people that's
obviously far more of a sacrifice than
for others but you know social being
demands what would you call restriction
of your at least of your individuality
in all sorts of different aspects and
for some people that's much more of a
sacrifice than others the question is
what does the existence of the exception
imply for the general case and I believe
that if you're a postmodernist and a
Marxist underneath that it supplies the
excuse to take down the category of
gender and why would you do that well
it's a category used by the oppressive
patriarchy to continue it's to continue
its pathological power seeking
distinction between you know leave me
alone I want to get on with my life
versus I'm going to dismiss the category
so that there's room for me yes
precisely or I'm going to dismiss the
category on behalf of someone else who I
claim to speak for which is even more
commonly the case this is a general
environment where oppression and
identity are the currents
status and advantage yes right right
well I just don't see that it's going to
be all that useful kids are confused
enough when they're growing up I think
to add gender confusion to that which
we're doing very very rapidly is going
to destroy 15 people for every one it
saves it might be more than that because
there's plenty of confused people out
there I would say like what two out of
30 something like that are just barely
clinging on to the to the edges of
reality and they're looking for
acceptance and transmutation wherever
they can find it and confusing them
further isn't going to help and these
people that were transitioning young is
going to be one hell of a kick back from
that I can tell you when they hit the
when they hit adulthood let me just
follow up on Grant Browns question
Jordan is among that the top five or top
ten professors in North America during
the past year who's been a lightning rod
a target of collective efforts at
humiliation and being disgraced and my
question is essentially if you could
give as parsimonious an answer as you
can which generally isn't very personal
I've noticed yet of why you and it's a
remarkable phenomenon when somebody is
demonized to the extent that you have
been in mainstream media I was reading
just lately I picked up in a car
mechanics office a copy of Toronto Life
oh yeah there was this it did a nice job
by by a kind of wide-eyed reporter who
you know he doesn't seem like a demon
you know he seems like a kind of nice
guy he even seems a little bit on the
left but he must be a deep and personal
so the question is just as briefly as
you can why you because I said there was
something I would do
right I mean because like all these
massive ideas as I said they manifest
themselves in micro examples you know
many my
two examples but they're micro examples
and so there's always a certain amount
of arbitrariness when you decide to not
go along with it and the arbitrariness
is like well I said that I wouldn't use
these words for example and how to
rationale for it and then people test
you out when you when you put up your
hand they test you out they think well
are you just a monster well let's throw
a bunch of monster words at you and see
if they stick see if you can defend
yourself because that's a really good
way of finding out whether you're
actually a monster and so that was the
first let's say two months of all of
this was me just sort of fending off
these different accusations now I was
fortunate in many ways I was fortunate
in that in the first demonstrations that
followed the videos that the people who
were supporting me behaved reasonably
well compared to the people who weren't
that was you could think about that as
somewhat dependent on chance not
entirely but things could have gone
badly the other way and also I was
protected by the fact that I already had
about 400 hours of videos online and so
virtually everything I had said to
students in the last well over the span
of 30 years really but particularly in
the last five years was all recorded and
so if anybody wanted to find out if I
was a monster all they had to do is go
through the painful process of listening
to what I had to say and there were no
smoking guns buried in there which is
which is significant given that there
were 200 hours of it you know it's it's
you'd think there'd be something in
there that I said that could have been
taken out of context that would have
really walled me a good one but so far
nobody seems to have extracted one so
and I also think that I guess the next
reason would be
I didn't just apart from saying there
was something specific I wouldn't do
which like brings the abstraction down
to a point of reality right it's it's a
line that that makes it real rather than
just an abstract critique I think the
other thing that happened was that
people came to my website because of the
political material but that isn't where
they stopped they started listening to
what I had to say and I think that what
I have to say is actually revolutionary
so and I think people have a sense of
that
I mean it looks like it as far as I can
tell the response seems to indicate that
and you know I've shared some of that
with you today that the idea that some
of our values are grounded in in
phenomena that are far more primordial
let's say than our mere opinion like
that's a big deal if it's if there's
anything about it that's true and I mean
I don't know but I've been trying to
puzzle this out for a long time and it
seems to cohere and when people try to
apply the principles that I've been
discussing in their lives it makes their
lives better you know and it's so
interesting too because I've been going
around speaking publicly you know and
most of my audiences man interestingly
enough even in the live talks and all
I've been doing with the men basically
is talking to them about saying what's
true and adopting responsibility and
they're so bloody hungry for that that
it's just mind-boggling you know which
is something really curious and
interesting to me because that's not a
saleable message you know it's it's
because I'm basically saying well find
the heaviest load you can conceive of
and try to pick it up and while you're
doing that you know try to engage in the
least amount of deceit as possible and
that that's also a pathway out of
suffering you know for people in general
well it's so interesting to see how
unbelievably positively the people who
who are following this are responding to
they're responding to that it's I've
been talking to a lot of the potential
leaders of the Conservative Party and
you know one of the things I've told
them repeatedly is you guys have
something to sell young people for the
first time that I can remember and
that's responsibility the left is
selling freedom and rights it's like
well yeah where's the other half of this
story freedom you know that's freedom to
drown I mean I've got nothing against
freedom obviously but there's no rights
without responsibilities and there's no
freedom without tradition so somebody's
got to tell the other half of this story
so dr. Peterson three more questions is
that okay we don't want to wear you down
sure
okay that's you're too late for that
thanks a lot Jordan I'm remembering a
conversation we had about a month ago
yeah in a little cafe in Ottawa some of
the issues we discussed then brought up
again today it leads to certain we
didn't resolve anything I think
ultimately and I doubt if we ever will
and it seems to me the real problem is
something you mentioned today and we
could go a little further with it it's a
question that's Pontius Pilate question
the first postmodernist what is truth
and it was taken up many times but by
Nietzsche and the genealogy of morals
well truth this interpretation and of
course this is not the case with
Nietzsche and anybody who follows them
as you pointed out because that's
somebody else's truth that there is no
truth and therefore what do you do with
that and you're into the problem of the
Cretan liar but here is the problem for
me even with your talk which is unusual
brilliant and I think grounded in in
tremendous amount of factual information
I was asked once after a book of mine
came out which was contested hotly by
many people what gave me the right to
think I had the truth this was an
interviewer in Toronto for the Random
House thing and why did I think what I
was saying was true who was I to say
that I had the truth and I said I don't
have the truth I had to come up with
some explanation quickly and some kind
of phrasing it just occurred to me I
said all I have is this credible
verisimilitude what is credible
verisimilitude he wanted to know I said
eh it depends on gathering as much
evidence as you possibly can even if you
have to counter your own biases you just
said with Leif at least the mouth of
deceit or self-indulgence as possible
and the second factor is common sense
which seems to be not so common these
days so if you can put evidence and
common sense together and at the same
time try and marshal and monitor your
own proclivities I went right but that
was hard with my book as I was left
before I could go right and I had to
make that decision do I want to go right
and with all my friends or do I want to
stay less
you know have kept men and join my
friends and socks I had to go right
because that's where the evidence told
me against my own desires so honesty if
you can manage it evidence and common
sense but here's the problem
truth it's still there how do you get
from credible verisimilitude to truth
where is the bridge how do you get there
nobody can say that ultimately yes it's
the problem I think you can you can say
certain things are true soaring gains
and tetris-like certain things have
happened certain men have suffered as a
result of feminists all this is true but
where truth seems to founder is when you
enter the realm of cause who has the
truth to explain why feminism developed
in the way it did or why climate warming
or global warming developed in the way
and it did we can point out the fact
this is wrong the draught that is
happening but when you get out of the
elements the region of events and into
the region of the causes that's the
bridge the gap from credible
verisimilitude to truth and i frankly
don't know how to manage that so the
conclusion i'm coming to is a little bit
different from your conclusion it's not
the one that i want to come to and I
would like to resist it but the
conclusion I'm coming to is quite simply
we're
yes but that's always being true right
says the apocalypse is always that's why
the apocalypse is eternal because the
world is always coming to an end and
it's actually true in small ways and in
great ways I mean with regards to to
your your ideas about truth I would say
that like language truth is more like a
process and I would say it's it's it's a
process that you actually embody rather
than conceptualize abstractly to one of
the ways I've thought about it is that
if you're seeking the truth and what you
don't know is more important to you than
what you know and that's a fundamental
orientation right I mean what I'm doing
what I've been doing since September and
I've had friends have been helping me
with this but I think I've been doing
this for a long time as I'm trying to
figure out where I'm wrong I'm watching
the audience too
see if I'm making a mistake i'm
listening to my friends who are watching
my youtube videos telling me what i'm
little too angry maybe or maybe too
pompous or too noisy or you know all the
different ways that you can fail in
front of an audience i'm listening to
them
i'm listening to the comments and i'm
trying to modify myself accordingly you
know and so you live in error and strive
towards the truth and it's in that
striving that the truth is most
accurately embodied but then I would
also say one other thing and this is
what I like about the existentialists is
that you know there's there's a kind of
emphasis on pragmatic truth among the
existentialists because they claim that
your truth is something that you should
act out not merely hold because to act
out is to believe it it's a definition
right it's not it's not precisely a
proposition it's a definition and so I
found some things that I was confident
and enough in to risk acting out and so
that's what I'm doing to the best of my
ability and then I'm watching what
happens and and I'm watching what
happens if other people act out the
propositions and as far as I can tell so
far so good I mean I I don't I wouldn't
say that my position right now is to be
what would you envied it's very
stressful I mean since September I
basically be in the position of any
mistake is fatal for all intents and
purposes you know and that's very
stressful to be that hyper vigilant and
but by the same token the public
responds to what I've been doing has
been overwhelmingly positive you know
I've only got three pieces of hate mail
which which just staggers me you know
and and the comments on YouTube for
example are like 50 to 1 positive and I
mean who yeah maybe it's a biased sample
I can't tell but but and the other thing
you know I've been trying to rip holes
in the ideas that I've presented to you
today for really like with all my
intellectual capability for as long
everytime a lecture I'm trying to do the
same thing is like is there something in
this that I haven't got right because
I'm trying to I was trying to look for
some a rock at the bottom of things you
know
and partly why I decided that I wasn't
going to use those damn words is because
I think the rock at the bottom of things
is honest speech I really believe that
it seems to me to be right and that's
good enough
so I'll act it out and see what happens
as best I can I mean I'm not claiming to
be I'm not claiming to be any more
honest than anyone else you know
seriously I'm not I did that what that's
a big claim to make you better watch
your bloody step if you're going to say
that but that doesn't mean I don't
believe that on speech is the pathway to
redemption because I do believe that so
I know that strange language but you
know that's still it's the most accurate
language for that kind of
conceptualization so during your
presentation your ear emphasis has
always been on the truth I mean the man
who strays from the group to find the
truth and comes back to it etc oh all
right his emphasis has been throughout
on truth and my question is this I take
it that truth is a necessary condition
for an idea being important at some
level it's not at all obvious that it's
a sufficient condition I mean some
truths are surely uninteresting boring
and others are really important and in
particular ideas about value I'm not
sure whether you wanted to classify
claims above value as being susceptible
or truth or falsity that's sort of been
a long-standing you know question in the
philosophical world but but which is the
right thing to say about those let's if
we suppose that we include those it
would be a way of obscuring the contrast
I'm going to make which is surely we
need an additional variable which is the
value of these ideas
and it's not I was wondering whether you
were in we're supposing that you had at
least implicitly some kind of general
criterion of value of that kind that
applies in your theory yeah or whether
that's open-ended no I have a criteria
because it didn't mean that's a
fundamental question and I know I am
talking about values rather than
empirical facts of which there are an
infinity right and so it's the
application of the facts to the problems
of life that's the that's the problem
because there's a lot of facts but I
would say and I got this partly from
Piaget because CPA one of the things
that John Piaget was trying to do was to
understand he was actually trying to
mediate between religion and science
that's what drove his entire
intellectual career and he came up with
this idea of the equilibrate state which
is an idea I really like so imagine two
teams of five people pursuing a goal
it's the same goal for both teams but
team a has been forcibly compelled to
attain the goal and Team B is doing it
voluntarily his proposition was is that
in a in an even in a race that was even
all other things considered that the
team that was composed of voluntary
participants would outperform the team
that was compelled and I believe that
Ben and he he basically said it's
enforcement costs that make the
difference and that's a compelling
argument for me and so I've been
expanding on that partly it's like
Piaget via Jung I would say is the
intellectual pathway it's like the the
proper aim for value is something like
what's good for me in a way that's good
for me tomorrow and next week next month
the next year because timeframe matters
a lot so that's a serious constraint and
then what's good for me now in the
future me in a way that's also good for
the other people around me if that's
possible and then also broader society
if that's possible across multiple time
frames that's sort of like the ultimate
equilibrated state and so that's a
hypothetical ideal obviously but I'm not
sure that answers
question in the following way why can't
you be is an indefinite number of things
were dark which are good why is that
same criterion but different lots of
them we don't it seems to me in a way
that sort of single criterion of
anything why do you think that well I
know but I think there is because in a
silver down yeah it's measured but it
seems you just leave the whole lot of it
in and and that's interesting and I
think that's a good thing my stuff but
certainly it's not obvious that that
wouldn't be true
I think there's commonalities among the
set of solutions that's basically that's
the proposition that I'm putting forward
is that there are and I think those
would be akin to Jung's archetypes their
commonalities across the sets of
solutions and so in their reflective of
people's I would say basic nature
roughly speaking I mean it's partly why
human beings that are isolated and have
been forever can learn to trade with one
another for example because they can and
so there's there's there are constraints
built into that requirement that I just
described that weed out most solutions
which is also I think the answer to the
postmodern dilemma which is well because
you're kind of posing it which is well
how do you know there isn't an
indefinite number of solutions and I
would say because the the constraints on
the solution space are so intense that
very few variants manage because if you
make a big mistake you're dead or people
or people gang up on you or like you
know you either run into the world
headlong and perish or you transgress
against your fellow people and they're
not very happy about that and so the set
of solutions that allows you to
simultaneously exist in the world and in
the social world for a reasonable length
of time there it's I think there's a
very limited number of solutions to that
problem
this used to be that year which it'd be
constraining the set up the set of
things in your universe in a way that to
be much to used excluding lots of images
are not are not problem we have
influenced us but that fits us well I
mean the only thing I can say is that
that I think there are there's a set of
solutions that's bounded in some manner
even though it may be quite large but
there's still a pattern to be detected
among its like it's like the pattern
that you can detect that unites
everything that's musical you know
there's something although there's very
diverse forms of music there's something
that emerges from all those forms that
allows you to generate the category and
I think the same is the case with
ethical behavior although even though
it's subject to the constraints of time
and place as well so well thank you very
much - Arden this is really a great
presentation that you've done I want to
end with some encouragement first of all
I've looked at the extent of your
coverage on YouTube and one of my areas
is digital media and journalism and it's
incredibly impressive as you probably
already know so the level of influence
that you have is really incredible and
that's a good thing because that brings
me to my second point I've watched a lot
of your stuff and you're not
embarrassing for those of us who hold
similar views greatly great that's good
in that in the next slide I am
definitely anything like hearing you in
fact I mean there are a lot of people
who espouse similar views and and they
give me shivers they make me sick to my
stomach a bit but you haven't
embarrassed us me and and that's good
and secondly I've seen that you have
moderated even your approach as I mean
saying the same things but you've become
even more erudite in the way that you
present your arguments and and I really
appreciate the effort that you're
putting into this because the number of
places that you've been and and the
number of shows that you've appeared on
I know must be very tax taxing and so I
want to just acknowledge that you're
doing this not for your own good and I
really appreciate the eff
that you're putting into this because
this is a lot of personal effort that
you've expended and I really appreciate
it thank you yeah and this is the
question the question is I've heard
sorry everyone but the question is this
I keep hearing people say if these are
my colleagues who are cowards
incidentally who say if only he were
nicer mmm
and you've mentioned that already do you
really think that and honestly this is
the question then do we need to be nicer
do you need to be nicer
what really need just the response to
that if you would I need to be nicer
when it's necessary to be nice and not
nicer when it isn't and I need to learn
to distinguish those more carefully
continually more carefully and
hypothetically I'm getting better at it
the fact that my job isn't at stake at
the moment actually does take some of
the agitation pressure off you know I
mean at the beginning of this I was
quite embattled let's say and also less
a accustomed to this crazy sequence of
events and so you know I didn't know
exactly what I was doing not that I do
now but I'm and I'm more resigned to it
in some sense as well and I'm not trying
to present myself as you know I don't
regard what's happened to me as any sort
of calamity even though it's very
complicated but it has its own momentum
and and I'm that's okay I guess but I'm
trying to weave my way through this with
the least amount of enmity possible
right but that's something you have to
continually feel out and hopefully
that's working better that's the plan
[Applause]