Dr.. Jordan Pearson good morning good morning
Thank you so much for coming in you're developing this enormous power and reach is it the heavy burden for it?
Well it it's heavy and light at the same time. You know it's it's constant I
Don't know what I'm doing day-to-day until that day
I have people managing my schedule, and I'm busy enough so that I pretty much attend to the next thing
But the responsibility of getting into all these heads mm-hmm
And you are influencing people's signa me aren't you?
well
I guess I take solace in the fact that so many thousands of people now have written to me and also talked to me
to say that
Things are better for them because they've been trying to do some of the things that I suggest in my lectures and so
It is a heavy responsibility
When when you have influence of that sort but it lightens it when you also have evidence
Suggesting that it seems to be doing people a lot of good your changing lives
That seems to be the case.
You're saving lives?
Saving lives too? Well, I would say there were six people in the audience last night. I was talking in Melbourne
I would say there were six, maybe there were more but there were at least six so half a dozen
And they were young men who told me that that that's that's what they said
That you had served their lives.
Yeah, how do you feel about that?
Breaks me up. Why, it's a very positive thing you've done. What what do you mean it breaks you up?
Well it's sad that there are so many people in that
State of crisis you know and they don't need
that much encouragement
That's the thing.
So,
It's sad that it only takes that much encouragement to make that much difference. There's a lot of lost people in the world
So it's a good thing to be able to help that
It's overwhelming. Well I can tell that you're very emotional about it.
Yeah, well it's really something. You know what time I hadn't thought much about what had happened last night, but you know
probably 500 people lined up after the talk and
Most of them say the same thing you know about a quarter of them say look you're putting into words things
I already knew I always knew but I didn't know how to say just like oh
That's what archetypal stories do and and I guess that's what articulate people
Do you know so that's a good thing, but then the other 3/4 of them say some variant of?
of
You know my life has been turned around
They say I was addicted or I was drinking too much, or I wasn't moving ahead my relationship with my girlfriend
I wasn't getting along with my family. I didn't have any direction in life
I was nihilistic or hopeless or anxious or any number of variants of those and
I've been trying to put into practice what you've been talking about in your YouTube lectures and
podcasts and and
It's really helped my turn my life around. Thank you. It's like
Yeah
Do something you feel fragile about that
Well
No, I wouldn't say exactly that um I seem to be able to handle this
It's been going on a long time now. It's it's been 18 months, and I would say in many ways now
It's better than it was because at the beginning
Especially when I got when I put my hat in the political ring
Let's say because I felt that the Canadian politicians had overstepped their boundaries
You know my job was threatened and
quite severely, and I thought I might lose my clinical license as well and
Things were up in the air in a big way. This was over the gender pronoun usage.
Yeah was my refusal when I stated refusal to abide by the
by the requirement that that I
modified my language in a certain manner that I
Felt was you know appropriate
oh I felt it was inappropriate of the government to demand that I modify my language the government has no right to
Intrude on people's lives to that degree
It's very very dangerous when that happens and so anyways there was I've been in one scandal after another in Canada like seriously like
Non-stop for 18 months the last one. Just two days ago. I was at Queen's University in Kingston, and there was a big
Demonstration there was a very eerie
Occurrence they arrested a woman who was carrying a garrote for God's sake you know. Does that frighten you?
That was not good, the Queen's University thing was not good. We were in a hall. It was kind of like a church this
this Hall. It's what it looked like it was lined with stained glass windows and
probably 20 of them and there was a
Protester had climbed up in the window well of all 20 windows
probably five or six feet off the ground and there were seven feet high these windows and they were pounding on them and
Forcefully forcefully enough in one case to break the window and so there was 900 of us inside
and it was we were surrounded by this group that were pounding on the windows and yelling and pounding on the doors and
It was and you know you could see against the stained glass you could see these shadowy forms pounding away
And it was it was very eerie. No one and no one in that Hall will ever forget that experience. Why?
Why were they trying to get in why the garotte, why the, it sounds like hate is it hate?
Some of it was hate for sure. Why, why do they hate you?
Because they because of who they imagine I might be I guess that's part of it
You know it's it's it's easy to hate someone who's been caricatured and
So, but there's more to it than that I have been very
Forceful. Let's say and my criticisms of the radical left not only in Canada
But in the West in general not critical enough in my estimation, so I hold no stock whatsoever for the radical leftist
I'm absolutely appalled that they're the force they are in the universities
and I do believe that in many ways the universities have done more harm in society than good over the last 20 years and
I say that you know with a fair bit of regret because I've been obviously associated with universities since 1993
But that, it's a really interesting thing, I sometimes enjoy dealing with the radical lift in the university so I think you're gonna grow up
You're going to get through this and I enjoy the the challenge and the drama and the yeah
It's a challenge of youth saying you're wrong well
I'm right, and I know I'm right because I'm 20 and I know everything it's not the students so much. I'm concerned about
Staff is it. Oh, yeah, it's the staff and the administrators, and no it's not the students
I mean look I've been protested against I watched the protesters and most of the time the vast majority of them are young people whose
Whose?
Desire to have a positive influence in the world is
Channeled into this particular political expression at the moment, but so many of them are manipulated by the faculty members hmm
And there's no excuse for that and what they're doing is is far more dangerous than it looks why do young men?
need you
Well first of all you know, it's not I would say it's not just young men part of that's an
Artifact of the fact that most of the people who watch YouTube are young men?
but but I won't evade the question I mean because
See to some degree
Maturation among men is a voluntary process. It's not so voluntary for women. They have to grow up fast
They have a lot of things to do before they hit 30 yeah with men it can it can take longer
And they need a call to adventure
Let's say, and they need a call to responsibility
And they need to be they need to to be initiated into
Responsibility and to have a case made for its utility
And so I'm saying look it's better to be adult than to be a child. It's better
It's better to be in control of your own destiny
There's a place for you in the world the world would be lesser if you don't take your place in it
That you have a responsibility to bear to sort out your education to straighten out your life and to become who you are
Grow the hell up don't grow up and and for reasons that are
Positive for you positive for your family positive for everyone, so is but is this generation lost
They desperate they're clinging to what you're saying and doing in a desperate. I'm not criticizing what you're saying
I'm doing, but they need it. They need it desperately
why why they think I think that I think that every generation needs a
Message that that that supports
maturation and and responsibility
I think that we've done a bad job as a culture of putting that message forward so to me since the mid-1960s
Our young people have been fed a never ending diet of rights and impulsive freedoms something like that and that leaves a hole
because most of the meaning that people
people manage in their lives
And so that would be the meaning that you can offset against the tragedy of life that comes from adopting
Responsibility and carrying a load like human beings in some sense our design for a load and the heavier the load the better
It's it's one of the things that gives you
You know there's this this proclivity among psychologists to attempt to facilitate self-esteem which is a word
I don't care much for I think that self-respect is a much better term
And I think you develop self-respect by carrying a responsibility I feel very lucky to be born in this country
I think it's essentially a decent country does follow a lot of what happens in the United States
I'll get to that in a moment, but I was talking to some welfare workers police Salvation
Army yesterday saying to me
They think society is becoming and and particularly the younger the age group
We're talking is becoming more aggressive more cynical more angry
Do you agree with that and if so why well?
I don't think the statistics bear that out because what we've seen over all over the last especially the last 20 years is a
remarkable decline in violent crime I
do think that there might be an epidemic more of aimlessness and and and depression and anxiety that sort of thing and
I think that that's partly because the case for growing up is not made well
And and and because we're also so cynical about our own societies. You know I was in Amsterdam month ago talking to a group of
well-placed intellectuals
They're all friends of Theo van Gogh who was who was killed in in in Amsterdam about 15 years ago was stabbed
And there they said that embarrassment about the Dutch culture is rampant in their society
and I
That just makes my jaw drop because I go to Holland and I think my god this is such an amazing place these people they
Scrape this country out of the bottom of the ocean they built dikes to hold back the waves. It's it's free. It's it's liberal
It's it's compassionate its orderly. It's beautiful. Yet they're embarrassed by it. They're embarrassed by it because of its
Tyrannical patriarchal nature, it's like well. Who are you comparing it to it's like?
What are we comparing our societies to where do you want to live it on on the planet or in time anywhere?
But in the West not if you have any sense you think you've sort of been described as a warrior
Against political correctness is that fit?
Yeah
Tell me about this in our national carrier Qantas. Got some attention early this week and I was thinking about this
I knew you were coming in and
Taking advice from a diversity group. That's that's a bad idea
And I wanted to ban words like guys and chairmen husband and wife
Replaceable replace words like mankind and chairman. What's your reaction to that?
I think that it would be better if people tried to solve some real problems
Instead of playing these idiot diversity games. I think that
Everyone who plays identity politics whether they play it on the right or the left is
is going to pay for it in ways they can hardly imagine. It's a very
Counterproductive way of dividing up the world
it's an it's
Impossible to come to a peaceful solution in the identity politics universe even the identity politics types themselves they've run into this problem they call
Intersectionality right so ok so you classify people by race and by sex let's say
So and and seek for equity along those dimensions, but then well what about the intersection between those dimensions?
So you you have enough?
Ethnic minorities in your in your organization, let's say you match by population which is a foolish way of doing it
But you do that and maybe you're matched by sex
But then what about the intersection between race and sex well then what about the intersection between race sex ethnicity?
Then you could add social class to that then you could add social proclivity then you could add attractiveness
There's never-ending way of dividing people up into groups, and you can't equalize across all those ways. It's just technically not possible
Do you think people need to make a stand on issues like this and when an airline like Qantas makes these?
decisions do they need to stand against it do they need to boycott it and to do that sort of thing I
I think they need to understand it at a deeper level
It's like we have to decide if we're going to
Divide people up if we think that dividing people up primarily by their group identity is a good idea
And it's not it's a bad idea it will lead to
an enhancement of our tribal proclivities
and I don't think that if you're a an advocate of peace that you would push and
advocate for
Ours further division into tribal entities. It's a it's not wise is this transient when we move through this
We'll see it's been not transient in the past. It's caused tremendous troubles in the past
This is another reason why I'm not a fan of the radical leftists, so
The the radical left ideologies were were murderous in their expression throughout the 20th century
I mentioned earlier this country follows a lot of the US trends good and bad...Like Canada...We're a little bit behind, but it can be fashioned
well
What do we need to be alert to what do we need to be aware of what we need to avoid?
We need to
We need to be alert to the benefits of the societies that we now inhabit
We need to be grateful for their existence and and note very carefully the unlikelihood of their continued success
No, I don't understand. How we managed it
In the West we have societies where the default assumption between human beings is trust. I do not understand. How we manage that
because
There's so many ways that you can be betrayed by someone especially if you don't know them
How do you set up a society where the typical interaction between strangers is straight? Oh?
How many societies in the world are like that like 30 40 something like that how did that ever happen?
We don't know and it's an ongoing miracle, and we should do everything we can not to disrupt it because the alternative to that
Generous trust that courageous trust, which is unbelievably productive is ruled by thug, and that's the rule in most of the world
So do you have optimism or not for the future?
I think we're in a time of extreme chaos
Things could go unbelievably well if we were careful. There's so many good things going on in the world right now
they're almost miraculous so for example between the year 2000 and
2012 the level of absolute poverty in the world was cut by 50%
That was the fastest rate of improvement by a large margin in human history
It was three years faster than the most optimistic projections had suggested
There's hundreds of thousands of people a week now being being
Pulled into the electrical power grid almost everyone has access to almost infinite computational power and all the educational resources that go along with that
We're wiping out most transmissible diseases the fastest growing economies in the world are in sub-saharan
Africa like there are a lot of things. There's no starvation in China
There's a huge middle class in China and India these things are absolutely miraculous
So and and god only knows what we could accomplish if we got our act together in the next 20 years
You know the sky's the limit
So, but we're playing very foolish games in the West and we could bring the house down around us, so we'll see
Thank you so much for coming in good luck with the burden oh
Thanks very much for the invitation and for the interview Jordan B. Peterson 12 rules for life an antidote to chaos