Welcome to Econ Talk part of the Library of Economics and Liberty. I'm your host, Russ roberts at stanford University's hoover institution. Our website is econ talk dot org where you can subscribe comment on this podcast and find links and other information related to today's conversation. You'll also find our archives where you can listen to every episode we've ever done. Going back to 2006 our email addresses, mail at Beacon talk dot org. We'd love to hear from you today, january 25th 2018. And my guest is psychologist, author and internet phenomenon Jordan Peterson of the University of Toronto. His latest book is 12 Rules for Life, an antidote to Chaos, which is the subject of today's conversation, Jordan Welcome to Econ Talk.

Thanks very much for the invitation.

Your books very um it's rather extraordinary. It may be the only self help book that combines the bible, the young and a lot of Jordan Peterson, I found it provocative inspiring, sometimes frustrating. We'll get to that, I hope, and I hope we'll also get to some broader issues outside the book as well. If time permits. I want to start with Happiness.

I found it frustrating too. So we're not. You're not alone there.

I bet you did. Uh keeping it to a mirror. What 300 and something 50. So pages must have been challenging for you because I know you have a lot to say. Uh but I want to start with Happiness. I think many people maybe most have as their central goal in life to be happy. Uh is there something wrong with that?

Well, there's a bunch of things wrong with it. First of all, it's simply not true. If you look at what people mean when they say they want to be happy, what they actually want to want is to not be anxious and miserable. And the reason I'm making a point of that is because you might think of happiness and sadness as opposites, but they're actually not because you have a system in your brain or a part of your psyche that that is responsible for the production of positive emotion and you have a separate system that's responsible for the production of negative emotion. And when people say they want to be happy, what they really mean if you do the psychological analysis properly and question them properly and dig in and and and and and develop a detailed understanding of what they actually mean. They mean they don't want to be anxious and in pain. And that's not surprising. So technically it's incorrect that people are after happiness. Um, but then let's say metaphysically and and more strictly psychologically, I also think it's a bad goal because there's lots of times in your life, there's going to be lots of times in your life where you just can't be happy. My neighbor up the street said to me once, you're only ever as happy as your least happy child.

Yeah,

it's a good, it's a good one. There is something to it and you know, most of the time in life, there's at least one serious thing going wrong. You know, you have a relative who's not well or you have financial difficulties or there's a problem in a relationship or like, life is hard and there's often something going wrong. And so if what you want is to be happy and most of the time there's something serious going wrong, then that's not gonna work out very well for you. And so what I recommended in 12 Rules for Life and what I think wise people have recommended since the beginning of time is that you look for uh you look for meaningful engagement and significance and responsibility instead of happiness because that can keep you afloat during times of, during tragic and troubled times. And that's better than happiness. It's not like I'm against happiness, man, If it comes your way, embrace it. But it's a gift I think rather than something that's a proper pursuit,

You think it's dangerous and unhealthy to assume it's, it's our lot in life. I feel like a lot of people in, certainly in America in the 21st century feel like it's their birthright. And if they don't get something is terribly unfair.

Oh, yeah, that's not good. That's not good. That's why in so many religious traditions, the fundamental axiom is that life is suffering. It's like, don't be thinking that the default condition is happiness. That's just, that's a that's a road to purgatory and disaster. That. And it is because the fundamental preconditions of life are tragic. So, and that has to be contended with. You can contend with it. But the idea that somehow the default position of human beings is happiness is just it's it's the delusion of an extremely naive child.

I want to talk about meaning which runs through the book. And I got an interesting question from a listener who wanted me to ask you about uh, the ethics of of searching for a meaningful life. You always have a very poetic way of talking about the book. And online you say things like, you know, lift your gaze uh beyond yourself, aim high look for a star like uh Pinocchio wants to grow up and become a real genuine awake human being. And yet, of course, at the same time, I when I was thinking about that, I was thinking about David Foster Wallace, who said, I thought very profoundly everyone worships. So some people set their star on religious goal. That's maybe a very beautiful high minded goal.

Some set their sights on a religious goal that's maybe dark. Some people set their sights on joining a movement that that is hateful at its core, but feeds something deep inside. It seems to me, we all want something profoundly greater than ourselves. But what we attach ourselves to, which is David Foster Wallace point, we should be very careful. What are your thoughts on that?

Well, I think that often people attach themselves to something for the wrong reasons. And I wrote about that a fair bit in Rule six, which is set yourself set your house in perfect order before you criticize the world, which is a meditation on the desire to commit atrocity. Right? So it's a description of the mindset of people like the columbine High school shooters and a serial killer who's and rapist whose whose psychological state I analyzed named Carl Pans Ram, who wrote a very interesting autobiography, describing his motivations. Like people can go to very dark places because they become bitter and resentful and then they can align themselves with the desire to do, to do harm, to commit atrocity to to produce suffering for the sake of suffering. And that's well, I think that's the that's the gateway to hell fundamentally. That's the best way of thinking about it. I do think that people can differ in the, what would you call it,

in the in the metaphysics of their aim. I mean, some people are aiming at having a comfortable family life, say a loving family life and that's perfectly fine. I think that's a high order goal you don't have.

It's

very challenging. Absolutely. There's nothing trivial about it at all. It's it's it's difficult to put your family in order properly. It's very, very challenging. And if you can do that, then you'll be able to do a lot of other things as well, but people people need to have a goal that's beyond the gratification of the impulses of the moment, not least because the strategy of gratifying impulses in the moment doesn't work very well. So it just from like the book 12 rules for life is a very philosophical book and and it and it deals in high order abstractions very frequently. But the entire point of the book is practicality. I'm trying to outline um I'm trying to provide people with information that's necessary to make the kind of choices in their day to day life that would really help put their put their worlds together. And so and impulsive gratification of each whim as it appears is a very bad strategy. It's really the strategy of a two year old, I mean that technically, and like two year olds just can't survive in the world.

And if they and if left to their own devices, they're often extremely upset. So you need a goal, you need a transcendent goal because a transcendent goal, you unifies you psychologically and then unifies that unity with the social world and both of those things are absolutely necessary if you don't want to suffer stupidly and and bitterly

at the same time, you emphasize something i it takes a while to learn. I think as you grow up, that focusing only on the goal rather than the process of getting to the goal is a huge mistake as well, if you say it's good to have a goal, but if all you do is think gotta have it gotta have it, gotta have it, you're going to um, you're gonna have a tough time.

Yeah, well with any luck, you know, if you get the goal right, this is, I do a fairly detailed analysis of the sermon on the mount in in Rule seven, which is do what is meaningful, not what is expedient. And the advice in the sermon on the mount is aimed at the highest good that you can conceive of. But having done that, concentrate on the moment and so you might say that if you get your goal right, imagine that you get your goal right, okay, whatever right means. So, and then imagine it means that it's good for you now and it's good for you next week and next year. So you can you can play it out across time in a successful way,

It's an iterative game, but it's also good for other people at the same time. But then it's also the kind of goal that engages you in its pursuit. You want all of that in a goal, say, well, I'm trying to I'm trying to build a business, I want to I want to establish a business and there's some sense of financial security that goes along with that and financial opportunity and and challenge. But if you can if you configure it correctly, then you'll find that the steps that you take on the way to that goal are also in and of themselves worthwhile and then the end and the means are aligned and that's why not have that. I mean if you're gonna if you're gonna pick a goal and you can pick it. Not exactly arbitrarily, but you have a range of choices, why not pick one that works for you and everyone else and that works while you're pursuing it and as an end.

Yeah, obviously can be deeply satisfying. Uh I wonder if you'd reflect for a minute on uh something that's Adam smith says in the theory of moral sentiments. We talk a lot about that here on Beacon Talk which is he says man naturally desires not only to be loved but to be lovely and smith. What he means by that is that people yearn for self the respect of the people around them, They want to be praised, they want to be paid attention to, they want to be looked at, they want to matter. Uh They don't want to be off in the corner. Uh huh. And you talk a lot about about posture, both physical and and metaphysical spiritual posture and and smith's vision, A person who's who's he would never call them happy but which is not his goal either. We're satisfied. Somebody is serene. Somebody who has some tranquility in their life is somebody who has paid attention to and he says there's different ways to get their fame and fortune does it,

but he urges you to be wise and virtuous. Um what do you think of that as a and you should earn that praise and respect? He says honestly, which is why he says you should be lovely, not just loved,

I think, I think I think it's brilliant and I think you can see that in the way people look at each other and I mean that literally when you're talking with someone or even talking to a group, you watch, you watch the eyes and the face of the individual and the individuals who compose the group and you look at what they're broadcasting at you and what you want is interest, You want their eyes to be open and their pupils to be slightly dilated and you want their face to be configured so that they're taking in the information that the interaction with you constitutes and you want them um what would you say, broadcasting a certain amount of hopeful, positive emotion at you and that's all all of that is broadcasting that you're acting in a lovely manner in Adam smith's um sense of the term, and people are always telling each other exactly how to do that. You know, you want people to laugh at your jokes because that means that you're actually funny and you want people to listen when you speak, because that means you have something to say and you want people to be happy when you enter a room because that means they're glad that you're there. And people are broadcasting their their broadcasting your departure from the ideal at you all the time.

Yes,

constantly. And if you pay attention to that, then you can you can figure out how it is that you should be and you can get better at being that way. And there's no loss in that. The, well, the one loss is that you have to take the responsibility for it and you have to let go of everything about you that's interfering with that. So there are sacrifices to be made. But there's nothing but ultimate gain. I would say in in every sense of the word

for smith. Those what you just said in a very, very rich way is the way I summarize it. When we interact with other people. We have these little feedback loops of approval and disapproval. That's what smith talks about. And it's the raised eyebrow. It's that, it's that look that you're talking about that says I want I want more. I want to be here. And when you get that look, you know, you're doing

something right, right.

Wonderful

signal. Exactly. I want to be here with you now, that's a good look.

And I'm just a just a riff on that for a second. You know, some of the most transcendent moments of my life have been the handful of times I've had a conversation where that kind of connection is established with a person who might be almost sometimes a stranger doesn't have to be your your wife, your wife is lovely and your Children are your loved ones. But when you can connect with another human being and that open inviting and it's a delicious thing and it doesn't have to be it's not somebody just telling you a joke. It could be somebody sharing a tragedy that you that you empathize with, that connects them to you in a profound way.

Yeah, well I described that in chapter Chapter nine, that's rule nine, assume that the person you're listening to know something you don't and it's and it's a it's a guide to having that kind of conversation. And I would say that's a conversation where speaking metaphysically, I would say that's a conversation where the logos is present, right? Because both of you are developing in the conversation, you're both extending yourself beyond where you are and that's incredibly engrossing. People love to see that happen like they love to watch athletes do that now if you see an athlete who's extremely well trained, I always think about this when I'm watching gymnastics at the olympics because now and then you see, you know the gymnasts are so highly trained and so skilled that every single move they make is perfect. But now and then you see someone go beyond perfection and you think, well how is that possible? And it is possible because they do everything perfectly. But at the same time they're pushing themselves past their previous limit. Just that just that just that right amount that puts them on the ragged edge of disaster.

And so they're perfect and developing further at the same time. And that's that's a that's something to watch. That's something that will bring an audience to their feet. And you can have that experience in a conversation where you're both exchanging information honestly and and you're in a domain of competence while you're doing it. But you're stretching yourself beyond your competence while you're having the conversation and transforming yourself. And and that's that's a great conversation. That's the kind of conversation you want to have with everyone

if you could

every day

you get enough of it.

That's exactly right. You can never

get enough of it. And it is the uh it's a great drug. The side effects are all positive and you can't beat it?

Yeah and it's good for you and it's good for the people you're having the conversation with and it's good for the people they know it's there's nothing about it that well and that's one of the things that's so lovely about being a to use smith's term again about being a clinical psychologist, you know because people come to you and they say well I'd like to make my life better? It's like okay that that sounds like fun, Let's have a conversation about that. What's wrong with your life? What do you think is wrong with it? That's a long conversation. And how do you think it could be better? That's a long conversation. And then, well, let's see if we can come up with a strategy to make it better. And, and all of those conversations are super engrossing. It's really, it's like being in a dostoevsky novel all the time.

Well, it's your fault that I'm a third of the way through Other Brothers care amounts off. How's that going? Well, I don't really love the romantic side plots. I'd be happy with all just the philosophy, the philosophy I'm enjoying tremendously. I'm reading the Constance Garnett translation by the way, which I think is I'm always a big fan of hers. Um, I'm gonna, I'm gonna switch, let's switch gears. I want to talk about parenting, but I'm seriously, I'm grateful for that because I'm it's an extraordinary

book that I missed. It is and it's amazing book. It's an amazing book. You have to put up with the romance if you're gonna read

the Russians, I'm getting in there, don't worry, not to worry. And

it ties it ties the philosophy together

as the book progresses,

I'm not so it's not superfluous,

I'm not concerned, but it's a little bit slow going at times. Um, a lot of lot of crying, a lot of emotions.

Well, there are Russians, you

can't help it,

you know? So,

I'm gonna ask you about parenting, uh, bryan Caplan, the economist has been a guest on the show a few a number of times and he argues in a book about Children that parents spend too much time trying to influence their Children and how they're going to turn out as adults. And he uses research on twins, adopted Children. And he argues that nature dominates nurture dramatically and the parents have little lasting influence on many aspects of the Children's lives. Uh

Yeah, that's not

true. Yeah, I suspect you don't agree with that. So I don't want to get into the weeds

on the research. Well, it's it's an interesting thing to think about because what what happens is that if you set up the preconditions in your household properly, then the shared environmental variance disappears. And so it looks like you're not doing anything. But but that's misleading like, so imagine your child has a nature and a fair bit of that is determined temperamentally biologically. And then what you want to do is establish an individual relationship with that child so that what they are can maximize and the the statistical processes that are used to analyze those effects aren't sufficiently sophisticated to pick up the the individuality of what you're doing. And so they risk throwing the baby away with the bathwater. Like if you treat all your Children as if they're the same, then that's going to be trouble.

Well, I happen to agree with you. I happen to agree with that general thrust on social science research generally, but let's, let's get to what you think parents should see as their task in raising Children extraordinary chapter on, on raising Children, which I, I sent the book to my dad because the rule, the rule on child raising, which I think is, uh, don't

don't let your Children do anything that makes you dislike

them. Yeah, that was my dad's philosophy, uh, as a parent. And with my mom, and I always thought that was a profoundly a radical idea actually, and it's violated constantly by most many parents that I see, so explain what you mean by that and what you think parents should do.

Two reasons. The first reason it's radical is because it's the rule that you would adopt if you knew that you were a monster and you might say, well, I'm not a monster. It's like, well, yeah, lots of people think that, but I've seen the catastrophic consequences of people mistreating their Children physically and psychologically over periods that spend decades and it's far less rare than people would like to think. And so you might say, well, why is there so much misery in families? And part of the answer to that is that people are a lot more monstrous than they like to think. And so when I had my little kids, they're, they're in their mid twenties now. But when I had my little kids,

I'd already recognized that I was a monster. And I thought, well, I want to make sure that I'm positively predisposed to my Children as often as possible so that I help so that I'm happy when good things happen to them and unhappy when bad things happen to them. And what that means is I can't allow them to disturb me deeply because I will definitely take my revenge if they do, and I'm big and strong and they're little and dependent. So that's the first thing is you want to make sure that you like your Children so that you don't have to be a monster to them. And that means that you have to understand how dark and terrible you can be. And that's very uncomfortable for people because they say, well, of course I love my Children and I never do anything to harm them. Of course, I always like them. And it's like, yeah, that's all lies,

that's all lies. So,

okay, so the next thing is, so, so then you think, well, but then, you know, maybe you're a bit crazy, you know, and and so your Children are doing perfectly good, perfectly okay child things and it's bothering you, it's like, well, yeah, you also have to get your act together and you have to talk to your wife or your family and make sure you're not completely out of your mind with your rules and you don't want to have too many rules, like this is all assuming that you're apart from the fact that you're a monster, that you're also trying to be a reasonable human being.

So okay, so that's the preconditions, but then why is it that you shouldn't let your Children do anything that makes you dislike them? Apart from the fact that you will extract revenge. And the answer to that is simple. If you're probably more positively predisposed to your Children than most people are likely to be at least on first encounter. And so if they're if what they're doing is bothering you, the probability that it will also bother other people is extremely high. And so, like I've seen two year old kids say maybe they come over to our house with their parents, and the two year old has never been subject to any reasonable regulation of his behavior whatsoever. And so, well, we're supposed to be having a nice dinner and a reasonable conversation. The kid is wandering all over the house, tearing books out of the bookshelves and tumbling down the stairs and standing up underneath tables and pulling the plants off the off the side tables, and the parent is right behind them.

Yeah,

But but but hovering over them like the ultimate tyrant, it's like, it's not helpful. You don't invite people like that back and you're not happy to see their Children and that's terrible because Children are really delightful and if their behavior is reasonably regulated, then they can operate in a world where when adults see them and smile, they mean it and then, and when other kids meet them, they immediately wanna play. And then that means that you can have your child enter a world where everywhere they go, virtually the adults where genuine smiles and will interact with them and teach them and listen to them and pat them on the head and tell them that they're cute and wherever they go, they'll make friends. It's like, well, what else could you possibly want for your child? You want? That's what you want to have happen to your child by the time they're four years of age, that's what you want. And it isn't that you want to raise their self esteem or help them be creative or or don't interfere with their their maximal freedom or any of that, what you want is to help them understand how to be eminently desirable human beings in the social landscape and that sort of ties back to that loveliness that we were talking about earlier.

One of the, one of the challenges, of course is that Of parenting. I I'm 63, I have four kids and my youngest is 18. So I'm done with the young person. Part of parenting, I'm into the next phase. But the challenge, of course. Uh and I wish I wish I could do it all over again, right? You make so many mistakes. It's it's incredible how many mistakes you make and you think you're so wise. Now, I'm sure you make a different set if I started over, but,

but what's extraordinary is you see your flaws and your Children and one of the challenges I think of, of loving them and not extracting that revenge is to accept those flaws that are your flaws and that you've created, you've created them genetically, you've created them by, you know, through the household behaviors and uh, you still want to still love

them. Well, it's also often, you know, the philosopher Nietzsche said, uh great men are seldom seldom credited with their stupidity and I really liked that because what he was pointing out in his inimitable way was that, well, lots of vices have a virtuous side and vice versa. You know, so, and I thought about this a lot when I was thinking about what it meant to love someone like a child, it's like, well, Children have all sorts of limitations of course. So do parents and sort of friends and you know, you might think it would be better if they didn't have those limitations and those weaknesses, but you have to be careful about that because you can throw the baby out with the bathwater,

you know, sometimes what you regard as a flaw is the flip side of a virtue. Not always, not always, but more often than people think. And so it's it's it's useful to think that that particular peculiar configuration that characterizes someone you love is lovable precisely because it is particular and peculiar

agree. Uh now we've talked about suffering a little bit, it runs through the book. Uh, and I would say that the way it runs to the book is that it's a fundamental human condition and I can relate to that. It's taken me a long time. I've suffered more. I think it's interesting when you talk to teenagers, if you're lucky to talk to the happier teenagers, they'll say, you know, you know, what's what's, what do you mean by that? What's what's, what kind of, what are you talking about?

But as you get older and as you point out, you know, tragedies happen inevitably to you, to your friends, your loved ones, your heart opens up, you get changed by it. There's something point and beautiful about it and painful. Uh, but one of my few complaints about the book is that it's a little short on joy and love. It's, I would call it a stern book. Uh, it's a bit of a lecture and I certainly see this as a time in human history when we need a little more seriousness.

It's a lot of a lecture.

Yeah, but

I'm lecturing myself, I'm as well, I'm hoping that that to some degree, you know, because I'm hoping I'm not finger wagging

people, not at all, not at all. There's a lot of self revelation and that's that's clearly well earned. But I'm just curious why you focus so much on what I would call the dark side of the human heart.

Well, I think it's it's a corrective, I would say because everyone knows it, but no one will talk about it, you know, and and it's a relief to people and I've really noticed this in my public lectures over the last year and a half. You know what, I I've talked to thousands of people in the last year and a half now and and about the themes that are developed in the book and I say these things that are really rough, you know, that life is fundamentally tragic and ridden with suffering and touched with malevolence and evil and that goes for you and everyone around you and that's harsh and it's a relief to people because they think, oh my God, I I thought I was, I thought I was supposed to be happy, just like it's not just me, right? It's like, oh this is I kind of suspected this is what it was like,

but no one's ever actually said it, it's like and so I really want to make a strong case for that and just drive at home so that there's no doubt about it because then I can say, look, despite that, despite the horrors and the betrayal and the and and the and the atrocity even you have enough nobility of spirit and enough potential to actually live successfully in the face of that And that, that's even more powerful. That, that, that ability that you have to live a meaningful and responsible and truthful life is, it's more significant than the pain and the malevolence. And that's really saying something because the pain and malevolence is really real and everyone knows it. So, so I think that I, I waited things heavily in the negative direction, let's say because I want people to understand that the optimism that the book contains, which is a testament. I would say it's a, it's a, it's a hymn to the possibilities of the human spirit. It's not naive.

Like

I'm not saying, oh, you know, things are okay and we're basically happy and life is essentially good and you can go out there and do wonderful things. I'm saying no, no, look, man, life is terrible. And the people who turn against it like the columbine High school shooters, like they have powerful arguments because life is terrible and there is a lot of malevolence, but it doesn't matter in the final analysis, Good is stronger than evil. And, and unless you make a hell of a case for evil, you make a weak case for good. So that's, that's my, I would say that was my philosophical attitude while constructing the book.

I like that. Um, this is a long question. I apologize. It brings us back to Adam smith for a minute in the theory of moral sentiments he warned about the man, what he called the man of system, the person who thinks he can manipulate human beings as if they were pieces on a chessboard without taking account of their own internal ways of movement, interacting with others, ordering their lives. And this is deeply consonant with your rule, that we should fix ourselves before we fix others. And we certainly all of us have plenty of work to do. And it resonates incredibly deeply with me, particularly because I find myself less interested in reading the news, trying to influence the debate and recognizing their large forces out there. I can't control I do my part, but it doesn't get into my bones the way I don't I don't feel the need to rant.

Say about the latest policy blunder the way I used to and I'm increasingly humble, but what I'm sure of, so that's all good at the same time. I worry is I think you do that. The american experiment were broadly the Western experiment that celebrates and honors liberty. Restrains the power of the state recognizes the sanctity of the individual that that that's in jeopardy, maybe serious jeopardy. And I I see your book in your videos as a part of an effort to fight against that serious tied and I want I want your advice on how to balance tending one's own garden with the chaos that seems to be erupting outside of ourselves and saying, well I'll just stick here to my little garden. I don't need to solve all that. I can't and besides, it's a lot of nonsense mostly, but it could be that the, that the house is on fire, kind of a little, getting a little nervous.

Well, I would say that having the sorts of conversations that we're having and I mean, these are public conversations as well. I can't think of anything that's better that you could do. Like, what could you possibly do? That would be better than that. You know, you're not in a position at the moment to to directly influence large scale policy decisions, let's say. And you know how difficult it is to formulate those properly to begin with. I believe I truly believe that if people tended to what was in front of them, if they paid attention to what they can control and they organized that properly, that that would do the trick that would solve the policy problems, I believe. I believe that it's the right level of analysis and so, you know,

you said, well, you you you have a family and and you've raised your family and you're trying to get along with your kids and you have this podcast and you're trying to put forth the ideas of Adam smith, the genius, I, genius level ideas of Adam smith. It's and I presume that you find that engaging and meaningful and it might be that you're working at exactly the right level of resolution because you gotta, you know, you might say, well, you should be concerned with things that are far beyond that, like the fate of Western civilizations. Like, well, maybe your failure to do, maybe you're failing to do that and maybe your failure is a consequence of cowardice and ignorance,

but maybe it's just proper humility and be moving beyond your domain of immediate competence would be grandiose and destructive. And I believe that it often is, you know, these we take 18 year old kids, we put them in Ivy League universities and we tell them to criticize the system and to act as political activists. And I look at that and I think, God, you kids, you don't know anything. You don't know anything. You've never had a job, you've never taken care of anyone, including yourself. You can't organize your own household, you've never read anything, you don't know how to write,

you don't know how to think, but, but it's okay, your professors can tell you that now you're in a position to criticize the foundations of Western civilization. It's like, it's, it's horrifying. So best to operate in your domain of competence and try to extend it. And I think that's the way to set the world straight. I do believe it after thinking about it for decades.

I agree with that part deeply. Um, again, that's just the way I already have thought about it for a long time, But, but there are a lot of people out there don't think that

way

I

am, I am, I am aware of that, and also torn about it because I've been engaged increasingly in the last year and a half in political dispute and in my own country for a variety of reasons, not least because the government here introduced legislation that required compelled speech. Now, they had their high flying, hypothetically moral reasons for doing so, but for the first time in our country's history, the content of someone's speech has now been mandated and that forced me, I would say, into the political realm, rather unhappily. And so now I find myself straddling the two positions that you describe, I'd like to be, I'd like to be working locally as I've been recommending. But now and then the political becomes so unstable that it necessarily intrudes into the,

into the local And I do think we're in that position. Unfortunately, I see it's particularly in the universities, which the universities are absolute disasters. The humanities are completely corrupt and like, this isn't my opinion, you know, 80% of humanity's papers now go unsighted, and there's no moderates or heaven forbid conservatives in the humanities, they're completely gone, and all they're trying to do is produce postmodern neo Marxist activists, It's dreadful, and we're gonna pay for it. So, yeah, that's very worrisome,

but not a bit of an exaggeration, I I say that, particularly because when people complain to me about the state of university, it's typically somebody from the right correctly pointing out as you have that there's not much of a conservative voice or a libertarian voice represented on campus. And I always think about the Marxist professor droning on in the front of the room while the kids roll their eyes and write the things on the exam, they think they're supposed to, but I don't know how many people they actually convince

they convinced enough to have a seriously detrimental effect on our our cultural conversation. I mean, we just had the biggest scandal in in Canadian history in in in the history of Canadian universities within the last two months in Canada because um a woman named Lindsay shepherd a ta a 22 year old T a had the temerity to show a video um featuring me and uh radical left professor debating personal preferred pronouns on a public television show. She showed a five minute clip and was hauled into something basically resembling the spanish inquisition by her two professors and an administrator and she had the presence of mind to tape it. Audio tape it and released it. And it was was unbelievably scandalous. And I mean, I'm not, I don't believe I am exaggerating that the pathological condition of the university, I wish I was because I'm associated with university. It's not all disciplines, but the humanities are unbelievably corrupted

reminded me more of a communist or soviet um re education session than a than a spanish inquisition if I could

just

distinction there.

No, it's not a subtle distinction. You're absolutely right. It's that's exactly, that's exactly the proper historical

precedent. And it reminded me of uh, an issue we talked about in the Megan McArdle episode on, I think it was that episode about, about groupthink in the, what's going on in some tech firms where certain things are not acceptable to say.

You mean like google,

like google explicitly because I have friends who work there. And they tell me it does remind them a little bit of a soviet reeducation camp, which I find it's startling to hear that you think, oh, that's an exaggeration. But and it is for sure it exaggerates because it's really nothing like a soviet reeducation camp in many dimensions. But it is alarming our unease, cultural unease with honest speech, because honest speech is the way we learned things and the way we communicate, it's just a dangerous road,

very alarming. And you know, the people after the when Lindsay shepherd scandal her, the people who were attempting to paste over it, I would say, or to wallpaper over the large hole said, oh well that they misunderstood the legislation and that was an isolated incident. It's like, no, they didn't misunderstand the legislation. They understood it perfectly well, especially the administrator that was hired to enforce it. And it wasn't an isolated incident. It was par for the course, as you could tell by the fact that the entire faculty in the department from which those two professors emerged wrote letters supporting them, uh, supporting what they did. So I don't believe there's any evidence whatsoever that it was an isolated

incident. And for listeners, for listeners who don't know about this case, we'll put a link up to it. But I say the best, the most important thing you have to know about it is that when, when the, when Lindsay shepherd said, well, just showing this video and she showed stuff on the other side, of course, and, and their attitude was, well, there's some things you can't show and that's a very, uh, common view.

Now. I think it's not just a university, it's also in newspapers, there's some side you don't have to represent. There is no other side. And of course sometimes there is no other side. So that's the challenge of being a grown up, I think, and a thoughtful person. Is that true? I don't think you should give the nazis, uh, a chance to express their viewpoint widely, uh, there or say holocaust deniers, but where you draw that line is not so easy and you should be aware

of that. Well, in worse, it's, it's not even where you draw the line, it's who's allowed to draw it. And you could say, well, look, there's clearly a line and it's like, okay, fine, no problem. Like it's not like there's no such thing as hate speech. Although I think we had laws already covering incitement to violence that we're working quite well. But the issue isn't whether or not there's hate speech. The issue is only who gets to decide what constitutes hate.

And the answer to that is exactly the people that you wish wouldn't have that power. So beware of who you granted to and under what circumstances. So It's it's not good. And I wish like, well, I also think the fact that 80% of humanity's papers go on site, it is a it's a dreadful indictment of the university's. That's that's a that's uh awkward. Yeah, it's awkward. That's a good way of putting

it slightly. A sign of self indulgence,

80% of our products don't

sell.

That's not good. You

Could you could argue back and say, well, it's hard, they're hard to sell. It's a hard it's a it's a tough sell. So you you shouldn't expect such a high rate higher than 20%. But I'd be interested

to know. But you you do see it much higher. The sciences have much higher citation rates much, much higher and they're and they're they're more difficult. It's more difficult to sell them because it requires technical expertise to do the reading. So I I don't I don't think it's merely

a matter of difficulty. I only complain about this is that you could argue a lot of it just doesn't sell anyway. Even when it's well sided. So I'm not sure that's the only measure I'd want to use.

Oh no, I, I agree. It's

an inside game no matter what right,

it's true. But I would also say like I've done an analysis of the, the situation of the universities across seven dimensions of failure. So here's one Um, in the United States, of course, the tuition costs are spiraling spiraling out of control as the administrative overload increases. And that's happened dramatically over the last 20 years. And what's happened in consequence to buttress, um, to, to, to buttress the consequence to buttress the building against the consequences of that, let's say is that student loans have been made widely available. But the trick is that now, if you're an american kid and you have a student loan, you can't declare bankruptcy and that's corrupt beyond belief. And so my sense is is that the, the administrators have determined how to pick the pockets, the future pockets of the students and have essentially transformed a large part of the american population into indentured servants.

It's a little bit of it, it's a little bit of melodrama there, but, but it is somewhat akin to the way that the financial sector in the United States, uh, was able to borrow a lot of money knowing that the lenders were willing to lend money to very risky things because they knew that uncle Sam, which is not a real person actually, but you not, you Jordan but me, uh, is gonna end up being the backstop. And similarly, we've done a similar thing with the, with the student loans. To some extent, we've subsidized my industry education dramatically, which is allowed demand to increase, pushed up prices and allow those administrators to collect more money. It's a, it's a wonderful, it's nice work if you can get it,

it sure is when you don't allow people to, you know, you shoulder them with those debts when they're at the point where they should be taking entrepreneurial risks and you don't allow them to escape from the consequences of their error. It's not good. It is. And then I would also say that the universities are doing an increasingly bad job of teaching people to write and to think and to read. And I don't see any evidence whatsoever that, that there's been improvement along those dimensions in the last 20 years and plenty that, that things have got worse. And so I'm not, I'm not happy with the current state of the universities, I'm embarrassed about what's happened. And um, I know on any one dimension, it sounds melodramatic. But if you, if you look across the seven potential dimensions of analysis, the picture is pretty ugly.

Yeah, there's just, well, it's another, it's a big pandora's box. I'm gonna keep it closed, I'm gonna keep it closed. I'm gonna move on to something else. Now. This show is nominally about economics and I believe economics is the study of how to get the most out of life, among other things. So I think everything we've talked about so far falls under that category and we've mentioned Adam smith of course. But there is an explicit part of book that is about what most people would call economics, which is trade. And you make the argument, it's a very beautiful idea that human beings discovered sacrifice and bargaining with the future and that leads to trade. Can you explain that?

Yeah, well, that was one of the things I would say, that was actually uh, an original, really original idea that I managed to put forth in 12 rules for life. And that is that I've thought about the idea of sacrifice for a very long time, you know, uh for a whole variety of reasons, trying to understand what it meant psychologically, um these sorts of sacrifices, for example, that are acted out dramatically in the biblical stories. And there were so much characteristic of ancient cultures the idea that you had to sacrifice to please God. It's like, what the hell does that mean? Exactly.

And I really thought about that for like 10 years, you know? And it finally occurred to me partly because I was thinking a lot about the story of CAin and Abel, which is a really remarkable story. I realized that people were dramatizing the idea that you could give up something of value in the present and obtain something of, of greater value in the future. That you could bargain with the future or you could trade with the future. And that would be, it would be, in some sense, future people, but it would also be your future self. And so you could you could let go of what was impulsively gratifying in the present and That that that you might regard as the precondition for an advanced morality and there would actually be a payoff for that in the future. So you make a sacrifice to God to please God. And that actually works now. I conceptualized God in 12 rules for life for the purposes of that argument as something like the future community,

you know, a personification of the future community. If you if you shared with other people, for example, then you were storing up goodwill. And that was something that that's like a bank in a sense, but it's a really reliable bank because as long as the people with whom you shared are alive and your reputation is intact. And that's something that you can continue to draw. And so there's a large discussion, a long discussion of sacrifice in there and and exactly what it means. And then a discussion of as well about another idea, which is that well, if sacrifice works to obtain a desired end, then that also produces two philosophical questions and one would be, well, what's the most desirable future end.

And so that's sort of like a meditation on paradise, or heaven or or Utopia all the way. I don't really like that word, I like the religious words better. I think they make more sense. And also what is the ultimate proper sacrifice? So what's the proper sacrificial attitude in life? And so back to our ideas about conversation. So let's say we're having a good conversation and we're throwing ideas back and forth. If I have the proper sacrificial attitude during that conversation, then I'm going to let some of the ideas that you put forth, kill some of my ideas. I'm going to sacrifice them and replace them with better ideas. And there's gonna be some pain and some anxiety associated with that, because like who the hell likes to have their conceptual structure flipped upside down, like no one likes that.

But if you're willing to let go, if you're willing to sacrifice, you can let your old ideas die and not you. And that's like the secret of humanity, it's sacrifice. Make the sacrifices that will bring the proper future into being. And and we first dramatized that, you know, that's what that's what the all the archaic people in the old testament were doing when they were making sacrifices to God is they were acting out the idea that you could let go of something in the present that was desirable and valuable and receive an enhanced reward in the future. It's the discovery of the future itself it's the most profound discovery of humankind. I would say,

no, it's like, it's an incredibly deep idea. And it's it's it's basically it's a response to the idea which seems very reasonable that savers are fools. Why why would you save anything? That's crazy or that's lunacy? Um Well,

and then so there's a bit of a discussion there and what the ultimate saving might be. It's like, well, let's say, you could you could throw your meat in a freezer and keep it for a year. Well, that's one form of saving. But then another form of saving is, well, you you make a kill, you're a hunter gatherer, you make a kill and you share the kill with the other hunters. Well then you are saving it because you're you're saving it in the form of your enhanced reputation as a good person, a good valuable person. And so then when someone else hunts in the future, they're going to share with you. It's perfect.

And

yes, that's how you get to trade.

Because you could swap some of that meat, you don't even have to give it away. You could swap it eventually realize and get something or you could get a promise. You could swap something later when their corn grows

or whatever. Well, that's the thing. You could swap what you have now for a promise, right? And so, and that also shows you why integrity is so important. Because you can't swap something you have now for a promise unless you both have integrity. And so then you might say, well, integrity is the best form of saving. That's why it says in the new testament that you should, that you should pile up treasures in heaven. That's really what it means. Because they're they're the treasures that can't be destroyed. And it's true. It's even literally true, which is so cool. It's so funny that that could be the case.

So just as a footnote, Kane's blames the generator, Kane's blames the idea of savings on the jews and blames the idea of the future on the jews and views it as a bad thing. Um, it's one of the dark sides of Kane's ethos, but uh, he viewed sacrifice at least in this essay. Uh, well, put up a link to, he viewed sacrifices as a tragedy. It's like, well why not enjoy it now. Uh, that was the hedonistic hedonistic side of john Maynard Keynes. Uh, but the fact that he blames it on the jews is very um interesting given that you argue also that it comes out of the out of the old testament, I'd like you to

talk. Well, it's also funny that he would regard that as a catastrophe. It's like, it's not a catastrophe to live for the moment, if you're going to die tomorrow, and we also know that that's how people behave, right? If you if you put people, if you put people in an environment where their mortality risk dramatically increases and they know it, they become increasingly hedonistic and it's no wonder because, well, they're not gonna be around.

But

the problem with living for the moment is that you're also going to be around for the hangover

or your Children will be, you know,

it's, um, well, well, there's, yeah, that's also a problem. Yeah.

Well, Kane says in the long run, we're all dead. And I always want to say, yeah, but my kids aren't, I hope, and which case I don't want to burn them with whatever it is that you're worried about. Uh,

Well, also the argument in the long run, we're all dead. That can be used to justify absolutely anything. And I do write a fair bit about that in 12 rules for life to it's it's a very, it's a very, uh, it's an argument that that breeds nothing good.

So, a lot of my listeners are not religious people and I'd say Atheist intellectually and talking about the bible probably gives them the willies. Uh,

no doubt. You

argue in a very interesting and thoughtful way, what I would call a union way to the extent that I understand young, uh, that we should read the bible to for non religious reasons just to understand ourselves and you use a lot of imagery for both the christian and jewish bible extensively, fairly extensively in the book, uh, make the case for that, uh, and you're not a fundamentalist as far as I know, you're you don't believe the bible came from God's hand.

Well, it's certainly not, it's not literally true in the way that that that scientific theories are true. It's it's not it's not designed to be that it's it's something entirely different. It's a story, it's a story and it's it's true. The same way that dostoyevsky is true, except maybe it's more true. No, and and the reason you need to read it is because our our social system is essentially a story And whether you like it or not, it's the story that's laid out in the biblical writings, that's the foundational story. Now, you might say, well, you know, what does that mean?

Well, that that's very complicated. It's very, very complicated. And I have explained some of it in 12 rules for life. I mean, part of it, I can give you a quick example of why it's useful. There's there's an idea at the beginning of the Bible, um, an idea about, about how things come into being. And so the idea is that there's a state of potential that would be chaos, that would be the chaos that God confronts when he's when he's about to generate habitable order. So there's a state of chaos and there's a process that has to be undertaken to make that potential real, and then there's the real that emerges as a consequence of the process.

So, those are the things, there's the potential the process and the reality. The processes, logos and logos is something like truthful, communicative speech. So the idea is the spirit of God uh uses logos to make potential manifest itself as real. And then so that's one idea. And the second idea is that if it's the logos that's producing the order, then the order is good, which is why God repeatedly says when he makes order, that it's good. So the idea is that honest communicative endeavor produces out of potential, the order that is good. Okay, I believe that that's the case.

I believe that to be true. Then there's another idea there there's an idea that human beings are made in the image of God. And I think what that means is that people have the ability to use their communicative capacity to speak order out of potential and to do it so that it's good. And the pattern that logos pattern which which is proper speech, let's say something like that proper communication, the kind of communication that would inspire a good conversation, let's say that's the manifestation of the divine in the world and that's the manner in which potential should be transformed into actuality. That's what people do. And I also believe that that's both literally and metaphysically true and that's laid out in this symbolic dramatic language in the bible and it's laid out that way because we didn't understand it well enough to lay it out any other way. We had to act it out, just like people acted out the idea of sacrifice and so it's time to stop being naive about the bible for the fundamentalists and for the atheists alike, it's it's we have to get past that, and Carl young laid the groundwork for that, and I mean, he was an absolute genius, incalculable genius, I would say.

But your argument is also that that there is understanding there about the human condition that emerged from the desperate efforts of humanity to understand itself, and we can essentially get a portrait of that understanding that remains true, because our natures really haven't

changed. Exactly, yeah, and neither has the nature of reality, it's order and chaos and the process that mediates between them, it's always that way, it will always be that way. And yeah, it's like 100,000 Shakespeare's wrote the Bible, you say, well, is there truth in Shakespeare? Well, it's a silly question in some sense, obviously there's truth in Shakespeare. Well, what sort of truth is there in great literature?

Well, whatever that truth is, is in the bible now, you can argue about what that truth is, you could even argue about whether or not it's true, although I think that's rather futile exercise, you act like it's true. I mean, it's very difficult not to be compelled by a great story. Atheists and believers alike are equally compelled by a great story. So, and these are great stories and great stories are true. It's just that we don't understand the kind of true that they are

and that's because we're to take our Cartesian to

what? No, I just think it's too difficult. It's just too difficult. We like we got there with drama and literature and art way before we get there with articulated philosophical understanding. Like it's not easy to understand what it means to say that the that being is chaos in order. You know, it takes a lot of elaboration to make that into an art into something that's understandable in an articulated way. I mean, I have a lecture series about that maps of meaning, my class maps of meaning and takes 39 hours of solid lecturing to make that point.

Yeah, Well, I'm very uh I'm a big fan of of literature as as as truth. I think it's a shame that it gets taught and I don't mean at the university level even I'm it starts young, get it in high school compare and contrast madame bovary with and I think that's the wrong way to read literature. And it's the um Alan to Bhutan has been on this program, you know, has a book how Proust can change your life? I stole I stole the title for my book, but on Adam smith. But but that that's the way we should read literature and what we can learn from it about the human condition and what what Faulkner called the human heart in conflict with itself, which I think is what we all have to struggle with. And it's a shame we don't read it that way

much. Exactly. It's the ultimate shame when you think of Shakespeare is distilled life and the bible is distilled Shakespeare. That's a good way of thinking about it. And and and then you might and then and you know, you're you're you're alluding to this, you say, well, there's a truth in great literature and that isn't how it's taught. Well, the question is what is the truth in great literature and the truth is something like this is how the world is. So, it's dramatized, this is how the world is and this is how you should behave for better or worse in it. And so it's good and evil against a background of chaos and order. That that's the architectural reality and and it's it's and you think, well,

is that just metaphorically true. This is partly why I also we've a fair bit of neuroscience into 12 rules for life and into my investigations. Generally speaking, it's it's not just metaphorically true if you look at the way that your brain has, if you look at the way that your brain has evolved, your nervous system has evolved. You'll see that you have a module that's specialized for order. That's the left hemisphere and you have a module that's specialized for chaos, that's the right hemisphere and that this isn't just my opinion, like, I've learned this from studying neuroscience, rather than imposing it on the neuroscience. Can read Elkann and Goldberger, or or Ramachandran who's a neurologist in in in in California, because they've come to very similar conclusions as has um, Ian, he wrote The Master and The Emissary, I can't remember his last name at me, Ian.

Uh

Anyways,

Yeah,

that's the book. And I just talked to him and um, you know, when you, when you understand that your brain has adapted to chaos and order, it begs the question, how do you know, that's not the ultimate reality, then if your brain itself has adapted to that, then maybe that's what's real. And I would say, meaning, the sense of meaning, the instinct of meaning emerges when you get the balance between chaos and order, right? And the meaning tells you that you've done it, that's what it's for. So, it's it's the most real thing and and figuring that out just well, it's just I've never recovered from figuring that out because I believe it's true,

it's very deep, you say it, you write about at length in the book, and we wish we had more time to talk just about that, because it's such an interesting idea and the balance between those and how

you

can't live in chaos. But if you live only in order, you're you're not really alive,

it's right, right? You're the dead past. If you only live in order. And if you live in chaos, you're nothing but anxiety and pain like those, those, those aren't good options.

Um, and ask you a literature question while we're on it through a lot of literature, um, through a lot of time, the play ends with death. Uh, you know, the lovers kill themselves, the king is murdered, the king murders someone, the heroine dies of consumption in most operas. A lot of operas. Um, they're, they're dark, they're bleak and you could argue that's what life was that way. So they're just trying to capture what life was like.

And then we went through a period, it seems where there's a lot of happy endings and that's that's what we like now. And then there's this sort of sophisticated view that says, no, no, no, you don't want to pat ending. You want one that that leaves you unsatisfied cause that's what life's like to what do you think about that?

Well, I think there's utility and tragedy and comedy, no, tragedy is a good bad

example. Hamlet

is a good example of that. And then comedy. Well, comedy doesn't have to be trite. I mean, what, what, what you you want your life to be a comedy, right? In some sense, you want to be presented with a problem of substantial magnitude. You want the problem to take you apart and put you back together in a better way. And that's that's the sort of continually upward spiral of human development. And I think that that's that's really what you want from literature is an outline of that pattern. But tragedy is really useful because it can tell you how you could go wrong in an interesting way. And that that's why we like the anti hero and we like tragedy and we like horror for that matter. It's like,

okay, those are a bunch of things I shouldn't do. And and bad example is salutary and and some of it too is just a matter of awakening people. Like if you're naive, you might like a trite comedy and the trite comedy would be one where the ending is happy, but it's not realistic. There's no real problem and nothing has been accomplished or no transformation has occurred. And if you're naive, you might be living in a fool's paradise, but your boat's gonna flip over in the first storm. And so to expose you to tragedy can can undermine your naivety. You might say, well, that's cruel. It's like, no, it's no more cruel than helping a child grow up. So you need exposure to tragedy. If you're naive because it it confronts you with the real problem. And then it it can launch you on the real adventure and that's way better than being naive.

I wonder if you'd reflect a little bit on the Jordan Peterson phenomenon. I didn't I've never heard of you until about maybe, I don't know, a year or so ago when somebody more than one person said I should interview you. And I thought, well who is he? Well, the first I just ignored it I've never heard of and I just said

I was the best idea.

Yeah. But then eventually I googled you and I just saw that you were a big advocate for freedom of speech and I'm a big advocate. I'm a big fan of that, I thought, but I don't really want to talk about freedom of speech for an hour. And then I started watching your some of your videos, somebody sent me one of them on probably the idea of God or uh some of your advice for millennials. And and I was just, I was blown away with your uh presentation style and just to start with plus the content. Um obviously we're both, we're just extremely interesting to me and I'm not alone. Um now when I mentioned to people that you're gonna be on this program, they say great or they'll they'll say, oh Jordyn peters, he's everywhere or they'll complain this. I shouldn't give you a forum because you're you're a pawn of the altar right, which

I find, which I find, which

I find, and somewhat inexplicable. So, but my point is my question is you've obviously hit a nerve, You've hit a nerve that that a lot of people are enormous

you

did. They're enormously gratified that you're saying what you're saying. There's another another group that's enormously angry. I'm curious what what you think is the explanation for why you've uh and your book is number one on Amazon today, is it's been out for two days, I think, what's going on, what do you think that what

explains, who knows what the hell is going on? I mean, I I ask myself that virtually every minute I'm awake, you know, it's it's completely overwhelming. I think, alright, there's a couple of things. The first is I I definitely have set myself up in opposition and and loud and intense opposition, loud, continual and intense opposition on all fronts against the Radical left. And

because I'd say against egalitarianism generally, and postmodernism generally, which are two religions of

utilitarianism. Not precisely, I mean, I'm an advocate of equality of opportunity, but equality of outcome. That's there's no difference between equality of outcome and tyranny, they're the same thing. So, and and people don't understand that partly because they don't want to, but I understand it, and so I don't want to go there and but the the whole compelled speech thing in Canada it was like, no, you're not telling me what I'm gonna say, that's not happening. And I made that clear in my initial videos when I was complaining about Bill C. 16 and I said, look,

I don't care what you do, I'm not going to stand for compelled speech and that caused quite But but that's where all the accusations about being alright came from? It's like, well, I'm in opposition to the radical left. Okay, well, it's very convenient then for the radical left to presume that I'm a Nazi, because if I'm a Nazi, then they don't have to take me seriously. If I'm a reasonable person, then maybe a reasonable person could object to what they're doing. Well, that's not good. That puts people in the state of cognitive dissonance. And so and it's it's a trick.

It's a rhetorical trick. It's like you're objecting to what we're doing. You must be the most reprehensible of people who could possibly hold an opposing view. And so all sorts of pejorative, all sorts of pejoratives have flowed my way. The people who were prosecuting persecuting Lindsay shepherd compared me to Hitler or Milo Yiannopoulos take your pick, which was, you know, blackly comedic. I think these people are so clueless, they can't even get their insults right. It's like, look, you can't be Hitler or Milo Yiannopoulos, you know what I mean? It's just it's palpably absurd.

So, some of some of what's come my way is just conceptual confusion if you stand against the radical left then, where exactly do you stand? And so people have been guessing well, maybe I'm on the radical right? It's like, well, yeah, maybe I'm not. I have 200 hours of lectures about 100 hours of which are about the horrors of the Nazi death camps and the appalling pathology of right wing totalitarianism. So it's pretty bloody obvious that I'm not on the radical right, um, with regards to the phenomenon itself. Well, part of it is I've taken a lot of psychological wisdom, you know,

that that's been generated by the great clinicians of the 20th century Freud, young Adler, uh carl Rogers, the existentialists. Um, I'm broadly versed in the classics of clinical psychology, and a lot of what I'm talking to people about is derived from that. It's like, I'm a practical person, I'm a clinical psychologist, I like to help people put their lives together. And so what I've done in part is put together lectures that say, well look, here's a bunch of things that psychologists have learned. A lot of them are deep. Some of them are practical.

You need to know them because if you know them and you put them into practice, your life improves and I'm telling people it straight and I'm taking into account that they have reasons for their misery and suffering and then people go off and try them and they come back a month later and they say, hey, look, man, I put that into practice and it worked. I'm in this weird situation now. Um, it's so remarkable I can't believe it is, I'll travel to places, you know, I went to London and uh, my wife and I went out to get some groceries the first day we were there, we walked into a grocery store and a young guy came up to me and he said, hey you're dr Peterson, aren't you?

I said, yeah, he said, well I've been watching your Youtube videos for about a year and I gotta tell you I was in a pretty dark place and it's really helped and now I'm I'm in, you know, he said I'm into the London School of Economics and things are going really well for me. So like, thank you, I think, oh great, that's wonderful, man. So and then I went next door to the electronics shop and young guy come up to me and he said the same thing, he said, you're dr Peterson, are you?

I said, yeah, yeah, what are you doing here? I said I'm giving a talk, he said, well, you know, I've been listening to your lectures for the last year and I've been putting them into practice and they've really helped. And then he tells me why, and it's like there's if this stuff works, you know, But it's not that surprising because the people who thought up the idea is like, I'm not taking credit for them, I'm I'm a good aggregator of ideas, you know, and I have my original thoughts, but but I'm not trying to take responsibility for archetypes, you know, I didn't

invent the house, go ahead, how's that humility thing working for you when you get a couple of people like that and your, uh, you know, you're, you feel like you've got all the research on your side and all the wisdom of the past, doesn't that uh, everything issues with hubris?

Well, there's a, there's a paper by Young called Relations between the ego and the unconscious and it I read it about 25 years ago and and I understood it too, which, which I would say is rare because it's a hard paper to understand unless you know what it's about. But it's about hubris and it's a, it's a warning about Icarus and young was very clear. You know, he said you you have to be careful when you're in the archetypal domain that you don't confuse yourself with the archetypes because you will burn yourself up if you do. And so I took that to heart. I needed to read that essay at the time that I read it for reasons I can't go into. But I understood what he meant. And I'm very, very aware of my own shortcomings, like painfully aware of them. Um, they're always at the forefront of my mind and I am not confusing myself with the wisdom that I'm fortunate enough to be able to speak about,

but I do think it's more than that. Um, there's something about truth telling or a feeling of truth telling. You may not be telling the truth, but what people are hearing it is a truth that's been hidden or covered or you know, issues like gender roles where you're tolerant of women who want to say race, child, which is politically not so acceptable socially, not so acceptable these days. And I think for a lot of people, you are a breath of fresh air and for other people, you're a toxic piece of pollution. So

it's funny though. You know, there's, there's a lot more of the first people than there are of the second people. And you know, I'll tell you something that's really quite fun and may be telling you this will change it. I've only got about five pieces of hate mail And I've got at least 25,000 letters in the last six months from people, who have, who are stating the benefits that they've obtained by, by listening to the Youtube lectures. And so the people who are not happy with me. First of all, they very rarely take the time to actually understand what I'm doing. I think the channel four news caster Cathy Newman was a prime example of that. They're, they're organized and they're noisy, but they're in an unbelievably tiny minority.

And and they've been after me for about 15 months throwing everything they can get at me pejorative accusations and and and worse, um, undermining my professional standing in a variety of ways and targeting my neighborhood with posters claiming that I'm a danger to the community and all of these things. But you know, it's just not working.

So I'm happy to say by

their fruits, you will know them. That's fine with me. That's fine with me. If that happens to be the way it plays out, I'm, I'm willing to live with that. Uh,

let's close with what's next for you. You've written a book that pulls together a lot of what you've been thinking about for a long time. Must be very, that's very satisfying. Um, you put a zillion hours of material up on the web for people to explore your interviewed all over the place. This is a short interview for you. A mere hour plus you've done some two and three hours. Um, what do you want to do next? Keep doing it?

You know, I'm, I'm asking myself that on a regular basis at, at the moment, like the image that comes to mind when I close my eyes and think about my situation is that I'm surfing 100 ft wave and that kind of keep that you don't think about what you're gonna do when you get to the shore when you're surfing 100 ft wave, you think, hey, this is pretty exhilarating, but probably I'm going to drown. And so what I'm doing right now is trying to stay on the curve and not drown and not do anything stupid and not say anything unforgivable. I'm trying very hard not to do that. And then with regards to the future, I really don't know. I mean I, my, my tentative plan right now is to go around north America and the UK and europe and speak like once a week for six months or a year. I've made arrangements through penguin in the U.

K. To do that. They're not finalized. I'm playing with that right now with a couple of public presentations and that's a tentative idea. Um I would like to interview authors for my Youtube channel and I'm in a good position to do that and I think that would be fun and worthwhile. Um but my life has changed so much and and continues to change sort of on a moment to moment basis that it's, you know, I tell people look 3 to 5 years down the road and figure out what they would like to see what they would like to have happened. That's the advice in the self authoring program. Um but I can't look that far ahead because things are so transforming so rapidly around me that, that there's no predicting what should happen next.

I wish you all the best and my advice is aimed high.

Yeah, well I'm doing my best to do that and it seems to be so far so good. I I'm knocking on wood and not taking it for granted. You know, I think part of you talked about the sort of tragic sense in a sense that Pervades 12 rules for life and I think that's real like I have a real sense of the fragility of things. Um I've had experiences of severe depression um although I think I have that under control. I think I figured out what, I think my daughter actually figured out what was causing it, but be that as it may. Um I have a real sense of the fragility of things and I think that also and I'm old, you know, I'm 55. This sort of fame has come to me relatively late in life. It's, It doesn't have the same effect on you when you're a grandparent as it might when you're 20 years old, you know, um I don't see myself as a look. I I love going to talk to people and it's really something that they're happy to see me and and to listen. But um I don't think I'm in any particular danger of letting it go to my head. I'm too aware of what a vicious turn it could take and the price of making a mistake. I'm not taking any of this for granted.

My guest today has been Jordan, Peterson Jordan, thanks for being part of econ talk.

Hey, thanks a lot for the invitation and for the conversation. Much appreciated.

This is econ talk part of the Library of Economics and liberty for more econ talk go to econ talk dot org where you can also comment on today's podcast and find links and readings related to today's conversation. The sound engineer for econ talk is rich, quiet. I'm your host, Russ roberts. Thanks for listening to talk to you on monday.