Kind: captions
Language: en
I'm hoping that they find it useful the
same way they seem to have found the
first one I'm embarrassed work actually
hurts me actually both of them hurt me I
would say
because I'm very hurt I'm a very
destroyed person in many ways and so I
feel unworthy Unworthy of what
you name it
in the book you encourage people to
think from an evolutionary perspective
which I think is incredibly important
and I think what you offer people is one
you make we all struggle with our own
internal demons and you allow people to
see how that's a heroic Endeavor maybe
the ultimate heroic Endeavor to conquer
that inside of yourself and then going
back to the beginning of identity being
a function of behavior by helping people
begin to identify as the hero engaging
in relatively straightforward behaviors
like cleaning your room or liking the
new book making an area beautiful
refusing to give in to resentment aim at
one thing which [ __ ] was one of my
favorite parts of the book and see how
extraordinarily good you can get at that
like when I think about something is
you're going to aim at something
it's like otherwise your life is
meaningless well what should you aim at
well I don't know well pick something
pick something aim at it as you move
toward it you'll get wiser then maybe
your aim will change that's okay but at
least it'll change in an informed way
it's like discipline yourself in one
dimension
see what happens
well that's exciting
and I think that's something that's open
for everyone
you can do that I shouldn't say that
because I don't believe that I think you
can find yourself in a situation that's
so dire that you don't there's no escape
from it
but that doesn't matter because there's
still this is the hero myth might not be
the best we have might not always work
but it's still the best we have
and the fact that it might not work
doesn't mean we should throw it away
it's still the best we have
I mean everyone dies and so we fail in
some sense
the fact that the symphony ends doesn't
mean that it wasn't worth listening to
yeah when you put that in an
evolutionary context and you acknowledge
that people are compelled by biology to
strive they're compelled by biology to
progress they're compelled by biology to
um be courageous that they will be
rewarded for being courageous
neurochemically they will be punished
for being a coward neurochemically and
yeah well think about you know the thing
about that biological explanation too is
that we've been social for a very long
time we've been social for so long that
our social nature is programmed into our
biology
and so you'll be punished if you're not
useful to other people yeah
Yeah by your conscience because you're a
social creature
and the question is well how could you
be most here's another question that
starts to what Verge on the religious
what does the most useful person look
like well who is everyone hoping they'll
meet
and that's a genuine question I'm like
and that's the ideal the ideal is the
person everyone's hoping they'll meet
that's Christ in in the Christian
culture psychologically speaking
independent of any religious claims
so that's these these this is this is I
suppose the essential idea of the
archetype from the jungian perspective
we have the we have the image of an
ideal
and because it is the ultimate ideal it
has a religious element it's compelling
it's a judge why is it a judge well if
you fall short of the ideal your
conscience punishes you so it's a judge
and it's merciful well why because if
you act out the ideal then your life
improves
you know what I said well the question
what is the relationship between these
images of the psyche and reality
I I don't know the answer to that
I don't know where
the archetype Shades into
reality
it depends to some degree on how you
define reality
and you know this is I've been people
don't like that
statement
but
when when you're asking questions that
are deep enough you start to have to ask
what do you mean by true for example
what do you mean by real because the
questions you ask get so deep that
they're of the same kind as the question
what is real or what is true
you know if think of it this way reality
is what we adapt to
by definition
that's reasonable if you're a darwinian
you have to say that's actually as far
as you can go reality is that Which
shapes us
you can't get a better handle on reality
than that well when you make a picture
of objective reality it's not the same
as that it's a different picture and
it's not obvious which one should play
Trump
now the hero myth as far as I can tell
is an evolutionary artifact
and that means that for human beings
that the hero image is the path of
of optimal adaptation
does that reflect reality well it does
insofar as reality has selected that
well does that mean that reality is a
story
because the hero myth is a story or at
least that's one of the things it is
does it mean that reality has a
narrative aspect well it does insofar as
we act things out
does that mean that reality is
ultimately a story well I don't know but
the answer isn't obviously no
yeah
reading the book
Beyond order
there was
a part in there that struck me as this
is going to be the new Battleground that
Jordan is going to be fighting on do you
have
a sense of
um
what in the book is gonna trigger people
no
I mean I didn't think that the Lobster
in the last book was going to be so
Hillary I mean I thought it was I
thought it was really cool it's like oh
my God
serotonin mediates dominance in lobsters
and people how ancient how remarkable
but Well that took off in all sorts of
directions you know people made fun of
it it's like well you can make fun of
350 million years of evolutionary
history if you want
you can put your social constructionism
up against 350 million years of
evolutionary history good luck to you
I didn't think it was like and you know
the idea that I was trying to insist
that because lobsters live in
hierarchies that
hierarchies are the source of all moral
value you know that's
I was trying to insist that hierarchies
are in are so inevitable that you see
nervous systems adapting to them across
virtually every level of animal
and why well because some things are
valuable
and since and within any given domain of
value some valuable things are more
valuable than other things and so you
have a hierarchy there's no avoiding it
as long as you need something as long as
there's scarcity
a hierarchy is inevitable
yeah nobody cares how many big pens you
have
it's because they're not scarce
so you can't have status because you
have 200 of them but as soon as there's
scarcity there's a hierarchy and there's
always scarcity of one form or another
no matter how rich you get you know if
you're if you have a hundred million
dollars Picasso paintings are still
scarce
yeah the uh the pushback on the The
Lobster thing falls into two things for
me one I don't understand why people
look for a reason not to listen to
somebody which to me most people coming
after you for that one just they didn't
want you to be right or to be heard and
so they went after something that they
thought they could mimify and and shut
down on and then I understand that like
I understand that I it's obvious why
people are looking for a reason not to
listen to someone it's like how God damn
many people can you listen to there's
nine billion of them you know so you
have to not listen to almost everyone
and so you'll fall for any excuse and
sometimes that's not so good you know
because you have a bias that prejudices
you against a Viewpoint that you
actually need that's that's a problem
but the phenomenon itself like you know
you you mentioned sorry to bring this up
again but because it's germane and and
relevant
someone said something disparaging about
me and they were on your staff it's like
well you have lots of options for guests
you're looking for no
you're always looking for no because you
can only say yes to a very limited
number of things
so
that's another reason we have to be very
careful about our prejudices because
we need them you know to
I don't mean Prejudice in that obviously
in this inappropriate social sense but
Jesus we have to Shield ourselves from
an excess of information we're very
limited capacity processors
no question
I I don't understand though I don't
understand really
and it's really killing me I think I
might might mean that literally
I don't understand why I'm so
controversial
I can't figure that out it's very
distressing to me
you want me to take a stab at it
sure good metaphor all right so my gut
instinct in terms of why a certain type
of person uh responds negatively to you
is
when you think of a person as a blank
slate and that we all have this
Collective responsibility to make sure
that everybody ends up the same then you
saying some people are better at
something than others already is feels
judgmental and so it is oh yes it is for
sure and but when you have a
collectivist view and you believe that
everyone should have equal outcome which
by the way I think everybody yourself
included like if only right like that
would be amazing like if everybody could
live truly in Harmony and that didn't
violate principles of just the human
animal which is why I always remind
people to remember you're having a
biological experience but you say things
that are they violate a deeply
compassionate person's desire to take
care of everybody the sort of No Child
Left Behind type thing and when you
insist on in your own life like I'm only
going to say that which is true and I'm
certainly not going to let somebody
force me to say something I don't
believe is true so now with that and by
the way all of that and this is a key
thing I think you have to understand
you're fighting with a level of
intensity that makes sense when you
realize your obsession with what
happened in the 20th century the gulag
archipelago what happened there uh
obviously Nazi Germany Mouse China like
the number of people that have been
killed in these essentially social
experiments so you have this deep
intense thing trying to get people to
understand like hierarchies are real
there's no escaping them not everybody
is as good as everybody else at
everything and by the way you have to
shoulder responsibility and
that's where people are like you just to
them I cannot and before I say what they
think I will reiterate you have changed
my life forever and for the better I
will forever be grateful to the things
that you continue to put out into the
world and I missed you horribly as a
thought leader during 2020 of all years
to be on a Jordan Peterson diet I was
not happy about that
but what they think of is
that you're being mean for the sake of
being mean that you're not trying to
help them see you cannot pretend reality
isn't reality in pretending that the
dragon is not there the dragon does not
go away the dragon grows more powerful
more likely to devour you and your
family and so yeah I'm smaller
they don't see that and so that's why my
when I see people attack you I'm like
Jesus Christ how many times does he have
to say this is about a balance between
Order and Chaos that you need both of
these things that you have to show the
responsibility because that is what
reality demands that you're in you're
nested in an evolutionary context there
are things like hierarchies that will
play out in uh in the the body Inception
exactly and so you may not want to feel
bad when you walk in the room and are
worse at something than everybody else
but you're going to you may not want to
feel bad when you're rejected but you're
going to you may not want to feel bad
because you're just lazing around your
house and not doing anything but you're
going to and you have peered into enough
of human nature to recognize hey there
are just certain truisms you've now
given us 24 of the I forget how many
were originally in the core article 49
or whatever so 42 42 okay we've got 24
answer to the life the universe and
everything
right is that also's number
so oh my God that's perfect actually uh
it it is this incredible Thing Once you
break free from ideology and that's
where again this is one of the rules in
Beyond order
not to fall prey to ideology this is
where I thought you were going in the
beginning with identity I thought you
were going to say
identity has become pathological because
it has become it's been simplified you
talk about this and Beyond order once
you simplify something and this is how
an ideologue gets you they simplify it
they make it very understandable it
becomes very clear who's in and who's
out you can reward and punish based on
that people are grabbing these
unnegotiated
self-determined pieces of identity that
don't necessarily bring value to the
larger World which will create
dissonance in their own life because
they've got all this substructure
running tradable value
you know what I mean it's like I'm not
saying they're like your race I suppose
is a value
but it's not a tradable value and your
gender and your sex the same thing it's
like I guess it's partly because there's
no scarcity
you know it's like we've got enough
white people being white doesn't buy you
anything
so
and I I'm not saying that with any
pleasure
that's what I think people miss this is
why I think people come after you
they don't recognize that you're not
saying it
you're not relishing in this you want
people to be happy and I I'm always so
confused Jordan I don't know why you
remain as vulnerable and open as you are
after the time saying I was like what
the [ __ ] you sounded so kind open
compassionate after what four years of
you know some percentage of the world
relentlessly slandering you and
obviously you get people that cheer you
on probably way more people that cheer
you on the doe but you still remain
vulnerable which is [ __ ] incredible
but the fact that they don't recognize
that you're trying to
help like I could get it if they said
hey look I disagree with you maybe on
this side or the other but maybe they do
recognize that you know there's a lot of
cynicism about the help and I I can't
understand why you why you cynical about
help unless you weren't that help
weren't that pleased about the idea of
help
you know like all these deplorables that
I'm helping these angry young men
you know they don't deserve help
well I don't think that
I don't know anyone that doesn't deserve
help
you know there's this idea in the New
Testament that you should love your
enemies
it's like I
why would you do that well
it'd be better if they weren't
your enemies
and their unnecessary suffering doesn't
help
it's not helpful
it's not like you don't you know anyone
with any sense anyone who's human
is liable to take pleasure and vengeance
or even in but you know when people go
after the journalists that have gone
after me I don't take any pleasure in
that
I don't sit back at my home and rub my
hands and think
you know
you got what was coming to you I do
think sometimes you've got what was
coming to you but I think of that more
like watching someone in the road you
know they're in the road and they have
their back turned and the truck runs
over them it's like well you were in the
road and there was a truck
and
so you got what was coming to you
because you were on the road and there
was a truck but I don't take any
pleasure in it
I don't see that it's helpful
what do you want people to get out of
Beyond order it it is extraordinarily
well thought through it is very well
laid out each sentence Stacks like a
brick upon the next I wouldn't advise I
don't know if you feel differently but I
wouldn't advise people read them out of
order it's literally this very careful
case being made that taken in totality
is breath
I think you can read them in either
order
I tried maybe maybe they're better read
in order but but
um
I think that if you read the second one
first then it would color your vision of
the first one I mean I mean the rules
the I think you're right 12 rules for
life and Beyond order it doesn't matter
they're yin and yang well you mean the
rules themselves the rules themselves
just it Stacks so well so otherwise it
wouldn't be a book okay I mean each the
thing about writing a book is that
you're outside of time and space in
relationship with the book because
chapter one comes before chapter 12 but
not when you're writing it you can go
back and modify chapter one because of
chapter 12. I did try to tie them
together so that they make a book you
know and they one builds upon another
that's like that's the musical element
of it as well the re recurrent themes
I'm glad you liked it see I can't tell I
can't evaluate it
um I'm hoping that it it's of the same
level of quality that the first book was
and I'm not making any claims saying
that about the level of quality of the
first book I'm just that was as good as
I could do and I wrote the second one
under unbelievable duress and so I can't
tell if it's you know whether that was
uh
curse or what certainly a curse no doubt
about that I don't know how it impacted
the book though it's hard to say what do
I want people to get out of it well
I'm hoping that they find it useful the
same way they seem to have found the
first one I mean look actually hurts me
actually both of them hurt me I would
say
because
I'm ashamed you know of what's happened
to me
what do you mean and
they're books about life and my life is
I'm very hurt I'm a very destroyed
person in many ways and so I feel
unworthy
Unworthy of what
oh
you name it
I hope people find it useful
you know
I hope it alleviates some unnecessary
suffering
that's the goal here's how I read your
books and everything that you've put out
into the world
the people that should write the
instruction manual are the people that
have struggled and
in your suffering you have been able to
piece together useful information which
is the barometer by which I judge a
book's value for sure
the reason people flock to your
lectures they buy your book is you have
made in modern times the single most
coherent and useful instruction manual
for life
period so the I fear that the Brokenness
that you feel the heartache that you
feel translates into something usable
that couldn't be written by somebody
that hadn't gone through what you've
gone through
well I would like to believe that was
true you know there's a bit too much
self-justification in it for my taste
but
I thought the other day I'd probably do
this too and
I would I have to record an announcement
for this book because it's coming out on
Tuesday I thought the best announcement
would be just to thank people for
all of their kind attention
I'm very fortunate
in that regard
I get letters from people all the time
that
they open up their hearts
you know it's really something
but I am somewhat non-plussed let's say
for all this
work I'm pretty broken
in general or just In This Moment
don't know
I think in general
man well I will say this as somebody
whose life you have touched
and the thing I want you to recognize in
me as I imagine countless other people
want you to recognize in them
more than warm wishes is
I have put to use the things that you're
teaching and they have made my life
better and they have made the lives of
those around me better
and what is up my friend Tom bilyu here
and I have a big question to ask you how
would you rate your level of personal
discipline on a scale of one to ten if
your answer is anything less than a ten
I've got something cool for you and let
me tell you right now discipline by its
very nature means compelling yourself to
do difficult things that are stressful
boring which is what kills most people
or possibly scary or even painful now
here is the thing achieving huge goals
and stretching to reach your potential
requires you to do those challenging
stressful things and to stick with them
even when it gets boring and it will get
boring building your levels of personal
discipline is not easy but let me tell
you it pays off in fact I will tell you
you're never going to achieve anything
meaningful unless you develop discipline
all right I've just released a class
from Impact Theory university called how
to build Ironclad discipline that
teaches you the process of building
yourself up in this area so that you can
push yourself to do the hard things that
greatness is going to require of you
right click the link on the screen
register for this class right now and
let's get to work I will see you inside
this Workshop from Impact Theory
University until then my friends be
legendary peace out
man it is really heartbreaking to see
you
um
go through what you're going through now
and I I certainly get it
um
you know and I don't know you well
enough to offer you any sort of familial
consolation so I will just say that what
you do matters probably more than you
think it does certainly as much as you
think it does and I I had never met you
through 2020 and I started reaching out
to people that we both know
asking about you because I I believe
that the world needs the insights that
you uniquely have coming from your
background of Mythology and
understanding what is deeply ingrained
in the human psyche from an
evolutionarily shaped
perspective
and that nobody is putting it together
the way that you're putting it together
and the fact that you've been
you know I mean hopefully it's it's
small in comparison to the people that
are supporting you but Jesus like I
don't I know I would not put up with the
amount of [ __ ] that you've put up with
and the fact that I think the individual
is the only way to approach any systemic
problem like you just have to deal with
the individuals and then from there it
will Echo out into society and so the
fact that that's your approach
um
I kept telling people we need Jordan
Peterson right now and
I'm so grateful you're back
and I know this book will be
very successful because well I'm glad
you liked it I'm glad you liked it
because like I said I it's really hard
for me to evaluate it you know sometimes
I
well I have every possible thought that
you could have about it you know
sometimes I read it and I think oh that
seemed to have turned out pretty good
and other times I Think Jesus I've said
this 50 times already and yeah I'm all
over the place I can't
I think that happens it happens when you
write a book you get so because I you
know if when you read someone else's
book you can kind of tell if the ideas
are original at least insofar as you're
concerned
well I can't tell because I these are my
ideas well not all of them obviously but
their ideas I'm at least deeply familiar
with so I can't tell to what degree it's
original none of it and so
all right and it's it's also I suppose
I'm quite apprehensive about its release
in some sense because I've set myself up
in an impossible
second act
you know because the first book was so
insanely popular I think it's six
million copies now in in all the
languages it's been published in
so
um
that's impossible that never happens
right it's it's certainly it's like
winning the lottery
it's probably less probable than winning
the lottery in fact I'm virtually
certain that it's less probable than
winning the lottery
and to to imagine doing that twice is
well that's just it happens but it's
highly improbable
anyways it's going to all come and then
uh you know I'm in a different space
than I was when I released this first
book so
this is compared to all this is going to
be compared to all my electronic avatars
which are busily working out there in
the world I think there's more of me
outside of me now than there is inside
of me
weirdly enough
that's another phenomenon that I can't
really get my hand my my my mind around
you know the power of YouTube Jesus
that's quite the technology
yeah when I put those first videos up
you know I was this was bothering me
this piece of legislation and for a
variety of reasons some of which we've
discussed I talked to my wife and my son
sort of casually I said well I'm going
to make these videos see what happens
and
like
famous last words
yeah man look it's resonated it will
continue to resonate you are you have an
extraordinary ability to translate what
people are feeling into the actions they
need to take to get out of it it is not
a mistake that you are a very practiced
clinical psychologist that is able to
scale what you were doing one-on-one now
to the many it's extraordinary and I
think it's really had an impact on
society my fantasy I love being a
clinician
it was a great job
you know I really loved it there was
nothing better than intense
conversations about how to make things
better when both Partners in the
conversation are fully committed to that
it's such fun to
produce incremental improvements
sometimes more than incremental you know
collaboratively there's nothing better
than that I love doing my lecture tour
because it was that on a large scale it
was I talked to Dave Rubin about that
this week because of course he was long
on the tour
and it was such it was so
perfect
to be talking to people about making
things better and to have everyone at
least in that moment fully on board with
the idea you couldn't you couldn't ask
for anything better than that it was
great and to have the support I've had
from people it just stuns me you know I
think it's actually traumatic
to have that much support
that's interesting why traumatic
it's not easy to know what to do with
you know the cheers of a million people
it's overwhelming it's dangerous
dangerous because it can
see your identity or this is probably
not directly relevant but I don't know
you know I've thought a lot about Hitler
you know was it his arrogance or his
humility that led him to be the Savior
so-called of Germany he had millions of
people cheering for him
how could you not think you were right
how could you possibly think you weren't
right
and so there's danger in that
you know I don't think I've
I don't think I've unfairly benefited
from it
money success Fame all that stuff is
irrelevant what matters is how you think
about yourself when you're by yourself
and I want to know what you think about
in terms of
self-identity how we construct our sense
of self and then how we leverage that to
move through the world in a way that
makes sense
so
identity to me is something that's
practical
it's it's
your identity is a uh it's like a
dramatic role
that you play out in the world
and while playing that out it has to
furnish you with a life
and what that means is that it has to be
it means that it has to be negotiated
with other people
when you're a very young child
and you first start to play with who you
are
you live in a fantasy world and
according to some developmental
psychologists at least particularly this
is grounded in the theories of Piaget
that very young children two or three
are quite egocentric in their play they
play according to their own rules and so
they're not social yet until they're
three or four
um which means that they have their own
goals in mind
and then they erect a little fictional
world around those goals and then they
play out the role within that fictional
world and that's pretend play and when
they get to be about three or four and
they start playing with other kids they
have to bring their worlds together and
negotiate because both children have to
want to play
and so that means identity has to expand
Beyond its egocentric focus and
increasingly be negotiated in the social
world
I studied developmental psychology for a
long time especially in relate in
relationship to the regulation of
aggression and most children learn to
regulate their aggression between the
ages of two and four now for example for
for instance there's a subset of
children mostly male who are very
aggressive at the age of two
comparatively speaking they bite kick
fight hit and steal that's the
definition of of aggressive and
almost all those children are socialized
out of that by the time they're four
although a small proportion aren't and
they tend to be long-term anti-social
children and then criminal adults it's
very very difficult for that to be
rectified if it isn't rectified by four
what happens with most children is they
learn to move beyond their egocentric
presuppositions and include other
children in the play and so they start
to negotiate the roles and identity is a
sophisticated identity is a negotiated
role
and so it's not appropriate for
negotiated with who with everyone
with everyone and of course you know
this is the case because if you if you
well first of all if you're a child and
you want friends then you can't insist
that only your game be played
so I'll give you an example there's been
observational studies of children in
playgrounds so imagine there's a group
of children together let's say they're
six or seven years old and they're
playing helicopter so they've got their
erasers out and they're buzzing around
in the helicopters okay so they've
already established the ground rules
they've got together and they laid out
the drama they say well let's play
helicopter and maybe there's four or
five suggestions but the group the group
uh um
develops a consensus that helicopters
the fun game and let's make our erasers
into helicopters I don't have an eraser
Well you can use your pencil and it can
be a long helicopter and so everybody
gets a role and everybody's happy about
it otherwise play won't continue right
everybody has to be happy or play won't
continue
and so then the the little drama
organizes itself and the kids play
helicopter and there's consequences of
that that play out like a story and then
maybe another kid comes along and he's
got an eraser and a pencil in his bag
and he wants to play helicopter too and
if he's a socially sophisticated kid
he'll hang around the outside of the
Little Game and Watch and then he'll
take out his eraser and maybe start
making buzzing noises with it and when
when he can see that there's an opening
in the play situation he'll swoop in and
maybe he'll get integrated it's like
when you're at a cocktail party and you
hear a conversation and you're hovering
around the edge you wait for an opening
and then you say something that's
germane to the topic and if you're
sophisticated enough and the people are
friendly enough then it'll open and
you'll be allowed in
now even popular kids often get rebuffed
when they try to enter an already
structured game unpopular kids don't
watch what's going on and then they come
along and try to impose their game on
the entire group and then they have a
tantrum if they don't get let in
and so that's a good example of how
identity is negotiated at the earliest
stages
now that feels to me um something it
feels very different than what I would
think of as identity so I'm going to try
to put this in context of what I see as
the major movements of your work and
what makes you so powerful tell me where
I go astray so I look at your two books
and and I'm literally just paraphrasing
from what you said that they're
basically the yin and yang so you have
Chaos on one hand and you have order on
the other both will tend towards tyranny
and as far as I can tell this is why I
do not understand why people are pushing
back on you why there's so much bizarre
backlash is the moral of your story is
hey everybody guess what you need to
find this balance between the two if you
only exist in the creative potential it
ends up being all chaos all the time if
you only exist in the conservatism the
things that are already there and
working they will tend towards tyranny
solidify and cease to be useful and die
and so now it's this game and you do
this brilliant explanation of what
happens in a city that shows exactly
this with artists and if you can walk us
through that and tell me if if the
identity of the artist if that's what
you're trying to get at with identity
because I I'm understanding what you're
saying in terms of okay in that moment
we're negotiating but there's a grander
sense of who we become that is seems to
me to be a negotiation with the world so
collectively everybody else but also in
negotiation with how I want to feel
about myself when I'm alone and the
things that I think are right the things
that I think are wrong okay well okay
well that's very complicated so I'll
walk it through so as you pointed out
I'm gonna hold up these books so this is
the new book
Beyond order
and it does concentrate on pathologies
of structure and the previous book which
is 12 rules for life and antidote to
chaos and the the underlying
presupposition there is that in our
phenomenological landscape so that's the
world as we experience it complete with
emotions and motivations and dreams and
so the full range of Human Experience
including the subjective and the
objective let's say can broadly be
broken into two domains and one is the
domain of things that are beyond our
grasp and reach and that's the unknown
the unknown emerges when the unknown
emerges you tend to experience anxiety
and then there's the the known and I
Define the known very specifically and
and very carefully the known is the
place you are
when what you're doing presult produces
the results you want
and I say want because that brings
motivation and emotion into the game so
you're motivated to pursue something you
pursue it and what you want happens not
only do you get what you want but you
get validation for the structure that
governs your perceptions and your
actions now if you you know imagine that
you're um you know you're lonely
and you approach a young woman in a in a
social situation
um attempting to make some contact with
her
um you you want to alleviate your
loneliness and so you hope you make a
good impression and you tell a joke
let's say in a relatively awkward Manner
and you get rebuffed then you feel you
you you're no longer where you control
you're no longer where you exercise
control and that brings up all sorts of
specters and immediately it's like well
why were you rebuffed well maybe all
women are uh to be despised that's one
Theory maybe there's something deeply
wrong with you maybe you're having an
off day maybe it wasn't a very good joke
and so when you don't get what you want
then a landscape of question emerge
questions emerge and those questions can
resonate through different levels of
your identity from the trivial oh I told
the joke wrong to the profound there's
nothing desirable about me and I'll be
alone for the rest of my life
now you asked about identity and I used
the example of a child's game but I
could go through an identity and so I do
this particularly in maps of meaning and
so for example let's say I'm sitting
typing
okay we could decompose my identity so
at the highest level of resolution I'm
moving my fingers
and so that could be my identity I'm the
thing that moves its fingers and then
slightly at a slightly broader level
than that I'm typing words
and at a broader level I'm typing
phrases and thinking them up and then
sentences and then paragraphs and then
chapters and then let's say full papers
or books that that's that's a productive
unit so I'm the author of a book or the
author of a paper that's an identity but
then that's nested inside for me it
would be nested inside being a clinical
psychologist being a professor being a
good citizen and then that's nested in
some inside something that's even
broader than that and I would say that
that's nested inside
a cultural heroism and I don't mean that
specific to me I mean that for everyone
that's the outermost level whether
you're playing out the role of hero or
adversaries say that's that's the
highest possible level of identity
that's the level at which fundamental
morality is adjudicated and there isn't
really anything beyond outside that is
it's beyond us it's the Transcendent
itself and you're all of those at any
one time
you're all of those levels of identity
but those are all practical right so
those are the rules that you're playing
in the world all of those are a
consequence of who you are but in
interplay like in this situation with
the child all of that's negotiated with
other people
and so if you have a functional identity
you see if you have a functional
identity when you act it out in the
world
then you get what you want and need
and if an identity doesn't do that well
then you should
you either retool or your identity or
you retool the world
your conception of the world
well
if you're retooling your conception of
the world then you're retooling yourself
no you can actually I mean what a
revolutionary does is try to bring the
world into alignment with literary
changes yes literally well and we all do
that to some degree because we are
practical Engineers you know I mean
not only do we perceive the world
but we also interact with it so that it
does manifest itself in accordance with
our desires there's limits obviously to
how far you can go or how far you should
go with that
you know and
um what are the limits well there's
practical limits nature won't do what
you want it to unless you're very
sophisticated in your in your
application of your knowledge and other
people will object
so now you might say well you should
Forge forward regardless of their
objection and you know there are
circumstances under which that's true
but generally speaking that's not a very
good idea it certainly doesn't make you
popular as a child and so that brings up
one other issue I would also say and
this I developed this idea quite a bit
in
the new book
you go from egocentrism as a child you
have to go through this period where
you're socialized as a Child and
Adolescent and that really means that
you allow your identity to be molded and
shaped by the group and you know you
think about how important peers friends
and peers are to Children and
adolescents you know your mother will
say when you're a teenager well if
Johnny jumped off the bridge would you
too
and you say well no but the real answer
is well probably if all your friends are
there taunting you you would in fact
jump off the bridge and not only that
generally speaking you should
because it's your Duty it's your
developmental Duty as a child and a
teenager
to take your
your isolated self and turn it into us a
functioning social unit
now you could say well do you Peterson
wants everybody to be a functional
social unit a robot you know a cog in
the wheel
and I would say well that that isn't
where development stops
it has to go through that period before
you can emerge as a as a genuine
individual which means you have to know
the rules of the game before you can
break them
but not being able to abide by the rules
is not anything like being a genuine
creative individual those are not the
same thing and there's plenty of attempt
to confuse the two things because it's
much better if you can't follow the
rules to view yourself as a uh
avant-garde revolutionary that has a
failure
and it's not like I don't know that that
social molding crushes
obviously it crushes and everyone feels
that these are existential problems
everyone deals with the tyranny of
culture
and the fact that
it does want you to be a certain way and
not other ways and those ways might not
be in keeping with your with your the
deepest elements of your nature well
tough luck for you you have because
you're also the beneficiary of culture
and so you have to offer it your pound
of Flesh now you shouldn't do that at
the expense of your soul but you
shouldn't stay an immature child other
either
okay so this notion of identity that
we're being fed is very very it's very
thin what are we being fed be very
specific
well there is the idea for example that
your identity is whatever you say it is
and that everyone else has to go along
with that
no that isn't how it works partly
because
no one even knows how to go along with
it
like let's say just for example that
your uh gender non-binary
okay
what am I supposed to do
about that
man I don't know I hardly know what to
do if the rules are already there so
let's say I grow up I want to being a
heterosexual male
I want to find a woman
fall in love with her
raise a family
have children have grandchildren that's
a game I know the rules to it not well
because everyone's a failure at that you
know it's very difficult but at least
you kind of know what the the goal is
and so does the person you're with well
you leap out of that which is already
terribly difficult you leap out of that
into completely unknown territory saying
um ah
that I'm presenting yourself as
something other than those categories
leaves everyone around you and you
completely bereft of Direction
let me put it what do you do words that
I get from
um your material so what I heard you
just say tell me if I'm wrong is part of
the negotiation that we do from the time
we are little kids and figuring out that
play we're up on the bridge we jump
maybe because we want to you know fit in
with our peer group
um
it there is a sense of order to that now
you've been very careful and it will
drive me crazy if people respond to this
interview as if you have not already
Illustrated that it is the balance
between two opposing forces but so we
need enough order so that somebody can
find their way through the world and
that many I think a big part of the
reason that your work has resonated so
profoundly with people is there excuse
me they are left in a world where they
don't know how to
move forward in a way that serves them
spiritually practically as well for sure
and so hey everybody both of those both
of those practically Shades into
spiritually As you move up into the
broader reaches of identity
you know and look this this see one of
the things I really laid this out in
maps of meaning
it took me a long time to understand
that belief regulated emotion
so what happens is that if you act out
your identity if you act out your
beliefs in the world and what you want
doesn't happen
what happens is that your body defaults
into emergency preparation for action
and the reason for that is you've
wandered too far away from the campfire
and now you're in the forest and maybe
you're naked
and so what do you do then and the
answer is well you don't know what to do
so what do you do when you don't want
know what to do and the answer is you
prepare to do everything
and the problem with that is that it's
unbelievably draining
psychophysiologically
like it hurts you
and there's there's an immense
physiological literature detailing
the the cost of of exactly that kind of
response
and so people need people and animals
they people stay where what they do has
the results they want that's partly why
you want to be around people who share
your cultural presuppositions is because
you know that for example even in small
ways let's say you're a country music
aficionado
and you're hanging around with your
cowboy-hatted buddies and you throw on a
tape and everyone says great Tunes man
and you you know you're happy about that
but you know you throw on a piece by
tchaikowski and you're you're in a
different subculture and who the hell
are you and people the people in your
group will say man who listens to music
like that and like that's a trivial
example in some sense but I believe it's
one that everyone can resonate to we
like we it's very hard on us not to be
where we know what we know that what we
want is going to happen we hate that
we hate that and no wonder
so and then you know there are there are
varying degrees of that obviously you
can really be where you don't know
what's going to happen or you can only
be there to some degree but by and large
by and large we're conservative
creatures even if we're liberal and
temperament there's not we can't
tolerate that much uncertainty and you
might ask well why and the answer is
well because you can be hurt
pain you can be damaged you can become
intolerably anxious and you can die
so it's no wonder you're sensitive we're
very sensitive to negative emotion
and so our identities rate functional
identity regulates your emotion but you
do that in concert with other people in
the first chapter of the new book beyond
order
the rule is uh don't casually denigrate
social institutions or creative
achievement that's that balance again
um
I make the case that
most of your sanity
is socially distributed
and what I mean by that is well let's
say that you know how to behave you're
well socialized you can play with others
now I said already in this conversation
if you didn't learn to play with others
between the time you were two and four
you will never learn
and psychologists have beat their heads
against the wall trying to rehabilitate
anti-social children they can't do it
after the age of four
is that because areas of the brain just
don't develop
well it seems to be partly because the
kids fall farther and farther behind so
let's say you make the leap from
egocentric dependence on your mother at
two and three to immersion in a peer
group well then then you you pick peers
that are at your same development level
and you chase each other up the
developmental ladder and the longer
you're out of that the farther you fall
behind
and so you know kids five-year-old kids
might come across another five-year-old
kid who tends to cry too much if they
don't get their way and they'll say we
don't want to play with the baby and
what they're saying is we have to find
someone who's at our developmental level
shares our developmental Horizons so
that we can mutually scaffold our
further development now they're not
going to say that obviously but that's
the situation and kids test each other
out when they first meet so do adults
game game game game game can you play
are you playing at the same level as me
I'm playing my game at the level that
will further my development
can you play along with me if not well
maybe you're lower in status and I can
pull you up as a mentor maybe you're
higher in status and I can learn from
you but if you're a peer we can play
together anyways if you're acceptable to
your peers
and you behave well they'll accept you
and then they tell you all the time if
you're acting appropriately you know if
your jokes are funny if you're
dominating the conversation if you're
bringing something of value to the table
and all you have to do is pay attention
to the social cues and you'll keep
yourself regulated
okay I want to dive in here and I'm
going to see if I'm tracking all of this
because I'm I'm putting this in a larger
context of this really matters and it
applies directly to something that's
happening in the world it seems to me
that you don't dive into things unless
they have real relevance so is it fair
to Define identity as
the self-narrative that emerges from a
nearly infinite number of interactions
with other people and nature itself
well I I would say yes but that gets to
the point where it's so broad it's
almost it it starts to lack definition
so I can take it finer than that I I'm
trying to sort of find the borders and
then then I will work in okay so if
we're if we still remain true at that
point
um then having in the book you walk
through a lot of some of the people that
you've done psychoanalysis with and so
we get a lot of insights into the actual
people that you're dealing with and how
people can begin to tell themselves a
narrative that is very dysfunctional and
you help them out I don't want to say
easily because that that sounds like it
cheapens it but pretty straightforward
in helping them reframe and framing is
something I'm obsessed with and so our
identity is based on this it's a
self-narrative that we tell ourselves
based on the interactions we have with
other people and nature such that we
begin to solidify a set of behaviors
that make sense for us based on the
goals that we want to achieve and where
we're trying to go am I still good
yes well
you improved your definition by adding
the behavior element because I would say
the fundamental element of identity is
what you act out on top of that there's
the story that you tell do I have to be
consciously aware of it well you're
consciously aware of some of it not of
other elements of it
you can't be consciously aware of
everything you do and the Consciousness
unconscious alike make up my identity as
you define it
your identity is the story you tell
about your actions in the world but it's
also your actions in the world
okay now why why does
my identity and I assume as I understand
it why does my identity as I understand
it matter to the course of my life
because it's the it's the structure of
the it's it's the structure from which
the plans that you implement in the
world originates
and you're always acting in the world
you have problems to solve all the time
and you have to solve you have you have
to solve
there's all sorts of problems you have
to solve to stay alive and you have to
solve them for today but you have to
solve them in a way that works for today
that doesn't screw up tomorrow too bad
and leaves next week intact and next
month and next year and so there's a
Continuum of you so that's another see
that's the other reason why
your identity can't just be you
because or how you feel right now
because you're not only who you are
right now and how you feel right now
you're this strange entity that exists
right now but that already existed in
the past and that is going to repeat
itself into the future and so you're
actually a community of individuals
stretched out across time and the plans
that you implement have to be beneficial
for that entire community of individuals
and it's going to be the case that there
isn't much difference between you acting
properly with regards to your extended
temporal self and you acting properly in
relationship to other people
that's interesting so you're stuck with
Society just because you know that
there's a future you're stuck with
Society even if you're solipsistic
right if you think you're the only
conscious Consciousness that there is
there's still the fact that you
have duration across t