516. Michael Malice: A Clinical Analysis

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast – Episode 516. Michael Malice: A Clinical Analysis

Introduction

In Episode 516 of The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast, released on January 20, 2025, Dr. Jordan B. Peterson engages in a profound and multifaceted conversation with renowned author and political commentator, Michael Malice. The discussion delves into the complexities of virtue signaling, the psychology of evil, self-actualization versus societal roles, and the intricate dynamics of modern education systems. Through their dialogue, Peterson and Malice explore how individuals navigate personal values amidst cultural and political pressures, offering listeners deep insights into human behavior and societal structures.

1. Virtue Signaling and Totalitarian Evil

The conversation opens with Peterson highlighting Malice's sharp intellect and unpredictability:

[00:14] Jordan Peterson: "He always has something useful to say."

Peterson and Malice critique the superficial allure of virtue signaling, examining how such behaviors can mask deeper societal pathologies. Malice references his study of totalitarian evil, questioning the motivations behind extreme and mundane forms of wrongdoing, including pedophilia.

[02:54] Michael Malice: "We took down Trudeau. That's the spirit of January 6th."

They discuss the detrimental effects of moral posturing on political and psychological behaviors, emphasizing how outward expressions of virtue can sometimes conceal underlying malignancies within society.

2. Narcissism, Self-Consciousness, and Misery

Peterson introduces a nuanced analysis of narcissism, linking self-consciousness tightly with misery:

[04:12] Jordan Peterson: "There's no difference between being self-conscious and being miserable."

Malice challenges this by suggesting narcissists struggle to prioritize the self due to a fragmented sense of identity. Peterson elaborates on the concept of the self as an integration of various motivational states, arguing that true mental health arises from harmonizing these internal drives rather than centering solely on oneself.

3. Self-Actualization vs. Wage Slavery

A significant portion of their dialogue contrasts self-actualization with the notion of being a "wage slave." Malice shares his personal experience working at Goldman Sachs, highlighting the conflict between pursuing personal creative ambitions and conforming to corporate demands.

[08:30] Jordan Peterson: "The idea that self-actualization isn't self. It's more like conducting yourself in a manner that enables harmony to exist."

They discuss the Origins of self-actualization concepts from humanistic psychology, critiquing its individualistic underpinnings. Peterson introduces the Future Authoring program, noting its effectiveness in reducing college dropout rates by fostering personal goal-setting and self-examination.

4. Education Systems and Individual Differences

Peterson and Malice critique the current education systems, tracing their roots to the Prussian military model designed to produce obedient soldiers rather than independent thinkers.

[20:00] Michael Malice: "Why are we all going to school at the same time and learning everything at the same pace? It makes no sense."

Malice advocates for dynamic testing and personalized learning paths, arguing that homogenized education stifles individual strengths and creativity. They lament the lack of flexibility in educational structures, which fail to accommodate diverse intellectual interests and paces of learning.

5. Narrative, Perception, and Mental Frameworks

The duo explores how narratives shape human perception and behavior. Peterson emphasizes that shared stories provide a unified framework for understanding the world, essential for cohesive societal interactions.

[51:07] Jordan Peterson: "A book has a different effect on you depending on when you read it."

They argue that without a foundational narrative, societal perceptions become fragmented, hindering meaningful communication and collective progress.

6. Understanding Evil: Biblical and Psychological Perspectives

Peterson draws from biblical stories, particularly the tale of Cain and Abel, to elucidate the origins of evil and resentment. Malice supplements this with real-life examples, such as the atrocities committed by figures like Stalin and Panzram, highlighting the psychological underpinnings of extreme malevolence.

[71:08] Michael Malice: "I want an answer. Because I'm not the only one."

They discuss how evil manifests through deep-seated resentment and the inability to integrate personal failures within a broader cosmic order, leading individuals to commit heinous acts against perceived sources of their suffering.

7. Public Intellectuals and the Trickster Archetype

The conversation shifts to the role of public intellectuals like Camille Paglia, whom Malice admires for her ability to engage with contentious ideas without diminishing her respect among peers, even when she is wrong on certain issues.

[49:02] Michael Malice: "When someone has takes and people say this about me, they're like, I don't agree with half the things you say, but I love how your brain works."

Peterson introduces the Trickster archetype, explaining its dual nature as both a disruptor and a harbinger of new paradigms. He suggests that positive tricksters use humor and play to introduce transformative ideas, while negative ones manipulate narratives to serve malevolent ends.

8. Political Evil and Manipulative Narratives

Malice and Peterson examine how political movements often leverage narratives of fear and virtue to consolidate power, masking authoritarian tendencies under the guise of progressive ideals.

[80:33] Michael Malice: "They pretend this isn't a thing or that it's not a big deal."

They discuss the dangers of moral posturing in politics, where leaders may use manipulated narratives to maintain control, often at the expense of genuine societal well-being.

Conclusion

In this engaging episode, Dr. Jordan B. Peterson and Michael Malice traverse a landscape of psychological theories, societal critiques, and archetypal analyses to unpack the intricacies of human behavior and cultural dynamics. Their dialogue offers listeners a comprehensive exploration of how individuals and societies can navigate the balance between personal authenticity and the pressures of conforming to broader cultural narratives. By intertwining personal anecdotes with deep theoretical insights, Peterson and Malice provide a thought-provoking examination of the forces shaping our world.

Notable Quotes:

• Jordan Peterson [04:12]: "There's no difference between being self-conscious and being miserable."
• Michael Malice [08:30]: "The idea of self-actualization isn't self. It's more like conducting yourself in a manner that enables harmony to exist."
• Jordan Peterson [51:07]: "A book has a different effect on you depending on when you read it."
• Michael Malice [49:02]: "When someone has takes and people say this about me, they're like, I don't agree with half the things you say, but I love how your brain works."
• Jordan Peterson [71:53]: "So Cain listens, but he doesn't hear, and he goes away. And then he invites his brother to go do something with him, like in good faith. And then he kills him with the rock."

This episode serves as a compelling exploration of the psychological and societal mechanisms that underlie both individual and collective actions, offering invaluable insights for listeners seeking to understand the deeper currents shaping modern life.

Transcript

[Michael Malice]

Foreign.

[Jordan Peterson]

Hello, everybody. I had the opportunity today to sit down and talk, play, really, with Michael Malice, and that's always fun. Michael say he's a genuine delight to have a conversation with. You never know what direction it's going to go in many directions, all of which have a certain coherence. He's got a great sense of humor and irony and is extremely sharp and unpredictable. So that's ridiculously fun. And he always has something useful to say. So what did we talk about today? Well, we talked about the terrible attractiveness of the kind of virtue signaling that other people make sacrifices for motivation, for deep evil. Michael has studied totalitarian evil. He was curious about the more mundane forms of pathology, the sorts of things that motivate not only pedophilia, but extreme, sadistic pedophilia, let's say. So that always makes for a enjoyable conversation. We talked about Michael shifting views with regards to the marginal. Let's say as a creative anarchist by personality and political inclination, Michael is prone to presume that the different against the same, or the, what would you say, exceptional against the normal is admirable. But he's also come to recognize that the center can be dissolved in a manner that's cataclysmic, and the diverse and the creative can degenerate into the monstrous and dangerous. And so we talked about that technically, psychologically, sociologically. We talked about Camille Palia, who's a hero of Michaels, the brilliant female literary critic, unpredictable and sparkling, and Michael's request to me that I broker an invitation, which I could do, I suppose, with some degree of success, probability. And we surveyed the landscape. Fundamentally, what we did was survey the landscape of counterproductive moralizing and analyzed its effect on psychological and political behavior. And it was great fun. So join us for that. I suppose you think this should be a national holiday.

[Michael Malice]

Well, kinda, don't you? We took down Trudeau. That's the spirit of January 6th.

[Jordan Peterson]

Put her there, man.

[Michael Malice]

Right.

[Jordan Peterson]

Thank God. You know, I watched his resignation speech today. Apparently the wind blew it away just a couple of minutes before his actual speech, so he had to wing it. And you can tell, and you know what I really found fascinating about it was, and I think it's perfectly in keeping with his essential narcissism is the first statements he made were about him. He said something like, well, you all know I'm a leader and that, or I'm a fighter. You all know I'm a fighter and I don't quit. It's like, well, this isn't about you. I can't believe that. I can't envision saying something like that about myself. You know, can you imagine going out in front of a national audience and saying, I'm a fighter?

[Michael Malice]

I can't imagine anyone calling you a leader. That's true.

[Jordan Peterson]

Well, yeah. So.

[Michael Malice]

No, no. But all seriousness, to your point, I'm sorry to cut you off.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah.

[Michael Malice]

You know better than I do from your work at shrink. Narcissists think their narrative is the reality.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah.

[Michael Malice]

They literally believe what they say is true. And when you challeng challenge that, they get enraged because it's, in effect, you're lying if you contradict what they say itself.

[Jordan Peterson]

Well, there's an. There's an interesting corollary to that. You know, statistical analysis of language, kind of using something approximating early large language models was just factor analysis, but it's analogous. Showed that there's no difference between being self conscious and being miserable. They're so tightly associated that you can't distinguish them. So the default reality is that if you prioritize yourself, the associated emotion is negative. So narcissists are in a game that just can't possibly be won.

[Michael Malice]

Wait, but isn't it more the case that they can't prioritize their self because there is no self?

[Jordan Peterson]

Well, the self is a funny thing, Michael. This is something we. We might as well talk about this. You know, a human being is something that's organized on many levels, right? So if you think about it neurobiologically, for example, I'll give you an example. If you take a cat, a female, that works better on female cats, partly because their sexual behavior is a little less complex to organize. You can take out the whole, almost the whole brain of a female cat, the whole cortex and most of the centers of emotion, and leave it only with the hypothalamus, which is just a cap on the top of the spinal cord. And that cat in a. In a relatively unchanging environment can function.

[Michael Malice]

Oh, my God.

[Jordan Peterson]

It can eat, it can mate, it can defend itself, it can drink, it can regulate its temperature. Like it's functional. And this is the, this is the weirdest thing. It's hyper exploratory. So think about that. A cat with no brain is hyper exploratory, okay? So the hypothalamus regulates basic motivational states like lust and hunger and thirst and temperature regulation, defensive aggression. Right. And so it's like a. It's a. It's. It's the first place where reflexes transform into something like personalities. But there's A sets of them. Right. Like, you know, a cat that's involved in defensive rage isn't a cat that's in the mood for mating. Right. So it swaps between these fundamental motivational states. Well, each of those motivational states has a self. And Nietzsche pointed this out back in an unrelated investigation, in a sense, but he said every drive philosophizes in its spirit. So these underlying motivational states, like they're not just drives like reflexes, they come with perceptions, thoughts, attitudes, political opinions. Like they come fully fledged. But imagine if you're really immature, badly socialized, they just operate in sequence. That's like a toddler. Well, when people talk about their self, usually they talk about something like possession by one of those lower states. Now then you could imagine that could be integrated.

[Michael Malice]

Right?

[Jordan Peterson]

That's what happens when you mature. But then that integration and being social are almost exactly the same thing. Like, you know, if I was a solitary animal living in the woods, I could just cycle through my underlying motivational states. There'd be no real reason to regulate or integrate them. But as you mature, you integrate them so that they take the future into account and other people into account. So then the self starts to become, well, reflexes, basic motivational states, integrated personality. But then it's integrated into a relationship and a family and a community and a society. And it isn't obvious at all which of those takes priority. And one of the things I've been thinking about is that our definitions of mental health are, this is partly psychologists fault, are really badly flawed because we think of sanity as a characteristic of the self. But it's probably something like harmony between all these. Simultaneous harmony between all these levels.

[Michael Malice]

I wrote a short list of things I want to talk to you about and we're already hitting it. And what I want to talk to you about at length, I want to hear your thoughts at length.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah.

[Michael Malice]

Is that what you just hit on is the idea of self actualization? Yeah, because I think that's the kind of thing when you're starting out in any career, it's not possible because you're going to have to subordinate yourself to your boss, your superior somewhat, and you can't really be yourself all the time.

[Jordan Peterson]

Well, I think you hit the target dead center by bringing up self actualization. Okay, so this idea emerged in the late 1950s and the 1960s. Right. First of all with the existential psychologists and psychoanalysts and then with the humanists like Maslow and Rogers. And it was kind of a substitute for religious pursuit, like it'd be the secular substitute for religious pursuit. There was this idea that there was a self.

[Michael Malice]

Yeah.

[Jordan Peterson]

Which is something like the liberal project, I would say the liberal, individualistic project. And then that. That could be actualized. But. But there's a real problem with that, because, look, I had a neighbor say to me once, no mother is any happier than her most unhappy child.

[Michael Malice]

Okay?

[Jordan Peterson]

Right. Which, you know, strikes me as highly plausible, so. Because if you're socialized, you're in a nexus of relationships.

[Michael Malice]

Right.

[Jordan Peterson]

And if those relationships aren't harmonious, voluntary, playful, you're miserable. And that means that the self actualization isn't self. It's more like conducting yourself in a manner that enables harmony to exist, like a musical harmony, at all these levels simultaneously. So you have to conduct yourself if you're gonna not be swamped by negative emotion. This goes back to Trudeau. If I only think about my local self now, and maximizing that, you might say, well, I get exactly what I want, or something in me does. Why wouldn't I be happy? Well, part of the reason is I'm sacrificing the future because I'm being impulsive. And also, if it's all about me, who the hell's going to want to be around me?

[Michael Malice]

Because, again, this is your forte, not mine. I had always thought of self actualization, if I had to define it as I'm myself 24 7. I'm myself when I'm at home. I'm myself when I'm with my friends. I'm myself in a professional setting where you're always in a position to be yourself. And I think when you have people around you who like you, respect you, and admire you, you can have that. And it is very harmonious because you don't have to change who you are or how you talk if you're in the morning, evening, night, or no matter the setting.

[Jordan Peterson]

So Carl Jung talked about something akin to that, and I think that's partly the source of the ideas. So he believed that there was a core self, but Jung believed that the core self. This is something we could talk about in great detail. But Jung identified the core self. Like he thought that Christ was an archetype of the core self. There was a technical reason for that. And then he thought the self was guarded, in a sense, by Persona, which is exactly what you're wearing. Right. You've got a mask on. And so the Persona would be the. The tool that you use to. This is one way of thinking about the tool that use to manipulate the social environment. So that you don't cause undue stress and so that you get what you want. Now, Jung, like you, apparently would presume that if you're well constituted, there's no real division between the Persona and the self. Now, it can be a bit more complicated than that because one of the things Jung pointed out was that there are times when you want a Persona. Like you want to put out a shallow version of yourself in a way. So imagine, for example, that you go into a bank and you're just going to do a business transaction with the teller you don't want. Whether you want the teller's full self there or not is a matter of dispute. Really, what you want is a pretty generic transaction, right? So there are times when you need to know, when you present a generic version of yourself.

[Michael Malice]

My point is that Bank Teller isn't really in a position to be self actualized because they have to subordinate themselves to Chase or whatever the company is.

[Jordan Peterson]

Well, you know. Okay, so let's. I've been thinking about an idea akin to that in relationship to the Exodus story. Okay, no, so the Exodus story presents kind of an archetypal landscape of human destiny. And you might say one of the ways of interpreting it is that everybody starts out as a slave. And that would be, I think, akin to your idea that the bank teller, for example, isn't in a position to be self actualized. Right. Because they're so constrained by the demands of the situation that there's no room for what individual creativity or full individual expression.

[Michael Malice]

I can give you an example that happened to me in 2000. I was working at Goldman Sachs as a help desk. Right. So how it worked is I can't imagine that why I was better than everyone else on the team combined because I knew how to be helpful. Because I knew what I understood was when that person is calling you, they don't want an answer, they want reassurance. If you're at the point when you call the help desk, you're freaking out. You just want to know someone will take care of it. I don't care what the answer is. I'm outsourcing my concern so that I always. I understood the rest of my team didn't. Because they'd be like, oh, I don't know. I'm like, don't add to their stress. They're stressed enough. You're there to ameliorate their stress.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah, well, that's great.

[Michael Malice]

I mean, partly when I say earlier with this bank teller, and a lot of times they would want overtime and I wouldn't want to do the overtime because I want to go home and work on my writing and so on and so forth. And overtime was time and a half. I'd rather have that hour than that time and a half.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah.

[Michael Malice]

My co workers, I'm using this term literally, couldn't understand that. They're like, you're getting paid time and a half and the team needs you. And I'm like, I don't care. Like, I'd rather have my time. And for these types of people that self. It makes no sense. Like, you're there to help the team. The team needs you. Qed.

[Jordan Peterson]

Okay, so let's take apart that idea of your time, because the way you phrase that, for example, there's an implicit assumption there, that's underlying our discussion that there's a distinction between your time and company time.

[Michael Malice]

Yes.

[Jordan Peterson]

Okay. So I want to hit that from two perspectives. One would be, well, they're both your time because you decided to go work for the company. Right. But, but so you're. That's a voluntary choice, just like it is to. To pursue what's your time. So then the question would be, why? What is it in you that you were serving when it was your time specifically, rather than company time? You know what I mean? It's like, how do you. Because you did both of them voluntarily.

[Michael Malice]

But I didn't do both of them for free.

[Jordan Peterson]

Right. Okay. So one of the distinctions would be the, the top. The thing that you're doing when you spend your time, the time you characterize as my time.

[Michael Malice]

Yeah.

[Jordan Peterson]

That's something you would do for free.

[Michael Malice]

Right.

[Jordan Peterson]

Okay. Why? What was it about it that made it valuable in the absence of external reward?

[Michael Malice]

Because that was what I wanted to be as a person, and I was working my writing and things like that and trying to make it. Whereas the Goldman Sachs stuff, this is. There was no future in it for me that I was.

[Jordan Peterson]

Future.

[Michael Malice]

Right.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah. Okay, so. So that's an interesting aspect of that. So would we say that there's been.

[Camille Paglia]

A lot of talk about how AI is going to make the world a better place, but the question is, better for who? Better for your insurance company, who will use it to calculate exactly how much to raise your premium based on your web MD history? Better for politicians who will use it to sway your vote based on your online activity? That doesn't really sound like a better world to me, which is why I've already started protecting myself with ExpressVPN, and I think you should too. ExpressVPN is an app that encrypts 100% of your online activity and reroutes it through secure servers. Your private browsing logs can never be used against you because they'll never exist in the first place. ExpressVPN is also incredibly easy to use and it works on every kind of phone, laptop, tablet. If you can connect to the Internet, you can be protected with ExpressVPN and it even comes with a risk free 30 day money back guarantee. That's why we here at the Daily Wire are proud to partner with ExpressVPN. Both our hosts and production teams rest easy amidst their busy travel schedules, knowing their data isn't being compromised regardless of where they're using the Internet. So don't wait until it's too late. The time to protect your data from the future is now. Get four extra months of ExpressVPN's privacy protection for free when you go to expressvpn.com Jordan that's E X P R E-S-VPN.com Jordan to get four extra months free.

[Jordan Peterson]

It was easy for you, and maybe it's easy for people in general to assume that what they're doing is having their time if what they're doing with that time is investing in their future.

[Michael Malice]

I don't think they were thinking about the future.

[Jordan Peterson]

No, you, when, when you were doing your writing, right? Was. Was the fact that it was motivationally relevant to you directly associated with the fact that it was an investment in the future? Like, why was your writing, why did your writing take precedent? And why did you, why did you identify the time you spent writing as serving you? Like I'm after a definition of you, right? What do you mean by you?

[Michael Malice]

My definition, my definition of me, as I saw it then, though I was in a position to implement it, is someone who is a writer, someone who is a creative person, someone who's a thinker? There was no part of me that wanted to be that corporate helper.

[Jordan Peterson]

Right. Okay, so then I would say that's a, that's akin to the distinction between slave and sojourner, let's say, in the Exodus story. So, you know, there's this. One of the elements that underlies the general critique of capitalism is that people are wage slaves.

[Michael Malice]

Right.

[Jordan Peterson]

Of course, right now you can criticize that in that, well, slaves can't quit. And the critic would say, well, I can quit one job, but if I don't get another one, I'll starve.

[Michael Malice]

Sure.

[Jordan Peterson]

Like I'm in a slavery position, so to speak. Now, I think the most effective way of countering that is likely that if you're not charting your own destiny, then you are a slave.

[Michael Malice]

But I think there's a big difference. And this is why the Exodus metaphor does not apply here. I think a lot of people want the cage. I think H.L. mencken is right, that the average man. Wait, hold on. H.L. mencken said the average man doesn't want to be free, he simply wants to be safe. You don't see that in Exodus, the Jews wanted to escape Egypt. There were none of them that stayed behind. They go, oh, you know, I gotta pretty good here. Under Pharaoh, they all want to be free, right? And that's not accurate, but they do.

[Jordan Peterson]

Like, well, they're lost in the desert because that's part of what happens on the way to freedom, so to speak. They do get whiny as hell.

[Michael Malice]

Oh, hell yeah.

[Jordan Peterson]

They, they, they pine for the days when the tyrant told them what to do. They said, well, at least we have, we had like a variety. They're getting manna from heaven, right? They say, well, we don't have onions and garlic anymore, even though they're getting heavenly food. So they do revert to that slave. What would you say? That longing for slavery. And I do agree that that is being part of the reason. This is something that I think is really worth discussing with you. Part of the reason that people are wage slaves, let's say, is because they don't want to take on the responsibility of charting their own course now.

[Michael Malice]

Right.

[Jordan Peterson]

I think people often also don't know how. Like our school systems, for example, were set up to not teach people to do that.

[Michael Malice]

It's the Bismarck model where they wanted to make everyone homogenize to little soldiers. It's funny how one of the things I love about social media and kind of new media is that it allows people to question things they never thought to even question for their whole life. I'll give you a parallel example. The great leader Kim Il Sung, who founded North Korea, he had a big tumor on the back of his neck. It was too close to his spine to operate.

[Jordan Peterson]

That was the alien control.

[Michael Malice]

And it got bigger and bigger throughout his life. And he was always photographed from this angle. And I heard differing accounts about whether North Koreans knew about this. And I met a refugee and I said to her, did you know about this thing? She goes, oh yeah, it was an old war injury. And I said, why would a war injury get bigger throughout his life? And she just stopped. And she's like, holy crap. She never questioned. And she knew on the face it was a lie, but she never questioned that it was a lie. Let's look about education. Why are we all going to school at the same time and learning everything at the same pace? It makes no sense. You might be better at math, I might be better at history.

[Jordan Peterson]

Age graded groups.

[Michael Malice]

Yes. And when you stop and think, you go, especially with technology. Nowadays you can have dynamic testing. Okay, Once a month, you test, you stay here, you get extra help. That's fine, you can read ahead. But somehow we all have to start school at the same time, study everything at the same rate. And people who get are worse than others, or some not to any fault, their own are punished. It makes no sense, but we never question it. And now, thanks to podcast things like this, you'd be like, wait a minute, this is kind of weird, isn't it? Why does everyone have to learn everything at the same rate and at the same time?

[Jordan Peterson]

Well, you know that it was. The school systems were established in accordance with the Prussian military model.

[Michael Malice]

Yes, of course.

[Jordan Peterson]

And that the goal there was to make obedient soldiers and really, literally to crush out.

[Michael Malice]

Yes.

[Jordan Peterson]

Any proclivity towards individual striving.

[Michael Malice]

Just one more thing. There's a book called Illiberal Reformers which talks about this at length. It's amazing the boner western leftists have for European ideas. Like they went over to Prussia, they saw this, and because it's foreign, it's like, oh my God, this is amazing. This is next gen. Same thing happened a couple generations later with Lenin and the communists. It's like, okay, it's from overseas. It must be better than our stupid American values is how they perceived it. And the consequences have been absolutely disastrous. Like we've I if you ask Most conservatives in 2019 could Covid have happened in America, the lockdowns and all the submission, they would have laughed in your face. But they ran the experiment, they have the data, their theory was wrong. People are docile.

[Jordan Peterson]

I was shocked at the degree of. Well, my conclusion observing Toronto during the COVID was that 70% of Canadians would have worn a mask for the rest of their life. And I would say 30% of them would have worn that mask happily if they could have continued informing on their neighbors.

[Michael Malice]

Oh yeah, and the thing that's crazy to that is Canada is not hospitable country. It's a nation of frontiersmen. And look at Scotland. Like, what happened to these peoples?

[Jordan Peterson]

Or Australia?

[Michael Malice]

Oh, yeah, right, yeah, there you go. And now they're castrati.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, we did get rid of Trudeau today.

[Michael Malice]

Yeah. But, I mean, this is kind of. This is ripping. I mean, first of all, I think it's kind of crappy of him to set up his successor and take a major loss like Kim Campbell had to face it. Was it 93. So. But, I mean, I don't. I'm sure there's room for hope with Pierre, but it's. He's a symptom. He's not the. He's not the cancer. Don't you think?

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah. Hey, man, Canadians voted for him. And I would say that the default Canadian, if presented with his policies one by one, would still agree.

[Michael Malice]

Yes.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah. And that's true of the Conservatives.

[Michael Malice]

Yes.

[Jordan Peterson]

As well.

[Michael Malice]

Of course. Yes.

[Jordan Peterson]

You know, the. The. The malaise is very, very deep. Yeah. Okay, so back to this. I'm. I. I still want to dig in a little further into this, your dream. So we have this program online called Future Authoring that helps people lay out a plan for the future.

[Michael Malice]

Oh, what a great title. Okay. I love that.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah. Well, it. It. It has almost a miraculous effect. It's really quite stunning. And I'm still. I still find this difficult to believe, because psychological interventions usually don't work, and they often, if they work, they don't have the results to intend, which is partly because if something's kind of working well, it's really hard to improve it. It's way easier to buck it up in ways you don't understand. Okay, so the Future Authoring program asks you to. Okay. So you make a contract with yourself, like a covenant. So the covenant is something like this. If you could have what you wanted in five years, and so what you wanted would be you'd be satisfied with that or thrilled with it, even, and things would be going well enough for you so that you weren't swamped by misery, which is really what people want, but they want to not be swamped by misery. They don't want to be happy. Okay.

[Michael Malice]

Right. Right.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Michael Malice]

It's very important to know that very distinction. Yes.

[Jordan Peterson]

It's a very good distinction.

[Michael Malice]

Yes.

[Jordan Peterson]

So then, can you imagine anything that would satisfy you? So this is like a pretend game that a kid would play, you know, like it's fantasy. It's like, okay, you get to have what you want now, but there's a condition here. You actually have to be taking care of yourself like someone you care for.

[Michael Malice]

Yeah.

[Jordan Peterson]

Okay, so now you posit yourself as someone you care for. Now you get to have what you want. What would satisfy you? But you have to Specify it.

[Michael Malice]

Sure.

[Jordan Peterson]

Okay, so then we have people, right, just for 15 minutes with no real self criticism. What might that like, be like? And then we have them criticize it a bit because you have to make it into a strategy and then differentiate. It's like, well, what would you want for a relationship? What would you want with regard to your family, your career, your education, your care of yourself, your service to the community, your mental and physical health? And, and again, same rules apply. You get to have what you want. Okay, so now we had young people do this when they came to college the, on their orientation day. 90 minutes, that's all they wrote. They either wrote for 90 minutes or they wrote about what they did for the last two weeks for 90 minutes. So it was randomized. Okay, randomized study. The kids who did the self authoring program were 50% less likely to drop out the first year. 50%, yeah, yeah. And even the, even the college where we.

[Michael Malice]

It's a huge difference, stunning.

[Jordan Peterson]

For a 90 minute intervention. Even the college that we did the intervention in wouldn't implement the program. We got zero takers on the university side, which is, you know, very telling as far as I'm concerned. But the reason I brought it up is because the alternative to being a slave, let's say, which would be the alternative to self actualization, is charting your own course. Yes, but then this is the question I have for you. Like you were doing that when you had these dreams of writing. But why did you identify writing with yourself and why were you motivated to pursue it? You know, because that's work too, like working with Goldman Sachs.

[Michael Malice]

So this was my list. I remember the list distinctly and I've checked them all off.

[Jordan Peterson]

Okay?

[Michael Malice]

No alarm clock. Never have to talk to someone I don't want to and never have to engage in small talk. That was all I wanted. So I've done stand up for a little bit and that was very frustrating for me because the lack of causality, meaning a joke that kills one night would bomb the next. And that threw me for a loop. Writing I could do in my underwear, in my house, in my own time. So to have those things is to me self actualization and a huge, huge blessing.

[Jordan Peterson]

Right, so that a blessing?

[Michael Malice]

Yes. I don't take it for granted the president doesn't have that.

[Jordan Peterson]

So, you know, when God comes to Abraham, he comes as the voice of adventure. And what he tells Abraham is that if he follows that voice, his life will be a blessing to himself. Right. There's other aspects of the deal, but that's One of them. His life will be a blessing to him. You set out the preconditions for what your life would be like if it was a blessing.

[Michael Malice]

Yes.

[Jordan Peterson]

You said so. You're very high in openness. So you didn't want any small talk. You wanted to get to the heart of the matter, get to the depths right away.

[Michael Malice]

Me and the Kayla are zero in agreeableness.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah.

[Michael Malice]

So never have to talk to someone I don't want to.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah.

[Michael Malice]

And I like my biorhythm. I go to bed at 2. I wake up at 11. Monday to Sunday.

[Jordan Peterson]

Right. So you're. You're an evening person. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's. That's often associated with openness.

[Michael Malice]

Is that true?

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah, yeah. There's. There's actually the purse. There are morning people and evening people, and they have different temperaments.

[Michael Malice]

Okay.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you wanted to. Not to have to engage in pointless small talk. Right. You said you want to set your own temporal rhythm.

[Michael Malice]

Right.

[Jordan Peterson]

Right. Although is it disciplined or is it erratic, or do you just get up at the same time but later in the day?

[Michael Malice]

It's organic.

[Jordan Peterson]

You just get up and that's okay. Yes.

[Michael Malice]

The best. Yeah.

[Jordan Peterson]

Okay. Okay. Yeah. It's better for me psychologically if I get up at a regular time.

[Michael Malice]

But that is regular time. It's 11.

[Jordan Peterson]

Oh, you. But that's what I asked. You get up at 11.

[Michael Malice]

Yes, but that.

[Jordan Peterson]

Okay, so it's stable, but it's your choice.

[Michael Malice]

Yes.

[Jordan Peterson]

Right.

[Michael Malice]

So I don't have a clock. My body just wakes up.

[Jordan Peterson]

Right. So that means it's not. What would you say? It's not undisciplined. You know what I mean?

[Michael Malice]

Very disciplined. Yeah.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah. Okay. So you wanted not to have to engage in trivial interactions. You wanted to get up on your rhythm.

[Michael Malice]

Right.

[Jordan Peterson]

What else?

[Michael Malice]

Never have to talk to someone I don't want to.

[Jordan Peterson]

Right.

[Michael Malice]

No small talk. Yeah.

[Jordan Peterson]

Right. So that's part of the small talk thing. Why do you distinguish them, then? You wanted to not have small talk, and you also wanted not to talk to any.

[Michael Malice]

Anybody you didn't want to, well, not interact. So not just talk. Like, if I. Like if I don't have to go to some event, I don't want to. Or be trapped in a conversation.

[Jordan Peterson]

So you really wanted to choose the parameters of your social. That's all you wanted. Were there other things? That was it.

[Michael Malice]

I mean, I said if. That was my list. I've made it, like, in my head, like, being like. Now there's other ancillary things, like don't look at the check at a restaurant. Don't care. If I want to go on a trip once in a while, I can. But I think at a certain point, this is what I want to talk to you about, is at a certain point, we and I have discussed this off camera, you stop driving the car and you start surfing. Because I think when you reach a certain level of success, whatever comes next is so often so random and circuitous. Like, I've talked about this with Roseanne. You know, one day the president's complaining about a song she sings. This is not the kind of thing you can plan for and expect. Right. So once you reach a certain level of success, things just maintain their momentum. And I talked about this with Rogan also. He's like, you just wake up. You're like, okay, you know, Prince Charles is complaining about me. This is my life, and you have to accept it. You have that, too. You went up with Jordan Peterson.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yes. Yes. Well, so that's the. The there. I. There's a specific reason I wanted to bring this up. So when I was writing we who wrestle with God, I was looking at character, their characterizations of the divine. That was going to be the subtitle. We used perceptions instead. But it doesn't matter. What the stories do as far as I am concerned, or at least one of their functions is to figure out what principle should be superordinate. Now, you did that. You had three parameters for your superordinate principle and you identified that with yourself. That would satisfy me. So the divine in the Abrahamic encounter is the voice of adventure. And so God's covenant, his contract there because it's put in contractual form. If you follow this voice, then the following things will happen. Be a blessing to yourself.

[Camille Paglia]

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[Jordan Peterson]

Your name will become known among other people justly.

[Michael Malice]

Yes.

[Jordan Peterson]

Right. So that's a good author. That's. That's a good offer. Right? Because people want social standing and that can be gamed and it can be falsified, but it can also be genuine.

[Michael Malice]

Yes.

[Jordan Peterson]

Right. Okay. You'll do something of lasting significance. So that's cool. That would be probably for you. Yes. Maybe your work on anti totalitarianism.

[Michael Malice]

Yes.

[Jordan Peterson]

Right. And then you'll do it in a way that will be a blessing to everyone else. It'll multiply the pie. Instead of okay, and then the okay then the association of the promised land with that is that if you follow that call, then the world turns into a field of unpredictable opportunity.

[Michael Malice]

Yes.

[Jordan Peterson]

And so that's also an adventure. And it's true what's going to happen. I know it is true. That's the opposite of being a no.

[Michael Malice]

But I'm telling to the audience, like when you're young, I'm telling you, like, this is the advice I always give them. I say this all the time. Let's suppose you've got an author.

[Jordan Peterson]

Right?

[Michael Malice]

It's an easy example. Go into the bookstore, look at those crappy, crappy books on the shelves that you're like, I can't believe this is a book deal. That could be you. You could be that shitty author. Their friends, like, how did this guy get a book deal? And when you put it in terms like that, all of a sudden what would have seemed impossible because of your schooling, like, you're not going to be an author. It's like, oh, wait a minute, I can do this. Or you could be a band that no one's heard of, but you pay the rent and you create your music and you got a dedicated fan base. That's. That's half. That's heaven on earth.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah.

[Michael Malice]

You don't have to be the Beatles.

[Jordan Peterson]

Right? Well, you might not even want to be.

[Michael Malice]

Exactly. So, yeah, look at what happened to John Lennon.

[Jordan Peterson]

Right, Right. Right.

[Michael Malice]

So when you. We have this bizarre Pareto distribution in American aspirations, where unless you're at the very, very top, you're kind of a failure. And, like, that's ridiculous. You don't have to be this hugely successful thing. They're.

[Jordan Peterson]

There's also another way of dealing with the Pareto distribution problem, Right. Which is just. So everybody listening is clear, is that the bulk of the rewards go to a small minority of people in any field. Now, a small minority of people in every field do the productive work. So let's not forget. But one of the ways that a sophisticated society deals with that is just by generating an indefinite number of games.

[Michael Malice]

Right?

[Jordan Peterson]

Right. Here's a cool thing so that I've noticed about people. Imagine that you're kind of out on the Pero distribution in one dimension. It's like, you know, so you've got specialized knowledge. There's quite a few of you. But if you have specialized knowledge in two areas that are distinct, there's hardly any of you, Right. And if there's three, it's like, you're the. You're that person.

[Michael Malice]

Right.

[Jordan Peterson]

You're the only person playing that game. So that's a good thing for everybody who's watching and listening to know. It's like, get really good at something, and then that makes you exceptional and you're going to be somewhat successful just because of that. But then if you add another distant skill to that and you overlap them, it's like you're pretty rare. And three, no one's like you.

[Michael Malice]

I had a question I had for you, and then I was going to put you a little bit on the spot in a fun way. Who did you model? You basically became Jordan Peterson. Not overnight, but it was pretty quick, right. To go from just a professor to kind of. Yeah, right. Asymptotic. Who did you model yourself after? There had to be someone who's like, all right, I don't know what I'm doing here. Like, who do I want to be? Like, who paved the way for you?

[Jordan Peterson]

Oh, that's easy. Really. They were people that I encountered in books. Oh, definitely. Well, I would say, like, I read a lot, and some books had a massive effect on me. Like, my pattern for reading was I had a problem I was always trying to solve. I was trying to solve the. I was trying to understand evil. That's been, like, my motivation since I was, like, 13. And then now. And then I'd run across an Author. And I think, oh, this person knows something I don't. Seriously. And then I just read everything they read, wrote, and then I'd find out who influenced them and I'd read that. And so, you know, the cardinal people who influenced me were Carl Jung, for sure. Nietzsche.

[Michael Malice]

Okay.

[Jordan Peterson]

Carl Rogers was a pretty big influence. There was some biological psychologist, Jeffrey Gray. I learned a lot about the brain from Jeffrey Gray.

[Michael Malice]

But none of these people were public intellectuals like you are. What I meant is to who? Is there anyone you mob yourself after in that regard?

[Jordan Peterson]

No, I wouldn't say so.

[Michael Malice]

Like, that's interesting.

[Jordan Peterson]

The reason it worked for me likely is because I had a unique lecturing style.

[Michael Malice]

Yeah, but lots of people have unique lecturing styles. And even if you.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah, but they usually use notes.

[Michael Malice]

Okay.

[Jordan Peterson]

See, I trained myself pretty much from the beginning of my career to speak without notes. And then when I. So that was. That made my club. My classes were very popular. The combination of speaking out without notes and then dealing with this like major existential issue made my classes very popular. And that happened to translate to YouTube.

[Michael Malice]

Okay.

[Jordan Peterson]

And I would say at the time I experimented with YouTube just as an experiment, basically. Like I was doing some outreach on media. A producer came to me 20 years ago for a little television station, kind of like an npr, Canada's equivalent, TV Ontario, and asked to film one of my classes. And so we did a 13 part series and my classes were very popular. And so I had a taste of popular success as a professor and then sort of a little bit on the tv.

[Michael Malice]

Did you watch those clips to see what you could improve what you did wrong?

[Jordan Peterson]

No, no.

[Michael Malice]

Interesting.

[Jordan Peterson]

No, no, I could tell what I was. Okay, well, if you're really speaking to an audience, you, you know, this likely as a standard and as a speaker, if you're really speaking to an audience, they tell you.

[Michael Malice]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because you have a class, you have dynamic instant feedback. That's right. Okay.

[Jordan Peterson]

Oh yeah.

[Michael Malice]

It's not just you in front of a camera, right? Oh yeah, that's a big difference.

[Jordan Peterson]

And the most telling part of the feedback is silence.

[Michael Malice]

Yeah, right, right. Is people are riveting or looking around at each other. Yeah, exactly.

[Jordan Peterson]

They moving. Which means. It's so interesting because what that means neurophysiologically is there's all these competing motivations in someone. Right?

[Michael Malice]

Yeah.

[Jordan Peterson]

And what happens if you decide to do something the thing you're doing wins a Darwinian competition over all the other things you could be doing and suppresses them and inhibits them and the More powerful the central motivational state, the more complete the inhibition. So what I'm trying to appeal to people in lecture is like, the lecture is a journey, it's a quest. I'm answering a question, it's a quest. So I'm taking people on a quest. And if the quest is successful, they're dead silent, right? They're just. They're. They're tangled right into the discussion. And that's. There isn't anything more fun than that. Like, it's ridiculously entertaining to do that.

[Michael Malice]

So I'm gonna. I'm gonna put you a little bit on the spot. And this is also in teaching people at home how to ask someone for a favor, right? So the key, in my opinion, asking for a favor is give that person the space to say, no. Don't ever say, hey, can you do this for me? Say, would you be comfortable? Are you okay with this, something that you're in a position to do? Because I've had people make demands, get me on Rogan. It's like you're really. It's a big ask, you know, like. Like worded about.

[Jordan Peterson]

Right.

[Michael Malice]

So when I was growing up, there was someone I was modeling myself after. And you know that question people ask, if you have dinner with anybody on therapy, there is this person, and this person is a big fan of yours. And I would love it if you feel comfortable telling them, hey, break bread with Michael Malice. It'll be worth your time. And that person is Camille Paglio. She was my role model when I started out trying to do this kind of stuff.

[Jordan Peterson]

Well, I like your conceptualization. It goes along with your stance as an anarchist. Right. Well, look, this is one of the principles that we're using to guide the development of this alliance for Responsible Citizenship. Here's the rule. Policies that require fear and force are bad policies.

[Michael Malice]

Yes, that's right. Yeah.

[Jordan Peterson]

Right. Now, it's tricky when it comes to the regulation of criminal behavior, right? Because the really psychopathic antisocial people, they don't play a social game.

[Michael Malice]

And so asking them or people don't, can't think ahead. Even those who just can't think past the next moment.

[Jordan Peterson]

Well, they don't.

[Michael Malice]

Right. Yeah.

[Jordan Peterson]

Right. Notorious for not learning from.

[Michael Malice]

But non psychopaths as well. A certain intelligence level. They're not thinking in terms of causality.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I suspect that you're. See, this is a tough one. I was going to ask you when you were talking about, you know, your decision to become a writer, I mean, you're blessed with an Extremely high level of verbal intelligence.

[Michael Malice]

Right.

[Jordan Peterson]

And that's like. That's an a priori gift.

[Michael Malice]

Yes, that's fair. That's fair.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah. But then. But. But the coral. There's quite a correlation between intelligence and socioeconomic status. It's pretty high. It's the best predictor. Right. And the second best predictor is conscientiousness.

[Michael Malice]

Is that right?

[Jordan Peterson]

But, yeah, it's much weaker. It's about one fifth as powerful.

[Michael Malice]

Okay.

[Jordan Peterson]

You know, or on the entrepreneurial space, it's openness. Right. But my. But there's. No, there doesn't really.

[Michael Malice]

That's because so many entrepreneurs I know are so, like, kind of like, basic in their thinking.

[Jordan Peterson]

Well, the managerial types tend to be intelligent, conscientious. The entrepreneurial types tend to be intelligent. Nobody.

[Michael Malice]

Okay, got it. Okay.

[Jordan Peterson]

So there's a pathway to, like, it's. It's likely that a serial entrepreneur is going to be high in openness.

[Michael Malice]

Okay. Yeah, yeah. Okay.

[Jordan Peterson]

Right, right.

[Michael Malice]

Okay. Because they're. Right.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. They're switching games. Like, an open person is switching games all the time. Right, right. Whereas, like, a more managerial person picks a game.

[Michael Malice]

Yeah.

[Jordan Peterson]

And gets really good at it. And that works great if the game is working.

[Michael Malice]

Yeah.

[Jordan Peterson]

But it works terribly when the game stops working, which is why you need some entrepreneurs in your organization. So. Yeah. So I was wondering about this adventure issue. You know, intelligence predicts success, and so then you might say, well, what's your probability for success as an adventure if you're not as intelligent? But my suspicions are that strength of character will do the trick, you know, because one of the pathways to success in a functional society is that people can really rely on you.

[Michael Malice]

That's. So. I'm sorry, this is kind of insane that you. That's insane. But it's fortuitous. They say this because I've given talks for young people about, like, what I wish I'd known at their age. And I tell them, don't strive for excellence because you're not gonna be able to do it.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah.

[Michael Malice]

Strive for competence.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah.

[Michael Malice]

If I can rely on you as someone who's working for me and you say, I'll have this paper on Tuesday, and it's ready on Tuesday. You're at the 90th percentile right away. In fact, I'd rather have you say, I'll have it for you on Wednesday and give it Wednesday than, say, Monday and give it to me on Tuesday, because I know I could schedule around the Wednesday 100%.

[Jordan Peterson]

Well, the other thing, too. See, if you're reliable. This is why honesty is the best policy. If you're reliable, and you already pointed this out, you're low entropy.

[Michael Malice]

Right. You're right. Yeah.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah, Right, right. It's like, I can reduce you to one pixel. You will do what you said, box.

[Michael Malice]

I also appreciate the irony of the anarchists advising people to minimize the chaos that they bring, but that's the best approach.

[Jordan Peterson]

Well, but when we talk to you, when we talked about anarchy before, I stress voluntary element of it. Right. And that. That strikes me as well. That's why we made that a principle for our policy discussion, so to speak. At arc, it's like, if you can't offer people an invitational vision, so they say, yeah, yeah, I would do that. I would be enthusiastic about doing that, then there's something wrong with your policy. So I think, like, a cardinal way of identifying tyrants is they use fear.

[Michael Malice]

Of course, and compulsion. Yes.

[Jordan Peterson]

Right.

[Michael Malice]

Definitionally.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so this is a good also for you people to know who are watching and listening is if you're listening to a politician and they're trying to motivate you fundamentally with fear, or they're proposing the use of compulsion, you know, say, in the case of an emergency. It's like, yeah, probably you're a tyrant. Probably you're a tyrant even in an emergency. Right?

[Michael Malice]

Oh, yeah.

[Jordan Peterson]

No, your goal, your duty is to.

[Michael Malice]

Or the invocation of emergency.

[Jordan Peterson]

Well, that's exactly the problem, is that, well, the emergency is pretty convenient for you if you happen to be a tyrant. And part of the reason the idea of the Apocalypse is archetypal is because there's always an emergency.

[Michael Malice]

Of course.

[Jordan Peterson]

Right. It's like you're going to die. Everything's going to come to an end. So you can conjure up an emergency at a moment's notice. So I don't know whether I should look at the blue eye or the red eye. So you taught for Peterson Academy?

[Michael Malice]

Yes. Wait, wait. So will you. Will you message Camille Paglia for me? It's okay if you say no. She's tricky. I know.

[Jordan Peterson]

You know, I could. I could send her. I could send her a note and tell her who you are. What? Well, tell me exactly what you want.

[Michael Malice]

I just want to have dinner with her. My treat. I will go to Philly. I will. And I've. I've. I've. Claus. She will know. I'll tell you what. This. I have Candy Darling's journal. You won't know what that is. She will. I have Klaus Nomi's Tuxedo. You won't know what that is. She will.

[Jordan Peterson]

I know who Klaus Nomi is.

[Michael Malice]

I have his tuxedo.

[Jordan Peterson]

You do, do you?

[Michael Malice]

Yes.

[Jordan Peterson]

He's a singer.

[Michael Malice]

Yes.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yes. And with a soprano voice.

[Michael Malice]

Yes.

[Jordan Peterson]

And he sang.

[Michael Malice]

Let's see. I can't believe you know Klaus. No way. He didn't really have any hits.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah, but, yeah, I know who Klaus. He's got a stunning, striking voice.

[Michael Malice]

Yes.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah. So why do you have one of his tuxedos?

[Michael Malice]

Well, he had a very. He has one tuxedo. That was his stage outfit, and it's this kind of iconic item.

[Jordan Peterson]

Okay, so what you should do is you should write me a paragraph.

[Michael Malice]

Okay.

[Jordan Peterson]

About what you have to offer.

[Michael Malice]

Okay.

[Jordan Peterson]

And about what you want and about. I would also recommend guarantees. Like, I went and talked to Palia, and it was. It was hard.

[Michael Malice]

Really?

[Jordan Peterson]

Well, she was very apprehensive because she's been abused and used by all sorts of people and journalists. So she's very skeptical. She was extremely hospitable once we got there, my wife and I, and she knew that we were up to no tricks.

[Michael Malice]

Okay.

[Jordan Peterson]

She just flipped, and she was extremely inviting. But she's got a wall, and it's a protective wall.

[Michael Malice]

Okay.

[Jordan Peterson]

So I think one of the things you'd have to do in the paragraph is reassure her is you need invitation plus reassurance.

[Michael Malice]

Okay. Done. Okay.

[Jordan Peterson]

And then, yes, I could. I could contact her.

[Michael Malice]

It would make my life.

[Jordan Peterson]

My dream for Camille Palia is to have her talk to Ben Shapiro because they're both machine guns, and so I'd love to see that just as a spectacle.

[Michael Malice]

Speed up the tape.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah, I'd love to see that. I could imagine. Even better, maybe would be Russell Brand, Ben Shapiro, and Palia. Those are the three most verbally fluent people I've ever seen in my life.

[Michael Malice]

Wow, that would be quite a trico.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah, it would be. It'd really be something.

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[Jordan Peterson]

And who is Candy Darling? And why do you want to talk to Palia?

[Michael Malice]

Because Palia was my who I wanted to be when I grew up in many ways.

[Jordan Peterson]

Why?

[Michael Malice]

Because what I found fascinating about her is she is the kind of person where even if she's dead wrong, I want to hear her say more. And that is very, very rare. It is very rare. When you like, she was like 10 years ago, she was talking about how great Kamala Harris is. And I'm sitting there, I'm like, Camille, Ms. Paglia, come on. Like, are you serious? And it did not diminish my respect for her in the slightest. So when someone has takes and people say this about me, they're like, I don't agree with half the things you say, but I love how your brain works.

[Jordan Peterson]

Right?

[Michael Malice]

That to me is like the epitome of a public intellectual or where even if they're dead wrong or like, I know enough about a subject where I'm like, this person's way off. I don't care. Keep talking.

[Jordan Peterson]

That's probably part of that quest. So one of the things I've learned to do in lectures is before I go on stage, I have a question. It's like, it's a question that matters to me, which is also something you should do when you write. It matters to me and I don't know enough about it yet. And I'd like to get farther in my thinking. And so then what I'm trying to do on stage is get farther in my thinking. And maybe to come to a conclusion, if I can do that, then that's like the punchline, right? That's very satisfying. But. But in some ways it doesn't matter because the journey is what matters. I think what you're pointing out is that there are certain kinds of intellectuals whose thought quality is so rich that the journey is worth the.

[Michael Malice]

And so entertaining to listen to. Like the way she talks. I can do it. I'm not Going to. It's just so, like, unique and idiosyncratic. And you watch clips of her from the 90s. She was just. I mean, I was like, okay, this. And what I love about her is she is. You can't put her in a box.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yep.

[Michael Malice]

She's so. I mean, she's so all over the map politically. I mean, she's a hardcore atheist, but she goes on and on about the Catholic Church and the beauty it brings and the veterans that people have for it and how valuable it is. And her, you know, she's very big on Warhol, but at the same time, her veneration of the classics and her insane contempt for how that's being thrown into the garbage can and we're losing thousands of years of creative history simply because it's predominantly white men, is, to her, just complete madness. And she's correct. So there's so much I would love to talk to her about and just pick her brain and just to thank her, because I think there's certain people, when you find them at the right age, you know, like Catcher in the Rise, this, the Fountainhead for certain people. It really kind of codifies you later in life.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah, yeah. You know, I've been thinking about the function of religious texts in exactly that manner, I think. Partly. So it looks very much like a description of the structure through which we see the world is a story.

[Michael Malice]

Yes, yes.

[Jordan Peterson]

Right. So there's an infinite number of facts, but they have to be sequenced and prioritized. And the way someone sequences and prioritizes is their story.

[Michael Malice]

Yes.

[Jordan Peterson]

Okay.

[Michael Malice]

So, yeah, people don't want truth. People want narratives.

[Jordan Peterson]

That's because narratives. Structure are truth. Yeah, they sort. I think that what core stories do. So this would be, say, the fairy tales would do this. Or any stories that are shared broadly across the culture, is they actually. You just pointed to this. I think it's true. You know how it is. A book has a different effect on you depending on when you read it. So. And it's definitely the case that books you read, let's say, in your mid adolescence, likely, it's like they set the stage. Right. And I think that's actually true. I think what happens is the story that strikes you provides a framework for memory, and then you slot everything else into that. And so it actually becomes the foundation. And I think that part of the problem with moving away from broad knowledge of the biblical stories is that the foundation of our perceptions is no longer unified. And when that's the case, I mean, some variation is good because you don't want everybody thinking exactly the same thing. But if there's too much variation, you. You can't even talk to each other.

[Michael Malice]

But do you think it's happening now? I think it's happened, yeah. I was someone who's very big, encouraging political division. And Thomas Soule says there's no solutions, only trade offs. I was naive because I didn't realize the trade off is how dumb political discourse has gotten where people. No one's holding them in check. So people are free to say just completely stupid things. And since you're surrounded by this echo chamber and anyone who says, hey, this is stupid, now you sound like the out group, it becomes self validating. It's really horrifying.

[Jordan Peterson]

So we've been. I've been working on trying to conceptualize why that happens, particularly with Jonathan Pageau we've been drawing. And John Vervaeke, we've been drawing a bunch of different sources, trying to understand the structure of a concept or a perception. So I think this is how it works. This is also the same structure as the tabernacle, by the way, in. In architectural form. So every concept has a center. Okay. That's what Moses staff establishes. That's what a flag establishes. When you move to a new territory, there's a center. Okay, then. And the center is the ideal. That's a good way of thinking about it. Or the center is the place that looks upward. Okay. And then around the center there are margins. And the farther away you get from the center, the less like the center the phenomena is and they start to multiply. So now a concept that's only center is too rigid and a concept that's only margin is too profuse and diffuse. And so what we need is a balance between the center and the margin. Your proclivity would be, I think, because you're open would be to deprioritize the center in favor of the margin. Yeah, that's what open people do. But you just said you realized that if you. The margin's fine, the margin of the margin, it's like, oh, well, that's, that's less fun.

[Michael Malice]

The other point I made in my book the New Right is that when you're in the center, insanity and brilliance are equidistant. You have no capacity really for distinguishing between the two of them because they both sound completely crazy to you and something you'd never heard before before. And I thought, okay, then we gotta kind of knock the center out. But then what's happening is you kind of get these new Centers which kind of crystallize. And a lot of them are just like insanity. Insanity. And also, as you know from a lot of your work, the more insane, the more sticky it gets. Because people take pride in having insane views. Cause it's like agnostic thing. I've been initiated into these mysteries. These people just don't get it.

[Jordan Peterson]

Right. Well, it also mimics creativity. So you can wear that. That.

[Michael Malice]

So.

[Jordan Peterson]

Well, here's a mythological take on that. This is very cool. So the center is a phallus, right. It's unitary and solid. Say that's archetypal masculinity, that ideal center. Okay. When it collapses, a hydra emerges.

[Michael Malice]

That's right.

[Jordan Peterson]

Right. And hydra has an indefinite number of heads.

[Michael Malice]

Right. And the odds that they're all going to be positive is very low.

[Jordan Peterson]

Well, the mere fact that they're multiplicitous is already a problem because it's an entropy problem.

[Michael Malice]

Right.

[Jordan Peterson]

It's like, what. What am I going to do with all this?

[Michael Malice]

Right.

[Jordan Peterson]

You know, you want. You know, if you have a toddler who's say three, and he has a closet, or she has a closet full of clothes, say 20, 30 outfits, you open the door and you say, what do you want to wear today? It's like all you do is make the kid anxious. You take three outfits and lay them on the bed and you say, well, which one do you want? Then they're happy. And it's because, you know, this has actually been figured out technically. It was figured out by. Oh, I'm going to forget his name. Friston. Carl Friston. He's a neuroscientist and he did some work on entropy. And I did some work like this in my lab. We were trying to tie the idea of anxiety to entropy, to make it physical. Anxiety signifies a multiplicity of pathways. Right. And you might say, well, that's diversity. That's creativity. That's what the left thinks it's like. Yeah, but what if it's too much? Well, then it's. That's what the hydro paralyzes you when you look at it. It's too much entropy. You don't want to make a hundred decisions. We know this from the consumer literature. So if you go to a store, imagine there's. Try buying a printer. You've run into this right away. I want to buy the best printer. It's like, there's 500 printers. By the time you go through all 500, most of the models have changed. Right. You're never going to optimize and so what that means is if you have 500 printers and you have to choose the best one, you're going to fail. So you actually want to go to a store where there are four printers because, like one printer that they're making you buy that printer. 4. So you can see. Right. I mean, it makes perfect sense too. Right. You don't want totalitarian centrality, but you don't want indefinite amorphousness. This would be, I don't know if that's a critique of all out anarchism, is it?

[Michael Malice]

No, no, but it speaks because all out anarchism would still have leadership and would. Have you ever seen the Devil Wears Prada?

[Jordan Peterson]

I think so, yeah.

[Michael Malice]

So do you remember the speech that Meryl Streep gives to Anne Hathaway?

[Jordan Peterson]

Elaborate.

[Michael Malice]

So Anne Hathaway's Meryl Streep is Anna Wintour. She's head of Vogue magazines. You know, Romana Clef. Romana Clef. However he's pronounced. And Anne Hathaway is her assistant. And they're putting together a photo shoot and they're trying to say which belt would go with this ballerina skirt. And Meryl Streep's like, it's hard to pick some of the characters. Like they're too similar. And Anne Hathaway laughs and they look. Everyone in the room looks at her as like something funny. And she goes, I'm sorry, I'm just still. These belts look the same to me. I'm still getting used to this stuff. And the venom from Meryl Streep's character, she's like, this stuff. And she goes, oh, I see what's going on here. Like, you think you chose that lumpy sweater, Right.

[Jordan Peterson]

Remember this picture?

[Michael Malice]

But what had happened was five years ago, Yves Saint Laurent had. That sweater isn't blue or turquoise or it's cerulean. Because five years ago, Yves Saint Laurent had cerulean military jackets. And then it was in all cerulean, spread out to all designers, then it was in all the runways, then it was in the department stores, and then it ended up at some bargain Target. Target, where you fished it out, you bought it, right?

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah.

[Michael Malice]

Because you're pretending you don't. What you're trying to say with your outfit is that you don't care about fashion.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah.

[Michael Malice]

But what you don't know is that cerulean sweater has been picked for you by the people in this room from a pile of stuff.

[Jordan Peterson]

Right. So that model, you've picked it from the bottom of a 10 hierarchy.

[Michael Malice]

Right.

[Jordan Peterson]

10 rung social hierarchy that you're at the bottom of and you don't even know it.

[Michael Malice]

And you don't even know it.

[Jordan Peterson]

So that's. And you're dismissive of it.

[Michael Malice]

Right. So you thought the choice has been made. And again, that is an anarchist system. There's no government involvement. But point being, you need leaders who are going to be winnowing things down so that person at the bottom has that limited choice because then they also. You don't need the best printer. I'm sure the 10th best printer what's not going to print the letter Q. They're all going to be fine. Like this idea that you need the best is also spurious.

[Jordan Peterson]

Unless you're like, well, that's the trade off problem.

[Michael Malice]

Yeah.

[Jordan Peterson]

You know, you could spend a year finding the best printer, but then like you could have spent that year doing a lot of other things.

[Michael Malice]

Like what this printer that's like $50 cheaper is, is not going to work. What does that.

[Jordan Peterson]

Well, there's an economist, Simon, great economist. He was the guy who had the bet with Paul Ehrlich about whether Julian Simon.

[Michael Malice]

Let me tell you a story about Julian Simon.

[Jordan Peterson]

Okay? Let me just.

[Michael Malice]

Please. Okay.

[Jordan Peterson]

Simon came up with a concept called satisficing.

[Michael Malice]

Okay.

[Jordan Peterson]

And satisficing is a reflection of exactly what you just described. It's like you don't. With most decisions, you don't go for the best. You have something like a threshold. And once you hit that threshold, you say that that's what people do with their mates.

[Michael Malice]

Oh, well, you know, my friend Ron Messer said, he goes, every woman's crazy. I'm sorry, I'm sorry to outrun. He goes, every woman's crazy. So you find the woman who's crazy you can handle. That's the one you marry.

[Jordan Peterson]

Right? Right.

[Michael Malice]

So you're not going to find that anyone who this very horrible how women are given this kind of Disney idea that you need Prince Charming, you're not finding him. And why is he going for you? So everyone's going to have a problem. And when you find that problem, you can handle men as well as females. You know, that's the one you settle with. But what we just talked about, one.

[Jordan Peterson]

Of your problems is to find someone who can stand you. So yeah, that's a big problem. You were talking about Simon. You had a story about him.

[Michael Malice]

Oh, so I was an intern at the CATO Institute in 1997 and we had to go out distributing videotapes. Whatever. We come back, he's giving a talk in the Auditorium downstairs doors are closed, but there's a monitor. And I'm looking at the monitor and it looked like he had horns. And I was just like, what? And I'm staring at it. I'm like, am I? Is this some kind of glitch? And what had happened was at the beginning of the talk, he said, since the environmentals think I'm a devil. And he took suction cupped horns and stuck them on his head. And it's on C span. He gave his talk that way. I got his autograph. He passed away shortly thereafter. But he was a great, great guy.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yes.

[Michael Malice]

And what I love about him, and I think it's very important for people in our space, is he had a sense of levity and a sense of positivity. I think a lot of times, and I'm sure you agree, nefarious political movements attract people simply because they present joy. I mean, that is the perfect word for it. And people who are agnostic about politics or aren't informed, which is perfectly fine, they're like, I want to go where the fun people are. It's just as simple as that. And it's very sinister and very tricky, but very effective.

[Jordan Peterson]

You think that sinister people can use joy?

[Michael Malice]

I mean, look at Officer Harris.

[Jordan Peterson]

Did she use it or did she. Fair enough, fair enough. But I guess my skepticism.

[Michael Malice]

Look at Hollywood.

[Jordan Peterson]

Okay. To use joy or to manipulate it?

[Michael Malice]

Well, I mean, what's the. That's.

[Jordan Peterson]

Well, I think kind of the difference maybe is the voluntary element. Like, look, I figured out I had this weird kind of obsession when I was teaching in Boston because I was teaching about horrible things, terrible things like the Holocaust and the Gulag and like the depths of depravity, right? And I got this voice in my head that kept saying, if you could master this, you'd do that with a light touch. And I thought, really? Like, how the hell am I going to talk about these topics that are.

[Michael Malice]

I'll tell you how I did it, okay? Because my book on North Korea, dear reader, it's written from Kim Jong Il's perspective, right? And their propaganda is humorous in. In the sense of absurd. And I wrote it straight. And I'll give you one example that I use. So they have something there called the Tower of the Juchi idea, which is, this is true, the biggest stone obelisk in the world or concrete obelisk, whatever. And according to their literature, it was Kim Jong Il's idea and no one else had ever thought of such a thing, Right. For that to be true. And this is how I lay out the scene. The architects must have sat together, and no one even has a brainstorm had this suggestion. And I imagine one of the architects being like, you know what? Let's make this the second tallest obelisk in the world. And then Kim Jong Il comes in.

[Russell Brand]

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[Michael Malice]

They're like, oh, my God, no one's ever thought of this.

[Jordan Peterson]

Right, Right.

[Michael Malice]

But that for their propaganda to be true, that is what would have to be the backstory. Another example that they have is there was an amusement park fun fair that they built in North Korea, and Kim Jong Il, the Dear Leader, wanted to make sure this is like a South park episode, that it was safe for everyone. So he gets on all the rides, and everyone's like, can we ride it with you? No, no, no, no, no. I have to make sure that the elderly and children aren't harmed. And he did all the rides by himself. And there was a light drizzle. So, you know, he's very brave. And everyone stood and clapped, and they present this story with a straight face. And you read this and you realize how humorous it is that this is what's positive truth in this country. Now, my last chapter in the book is where the mask drops and it gets very, very dark very, very quickly. But I think there is also.

[Jordan Peterson]

That's interesting, you know. Did you watch the Death of Stellan?

[Michael Malice]

That's. I mean, he also did Veep, which is probably like, the best comedy of all time.

[Jordan Peterson]

Oh, I haven't seen Veep. He did Veep.

[Michael Malice]

You haven't seen Veep?

[Jordan Peterson]

No, no, no.

[Michael Malice]

Julia Lewis Dreyfus. Julia Louis Dreyfus blocked me because she plays Selina Meyer, who's The titular character, she was going on about Trump or something. I go, you won several Emmys for demonstrating that all politicians are sociopaths. Blocked. That show is a complete masterpiece because as the seasons go on, the mask drops more and more. And the first season, she's this bumbling vice president. Every episode there's a running gag. It's like, did the president call? No. No. Okay. And by the end, it's full blown brazen sociopathy. And she's such a great comedic actress and so charismatic. Like, there's this one scene where her assistant's in the hospital, right? There's just these little touches, and they come in, bring him water. She, of course, takes it. She goes, can someone get Gary some water? Like, this must be a hospital. Like, it never even enters her head that this water would be for the guy in the bed because she comes first. So there's so many moments like this throughout the show. And the death of Stalin, same thing. There's this one great scene where after Stalin dies, spoiler alert. He dies. Death of Stalin. His daughter is talking to Khrushchev, and Khrushchev says to her, I promise nothing bad will happen to you. She's like, why would you say that? He goes, no, no, no, no, no. Calm down. She goes, wait, are people plotting to kill me? He goes, no, no, no, I'll protect you. And she's like, protect me from. But, like, this is the reality that these people lived in.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I've. I was obsessed with the idea of evil clowns for a while because I. I started to figure out what it meant. The evil clowns of classic horror trope. Right? It's.

[Michael Malice]

Right.

[Jordan Peterson]

It's weird. Like, Stephen King wrote this strange book, called it about this clown who is an alien. So a sky God that lived in the sewer, Right. So in the underworld. So it's evil clown in the underworld. And it's an evil clown of cosmic significance who lives. As soon as I figured out the archetypal understructure, I thought, oh, I get this. But it's partly because, like, there's this old idea in. In traditional Christianity that. That Lucifer, that the devil, that Satan can't produce anything original. Everything's a parody, right? Everything's a parody, right? And there is this evil clown element to totalitarian states. It was really captured very well in that death of Stalin.

[Michael Malice]

And in North Korea today.

[Jordan Peterson]

Well, well. And in your book. Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Michael Malice]

You know, it's funny that you say that, because when people ask me about why the book I said this. I'm like, look, I've got a very small microphone. There's only so much I can do about North Korea. What can I do? And I said, what can I can do? Is people will look at that country and they see the joker, right? They see this evil clown. And I go, all I want to do is move the clown a little bit, move the camera a little bit. And you see behind that clown there's a lot of dead bodies.

[Jordan Peterson]

Right?

[Michael Malice]

And all of a sudden you're like, this isn't funny at all. This is horrifying. And that was my goal with that book.

[Jordan Peterson]

Right, yeah. Well, the, the comical element, I think, comes in the preposterousness of the lies. Right, right. Because. And this is also partly why the gender thing bothers me so much. I mean, there's many reasons why it bothers me. The brutal surgery being, you know, not least among them. But I believe that there is no more fundamental perceptual axiom than the capacity to distinguish between male and female. I'm thinking about this. Biologically, creatures could distinguish between the sexes for hundreds of millions of years before there were nervous systems. Right? So it's like this is fundamental and obviously because if you can't distinguish between male and female, at some level, you don't reproduce.

[Michael Malice]

Well, except for the cuttlefish.

[Jordan Peterson]

What do they do? Are they hermaphroditic?

[Michael Malice]

No, no. At least the giant cuttlefish, maybe other species. There's a male that present as female and they wait for the, the alpha bull males to go away and then they rape or at least impregnate the females.

[Jordan Peterson]

Right, well, so they still just pretend.

[Camille Paglia]

Yeah.

[Michael Malice]

They're passing though.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah, yeah. So. So the problem with that, the gender bending foolishness. And I think it's part of this, like, evil clown pathology, if you. Yes, that's for sure. If you can get people to accept the lie that a man can be a woman, all other lies are trivial in comparison. Right. The lie is then paramount. There's, there's a, there's a weird sub narrative. Sorry, I'm obsessed with biblical references because I've been immersing myself in it for quite a while. But there's a biblical idea that's a strange one, that when the abomination of desolation is raised to the highest place, put on the altar, it's time to head for the hills. And that's what it is. It's a statement that when the thing. That when the order is perverted 100%. Right. When the worst Possible thing is elevated to the highest possible position. Things have deteriorated to such a point that you better take appropriate steps.

[Michael Malice]

But we got a ways to go.

[Jordan Peterson]

Well, hopefully.

[Michael Malice]

Yeah. I don't think we're there yet. I think these. I mean, going on with Rotterdam, those stories.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah.

[Michael Malice]

You talk about trying to understand evil. I mean, these things where I don't even get into the details. People could Google it, and it's just like, it makes no sense. You try to. Whenever. I'm gonna get a little bit graphic here, whenever I hear these stories of, like, some CNN producer getting arrested for having imagery of children.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah.

[Michael Malice]

I always hope I read the article just to get details. Like, I hope it's like they're watching teenage girls and there's some kind of conversation we could have about how high schoolers are overly sexualized. Then you read it, and it's like infants and children being tied to chairs. And there's message boards. So it's not just one guy. Like, he's got a community. And you see this and you're like, what, you're shrink? I'm not. What is the utility to you? You know, is it just pure?

[Jordan Peterson]

If you feel you really want an answer to that question.

[Michael Malice]

I do, because you were talking about understanding evil. It's like, I can understand evil in the sense of sadism, but a child is weak. Like, what did you want here? It's like beating the crap out of taking candy from a baby is not an accomplishment.

[Jordan Peterson]

No, it's. Oh, boy. You really want to answer?

[Michael Malice]

Yes, I want an answer. Because I'm not the only one. When I talk about this, social media people are like, I can't wrap my head around it. I can understand assault. I can understand murder. I can understand bank robberies. But you read stories like this. I'm like, this is an alien thought process.

[Jordan Peterson]

Okay, so in the story of Cain and Abel, I'm bringing it up because.

[Michael Malice]

Sure.

[Jordan Peterson]

It's the first biblical story about real people.

[Michael Malice]

Right. Okay.

[Jordan Peterson]

Right. And it's a murderer and his target.

[Michael Malice]

Yeah.

[Jordan Peterson]

So that's. That's not fun.

[Michael Malice]

Right.

[Jordan Peterson]

The first thing that happens in the profane world. Right. Okay. So Cain, he's working away, hypothetically, and he's not getting anywhere. Okay. And there's two reasons for that. Possibly. One is that he's doing something wrong. And the other is the cosmos is constituted improperly.

[Michael Malice]

Sure, That's.

[Jordan Peterson]

And he decides that the cosmos is constituted improperly. So he's doing what he can, and everyone should know it, and he's working himself to death. And it ain't working. And so something's broken. Whereas his brother, like the sun shines wherever he goes. Everyone loves him. So it's Cain's failing. Trying hard, failing, making sacrifices, failing Abel, no effort at all, is just sailing through life. That's Cain's position. So Cain decides he's going to go and have it out with God because it's not his fault, obviously.

[Michael Malice]

Right?

[Jordan Peterson]

And so he says to God that Abel, everything's going well for him. And here I am, suffering away, nothing's working for me, and. And I'm bitter and miserable and resentful and no wonder. And God says, well, you got a couple of things wrong with your theory there, buddy. The first theory is that that's wrong is that your failure is not what's making you miserable. And God says there's an intermediary figure playing a role here that you don't understand. He says sin crouches at your door like a sexually aroused predatory animal, and you invited it in to have its way with you. So you engaged in a creative dialogue with the figure of evil because you felt you were justified, because you're resentful, because you're fading. Now, while you were failing, you could have learned. Sure.

[Michael Malice]

Sure.

[Jordan Peterson]

Could have decided it was your problem. But no, it's God's fault. And so God tells Cain, I don't think it's my fault. I think it's your fault. If you did well, you would be accepted.

[Michael Malice]

Yeah.

[Jordan Peterson]

All right. So Cain listens, but he doesn't hear, and he goes away. And then he invites his brother to go do something with him, like in good faith. And then he kills him with the rock. Why? To get revenge against God. To get. That's the motive. Right. Because Cain is existentially wounded because his sacrifices are being rejected. So he takes God's ideal and he sullies it.

[Michael Malice]

Right.

[Jordan Peterson]

That's what they're doing with kids. You take the most innocent possible creature and you do the worst possible thing to them. Yeah, that's what it is.

[Michael Malice]

Oh, God.

[Jordan Peterson]

Oh, God is right.

[Michael Malice]

You know, I was thinking about in terms of a pornographic aspect, but it's actually literally demonic.

[Jordan Peterson]

It's like core demonic. Yeah, well, that's why, you know, that's.

[Michael Malice]

Why it's so alien.

[Jordan Peterson]

Christ says in the Gospels that. Oh, God, you know, that the people who sully children, he says something like, it would be better for them if they, you know, if a heavy weight was wrapped around their neck and they were thrown into the ocean. It's the worst sin. That's why they're doing it. That's why they're doing it. It's the. It's the. It's the ultimate middle finger to the. To reality and being. It's like, you with me, I'm gonna with you. Right. And so. And then there's that perverse delight that's. There's a novelty edge to that too. So you get sexual gratification for a multitude of reasons. One reason is just sort of reflexive, like sexual activity in itself is pleasurable, but you can put a novelty spin on that. And that's partly what motivates diverse creatures to seek out multiple sexual partners. And you can game that in all sorts of ways. When people start watching pornography, they start with the sorts of things that you describes, like attractive women, of attractive nude pictures of, you know, of. Of live women. But then after 10,000 of those, it's like, well, maybe a little variation. And then you can chase. That's that inviting that spirit in. You can chase that edge. Right. Serial killers do that. They chase that edge right to the logical conclusion. The logical conclusion is a long, long, long way down. And people don't want to understand this. It's worse even than this, Michael. It's worse than this because, see, one of the things God tells Cain is that he invited this spirit in to have its way with him. It's very specific wording. There's like a myth. There's a whole sequence of mythological stories around it. For someone to do something like shoot up an elementary school. They fantasized about it for like 5,000 hours. Like, there's a devil in them, so to speak. You might as well call it that because for all intents and purposes, that's what it is. They've a lot. They've invited it in and it's taken possession of them. And it's fantasizing in that spirit. What's the worst thing I could do?

[Michael Malice]

But that's not the worst. That, to me, it's a lot easier to wrap my head around. I hate everyone, this school. I'm going to put them in their place. I'm going to show them what's going on.

[Jordan Peterson]

But this is an adult killing children. I was specifically referring to Sandy Hook in that case. Yeah, yeah. I would say in terms of level of sin, you know, I'm annoyed at my classmates.

[Michael Malice]

Right, right. Yeah.

[Jordan Peterson]

That's more comprehensible.

[Michael Malice]

Easily.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Although, you know, there's a. There's a darkness in that. Well, we don't even have to say that that's extraordinarily deep. No, no, the. The desolation of the. The innocent. That's. That's the thrill in and of itself. Like, it's the. It's the. And then there's more to it. It's like. Because this is why it's Luciferian. So Lucifer is the usurper, technically speaking. Right. So he's often the intellect, by the way, that wants to put itself in the highest place. Well, there's nothing more that makes you the commanding officer of the cosmos than to take the most profound moral rule imaginable and to invert it. Right? That's how much you can get away with. And these like. I know what people like this are like. They also think I'm so smart no one will ever catch me. And I can toy with people, too, because I can hint at this because they're so stupid, they won't even notice. That's often why they get caught. That's what happens to Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment. Right? And the prosecutor does a brilliant job of toying with him.

[Michael Malice]

Why? This is something else I've been wondering about. Why do you think it's so. I'm scared to ask because you answered that last question in a way that I'm not comfortable with in this system.

[Jordan Peterson]

Oh, no, no, no.

[Michael Malice]

Why do you.

[Jordan Peterson]

People don't want to know anything about this.

[Michael Malice]

Why do you think there is such a movement, in your opinion? God, I'm scared to ask this, to downplay this in the media. I had this tweet, I said if we cared half as much about childhood assaults as we do about global warming, we. I mean, the media in the uk. In the media. In the media, yeah. No, just anywhere in America.

[Jordan Peterson]

Well, let's take the hold.

[Michael Malice]

Let me finish my thought. Just like if we. If the media cared a tenth as much about childhood assaults and certain kinds of assaults as they do about global warming, things would be a lot better. And this is something that you could fix right now. It's not some hypothetical the environment 100 years. And it's. This is crazy moral panic, mass hysteria. Why is that happening?

[Jordan Peterson]

Well, part of the reason in the UK is that.

[Michael Malice]

Well, the UK is. Is a racial thing. Partly.

[Jordan Peterson]

Well, it. Yeah, but, but. But they're covering it up, right? Yeah, but. Well, no, yeah, yeah. There's the racial thing and there's fear associated with that. And people are afraid that they're going to be targeted by the woke mob. If they stand up, they're going to be called Nazis and neo Nazis.

[Michael Malice]

They are, they're not wrong.

[Jordan Peterson]

That's all right. That's, that's one element of it. The other element is the elite. Look, you want to elevate your social status. Now, if you're a good person, you do that by being useful.

[Michael Malice]

Okay?

[Jordan Peterson]

Okay. But you can game the system. Narcissists and psychopaths game the reputational system. That's their niche.

[Michael Malice]

Sure.

[Jordan Peterson]

And they do that successfully. Often, often access successfully enough to be attractive, you know, especially if they're men. Because naive young women are attracted to psychopaths because they game the system so effectively. Okay, but that proclivity to game the reputational system is a very deep temptation. One of the commandments, I think it's the third, but it might be the fourth, is to not use God's name in vain. And people think that. Don't swear. I don't know, maybe I can never remember the order. It doesn't mean that. It means do not claim divine inspiration for pursuing your own agenda. It's like the worst thing you can do. I'm doing something low and terrible.

[Michael Malice]

Yeah, yeah.

[Jordan Peterson]

For the best possible reasons. That's the Stalinist situation.

[Michael Malice]

Right, Right.

[Jordan Peterson]

I'm exercising all my sadistic desires, like barrier. And I'm doing this for the benefit of the poor.

[Michael Malice]

Right.

[Jordan Peterson]

Okay. So you don't ever want to underestimate that attractiveness of moral posturing, especially if someone else is paying for it. Sure. So in the uk, it's like, I'm tolerant, I'm cosmopolitan, I'm open to diversity. We can welcome immigrants of all stripes in. And if the cost for me displaying my cosmopolitan sophistication is that 10,000 working class women get raped, girls. Well, no skin off my nose. And so that's the other part of it. I mean, they're afraid. They're afraid of being called Nazis. They are afraid of being prejudiced, you know, because it's easy once there's a pool of bad actors in a given identifiable group to tar the whole group.

[Michael Malice]

Right.

[Jordan Peterson]

And when you should do that, when you shouldn't, is not a simple question. There's lots of complex reasons, but one of them is there's no limit to the degree that people will elevate their own moral status falsely, especially if someone else pays the price.

[Michael Malice]

I, I hear you. And that explains the uk, but this is the case in the US as well.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah.

[Michael Malice]

They pretend this isn't a thing or that it's not a big deal. Where it's some kind of right wing issue. I don't.

[Jordan Peterson]

Well, Part of it, too, Michael, I think, is just that people don't like. You didn't like my explanation for the child. Right, Right. But you're not a naive person.

[Michael Malice]

Right.

[Jordan Peterson]

Okay. So Michael Shellenberger, when he broke the W path files, I interviewed him at. And I asked him. Well, we talked about it. And he said that he first got wind of this butchery because I did an interview with Abigail Shrier. Shire. Shire.

[Michael Malice]

She's great.

[Jordan Peterson]

She is great. And very, very brave. And I did that just as I was recovering. And it just made me so nervous, like I was barely functioning. And it was such a terrible interview to do. It was really early in the. In the trans butchery cycle. And I knew we'd get pilloried for it. I thought it might sink me. And I thought, you know, we're going ahead with this. And she laid out as, you know, the absolute travesty of this entire catastrophe. Now, Schellenberger watched that and he said he couldn't believe it. He couldn't believe it. It wasn't till two years later that he started, you know, it was in his mind. But I think that's so telling because Schellenberger is not naive. Now he tilted towards the left, and so he's. He's going to have the kind of temperament that's inclined to think the best of people.

[Michael Malice]

Right.

[Jordan Peterson]

Which is a great inclination. Except when. Not when you're dealing with psychopaths. Right, Right. In which case it's exactly the wrong attitude. Right. And the problem with the left often is they have no imagination for evil. And some of that's naivety. And some of it's like willful blindness. It's like, you don't want to know. You know, you don't want to know. You don't want to know what sort of snakes are in people's minds. Guys studied sociological evil and psychological evil for 40 years, right. Trying to get to the bottom of it. I had some pretty bad actors in my clinical practice and saw some things all the way to the. I wouldn't say all the way to the bottom. Hell's a bottomless pit for a reason.

[Michael Malice]

Sure.

[Jordan Peterson]

Right. Lies get so deep that you literally can't get to the bottom of them. You. You scrape something away and you think, finally it's like, no, just another layer of lies. Well, you know that from studying totalitarianism. But so part of it is not only that.

[Michael Malice]

It's like you read these stories about like some. Someone who's with the underage kid and you think that's the basement. And then you hear about England and it's like, oh, this person's a saint.

[Jordan Peterson]

Oh, yeah.

[Michael Malice]

It's just like, holy crap, I thought this was the bottom. And there's a trapdoor and there's. There's another cellar.

[Jordan Peterson]

Well, that's what Dante was trying to.

[Michael Malice]

Yeah, right. Yeah, yeah.

[Jordan Peterson]

You know, and one of the things I've learned, too, this is also something that's awful. So imagine that you say you're married, right? And you hit a sequence of conflicts with your wife and they repeat. Okay. So there's a hole there in your relationship. And so usually people just walk around those and they try to like, not delve into it. Partly because when you start delving into it, the person's going to accuse you.

[Michael Malice]

Sure, sure.

[Jordan Peterson]

And get angry and then they're going to cry. And that'll stop 90% of people. But if you go past the anger and you go past the tears and you delve in, you go down Dante's hell, and at the bottom you find betrayal, and then there's trauma there, and then the person has to like really cry and really reconfigure and admit to God, sometimes it didn't even happen to them. Sometimes they're carrying the burden of something that happened to, like, their mother.

[Michael Malice]

Yeah, yeah.

[Jordan Peterson]

You know, and you have to go all the way to the bottom to exercise that. And if you do that, it changes your view of human nature. It's like, like you said, you know, you get these, oh, I don't know, some guy is attracted to 16 year old girls, you know, and you think, well, low within the realm of human comprehension. Low. Right. And then you think, you're just like, you're in the first circle there, buddy. You're not even approaching the bottom.

[Michael Malice]

It's funny, I'm so well versed in political evil that this kind of depravity. Because political evil is easy to understand in that amoral people who seek power at any cost.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah, right.

[Michael Malice]

Okay.

[Jordan Peterson]

Because they're after power.

[Michael Malice]

Yeah. You get it? Oh, yeah, I know.

[Jordan Peterson]

Their motivation is a criminal. You want my Lamborghini? I want my Lamborghini. It's just a matter of difference of approach.

[Michael Malice]

Okay, I get it. Fine. Understood.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah, yeah.

[Michael Malice]

So when I hear these stories, I feel completely naive because until you just.

[Jordan Peterson]

I learned what iniquity meant the other day.

[Michael Malice]

What does that mean?

[Jordan Peterson]

Aiming down.

[Michael Malice]

What?

[Jordan Peterson]

So imagine that, you know, you make a moral error.

[Michael Malice]

Sure.

[Jordan Peterson]

Like that would be like stealing a car, right? Well, you want the car, you want to go places it's like, fair enough. You made this error of stealing it. It's like, no, you, you steal the car and then you, you burn it. That's the Joker in Batman, right? It's like, I didn't want that money, I just wanted to steal it. And now I'm going to burn it. And he's the guy that terrifies all the criminals. It's like, because the criminals, it's not iniquity for the typical criminal. It's just a matter of strategy, right?

[Michael Malice]

Yeah, yeah.

[Jordan Peterson]

They buy the whole capitalist thing. They want the house in the yard. Maybe they even want education for their kids, right? So 90% of them, they're like you, they're aiming up at crooked way. And I'm not trying to rationalize, it's like they're not aiming at. Whilst part of them is, but there are people who are aiming at down. So there's a book, Panzram. You ever read Panzram? No. Oh my God. So the book starts out, it's this guy who's in prison.

[Michael Malice]

It's a novel or a real book?

[Jordan Peterson]

It's an autobiography.

[Michael Malice]

Autobiography, okay.

[Jordan Peterson]

And he's sitting in the corner, he's all beat to hell. He's very tough looking guy. And a prison psychiatrist goes and gives him a cigarette. And Panzram, the guy who wrote the autobiography, said that's the only nice thing anybody ever did for him in his whole life. Now whether or not that's true, that's not the point, but it's close enough to true. And so the psychiatrist starts to interview this Panzram character who's like, he, I think he raped 240 men. He killed like 50. His dying words to the hangman were, hurry up, you. Who's your bastard? I could kill 12 men in the time it's taking you to knock that rope. Right? And he meant it.

[Michael Malice]

Okay?

[Jordan Peterson]

And Panzram was brutalized when he was a child, like just beyond belief. And he decided that he was going to aim down for his whole life. And so he almost started a war between Great Britain and the United States. He wanted to burn everything to the ground. Everything. And that's his autobiography. He even told us the psychiatrist asked him to write his autobiography. It's called Panzram. And so that's what he did. He told the psychiatrist never to turn his back on him because he thought, even though he liked the psychiatrist insofar as Panzeram could like anyone, he thought, give me an opportunity, buddy.

[Michael Malice]

Yeah, okay.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah, yeah. Well that's like, well, that is Different. There's some overlap with political psychopathology, with people like Barry and Stalin as well, you know. God only knows what those people are up to, especially someone like Barrier.

[Michael Malice]

I have a death warrant. I think I told you this last time we talked. I have a death warrant signed by him in my kitchen, framed. And the paper is just real shit. And it's like it's not even worth a nice piece of paper. That's how little someone's life was worth then and there.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah, right, right. Yeah, exactly. Well, it's funny, those little details matter.

[Michael Malice]

They didn't worry about the good printer.

[Jordan Peterson]

Jordan, I read Theodore Del Rimpel's account of going to North Korea, which is brilliant. He's such a brilliant essayist. And he went into the big department store there where everyone's an actor and all the artifacts aren't real, and he bought a pen. He was like the only person who actually bought something in the store because no one buys anything. And he. He detailed out the ways the pen didn't work. Like, you just have no idea how many ways a pen cannot work. The little pocket clip can, oh, you know, come off the ball. Doesn't work. The ink is watery and runs. Like, for a pen to work, 100 things have to be not lies. In that. That kind of totalitarian state, absolutely everything is a lie.

[Michael Malice]

But I'm going to correct you a little bit. The pen did work as a status symbol.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yes.

[Michael Malice]

Because if you have this nice pen in your pocket, that's what it works.

[Jordan Peterson]

Right, Right, right. Sure, sure.

[Michael Malice]

Yeah.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah. So the bottom of things. Yeah, well, it's a very. It's a very long way down. And that is part of the problem with the marginal. So, you know, we were talking about the center in the margin. It's like Jonathan Pageau explained this to me. I didn't know this. So in sacred architecture, the architecture of cathedrals, there was often monsters on the periphery. Right. Like the gargoyles. Sure. And the monsters are. Because as you move farther and farther away from the center, you get into the world of monstrous forms. Now, by the definition of the center, granted. But this is the case for every conceptual scheme or every perception ideal at the center, like circles of approximation, right. Drifting out into the marginal and then the monstrous. And this is the problem with the. Part of. The problem with the postmodernist ethos. It's like, center. The marginal.

[Michael Malice]

Yeah.

[Jordan Peterson]

Oh, yeah. How about the monstrous? Well, they. They're just victims. It's like, wait till there's one under your bed.

[Michael Malice]

Right, right, right. Because they're marginal. They're marginal for a reason. Oh, yeah, hopefully. Hopefully.

[Jordan Peterson]

Hopefully. Yeah, hopefully. You know, for Fruco, all the people who were in prison were victims. It's like all of them.

[Michael Malice]

Right, right.

[Jordan Peterson]

Really, this. You saw this and what brought down the Scottish government, the Scottish Prime Minister.

[Michael Malice]

Remember she put pissed in the window, Nicola Sturgeon? Yeah, yeah.

[Jordan Peterson]

It's like, oh, they're men, they're. They're women.

[Michael Malice]

No, she didn't know what to say. She was asked that. She was stammering.

[Jordan Peterson]

Right, well, that's right, that's right. But. But that was bad enough. It's like, oh, I see. So every man who says so is a woman.

[Michael Malice]

The thing that I think that you obviously know, that I think a lot of people haven't codified, is that a big portion of leftist thought is based on the idea that human beings never respond to incentives. And those who do, it's in such small numbers that it doesn't really matter. And we could talk about in sports where, like, if someone's a wrestler, they have to make weight, right? So if you kind of lose 15 pounds of fluid and you're 160 on the day of the weigh in, you can actually be someone who's 180 pounds. And you know you're going to fight someone who's much smaller than you. And I'm sure I haven't looked this up and that There was one guy who's like, wait a minute, I can game the system, I'm 180. But if I'm 160 on that day, if I just have diarrhea and just dehydrate myself, I'm going to have a huge advantage. And now everyone has to do it. But that's the same thing. If you have this, you're telling me that one person is going to say, okay, wait, if I just say I'm female, I can just run the table in a given sport, even as a joke, why wouldn't that guy do it?

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah, yeah.

[Michael Malice]

Well, why wouldn't he? There's never an answer.

[Jordan Peterson]

The comedian that was wrestling women, Kaufman.

[Michael Malice]

My idol, he knew that was coming.

[Jordan Peterson]

Eh? He knew that there was part of him, his evil little soul that knew that was coming.

[Michael Malice]

Oh, he wasn't evil at all.

[Jordan Peterson]

Well, and no, not at all. No, no.

[Michael Malice]

This is very interesting, prophetic. This wants to. This is. I want to segue into what I really want to pick your brain about something that I relate to a lot. And you're probably going to go on for five hours And I'll love every minute. The Trickster Archetype. Why is the Trickster Archetype so important? And what are your thoughts about it? Positive, Negative?

[Jordan Peterson]

Well, the trickster is both. You're a trickster today.

[Michael Malice]

Yes, very much so. Yeah.

[Jordan Peterson]

Exactly. Exactly. And you have that about you? Yes, well, Jung said the trickster is the precursor to the savior.

[Michael Malice]

Oh, okay.

[Jordan Peterson]

Right, right, right. So that's. Well, that's because he said that.

[Michael Malice]

Really?

[Jordan Peterson]

You bet. He's a marginal character, but the trickster is a psychopomp. Okay, so you want to answer this?

[Michael Malice]

Yes, I do.

[Jordan Peterson]

Okay, so we'll go right from first principles. So, here's how the world works. You set a name. Okay? That means you elevate something.

[Michael Malice]

Yeah.

[Jordan Peterson]

You prioritize it, you celebrate it, you worship it. Those are all the same thing. You set it as a name. Okay? Now, your perceptual systems are navigation tools. Okay? So you set the aim. You see a pathway. This is actually how the world appears to you. You see pathways, tools, they move you forward. Obstacles, they get in your way.

[Michael Malice]

Yeah.

[Jordan Peterson]

Friends, they're tools in the social world. Foes. Okay, that's the. That's the. That's the dramatic landscape. One more. Agents of magical transformation, like wizards. What do they do? They reset the aim. A trickster is an agent of magical transformation. Now, is he good or bad? You don't know, because the tricksters. So imagine you're playing Game A, right? But there's someone who's playing Game D, and they come to visit. Okay? Now, they're a trickster because they. They're not playing by the same rules. They're not in the same world. And when you interact with them, it's magical because they're emblematic of another way of being. Well, that could be a descent into the abyss, or it could be an ascent to a higher game. You don't know. And the thing is, is that in all likelihood, you're going to be afraid. So when Gandalf, for example. When Gandalf comes to visit, the Hobbits, they're kind of in awe of him, but they're also afraid and distrustful. And even Bilbo is the same. Like, he. He knows there's something to this guy, but. And the Strider too. Aragorn has kind of plays the same role. He's ambivalent. Well, why? Because he's a game changer. Well, your game could fall apart. In which case the Trickster is like. He's opened the portal to hell. But your game could be elevated in which case, he's a harbinger, he's a psychopomp, he's someone lives on the edge. He's a messenger of the gods. Right. And so tricksters. Tricksters introduce the possibility of a new game. You know, and even comedians do that. Oh, yes, all the time. Because what they're doing, a joke, is often here we are in this world and then, no, it's actually this world and everybody laughs, you know, and that's the punchline. And so the comedian is a trickster and he's a world shifter. And so the tricksters in it now, the trickster and the fool are similar archetypal creatures. And the fool is also the precursor to the savior. Because when you play a new game, you're a fool to beginner. Right? You're a beginner.

[Michael Malice]

Yeah.

[Jordan Peterson]

So you have to accept the fool. You have to accept the trickster and the fool to play a new game. Right, right. And so certainly comedians play that role all the time. And that's partly what. What do they do exactly? They're jokes. Well, a joke is. A joke is something like an introduction to a new. It's an introduction to a new way of perceiving. So, you know, it's a micro. It's a micro transformation. So I don't know. I think part of the way that you distinguish the positive tricksters from the negative tricksters is the positive tricksters use play and humor and invitation. Right. So it's a game. It's. You want to play a new game. That's the invitation. That's the right. But that's definitely the right basis for policy.

[Michael Malice]

What about that kind of trickster?

[Jordan Peterson]

Make your question more specific.

[Michael Malice]

Well, you just said the good kind of trickster uses games. You know, do you want to play a game? What's. What would be the inverse?

[Jordan Peterson]

Well, as you said, that could be manipulated.

[Michael Malice]

Sure.

[Jordan Peterson]

You get campaigns of false joy. Well, the Soviets did that all the time. But they were so enthusiastic for Stalin.

[Michael Malice]

Right. You wouldn't call them tricksters, though. There's none of that there, I would feel, I would argue.

[Jordan Peterson]

Well, there's the trickster component that we talked about with regards to the black comedy.

[Michael Malice]

Yeah. Oh, that's right. That was the only safety valve that they had. Or these dark humor.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah, well, in the. And the.

[Michael Malice]

And Stalin would engage in it as well.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah.

[Michael Malice]

Like he used dark humor.

[Jordan Peterson]

Well, Stalin, Solzhenitsyn did a pretty good job of detailing out Stalin's attitude towards everyone around him. He thought. He thought everyone around him was contemptible and Lied all the time and couldn't be trusted.

[Michael Malice]

Right? Yeah.

[Jordan Peterson]

100, right?

[Michael Malice]

Yeah, yeah.

[Jordan Peterson]

Right. And so you can see this spiral he was in. It's like, right, you start to betray, people get afraid, they become contemptible. You're more likely to betray them and they lie. And it just goes, you know, it just. It just spirals completely out of control. I mean, you can think of Stalin as a rational actor in some ways. It's like, what would you be like if every single person around you did nothing but suck up and lie to you 100% of the time?

[Michael Malice]

What's interesting about this, this is a very divergent example of this. Roseanne had to do something like this when Roseanne had her. I talked to her about this. Roseanne Barr, when she had her show, she had a whole crew of writers and she had them by number. And she saw that the people would laugh at their own jokes because they were trying to sell them. So this was kind of. It was hard for her to figure out, okay, is what I'm. Or she would intentionally say things that aren't that funny to see if people like, aha. She's like, okay, you're not laughing because what I'm saying is that funny. You're laughing because you want to appease me. And when you get at that level, it's almost inevitable that. And some people be really good at it because they have a proximity to power, they're going to want to pass. So it gets harder and harder.

[Jordan Peterson]

Absolutely. Absolutely. That's definitely the danger of. I mean, danger of celebrity. I mean, my impulse throughout my life was to, especially in professional settings, to, like, at the university, to take people at their face value and. Well, that worked quite well. But partly the reason it worked is because I was in very rarefied environments.

[Michael Malice]

Oh, yeah, right.

[Jordan Peterson]

I was at McGill when McGill was functional. Then I was at Harvard when Harvard was functional and the University of Toronto. And so the typical person who came my way was playing, you know, mostly a straight game. Well, as I became more known, let's say, the percentage of bad actors who present themselves increases.

[Michael Malice]

Oh, yeah.

[Jordan Peterson]

And so you. You become more skeptical that way too. And so there's more. So. And you could imagine. Well, that's one of, obviously, the dangers of power. What? Why? Why is power dangerous? No one gives you any feedback.

[Michael Malice]

You know, that's funny. Whenever I meet, and I'm obviously not your level, but whenever I meet someone at an event, I always throw in a marginally inappropriate comment is the first thing, because they're not going to have the skill set to mask their reaction. So if they laugh or they find it funny, that's good. If they roll their eyes, that's sincere. But if they kind of give me attitude, I'm like, okay, this is going to be someone I'm going to have difficulty engaging with because if they can't handle me at A, at A1, they're not going to be able to handle me at a 10.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah, yeah. Well, people, I think that's, that's not an atypical game for people who are sort of comedically oriented and playful. It's like when little kids come to a playground, they start interacting with each other in a immature way. Like if they're four, they'll sort of start off at two year old level and then they ratchet up and see if the other child can play the same game. Now, you know, four year olds can play with two year olds, but for a play partner they want someone who's going to push them.

[Michael Malice]

Sure.

[Jordan Peterson]

So they do this. They ratchet up to see if they're at the same level with regards to the game. Yeah. This is, you know, one of the things that you might think about with regards to small talk. That's what people. That's partly what people are doing. Right. So when they meet socially to begin.

[Michael Malice]

With, suss each other out. Yeah, yeah.

[Jordan Peterson]

They want to offer their little offerings to get the exchange going. Now part of what you're likely objecting to is that people who aren't high in openness won't take the conversation down. Right. Or they won't make it deep. They just won't go there.

[Michael Malice]

Or they can't.

[Jordan Peterson]

Or they can't. Yeah, right, right, right. They're, they're not interested or they can't. Right. And, and that's very frustrating if you're an open person because that's all you want to do.

[Michael Malice]

Yeah. I always say there's, I use this example all the time. There's two kinds of people. Maybe it's more than two. Whatever. If you're at a party and you meet someone who's like a guinea pig breeder, there's either, well, that's weird. Okay, Psycho. Or sit down and tell me everything.

[Jordan Peterson]

Right.

[Michael Malice]

And I'm. My people. People I like. And me, I'm definitely number two. Whatever it is, if you have a passion or some technical knowledge and this means a lot to you, tell me. That's why I.

[Jordan Peterson]

Clinical psychology.

[Michael Malice]

Oh yeah.

[Jordan Peterson]

People. If you get people actually telling you what they're like.

[Michael Malice]

Right. Yeah.

[Jordan Peterson]

They're Unbearably interesting.

[Michael Malice]

Yeah.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah, that's true. Even for simple people, because there are no simple people. The. The ones who are less intellectual are less articulate, and it's harder to get their stories out of them. But.

[Michael Malice]

Well, it's the 115s who are the problem, aren't they? Meaning the marginally intelligent who think that they're brilliant and fascinating.

[Jordan Peterson]

Well, then their ideas tend to be dull, but that doesn't mean they are.

[Michael Malice]

Okay.

[Jordan Peterson]

Right. You got to get them off their eye, like. Yeah. There's nothing worse than a dull ideologue. Right. It's like, I've heard it all before. But if you get. If you get people talking about what they know, and they're often very hesitant to do that because they don't want to, no one's ever listened to them.

[Michael Malice]

Sure.

[Jordan Peterson]

And they're afraid, like the guinea pig breeder, that they'll just be laughed at if they let people know what they're really like. But people are unbelievably interesting if you can get them talking. All right, we should stop. We should go to the Daily Wire side. We should talk about the current political situation.

[Michael Malice]

Let's do it.

[Jordan Peterson]

Let's do that on the Daily Fireside. Yeah. Okay. Good. Good. So, always a pleasure talking to you and seeing you, and I had no idea what we're going to talk about, and we didn't talk about any of the things, really, that I thought we might talk about. But that's entertaining. Very entertaining. So. And hopefully everybody else found that it was so, too. And write me that paragraph.

[Michael Malice]

I promise. Oh, I will.

[Jordan Peterson]

And I will send an introduction and we'll see. I'd like to go talk to her again, too.

[Michael Malice]

Oh, she's the best.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah. Oh, yeah. It was fun talk. She's a. She's a blast. She's a blast. And she's so smart.

[Michael Malice]

I know, Jordan. I know.

[Jordan Peterson]

Sparks everywhere.

[Michael Malice]

I know. I can't wait.

[Jordan Peterson]

Have you talked to Russell Brand?

[Michael Malice]

I have not.

[Jordan Peterson]

Russell Brand is fun.

[Michael Malice]

Okay?

[Jordan Peterson]

He's fun that. In that way he's got that. He's always leaping from place to place.

[Michael Malice]

Russell wasn't the guy for me when I was six years old.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah, no, no, I get it.

[Michael Malice]

It's like that first band you fall in love with, maybe 20 years later, you listen to them. You're like, they're not that good. But, man, when you were 16, no one's going to tell you any different.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah, well, the thing about Pelia is she is that good, right?

[Michael Malice]

I know. I know. I know.

[Jordan Peterson]

That's good. That's good. All right, sir.

[Michael Malice]

Great pleasure to see you, man.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah. Yeah. And thank you, everybody, for watching and listening and to the film crew here today in Scottsdale for setting up this crazy site. And join us on the Daily Wire side, because I didn't talk to Michael at all about the strange political situation that we happen to be in now. And I want to get his feelings about, well, about Musk and about the strange group of people who've aggregated themselves around Trump and about what he thinks is going to happen in the next year and what he hopes is going to happen. And so join us on the Daily Wire side for that.