← Tom Bilyeu's Impact Theory
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- [00:00]
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Tom Bilyeu
Welcome back to Impact Theory. I'm Tom Bilyeu and this is part two of my powerful discussion with the clinical psychologist, bestselling author and freedom speech fighter, Jordan Peterson. Get ready to be challenged and inspired. Let's jump right back in. You are, you have an extraordinary ability to translate what people are feeling into the actions they need to take to get out of is not a mistake that you are a victim. Very practiced clinical psychologist that is able to scale what you were doing one on one now to the many. It's extraordinary and I think it's really had an impact on society. My fantasy, I love being a clinician.
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Jordan Peterson
It was a great job, you know, I really loved it. There was nothing better than intense conversations about how to make things better when both partners in the conversation are fully committed to that. It's such fun to produce incremental improvement, sometimes more than incremental, you know, collaboratively. There's nothing better than that. I love doing my lecture tour because it was that on a large scale. I talked to Dave Rubin about that this week because of course he was long on the tour and it was such, it was so perfect to be talking to people about making things better and to have everyone at least in that moment, fully on board with the idea. You couldn't, you couldn't ask for anything better than that was great. And to have the support I've had from people, it just stuns me, you know, I think it's actually traumatic to have that much support.
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Tom Bilyeu
That's interesting. Why traumatic?
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Jordan Peterson
It's not easy to know what to do with, you know, the cheers of a Million people. It's overwhelming, it's dangerous.
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Tom Bilyeu
Dangerous because it can seep into your
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Jordan Peterson
identity or this is probably not directly relevant, but I don't know. You know, I've thought a lot about Hitler, you know, was it his arrogance or his humility that led him to be the savior, so called of Germany? He had millions of people cheering for him. How could you not think you were right? How could you possibly think you weren't right? And so there's danger in that. You know, I don't think I've. I don't think I've unfairly benefited from it. I'm not a hedonistic person. My lifestyle hasn't changed, but still it's. It's just difficult to see. I also think these are things I don't know what to think about, you know, that I'm talking about. If you're a movie star, people are your fans, you know, for your roles. But I'm not playing a role or if I am, it's me. I'm no different on in this conversation than I am. Whenever I'm doing anything, you know, I think, well, what is it? Well, I'm talking about all these great clinical ideas. It's the power of the ideas, it's the power of the communications technology brought together. And that's probably sufficient explanation, but it's still strange. And maybe I was pretty old when this happened to me and maybe that makes it more difficult to adapt to. But you know, my videos have been viewed something like, if you count them all up approximately with the ones that people have cut, it's like 600 million times. It's some insane number.
- [04:52]
Tom Bilyeu
It's incredible. It's incredible, man. It speaks to the impact. So not that anybody would have a hard time finding you, but if people want to track you in the book and the progress and you getting more involved now, again, where should they do it?
- [05:08]
Jordan Peterson
Well, you can go to jordanbpeterson.com and everything's laid out there. I have a list of recommended books that's quite fun. There's about 100 books there. If you read all those books, well, you'd be educated. Not in everything, but you know, you'd have an education. So there you go. There's an education for anyone who wants it. There are a hundred great books. That doesn't mean you know everything about everything or even something about everything. But what you do know would be useful and you would know it. And lots of people are reading those books. I can tell because I run it through Amazon as a third Party vendor. So I get some sense of how many book affiliate. Yeah.
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Jordan Peterson (continued, more detailed explanations)
Get some sense of how many books
- [05:52]
Jordan Peterson
are being published a month and it. Or bought a month. It's a lot, so that's fun. The exercises that my partners and I have developed, self authoring and the personality test understand myself are. Are you can find them there. And self authoring helps people write out an identity, past, present and future. And that seems to be really useful for people because it's better to have a plan. You know, what's the idea? If you don't have your own plan, then you're the tool of someone else's plan. So that's probably not good, especially if you don't know what their plan is.
- [06:32]
Interviewer/Host (possibly Kevin or another Impact Theory host)
You have to explain what's happening now with LLMs and how they're finding the
- [06:35]
Tom Bilyeu
patterns in the language.
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Interviewer/Host (possibly Kevin or another Impact Theory host)
Because that, that really made me look at the biblical corpus in a new way.
- [06:42]
Jordan Peterson (continued, more detailed explanations)
Absolutely. Well, I think that we'll be able to use l. Large language models where I'm, I've tongue and cheek established a new scientific discipline with a former student of mine, Victor Swift, who now works with me and works on large language models which we've been playing with a lot. Computational epistemology. So he's found a set of 10 words that functionally replace the notion of God in the English language corpus.
- [07:07]
Interviewer/Host (possibly Kevin or another Impact Theory host)
What are the 10 words?
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Jordan Peterson (continued, more detailed explanations)
I don't know all 10 of them to tell you the truth, but you know, you can imagine. So imagine God is the shared variance of words such as good, truth, true, beautiful, just merciful.
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Interviewer/Host (possibly Kevin or another Impact Theory host)
Interesting.
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Jordan Peterson (continued, more detailed explanations)
Right, Right. So then imagine that God dies. That center word disappears.
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Tom Bilyeu
Yeah.
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Jordan Peterson (continued, more detailed explanations)
But the spirits embedded in the cloud of concepts. Well, that the cloud of concepts around a given concept is the archetype. The central. Sorry, the central tendency of a cloud of related concepts is the archetype. Yeah. And we can map it. We can map it now with the large language wants. Yeah. Stunning.
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Interviewer/Host (possibly Kevin or another Impact Theory host)
That's really important for people to understand that. That in cracking at least mimicking human intelligence in a way where we can't distinguish the difference. What you're looking for are these interconnected patterns.
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Jordan Peterson (continued, more detailed explanations)
That's exactly. That's what the models do. That's how they're trained. Right. Is that they're trained on conditional probability essentially towards a goal. So you can tell a word, let's say a non word like nant N A N T nant. That's a. It's a non word, but it's not. It's less of a non word than zxqr. Well, why well, because the statistical relationship between the letters in the word nant are more akin to English words than the statistical relationships letter to letter in the all consonant, other, non cons. All consonant, non word. Okay. While the large language models map the statistical relationship not only between letters, but between words, adjacent words. But then words two words away, words three years words away, two words two. Two words away from two other words. Like the whole map, essentially. Right, right. And so, but they do that statistically, they do that mathematically. So that would really. What that means now is that if these models are programmed, honestly, trained, honestly, a very difficult thing to manage, then we can use statistics to evaluate the structure, the implicit structure of meaning. And that's what literary critics have been doing forever. And you know, Harris, when he argued with me, said, well, you know, you're just, that's just your interpretation, which meant of the biblical texts, for example, which turned him instantly into a postmodernist.
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Jordan Peterson
Right?
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Jordan Peterson (continued, more detailed explanations)
There's an infinite number of interpretations of any text and there's no canonical order between them. That's the postmodernist claim. The lack of meta narrative, let's say, which means there's no union. It means there's no comprehensibility. It means everything, fragments ultimately, which is what they wanted so they could dance in the runes and pursue their own short term gratification, right? With power as their, as their, as their hypothetical guardian and guide. Terrible. Terrible. These interpretations aren't arbitrary. They're not arbitrary. They're coded into the language. That's what makes the language comp. Without that coding, their language would not be comprehensible. Now the postmodernists even knew this to some degree because they knew. So, sir, he was, he wasn't a postmodernist, but he was a precursor. He knew that the meaning of a word was coded in its relationship to other words. Now it's more complex because it's the same for phrases and sentences and paragraphs in the entire structure has that. What would you say that networked, that network nature, right? But none of that's arbitrary. And, and here's why it's not arbitrary. This is so cool.
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Jordan Peterson
It's.
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Jordan Peterson (continued, more detailed explanations)
It's not arbitrary partly because it has to be comprehensible to you and to me and to everyone else. So that's a terrible constraint, right? It's like it has to be a game everyone can play. So that's a really wicked constraint. One of those multi dimensional constraints we were talking about earlier. But there's more to it. I had a vision of this, this. This week about how this. And it's been developing for years, this idea. So imagine there's like a central pillar. I envisioned it as a pillar of fire with sort of God at the base of that. And then there are stacked discs of manifestation. Material, imaginal. No, material, behavioral, imaginal, semantic. Right. So the material world has an implicit structure that's captured in imagination. And so the world of images is going to have the same networked structure as the world of words that the LLMs have modeled. Soon the LLMs will be able to model the world of images, and soon they'll be able to lay them on top of one another. And that's what we do, because our semantic representation system is isomorphic with the underlying imaginal system, and that's isomorphic with the behavioral system, and that's isomorphic with the material system. And so there and then the concordance between those is the truth of the claim. Right. So if it's true, it's true semantically, imaginatively, behaviorally, and it's reflective of the structure of the material world. That's a tight set of constraints. There's nothing arbitrary about that. There's no. The meaning is only in the text. That's the ultimate claim of the disembodied, rational, prideful intellectual. It's all in the words. It's like. No, no, no.
- [12:18]
Interviewer/Host (possibly Kevin or another Impact Theory host)
Yeah, that. That to me is the punchline about what you're calling the counter enlightenment of. All of these patterns are present in the biblical corpus. And that's how, you know it's a reflection, that it's maps.
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Jordan Peterson (continued, more detailed explanations)
Right. It's a reflect. That's exactly right. It's a. It's.
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Jordan Peterson
Well, what the hell else do you
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Jordan Peterson (continued, more detailed explanations)
think we've been doing for 4,000 years than trying to map this? That's what we've been trying to do with every tool at our disposal. Now, and you. But you pointed to a further constraint. The representation has to be made manifest in a form accessible to everyone. Right, right. Well, is that going to be in the form of complex scientific theories? No, that's the domain of specialists, obviously. Obviously, obviously. And besides that, even that specialized knowledge, you can't use that to orient you in the world. There's no reason to assume that your, you know, typical evolutionary biologist is any wiser, you know, than your typical plumber, often far less. At least the plumber is constrained. You know, the world of constraints that a plumber operates in, that's a pretty tangible world. You're wrestling with the essence of material reality. That's for sure.
- [13:31]
Interviewer/Host (possibly Kevin or another Impact Theory host)
We who wrestle with pipes.
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Jordan Peterson (continued, more detailed explanations)
Yes, definitely. Definitely. Well, and plumbers. You know, I would say there's. It's hard to imagine a profession that has contributed more to the world than plumbers. Right. So.
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Tom Bilyeu
All right.
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Interviewer/Host (possibly Kevin or another Impact Theory host)
This. This whole idea I find utterly profound. I worry, though. We're in a super weird moment.
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Tom Bilyeu
You are.
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Interviewer/Host (possibly Kevin or another Impact Theory host)
You're a canary, Nicole. Mine. For me, in terms of freedom of speech and the Overton window, what people are allowed to say, the. The authoritarian game only works if there's nobody there to challenge the ideas. You refuse to go away, but you're proving hard. But they have certainly tried. Most people are very easy to kill in the world of ideas. They can shut down their career and make it impossible for them to make money, which then makes other people just way too afraid to speak. I get it, you know, the hell that awaits on being silent, but most people don't. And honestly, the hell comes so slowly that most people are like, well, this
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Tom Bilyeu
is just a little bit of hell.
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Interviewer/Host (possibly Kevin or another Impact Theory host)
By being silent A little bit more. A little bit more.
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Jordan Peterson
Well, it's deferred hell.
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Interviewer/Host (possibly Kevin or another Impact Theory host)
Yes, exactly.
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Jordan Peterson (continued, more detailed explanations)
And deferred hell is deferred hell is eternal hell.
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Jordan Peterson
That's not good. It is.
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Jordan Peterson (continued, more detailed explanations)
I'd rather just have the hell, like now.
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Interviewer/Host (possibly Kevin or another Impact Theory host)
Yes, but you are very, very rare. And so there's two things I want to see if we can get to the other side of using what the counter enlightenment is going to teach us. Okay. So, one, I. I spend a lot of my time absolutely freaked out about the authoritarianism that I see creeping in as somebody who grew up in the 80s. Like, this is just.
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Jordan Peterson (continued, more detailed explanations)
Yeah.
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Interviewer/Host (possibly Kevin or another Impact Theory host)
It's insanity.
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Jordan Peterson
Oh, yeah.
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Interviewer/Host (possibly Kevin or another Impact Theory host)
And it scares me because there's people telling me I can't.
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Jordan Peterson (continued, more detailed explanations)
700 million ctvs in China.
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Interviewer/Host (possibly Kevin or another Impact Theory host)
Jesus, man.
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Jordan Peterson (continued, more detailed explanations)
Yeah, they have full gate recog. Right.
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Interviewer/Host (possibly Kevin or another Impact Theory host)
So even if you're knocking down knives in people's houses.
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Jordan Peterson
What?
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Interviewer/Host (possibly Kevin or another Impact Theory host)
That's really scary.
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Jordan Peterson
That freaks me out of the way people.
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Interviewer/Host (possibly Kevin or another Impact Theory host)
Yeah, right.
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Jordan Peterson (continued, more detailed explanations)
That's what makes them tyrants. Right. There'll be nothing that you. There'll be no autonomy. That's the plan.
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Jordan Peterson
Like zero.
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Jordan Peterson (continued, more detailed explanations)
Zero autonomy. Because, you know. Well, and if.
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Jordan Peterson
If you.
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Jordan Peterson (continued, more detailed explanations)
If you haven't done anything wrong, you'll. You'll have nothing to worry about. So I can't. Well, good, great. Find me someone who hasn't done anything wrong, who has nothing to worry about. Yeah. Right.
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Interviewer/Host (possibly Kevin or another Impact Theory host)
So how do. I heard at one point you were spending like $90,000 a month fighting everything that's coming at you. That's crazy. So how do people who just absolutely cannot do that, how do they push back?
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Jordan Peterson (continued, more detailed explanations)
Substitute and substitute adventure for security.
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- [16:38]
Jordan Peterson (continued, more detailed explanations)
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Jordan Peterson (continued, more detailed explanations)
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- [17:03]
Jordan Peterson (continued, more detailed explanations)
Call 888, add dish or visit dish.com today. Okay, security. It's like you're going to pursue security. Are you? How's that going to work? You're going to die. You're going to encounter malevolence. Like you can defer the con, the encounter to some degree, although not very successfully. There's no security. And, and then the thing is, that's the thing that's so interesting to understand is you don't want security. You're not an infant. That's not what you're after. You're actually after adventure. So where do you find your adventure? Aim up, tell the truth and adventure will come your way. And then that's so much better than security that there's no looking back. It's so incredibly exciting. It's, it's uncharted territory. The thing about the truth is that you don't know what's going to happen when you utter it. You have to let go, you know, so if I could come in here, you know, calculating what I want from this interview, figuring out how it's going to increase my social status or make me more money. And I mean, if it does those things, okay. But that's not the aim. The aim is to come in here and have wrestling match. And why? Because I have faith in the outcome. So what's the faith? The faith is whatever happens to you when you tell the truth is the best thing that could happen, no matter how it looks to you. That's a statement of faith. Now, there's an alternative statement, which is, oh, no, no, no, I'll say something and there'll be a consequence and I'll have Faith that. That consequence is the defining. What would you say, defining feature of that utterance? I said something, I got in trouble, therefore I shouldn't have said it. It's like, well, what if you get in trouble, but like, three weeks later, everything's way better for you? Christ. Like, it's not like there's any shortage of things like that in life. That's what work is. Work is, I'm going to do this thing now that's difficult so that something better will happen in the future. Well, truth is like. Truth is the ultimate investment in that matter, definitely. That's why truth is what stores up treasure in heaven. That's what that means. And so, so how can people. How can people learn this? Try telling the truth. I mean, I wrote a chapter about this in one of my books that was quite accessible. It's like, start by not saying things you know, to be a lie. Just start with that, play with it. See what happens. See what happens.
- [19:44]
Interviewer/Host (possibly Kevin or another Impact Theory host)
Walk me through the morning when that person does that. I'll talk to young men right now. They say what they think is true. They get fired from their job. They.
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Jordan Peterson (continued, more detailed explanations)
Well, then they. Then they probably bit off more than they could chew, right? The eternal sin of Adam to bite off more than he could chew. It's like, you know, if you don't know what you're doing and you're in a dangerous place, maybe, you know, start on your knees, humbly, carefully, you know, don't go out there and brandish your new truth and make yourself into an idiot martyr. So you can tell yourself that you're the Messiah, you know, with one utterance. That's not wise. You have to be as wise as serpents, right? That's the idea. This isn't a game. You have to. You have to do it with your eyes open, you know, and if you pay attention, you'll see your opportunity. You'll see. You'll see it'll make itself manifest. You'll see where there's a choice point where you'll be conversing with someone and you could take the easy route out that you usually take, or you could dare right then and there, and there's an excitement about that. And then you'll try it and, you know, other person, you know, maybe you're kind of a cringing milk sop sort of person. And. And so you're. You're being intimidated by one of your friends who's actually a bully that you hate. And you decide at that moment that you're finally going to say at Least a fraction of what you've been thinking and you know, it takes him aback and then actually likes you better and is 10% less likely to bully you. Now you might get punched too, you know, that's. Well, hey, that's right. This is real. It's the ultimate game. I suppose the ultimate game is what's real. But it's not like there's not consequences. One of the other thing you have to understand, and this is a good thing for young men to understand, is you're going to pay one way or another. There's no way out of that. So choose your method of payment. That's what you can do. And, and weirdly enough, if you choose the proper God, if you choose the proper method of payment, the price you pay is, is one you would pay happily. That's what, that's why, see, Abraham is called upon to sacrifice his son, for example, and in the service of God. And he says yes, and then he doesn't have to. And that's right. And it's the same. We know this even in our families. A mother who will sacrifice her child to the world, let the child go, foster that child's independence, offer the child to be broken by the world full heartedly will get that child back, right? The child won't leave. It's so interesting because the child leaves, but not really right, because that's the child who wants to maintain a relationship with the mother for the rest of the child's life, who wants that mother as a grandmother and who wants her around, and who will return as much as is appropriate, but no more. And so everything you give away, you'll get back if you give it away in the right spirit. And we know that even on the reciprocal front, you know, I, I worked with many, many professors and, and society scientists, but let's say as a graduate student I had a great graduate advisor, Robert Peel, who's still alive and who I still work with that case in point, I loved working in Bob's lab, partly because he was insanely generous with his ideas. He just give them away. Like there were professors who, like they'd have an idea and they'd shelter the damn thing. It's like this is my idea and someone's going to steal. It's like first of all, probably it's not your idea. Second of all, it's, it's not that great anyway. So don't be so concerned. There's not a lot of people lining up to steal your ideas. And third, it's not that easy to Steal ideas anyways. So there's a fair bit arrogance and, and lack of faith in that. But imagine, we could even imagine psychophysiologically what happens to you if you give away your ideas. So let's say, you know, you're blessed with a creative spirit and, and you're just giving your ideas away like mad, like you're a tree that's full of fruit and you're just distributing it. Well, everybody that you give an idea to is thrilled about it. And they reflect that in their enthusiasm. And that enthusiasm is rewarding. And that reward creates a dopaminergic kick. And that dopaminergic kick reinforces the dominance of the creative spirit. And so then you have more ideas. Right? And so that's a great example of how you get back what you give away in spades. It's by far the best strategy. That's why Christ says that, you know, if someone asks you for. Well, I don't remember this phrase exactly, but you know, you give the person who asks your coat, you walk the mile with them. You give more than you're called upon to give, even to your enemies. Why? Because there is no better strategy than that by any stretch of the imagination. This is why there's such an emphasis in the Old Testament on hospitality. Be welcoming in productive generosity. Productive generosity? Well, what does that ensure? It ensures your own security, weirdly enough, because if you give to a thousand people and then you're in trouble, you have a thousand people who are ready to help. You know, maybe you could give to 100,000 people or a million people. I mean, how could you possibly put anything in a more solid bank than in the goodwill you generated in the embodied imaginations of other people? That's the kingdom, that's the, that's the treasure, that's treasures in heaven. And they are an eternal form of treasure in some sense, not least because that reputation can last in some cases throughout the ages. And then it's, it's part of the manifestation of that underlying spirit of creative generosity that gives rise to the cosmos itself.
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Interviewer/Host (possibly Kevin or another Impact Theory host)
Thing I don't want to get lost in all of that is that that is somebody who has a hierarchy of values. Whether they got it religiously or they just decided it. But the hierarch of values is what I would tell people to lean on in times of trouble.
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Jordan Peterson (continued, more detailed explanations)
Yeah, they can't have just decided it. If they decided it, it's because something moved within them.
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Jordan Peterson
Right?
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Jordan Peterson (continued, more detailed explanations)
Because we just aren't self created, you know? You know what I mean? I mean, we, we have that self creative capacity to some degree, but.
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Jordan Peterson
Right.
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Jordan Peterson (continued, more detailed explanations)
We're the inheritors of one tradition or another or mishmash of traditions or we're socialized creatures, intensely socialized creatures. So there's all sorts of things that give rise to impulses within us. And so I would say if someone technically atheistic is generous and productive in spirit, then they're infused with the word regardless of what the semantic system sitting on top has to say about. It's like, I don't believe that. It's like, well, it kind of looks like you do, you know, if we're going to judge the tree by its fruits. And so Dawkins, you know, Dawkins doesn't know how much of a Christian he is.
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Jordan Peterson
God.
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Interviewer/Host (possibly Kevin or another Impact Theory host)
I want to sit you two down at the same time. I want to hear him respond to that statement.
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Jordan Peterson (continued, more detailed explanations)
He's a, he's a terrifying guy. You know, I, I, unfortunately the few times I have talked to him, I'm still quite ill. And you don't want to talk to Richard Dawkins when you're not at your best. And so. But I do believe that we are scheduled to have a public discussion at some point in the relatively near future.
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Interviewer/Host (possibly Kevin or another Impact Theory host)
That would be amazing. Going back to young men, there's an idea that you put out there that I have talked about just ad nauseam. I'm so grateful to you for this concept. I hope you're right that in the Bible the idea that the meek shall inherit the earth makes no sense when you think of meek as weak. But when you think of meek as somebody who is a total badass, but they keep their sword sheathed.
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Jordan Peterson (continued, more detailed explanations)
Rogan's a good example.
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Jordan Peterson
Why, what's meek about Rogan?
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Jordan Peterson (continued, more detailed explanations)
Well, it's not that he's weak, it's that he, every guest he has, he, he tries to learn from, you know, it's, it, it's a kind of,
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Jordan Peterson
there
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Jordan Peterson (continued, more detailed explanations)
isn't anything more compelling and powerful than a well armed humility. And I've seen this in great people I've met, I have been privileged to meet many great people and I've met the shells of great people too. But the great people I've met are, they're striking in their humility. Striking. It's a core part of their character. And they're not, They're wrestling all the time. When they talk to someone, doesn't matter who it is, they're, they're there with them, communicating, you know. One of the things we learned as we moved along on this tour was I Have security people who also help me with logistics. And. We've had to be very careful about who we gather around us because all the people on the tour have to treat everyone they come into contact well with.
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Jordan Peterson
Well, all.
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Jordan Peterson (continued, more detailed explanations)
Everyone. Especially the people who come to my shows, but in restaurants, in hotels, like, I don't want to leave. This is especially true if you're in the public eye, because if. If you're unknown and you offend someone, they'll forget it. But if you're well known and you offend someone they will never forget, will burn itself into their imagination and they will tell absolutely everyone they're. They'll feel deeply betrayed and. And they have been. So. So we ensure that everyone around us treats everyone not well, in the manner that keeps reputation intact, but. Well, not so that reputation stays intact, but because it's the right thing to do. And that's a form of that meekness. You know, it's.
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Jordan Peterson
It.
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Jordan Peterson (continued, more detailed explanations)
That's. That's what it's referring to.
- [29:26]
Tom Bilyeu
This is what I tell people. So your identity is going to drive your behaviors. Ultimately, your behaviors are the only thing that matters. So you're going to begin by telling yourself identity statements. You're going to say, I'm the type of person that. So, for instance, I'm the type of person that gets out of bed in 10 minutes or less. Now, I started telling myself that even when it wasn't true, because I needed to start getting out of bed in 10 minutes or less.
- [29:47]
Jordan Peterson (continued, more detailed explanations)
Then that's an aspiration.
- [29:50]
Tom Bilyeu
And then I put more. I'm the type of person Monday through Friday, if I'm awake, I'm either working or working out, right? These become my identity. I am a husband first, right? So even before being an entrepreneur, I'm a husband. Like. And I repeat these things over and over and over. Some are aspirational and become true over time. And some are a recognition of something that I'm already doing that I want to reinforce. So all I'm trying to do is use basically cognitive dissonance against people so that they're not saying something to themselves and other people. Cause I always encourage them to say it to other people as well. So they're not saying something that they're not actually doing. So now you're trapping yourself into getting out of bed in 10 minutes or less, working your ass off Monday through Friday, prioritizing, in my case, my wife, things like that. But it's all like this really rudimentary thing about behaviors. Just say statements that you're going to adhere to that make you act in the way that you should be acting.
- [30:44]
Jordan Peterson
That's what a behaviorist does in as a therapist is that is to break things down to the level of implementable behavior. And yeah, you, you group behaviors like an ethical statement is actually a grouping of behaviors. Right. An ethical statement is a statement about a group of behaviors or it's empty. So I want to be a conscientious person. Okay. We have to decompose that into implementable actions. Well, you did there to some degree. I need to get out of bed at 8 o'.
- [31:17]
Jordan Peterson (continued, more detailed explanations)
Clock.
- [31:17]
Jordan Peterson
I need to get out of bed in 10 minutes or less. I need to have breakfast within the first half an hour, half hour that I've woken up. I need to be able to cook my breakfast. I need to be able to go get groceries because otherwise I won't have any breakfast to cook. And so you decompose is decomposed to the level of implemental behavior. And that means bodily. That's the point where the abstraction meets the world right through the actions of the body and behaviors. Concentrate on exactly that level. Rather than, you know, the psychoanalytic types might be more inclined to alter global statements that would be, say, part of the self narrative. Those are abstractions because they're collections of behaviors that have an abstract description associated with them. And yes, part one of the things that you do do in therapy is you notice where there's disjunctions between the way people describe themselves and the way they act. Of course, you do that in relationships all the time as well. You say to people, well, you said, this is especially true in intimate and familial relationships. You said X, but you do Y. It's like there's a discordance there and that makes you unpredictable to me, I don't like that. It's probably not that good for you either. Many, many arguments are like that.
- [32:31]
Tom Bilyeu
Get that MX Gold card ready. I'm way too tired to cook tonight.
- [32:35]
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- [32:46]
Jordan Peterson (continued, more detailed explanations)
Yes.
- [32:47]
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- [33:01]
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- [33:32]
Tom Bilyeu
So getting back to now, how people can leverage this information in a usable way in their life, and I'll put it in the context of what I see going on in the culture war. The thing that drew me in is I am not worried about myself. I'm worried about other people. And my big thing is, so I've worked in the inner cities a lot, and so I've seen people that have an identity, what I often refer to as a frame of reference, that leads them so far astray because their parents will tell them things like, people don't want somebody who looks like you to be successful, and so they don't even try to be successful. And so that belief about who they are and how the world conceives of them stops them from doing the behaviors that would lead them to be successful. And so when I look at your core concept, which I love, I think is so brilliant that we've been talking to kids about rights, and we really should be talking to them about responsibility and what you owe the world instead of what the world owes you, now I'll frame it a little bit.
- [34:28]
Jordan Peterson
We have to balance those, right? Because, I mean, even technically speaking, your rights are my responsibilities and vice versa. And so we can't only have half the dialogue because the responsibility makes. Enables the rights. So, you know, it could easily be that we could be in a situation where we should be talking more about rights. But I don't believe that we are in that situation at the moment. And I mean, I think for me, that's being borne out by the fact that people have been interested in what I've been saying. Because one of the things I've noticed time and time again is that whenever I talk about the relationship between responsibility and meaning, the crowds that I'm talking to go silent, say, look, you need a meaning to sustain you through the vicissitudes of life. Okay, well, try to debate that. It's like, is life painful?
- [35:19]
Tom Bilyeu
Yes.
- [35:19]
Jordan Peterson
Is it anxiety provoking? Yes. Is it uncertain? Yes. Is it painful beyond bearing? Sometimes, yes, it's difficult. Everyone agrees about that. Now, they might disagree about how difficult, but that doesn't matter that the central point holds. Okay, what if you think that's all pointless? Well, that doesn't seem very helpful. Okay, so you need a sustaining meaning. Well, where do you find that? Well, you generally find it in responsibility to yourself and other people. And people ask themselves those questions when. When I'm talking, because I ask them to ask themselves those questions, and that's the answer. Well, what's meaningful? Well, I have a meaningful relationship with my father. I have a meaningful relationship with my wife. I have a meaningful relationship with my pet, you know, because I take care of that pet when I commit to something and make sacrifices, that sacrifice is something I also talk about a lot in both of the last two books. You know, if something's valuable, you'll make sacrifices to attain it. And that, that discovery of sacrifice, I think that's what separates human. It's one of the primary factors separating human beings from animals. Because we discovered that we could let go of something we value in the present and we would gain something we value even more in the future. We acted that out dramatically in all sorts of strange ways over thousands and thousands of years before it was formalizable psychologically. But it's a massive discovery. I can forego gratification in a particular way and benefit in the future so I can share the proceeds of my hunt. And I store up future food in the form of reputation. And the favors I've owed, I'm owed now by other people. It's a massive discovery. So
- [37:22]
Tom Bilyeu
no question on that. So when I start to put this back in the context of, you know, what's going on today. So I see you in a certain way. I see you as somebody who has had a long standing desire to help people make sense of the world and how to move through it, both as a public intellectual and as obviously a psychologist who's working with people. And so when I hear you talking about whether it's identity, whether it's the culture war, whether it's the balance, the needed balance between chaos and order, it's in trying to get people to understand something so they can use it in their life and move forward. So taking that, the reason that I think identity becomes so important for people now is they, the generations coming up seem to be using as a part of their identity a desire for their rights to focus on that, what I'm owed. And if they were to flip it over to the responsibilities that they have now, they're getting into an identity statement that changes their behavior set so profoundly that it gives them the meaning and purpose that you were talking about earlier.
- [38:31]
Jordan Peterson
Am I being an experiment you can run yourself? One of the tenets of cognitive behavioral therapy is Collaborative empiricism. So, okay, so when you have a client and you say, well you know, maybe your mood would be better if you got up at 8 o' clock in the morning regularly instead of 2 or 4 in the afternoon irregularly, and then you say, well we don't really know if that's true. Let's try doing it getting up at 2 regularly for a week and see what happens. And then maybe we'll try moving it back an hour week by week, but you can see how it goes. Well, so this is, so I would say run the experiment. It's like, is your life better? And you can even look at the way that you evaluate your past. When you upheld your responsibilities, did that improve your quality of life, even though it might have been difficult? And you know, generally people say yes to that. We derive a certain amount of satisfaction from past accomplishments and generally in proportion to their difficulty. And so if that's not true, fair enough. And I mean there's variation. Highly open people tend to take more delight in extraordinarily creative ventures and extroverted people in being with other people. Conscientious people are more duty focused. But doesn't really matter. It's still, it's still responsibility. So it's just,
- [39:56]
Jordan Peterson (continued, more detailed explanations)
I, I see the,
- [39:57]
Jordan Peterson
the, so there's this, this presupposition, let's say with this, this set of identities that we've been taught to regard as categorical, that good should be distributed equally according to those categories. And that to me, because those categories aren't functional, you can't trade on them. They don't bear any relationship to outcomes. Now you say, well no, that's just evidence of prejudice. It's like, well, no doubt there's some prejudice. I mean no one in the right mind would, would deny that. But, but that's, there's, that doesn't mean there's no competence. The fact that there is some prejudice doesn't mean there is no competence in the hierarchy itself.
- [40:47]
Tom Bilyeu
So I once got asked, speaking at Google and an African American gentleman asked, hey Tom, do you think that it's harder for me to be successful because I'm black? And I said almost certainly true. Like even just from the perspective of a school of fish.
- [41:00]
Jordan Peterson (continued, more detailed explanations)
Right.
- [41:00]
Tom Bilyeu
You, from an evolutionary standpoint, we group up with people that look like we look. So if you're a minority in any country, then it seems self evident to me that it's going to be more difficult. But my question is, and now what? So you've got options. You can sit in the Unfairness of that. And I don't even think people would argue it, it is unfair or it's even counterproductive.
- [41:25]
Jordan Peterson
Right. Because hypothetically we want to exploit all people equally for our own benefit. You know, to speak very coldly about it, obviously there's more to it than that.
- [41:35]
Tom Bilyeu
So my thing is you talk very profoundly about resentment in beyond order and that resonated with me really well. It's like, look, you're going to have every reason to be resentful in your life. There are going to be a million things that come at you, but it doesn't serve you. It doesn't serve you, it doesn't serve the community. Like that is the fastest way for your. I wish I had better words for this. I'm sure you do. But for your sort of energy to go dark, for you to step into the role of the adversary, which you define very clearly, is essentially the devil. You liken adversaries to Mistofeles, to the Columbine shooters, and that is seeing those as archetypal roles. You can play the hero, you can play the adversary. If you're going down the path of bitterness, even if you have every reason in the world to be bitter, the thought of where that path leads you should be so terrifying that you should u turn and say even though I have the right, even though everybody is going to tell me it makes all the sense in the world for you to be angry, bitter, resentful. It's going to take you somewhere that will be so self punishing that there's just no point in heading in that direction.
- [42:38]
Jordan Peterson
Yeah. Unless you want. Unless you want the desolation and waste that comes with it.
- [42:43]
Jordan Peterson (continued, more detailed explanations)
Yeah.
- [42:43]
Jordan Peterson
I mean in that chapter that's do not allow yourself to become arrogant, deceitful or resentful. I might have the order wrong there, but that's the chapter. Yeah. It opens with a discussion of why you would get resentful. It's like, well, culture is arrayed against you. So you're the target of tyrannical forces that are beyond your control. They're arbitrary, they don't work in your interest, at least not entirely. And the more eccentric you are, let's say, the more tyrannical culture will be to you. And so you're stuck with that. And then nature conspires to destroy you constantly and is going to do that with pain and anxiety and aging. And then there's the uncontrollability and darkness of your own psyche. And everyone faces those now. We face the positive elements of those too. The Beneficience of culture, the beauty of nature, the glory of the human spirit. That's there as well. You have reasons to be deceitful, resentful and arrogant, but it's not a good game unless you want to produce.
- [43:52]
Tom Bilyeu
Hell, I want to talk about that. So you were the one that got me to read the Gulag Archipelago. You're the one that got me to. And. And this has profoundly changed my life for the better. You got me to distrust myself, which was such a brilliant move. So you said, hey, when you think of Nazi Germany, don't think of yourself as the one hiding Anne Frank in the attic. Think of yourself as a Nazi guard. Because odds are that as much as you want to think of yourself as the one hiding and Frank, the numbers just don't bear it out. And I thought, whoa, even if it is just a thought exercise, to recognize my potential for bringing hell on earth through silence, through cowardice, not necessarily that I'm rushing out to do it, but that I am capable of weakness. I am capable of silence at a critical juncture. I'm capable of resentment, bitterness.
- [44:44]
Jordan Peterson
Well, silence at a critical juncture. I mean, for sure that. I mean, you. You told the story at the beginning of our talk, I believe, about. Oh, no, you didn't. You told me this story, though, about. Or maybe you did mention it, about not having me on your show because someone called me a misogynist. Well, that's a good example. It was like. And it was just kind of a throwaway in some sense. I mean, it's not like I hold it against you. It's. It's obvious why that would happen, but that's actually what's terrifying about it. These things are easy, you know, when I. I worked very briefly, visited very briefly enough a number of times. A maximum security prison in Edmonton, Alberta, with a very eccentric psychologist. And I met a man there who had shot two policemen in cold blood and who seemed by all appearances, when I met him, to be of an ordinary, harmless guy, you know, certainly wasn't very physically prepossessing. And another one of the criminals that I met had held down a third a couple of weeks later and beat his leg to a pulp with a lead pipe because he was a snitch. And I imagined doing that. It was very shocking. I laid that out in the beginning of Maps of Meaning because I was having aggressive impulses at that time, too. And so I was curious about these aggressive impulses, and I imagined doing it. And I mean, I actually imagined doing it. And then I thought I could do that. And then I thought, it's even possible, under some conditions, that I might be able to enjoy that. And that was a terrible. Still a terrible shock. Was a terrible shock. Then it's no wonder people don't do this sort of thing. I mean, this sort of imagination. But, you know, I took the idea that we were supposed to learn something from the horrors of the Second World War seriously. Never forget. Okay? You can't remember what you don't understand. So what are we supposed to remember? What are we remembering? The fact that all these people were murdered? No, we're supposed to remember that that was a revelation of the genocidal nature of the human psyche. That's partly why I'm so impressed, let's say, with the story of Cain and Abel. I dealt with that in my biblical lecture series and in my writings. You know, the first two human beings, according to the book upon which our culture is predicated, for better or worse, the first two human beings, brothers, the adversary and the hero. The archetypal adversary and the hero, put right at the beginning of that amazing book. It's the beginning of history. Cain's sacrifices are rejected by God. Okay, well, how do we understand that? That's easy, once you know the key. You make sacrifices to make the future better. Well, what if that doesn't pay off? Well, you know, think about that. You know what that's like. You endeavor to do something and it doesn't work. You're not appreciated for who you are. You fail. Maybe you fail despite your best efforts. Well, are you rejected by God? Well, it's as if you're rejected by God. Does it make you resentful? Does it make you bitter? Does it make you want to pull down the successful? Does it want. It. Does it make you want to pull down the successful out of spite? Does it make you want to pull down the successful out of cosmic spite? The answer to that happens to be yes. You shake your fist at God, you say, I'm going to harm those whom you blessed. And no wonder. It's no wonder. You know, it's a. It's harsh that the rewards of life are indiscriminately distributed. It's hard on everyone. But it doesn't help. It doesn't help to become bitter. And it's not like I don't understand the temptation. I mean, I think part of the reason I get away with being so bloody preachy is because I'm talking to myself. You know, it's not like I don't put myself in the boat of the damned and lost.
- [49:14]
Interviewer/Host (possibly Kevin or another Impact Theory host)
Very well said.
- [49:15]
Jordan Peterson
Dangerous.
- [49:16]
Tom Bilyeu
Now I listen to the whole times
- [49:20]
Jordan Peterson
and, and I see this, in this culture war, I see this resentment. It colors the definition of identity, this attack on meritocracy. It's an attack on merit itself, you know, that says nothing about whether or not culture is tyrannical. Yes, but it's not only tyrannical, and it's important to get those distinctions correct.
- [49:48]
Tom Bilyeu
So I want to then put a coda on that because I think you cover it so well in your book and in rule number one. Don't denigrate social institutions or creative accomplishment. Reading that title, I didn't realize what you meant until I read the chapter and what that is ultimately, and correct me if I misstate anything, but cultural institutions are the order. They're the stability and the creative.
- [50:17]
Jordan Peterson (continued, more detailed explanations)
You're granted.
- [50:18]
Jordan Peterson
There are these, these, these identities that are handed to you, ready made, and thank God for that. Marriage is one. It's like, well, you can critique marriage, fine, but what game are you going to play? Try coming up with some. Try coming up with one on your own. Maybe you can. Maybe you're like avant garde Picasso. Maybe you are. And maybe you have a right to, to make your own arrangement. Maybe you have the psychological fortitude to craft your own social institution, but I bloody well wouldn't count on it. You're lucky that there's such a thing as a job, or better yet, a career. You're lucky that there's such a thing as friendship, as marriage. All of these social institutions, you know, and, and you, and when you criticize them, Nietzsche put as one question of conscience, and I think it's in Twilight of the Idols, whether you're a leader or whether you're running away, you're outside the pack and moving in a different direction. In either case, you know, are you a rebel because you can't fit in, or are you a rebel because you could fit in, but you see a better way? It's like people in that category are not that common. And the first question of conscience should be, well, which of those two are you? It's highly probable that you're the first one and not the second, because that would mean you'd be intensely disciplined plus creative on that dimension. Maybe that is you and God. Then we need you. You know, like you're an avatar of the savior under those circumstances. And maybe everyone has some of that in them.
- [52:09]
Tom Bilyeu
That's a big question and I think is one of the fundamental questions that you address, which is the almost the need to have them both. And so you give an example in the book In Beyond Order, where you said, let's take a city and imagine a really rundown, dangerous, crime ridden area. The people that find themselves attracted to that inevitably become the artists and they move in and they think, hey, with a little bit of effort, this could be kind of cool. And then they move in, they start to make it cool. Then the first coffee shop pops up and then the gentrifier start moving in, and then the chain stores start moving in. And then that place is no longer suited to the artist and the artist must move. And I thought, oh my God, like in, in one description of a city. And this, like when, when people listen to you, this is the very thing I want them to understand, which is there is a nature to things. And instead of, you know, shaking your fist at God, you know, why, oh why is this? Like, this is to recognize how predictable this shit is and to find a meaningful way, right? To find your meaning, to shoulder your burden, put your shoulders back, like, you know, climb your way up the competence hierarchy by getting so good that you can't be ignored. But recognizing, hey, dear artist, what a beautiful contribution you make, it is necessary in a certain place at a certain time, but that will evolve. And so instead of being angry that the natural course of things is that you've made something beautiful which attracts people such as the nature of beauty, recognize that, you know, there's like a Johnny Appleseed quality to that and to relish in that identity of, I am the artist, I make things beautiful, I attract people to my beauty, you know, hopefully in some transcendent way. I mean, you talk in beyond order about the need for beauty in your life and how chapter seven. Yeah, the very things that we consider impossible to put a price tag on is always art. And so there is that thing, but like tying it all together from identity to meaning and purpose to the almost cruel nature of things. That description arrested me in the book because I could both feel the joy of the artist when they discover something and create something and also feel their heartbreak as the place changed so much. You even say in the book where they can no longer afford the rent. And so there is a cruelty to, you are the one that gave birth to this thing and made it what it is. And then it gets to the point where you can't afford it and you have to move on. And now to really tie shit together and bring it back around to you. Getting me to read the Gulag Archipelago, you realize even I have the impulse to be like, oh, that's not fair. Like, how do we make sure that the artists can stay there? And, you know, they've done so much to contribute, and then you realize the hammer is essentially the only way. And that's where it all starts to get scary for me, and where I don't feel like people are extrapolating and looking into the future of. I don't know if you know Thomas Sowell, but he has a great quote which is, the last 30 years have been marked by replacing what works with what sounds good. And to me, that feels like the fundamental flaw of today, which ties into your notion of rights versus responsibility.
- [55:31]
Jordan Peterson
Well, the chapter on artists. So artists are high in trade, openness, and open people live in. They live farther in chaos. They're good at pattern recognition. They tend to have high verbal IQs. The pattern recognition manifests itself to some degree in their artistic proclivity because, like, visual art is a patterning of the world, an investigative patterning of the world. And so they're the intuitives. They see. They see what's coming. They live on the edge. They live on the frontier. Well, there are frontiers everywhere. There's frontiers in every discipline. There's frontiers in cities. And you talked about that like this. The artist is someone who can see possibility, and so they'll take a rundown place and beautify it.
- [56:12]
Jordan Peterson (continued, more detailed explanations)
That's.
- [56:13]
Jordan Peterson
That's their niche. And it's. It's an evolutionary niche. Technically speaking, we have five dimensions of personality. There's variation in each of those dimensions because there's a niche for every. Every. What would you call every place on the distribution. And you have to find your place in the world according to your temperament. I mean, you can change your temperament to some degree, although it's not. It's no. It's no simple matter. It's pretty stable. It's better to find the place that you belong. You know, an open people might be very annoyed that they're not appreciated by more conservative types. But the conservative types fill a different niche. They're conscientious and dutiful. And so if something's working, you want conservatives to run it because they're dutiful and efficient and orderly, by the book, patriotic. This works. Let's uphold it. Let's make it work efficiently. Let's not change it, because we might break it. But it needs breaking. Well, that's the debate. That's the purpose of free speech.
- [57:22]
Jordan Peterson (continued, more detailed explanations)
That's that.
- [57:23]
Jordan Peterson
That's my sense of it. You know, there's this balance that has to be obtained between tradition and transformation. We have to have respect for both of them. And how do we know when something needs to be changed? We don't know. So we have to argue about it. And in order to argue about it effectively, we have to be able to talk to each other across our identity boundaries. And then we can decide, well, should this be maintained or should this be transformed?