Jordan Peterson Canceled: A Warning On Good vs Evil, Andrew Tate, Porn, Israel-Hamas & Weak Men PT 1

Summary

Impact Theory Podcast Summary

Episode Title: Jordan Peterson Canceled: A Warning On Good vs Evil, Andrew Tate, Porn, Israel-Hamas & Weak Men PT 1
Date: February 20, 2024
Host: Tom Bilyeu (often referred to here as "Interviewer," at times mistaken for Joe Rogan in the transcript)
Guest: Dr. Jordan Peterson

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Brief Overview

This episode features Tom Bilyeu in a deep, challenging dialogue with Dr. Jordan Peterson. The discussion explores the dynamics of good and evil, the danger of totalitarian ideologies, the power and pitfalls of ideas and narratives, and the critical role of tradition, religious stories, and personal responsibility in shaping human flourishing and civilization. The conversation also touches on the perversion of religious narrative for power, the limitations of Enlightenment rationality, and the challenges of moral decision-making in a complex, rapidly changing world. Peterson, recently at the center of professional and cultural controversies, reflects on being “canceled,” the stakes for Western culture, and what it truly means to wrestle with the deepest existential questions.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Power and Danger of Ideas

• Ideas as Possessions:
  • Peterson asserts, “You're a slave to the ideas that you cherish. You are also a slave to the ideas that grip those around you.” (00:33)
  • Ideas, whether good or evil, possess individuals and shape behavior and destiny.
• Mob Mentality & Spiritual Possession:
  • Both speakers discuss how crowds can be overcome by a collective “spirit,” capable of both uplifting achievement (the stadium example) and horrifying evil (mob violence, totalitarian regimes).
  • Peterson: “It's the eternal spirit of pride allied with deceit and resentment and arrogance. That's the spirit that Milton characterized in Paradise Lost.” (03:57)

The Threat of Totalitarianism

• Modern "Doomsday Clock":
  • Tom asks if a similar “doomsday clock” should be set for authoritarian takeover in the West.
  • Peterson: “The opportunities there for a pervasive totalitarian state…with a rapidity we can hardly conceive of. That's there. It's right there in front of us. So that's the Eye of Sauron, by the way.” (02:01)
• Technological Surveillance as Idolatry:
  • Peterson uses the Lord of the Rings’ Eye of Sauron as metaphor: “If you dispense with God, you create a technology that replicates that [omniscience] for you, except there'll be nothing about it that will be your friend. And it will watch everything you do, no matter how hard you try to make yourself invisible.” (02:24)

Wrestling with Good, Evil & Moral Agency

• The Reality of Evil:
  • Peterson references Auschwitz as the epitome of evil: “If malevolence is an undeniable reality…and there's a price to be paid for denying that...you turn the Nazi catastrophe into just a matter of opinion.” (08:30)
  • Both discuss Solzhenitsyn’s dictum: “The line between good and evil runs through the heart of every man.” (04:58)
  • Peterson: “If you think you couldn't have enjoyed it [Auschwitz], you know nothing about yourself. And that's terrifying. And should be. Better to redeem than to damn.” (10:24, paraphrased)
• Personal Responsibility & the Kingdom of God:
  • “That's why Christ says that the kingdom of God is like a mustard seed. It takes root and grows inside you. Like all ideas. Ideas are alive.” (12:19)
• Sin as “Missing the Mark”:
  • Sin is not just failing, but aiming at the wrong target. “Sin means to miss the mark. There are three separate derivations of the word sin that come from archery.” (07:24)

The Peril of Slogans and Dead Ideologies

• Slogans as “Battle Cry of the Dead”:
  • Peterson: “It's from the Welsh slua garam. It means battle cry of the dead. Why of the dead? Because slogans are dead words...the army of the dead speaking through the mouths of people that use slogans.” (17:50)
• True, Living Speech:
  • Living ideas are tested and explored in dialogue and spontaneous speech rather than as rigid dogma. “That spirit that possesses you when you speak in an inspired manner...it's the creative manifestation of the structure that extracts habitable order from chaos.” (21:20)

Tradition, Biblical Narrative, & the Architecture of Human Perception

• Narrative as the Structure for Truth:
  • Peterson and Tom discuss the limits of facts and empirical reality; narrative gives hierarchy to facts and enables action and moral discernment.
  • Peterson: “The Bible's actually the structure through which...facts are interpreted. It's not the facts themselves. It's a deeper form of truth.” (62:32)
• Genesis, Chaos, and the Need for Order:
  • Failure to embody living tradition results in recurring chaos, as described through mythic stories from Mesopotamia to The Lion King.
  • “When Scar takes over Pride Rock… the whole kingdom turns into a wasteland, a dry, sterile desert wasteland. That's always the case.” (35:41)

The Limits of Enlightenment Rationalism

• Breakdown of Enlightenment Thinking:
  • Facts alone cannot guide; utility and value precede perception of facts.
  • Peterson: “The Enlightenment is the belief that the material world speaks for itself. It's not true. You have to see facts through a lens of value. The postmodernist got that right.” (36:42)
• Process Over Proclamation:
  • “Truth is a process. Truth is a spirit rather than a set of dead facts.” (27:48)

Faith, Responsibility, and Wrestling with the Divine

• Faith as Action, Not Assertion:
  • “Faith is what you bet your life on.” (67:15)
  • Living faith isn't reciting creeds but imitating and wrestling with the highest ideals (“wrestling with God,” like Jacob/Israel).
• Tradition’s Role:
  • Tradition is “the flag pole, let's say, like Moses staff…around which even our consensus must revolve.” (64:01)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the Power of Pride:
  • “Pride is always being regarded as the ultimate sin.” (16:20 – Peterson)
• On Technocratic Totalitarianism:
  • "If you dispense with God, you create a Tower of Babel. And that was what was represented in the Lord of the Rings as the Tower of Sauron, technological tower." (02:24 – Peterson)
• On the Slippery Slope of Dead Ideas:
  • “They're brandished by the army of the dead that would rather drag the living into the pit than allow the living to prevail.” (18:03 – Peterson)
• On Narrative's Central Role:
  • “We see the world through a story and the facts now indicate that.” (36:42 – Peterson)
• On True Worship:
  • “When Jacob is wrestling with God. That's worship. That's true worship.” (47:59 – Peterson)
• On Erasure and Cancel Culture:
  • “The case against you scares me. This is people with dead ideas enslaving others with bumper stickers, slogans that they can hold on to that makes them feel morally virtuous.” (25:02 – Interviewer)
• On Ultimate Hope:
  • (Reading his own speech, 50:03:) “If we were wise and faithful and courageous and responsible, we could continue to spread that to everyone...and continue the struggle uphill toward the City of God... It's not some superstition. It's not some primitive defense against death anxiety. It's not the opiate of the people. It's the call to divine responsibility.” (50:03 – Peterson)

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Important Segment Timestamps

• Doomsday Clock for Totalitarianism: 01:43–02:23
• “The Eye of Sauron” and Surveillance: 02:23–03:05
• Mob Mentality & Good/Evil: 06:57–08:30
• Sin, Slogans, and Dead Ideas: 17:46–18:18
• Peterson’s Shift (from “Internet’s Dad” to “theologian”): 14:10–15:34
• Stacking Truth & Psychometrics: 22:37–24:02
• Role of Tradition vs. Consensus: 63:23–64:01
• Peterson’s ARC Speech Reading (City of God): 49:55–51:30
• Faith as “betting your life”: 67:11–67:21
• Story vs. Fact & Limits of Empiricism: 59:10–60:35

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Flow & Tone

Both speakers are deeply serious, thoughtful, and push each other to clarify complex ideas. Peterson weaves myth, biblical allusion, and psychological theory, while Tom grounds abstract thought in practical and personal challenge. The tone is searching—sometimes dark, always urgent, and occasionally laced with dry, self-effacing humor.

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For Listeners:

This episode unpacks the existential core behind “cancel culture,” authoritarian drift in the West, and the crisis of meaning in a world dominated by dead slogans, superficial narratives, and the loss of lived tradition. For those seeking a principled path through the chaos—intellectually, ethically, and spiritually—Peterson suggests that wrestling with truth, rather than settling for easy answers, is what keeps both individuals and civilization alive.

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End of Part 1 (Note: The conversation alludes to future discussion of related hot-button issues—Andrew Tate, pornography, Israel-Hamas, and more.)

Transcript

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[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

Nine out of the ten largest banks get it.

[Jordan Peterson]

They get advantagescore.

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

The modern credit score is the leader in predictive power, improving mortgage default predictions and saving lenders billions. Better predictions better for your business with VantageScore. You're a slave to the ideas that you cherish. You are also a slave to the ideas that grip those around you. And right now, more and more people are adopting ideas that crush human thriving. Jordan Peterson, my guest today has become the canary in the coal mine for the rise of authoritarian ideals. The question is, given how wrong any of us can be, is the attempted erasure of Jordan Peterson justified or the tip of a very sinister spear? Here to talk about it is the man himself.

[Jordan Peterson]

Look how much I love my son. He doesn't even have a penis anymore. Those women online displaying themselves, they're not human. You're a fool if you think that's human. Jews, you know, they have IQs that are probably 15 points higher than the typical. So they're ratty, overrepresented. There's no reason to assume at all that the religious enterprise can't degenerate into totalitarian psychopathy, for that matter, does all the time.

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

Is that controversial?

[Jordan Peterson]

Yes.

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

All right. There is a doomsday clock that we use to track how close we are to nuclear annihilation. The closer to midnight, theoretically, the higher the risk. If we had a doomsday clock for how close we are to a totalitarian takeover of the west, how close to midnight would it be?

[Jordan Peterson]

It depends on what we decide to do it. The opportunities there at for a pervasive totalitarian state, the likes of which we can hardly imagine instituted with a rapidity we can hardly conceive of. That's there. It's right there in front of us. So that's the Eye of Sauron, by the way.

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

Why?

[Jordan Peterson]

Well, if you dispense with God, you create a Tower of Babel. And that was what was represented in the Lord of the Rings as the Tower of Sauron, technological tower. And what was on the top of it? A big eye that could see everything. Exactly. So if you don't have. This is one way of thinking about it. If you forgo your relationship with the omniscient, that's a good way of thinking about it. You'll create a technology that replicates that for you, except there'll be nothing about it that will be your friend. And it will watch everything you do, no matter how hard you try to make yourself invisible, let's say with the ring of power.

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

Okay, so I want to understand what, what is the proclivity in the human soul that leads us back to this. And let me give you a little bit of context and then go into it. So you introduced me to Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah.

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

I actually read the Gulag Archipelago. That sent me on a terrifying journey of reading about every totalitarian state that I could get my hands on.

[Jordan Peterson]

Oh yeah.

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

Ended up really scaring me about how humans can break bad in a way that I felt. I was looking around and seeing people trying to gobble up power, top down authority. A sense of I know what's right and therefore you should do what I say. And that even when it comes in the package of oh, I'm going to save you, like Mao's China, it's usually

[Jordan Peterson]

when the package it comes in.

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

Yeah. And. And yet kills 100 plus million people. So is it only darkness in the human soul? Is it only pride? Or is there spirit of pride?

[Jordan Peterson]

It's the eternal spirit of pride allied with deceit and resentment and arrogant arrogance. That's the spirit that Milton characterized in Paradise Lost. Is it, Is it only human? No, clearly not.

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

It exists only human. What do you mean?

[Jordan Peterson]

Well, it'll be there long after you are. It's immortal in a way. That's a way of thinking about it.

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

But it feels like it would propagate only through the human mind.

[Jordan Peterson]

What do you mean only that?

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

There is no other option. I mean, we could get into AI but I want to segment this out. The. The reason I want to tease this apart is I believe that people are possessed by ideas.

[Jordan Peterson]

That if they allow themselves to become possessed by ideas, they invite them in. Yeah.

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

Even better people invite in ideas. Those ideas are going to govern the quality of their life. And then as enough of us aggregate around good or bad ideas, the quality of our lives get better or worse.

[Jordan Peterson]

That's the war of principalities.

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

So that's what.

[Jordan Peterson]

That's right. That's right.

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

What I want people to understand is Soldier Knitson's idea of the line between good and evil runs through the heart of every man. We all have this temptation towards totalitarianism born of pride, especially smart people. So how do we avoid it?

[Jordan Peterson]

Fear. Fear of God is the beginning of wisdom.

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

Well, what is God then?

[Jordan Peterson]

The antithesis of the of the spirit of totalitarian pride.

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

Can I simplify that?

[Jordan Peterson]

So, well, imagine this. Okay? Sure, sure. Imagine this. Imagine that. Here's a form of hell. Auschwitz. Guard enjoying his job. Okay. Now, I think it's. It's fair to say that your experience exposing yourself to such things has convinced you that there's such a thing as evil. Okay. Whatever is farthest in the opposite direction, that's God. What is that? Well, that's not a simple thing to say. I mean, God is ineffable. God is the ineffable spirit that unites all. That's a good way of thinking about it. So what does that mean? Well, it means an endless number of things. Right. Many of which can't be formulated in words, much of which is directly experienced and embodied, imagined, felt, motivated, all of that, not just words. It's certainly not something that can be encapsulated in a. In a set of declarative statements, which is partly what the west is confused about. We think that belief in God is adherence to a statable description of God or a creed. That's not what it is. That's. That's a very small fragment of what it is, just as our verbal knowledge is a small fragment of our totality.

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

Can I give you what I think you're saying in my language and tell me if I'm getting correct? Okay. Everyone's going to be familiar with the idea of the madness of crowds. And there is something terrifying. If you've ever been around a group that goes from a normal group and they snap over into fighting or whatever you feel.

[Jordan Peterson]

Short term mob.

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

Yeah. You feel a spirit overcome them.

[Jordan Peterson]

Sure.

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

Where they are linked and it changes something in the way that they are processing the inputs from their environment.

[Jordan Peterson]

Definitely changes their perceptual frame. Yes. Perfect. Changes their emotions. It changes what they see. It changes what they're aiming at, even unconsciously. It's no different than. In some ways, it's no different than the spirit that unites a crowd when it leaps to the. To its feet spontaneously after a particularly brilliant goal. Right. That's also a form of possession, although much more positive form of possession because that's a celebration of the ability to hit the mark, which is the opposite of sin. Right. Sin means to miss the mark. There's three separate derivations of the word sin that come from archery. Yeah. Yeah. So that's what people are doing in a stadium, is they're allowing themselves to be possessed by the spirit that hits the target brilliantly. Right. All together, collectively, it's A form of worship.

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

What's interesting in that. So let's put two pins in things. So one, the hell is the exact opposite. It's when the crowd goes mad, it breaks bad, it kills, it smashes as it breaks. And then God is the exact opposite of that. It's expansive, joyful, uplifting, thriving and unifying.

[Jordan Peterson]

Right.

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

Both can be unified.

[Jordan Peterson]

It has that. Yes. It's the proper unity. That's another way. These are definitions, right? They're not statements. They're not statements. They're not descriptive statements about God. They're definitions. They're definitions. That's a very, very different thing. So imagine that there is a spirit that properly unifies. That's. That's the monotheistic God. That's the God of Abraham. What is that? Well, you know, who can say? No one can say. We can tell stories about it. And of course, the biblical stories are stories about that. That's exactly what they are. But the fastest way, and for modern people, I would say, is the route you took. If you don't believe in good, well, try investigating evil and see what you make of that and then start to understand what that means for you and see what that does to you. Is one of the things I realized because I started studying malevolence a very long time ago. Now it's. It's 50 years for me. It's a long time. And I certainly became convinced that in some ways there was nothing more real than malevolence. Now, there are arguable contenders. Pain, for example, is a contender. But if malevolence is an undeniable reality, and there's a price to be paid for denying that, by the way, because you turn the Nazi catastrophe into just a matter of opinion, right? If you don't believe in something like the ultimate reality of evil, it's just, well, you know, the Nazis went about things a slightly different way. Who's to say what's right or wrong? And while the opposite of that. There's an opposite of that, right? It's what. It's wherever you go. If you travel as far away from enjoying Auschwitz as you can possibly go, and people might say, well, no one enjoyed Auschwitz. It's like, really, what was the sign over Auschwitz? The joke Work will make you free. People joked. You tell me they didn't. Didn't enjoy it. Slayer, if you think that people didn't enjoy Auschwitz, you know nothing about human beings and nothing about yourself. If you think you couldn't have enjoyed it, you know nothing about yourself. And that's terrifying. And should be. And that it can lead you, you see, that leads you because it gives you something solid to stand on. Something terrible. Terrible and solid, but nonetheless something motivating. Because maybe you decide that you don't want to go to hell, so to speak. And maybe you don't want to bring everyone you love along with you. Maybe you don't even want to bring everyone you hate along with you. That's a good realization. Better to redeem than to damn.

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

You changed my life with a simple idea. And that simple idea was that I could find myself as the guard in Auschwitz and not as the person hiding Anne Frank in my attic.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah, all five of them.

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

Yeah, exactly. And that scared me. Yes.

[Jordan Peterson]

I mean, God, the thing, it just terrified me in Toronto. It was something remarkable to behold. All these butter won't melt in your mouth. Hyper moral Canadians, you know, secure in the fact that they're nothing. For example, like the warmongering Americans to the south. Delighting in the fact that they could turn their neighbors over to the state with a phone call. Willing to wear those God damned masks for the rest of their life just to have the privilege of being a state informant. Brutal. Brutal, Awful.

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

So I look at that and I see myself and I say, okay. The line between which way I go on, that runs through my heart. This is where I get obsessed with the idea of, okay, I'm going to be possessed by ideas. Which ideas do I want to invite in?

[Jordan Peterson]

That's why Christ says that the kingdom of God is like a mustard seed. It takes root and grows inside you. Like all ideas. Ideas are alive. Richard Dawkins figured this out, although he didn't take it to its logical conclusion. A living idea is a meme. All ideas are alive. And what do I mean by that? Well, they're instantiated in your nervous system. Like how are they not alive? How do they not have a perspective? How do they not have an aim, a set of motivations, the desire to communicate? Even Nietzsche. Nietzsche said every drive attempts to philosophize in its own spirit. Nietzsche knew these things. And then you do. You, you, you incorporate, you take in, you eat sometimes things you shouldn't. That's the eternal sin of mankind, to incorporate even the forbidden fruit. What's the forbidden fruit? Knowledge of good and evil. What does that mean? You don't get to make the moral rules. And that's where Nietzsche went wrong. We don't. We can't create our own values. We have to abide by the intrinsic order of the cosmos. Richard Dawkins knew this too. He wrote a paper stating that biological organisms had to be a microcosm of the environment in which they evolved. It's like, okay, Dr. Dawkins, how far are you willing to take that a human being's a personality? Does that mean that the cosmos is a personality? Is it something you have a relationship with? That's how we're adapted. So he can take that wherever however he wants. The, the avatar of the spirit of enlightenment, Rationality. Right, that's, that's a snake that's now devoured its own tail. So that's why the enlightenment is coming to an end.

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

Yes, we are for sure going to talk about that. Before we get to that, though, I,

[Jordan Peterson]

I really notice that I said that

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

you gave a speech. I, I, I listen to a lot of your stuff because you help me think through complicated ideas. I am a big believer in that. By speaking, you're speaking so that you can understand, not necessarily so you can be understood. So I see people that I see have the bravery to actually think out loud and process through. Also, for anybody watching, they will probably have heard me talk about this before. And I was telling you this before we started rolling, I was very confused. When you went from the Internet's dad, you got very sick and you came back back as like the Internet's theologian. And I could not figure out what that change was. But as somebody who I had seen be a very careful thinker, I thought, okay, what if there was something here that I'm just not understanding yet? Let me try to map it. And I don't know that you and I see this the same way. I don't know is the honest answer, and I hope we figure that out today. But I know that you have clarity of thought and there's internal consistency. And so that means that there's probably something very useful because you know what you're aiming towards. And this is the anchor we have to address before we can move on away from. Yes, yes. Which to your point about sin, is missing the mark, but that implies that there is, because I would say sin is hitting the wrong mark if I

[Jordan Peterson]

had another way of looking. Well, that's, that's a deeper form of

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

sin, because that's what I think is happening right now. I really think you're the canary in the coal mine. What's happening to you with them trying to strip your license? Even though I do hate the way you tweet, I'm not gonna lie, but I listened to that whole episode where your friends were like, jordan, please stop. I was Literally in my house, like, Jordan, please. Anyway, you get. You should have the right to have

[Jordan Peterson]

a shadow come out.

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

Correct. You should be a fully fledged human being. You should not have to answer to us. Even though, as people who have gotten so much value out of the way that you think through problems, that's what we're responding to anyway. So the thing we have to get to is I think sin is hitting the wrong mark. I think people are hitting that mark in spades. I think you've become the lightning rod of that pride. That's why we worship pride.

[Jordan Peterson]

Well, pride. Pride is always being regarded as the ultimate sin.

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

Before we. Before we go down that path, let me. Let me string this whole idea together. You're the canary in the coal mine. Because.

[Jordan Peterson]

Why would that be, I wonder?

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

Because you won't shut up about things that people who believe. Because I take the stance that totalitarians actually are trying to do good. Some of them aren't. But I think that that makes it too easy to push them. Assume that they are just possessed by the wrong idea, and so they believe. I know what's best. I legitimately know what's best for humanity.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah, but that's the problem.

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

I get it. Bear with me.

[Jordan Peterson]

And you are the I that knows.

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

Just out of curiosity, in that statement, that's the question. I'm saying I know how wrong that can go. Those people are saying they. They think they have identified the social structure that will lead to a utopia.

[Jordan Peterson]

They identify their eye with the spirit of totalitarianism that has possessed them.

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

They haven't gotten that far.

[Jordan Peterson]

They don't.

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

They may not even be smart enough to get that far. Which is a whole nother thesis I have about the complexity of ideas, which I think is a big part of what causes this problem, is people cannot think through these incredibly complicated ideas. So they need bumper stickers. You give them a bumper sticker.

[Jordan Peterson]

Parables.

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

Oh, you're trying to make it positive again. People will take a bumper sticker long before they will take a pair of bumper stickers.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yes, yes, that's. You know what. You know what slogan means?

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

Yes, I know. I don't know what it means.

[Jordan Peterson]

It's from. It's from the Welsh slua garam. It means battle cry of the dead. Why of the dead? Because slogans are dead words.

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

And they're like, as in dead rock.

[Jordan Peterson]

They're brandished by the army of the dead that would rather drag the living into the pit than prevail, then allow the living to prevail. Battle cry of the Dead. It's the army of the dead speaking through the mouths of people that use slogans.

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

Okay, can I. I'm going to translate that.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah.

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

You said earlier that.

[Jordan Peterson]

You know how Solzhenitsyn talked about people who were possessed by an ideology. Right. And they. Their words. Their words had no personal relationship to them. They were. They were merely mimicking an ideology. All the communists said exactly the same thing. There's nothing alive about that if everyone is saying exactly the same thing. Well, because. And this is, I suppose, where the left has something. Has. Has something. Accurate, perverted. There's a diversity and a vitality and originality in. In living speech that's not there in the. In the land of cliche and slogan. That's why you can't listen to people. Like when I listen to ideologues talk, it's just buzzing. I can't even hear it. My mind goes elsewhere instantly. There's nothing about it that's compelling. There's nothing that's gripping because they're not

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

testing the idea against feedback.

[Jordan Peterson]

There's multiple reasons for. Because they're. Because the speech is an indication that while they're speaking, they're not treading the golden path.

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

What's the golden path?

[Jordan Peterson]

It's the path that grips attention and is inspiring.

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

Okay, I have to say. You can give me space. I need to say this.

[Jordan Peterson]

That's. That's fine. All right, so I'm not trying to speak elusively. There's no. No, I know.

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

I know. You and I just use such different language, and I think it will be very useful for people to hear the same things said in, like, a Rosetta Stone way.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yes, definitely.

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

Okay, so I've heard you talk about this a lot. When you go out and do your talks, part of what makes them so captivating is you are actually taking a living idea that you were trying to explore. Golden path. It's not rigid dogma. It is an idea you want to find the truth of. And so you go out in front of a crowd to assess whether they're taking it in. What kind of like, silence. Perfect. And so that idea is living in as much as it is not rigid. It is not fossilized. You want.

[Jordan Peterson]

It's not predetermined. It's not dogmatic. Right. That's right. It's. That's why it's not dead. It's not already formulated. It's not a corpse. It's something alive that's happening right then and there. Right, right. And that's something that only spontaneous speech can manage even. Even books suffer from the lack of that. Now, books have their utility. They. In a book, when you write a book, when you read a book, you can deeply investigate an idea, but it does risk a kind of death. Death of the words on the page because they're not as finely attuned to the demands of the situation. The specific situation as a spontaneous speech can be when it's at its highest, because it's of the moment. That notion that, you know, there's a. That's the third person of the Trinity, right? That spirit that possesses you when you speak in an inspired manner. That's a. And that's a symbolic representation of the living spirit of. Of exploration in relationship to the highest goal. That's really what it is. And so, you know, you might say, well, what. What do you have to be aiming at if, if your goal is to speak in that manner? And the answer is, well, you have to be doing your best for the best in you and other people. That has to be your aim. And then you have to speak truth insofar as you're capable. And that will do the trick. And there's no difference between that and the paraclete that Christ left in the Gospels behind. Behind after his departure. It's a reflection of the idea of the Holy Spirit. It's the baptismal spirit. It's the Spirit of God that moves upon the waters at the beginning of time. It's. It's the creative manifestation of the structure that extracts habitable order from chaos. It's all of those things in its living form. That's why it's inspiring. Why else would it be inspiring? Why else would it attract and gleam, right? Or have motive, force, right? I mean, the. And. And you can think of it instinctually if you want. It speaks biologically. Those are words that speak to the deepest core of your being materially, for that matter. Because everything stacks up. If everything's unified in the highest place, everything stacks up. And, and that is the case, right?

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

That to me, is the final test of an idea's validity. If it will stack and if it will point you to things that are true.

[Jordan Peterson]

That's technically true, by the way, because one of. So the reason that you have five senses is so that your orientation occurs as a consequence of things that are stacked. When all five senses report the same thing, you have a reasonable assurance that what you're seeing corresponds sufficiently to reality so you won't perish. Right? Now we. That isn't enough because then I'll take the evidence of my senses and contrast it with the evidence of yours from your slightly different perspective. And then we'll do that collectively. We're doing a lot of stacking in order to filter the infinite sufficiently so that we can model it well enough to move forward. A lot of stacking. And that is. There's a technical branch of psychometrics construct theory that, that psychologists have developed to help distinguish between concepts that are real from concepts that aren't. Like the phrenological concepts, for example, that people used to use to map the hypothetical functions of the brain. There was something in that idea, but they weren't real concepts. How do you know if a concept is real? Well, you can measure it using multiple different instruments at different times and in different places and get the same report. Something like that. Right, right. Right.

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

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[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

This is why the case against you scares me. This is people with dead ideas enslaving others with bumper stickers, slogans that they can hold on to that makes them feel morally virtuous.

[Jordan Peterson]

But they are not simple. They're simple and morally virtuous. Yeah. It's a viciously tempting combination. Right? Correct. One idea explains everything. Plus, once you brandish that idea, all your moral work is done. Right. Very, very tempting. That is definitely the tempting. That is definitely the temptation of a deadly slogan. Like, from each according to his ability, to each according to his need. You can destroy the world with that dead weapon. Yeah. And we, you know, I did a pretty good job of trying that. And we're not done, apparently.

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

Yeah. So this is why I think you have to be from their lens, you have to be silen because you force that idea to compete for validity in the realm of ideas. And if it really is ideas, and

[Jordan Peterson]

that's all we have, if it doesn't compete in the realm of ideas, it will compete in the realm of flesh.

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

Yes.

[Jordan Peterson]

Right. Everyone needs to know that.

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

And its unwillingness to compete in the realm of ideas is a signal that it's not valid. Which is why they can't put. Is exactly why Biden saying, I'm not going to debate scares the life out of me. Because that's what you do when you can't win. Like if you know your ideas are more compelling and you step to the mic all day long.

[Jordan Peterson]

Wrong. Or if you know that you should subject them to debate. So if you're wrong, you could learn. Right. Because maybe that's even what you want in a leader. You don't necessarily need a leader who's right, because God help you, you're not going to find that, but you could at least find one who is willing to put his ideas to the test to discover where he's wrong. That's a leader. That's someone with courage. Right. That's someone willing to kill the. To kill the father, in a sense, to kill the tyrannical father. Because the tyrannical father is the presumption of your own dead ideas. That. Not psychologically speaking, that's the case. That's the giant that the hero slays in order to make the new world. Right. The dogma of the past, the dead dogma of the past. It might have even been valid at some point. But you want a leader who embodies that spirit and not necessarily the correct knowledge. You know, Piaget, Jean Piaget, the developmental psychologist, he knew this is that the deepest truth is a proper formulation of the process by which truth itself is generated. Right. And that's what Piaget was trying to discover when he evaluated children the deepest. I don't know if I can say that again. The deepest truth is the representation of the process by which truth itself is generated. That's the hero story. Wow. It's a process. Truth is a process. Truth is a spirit rather than a set of dead facts.

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

Why do people run from it?

[Jordan Peterson]

Because it forces you to pick up your cross. I mean, really, Obviously. Obviously. Like, why do people run is the question. Well, what do they run from? Pain and malevolence. Well, why?

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

Well,

[Jordan Peterson]

it's obvious why. What's not obvious is how you could not do that. Well, you know, the. The entire biblical corpus is an analysis of why you shouldn't run, what would mean not to run, what it would mean if you fully ceased running. That's the story of Christ. The story of Christ is the story of a man, the man, let's say, who ceased running. That's what it. That's what the story is.

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

Can I give you an alternate take? That scares me so badly, and I think I'm right about this.

[Jordan Peterson]

Okay. I think, well, if it scares you, that's a good indication that you might be right.

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

Yeah. The big problem here is that to pick up a cross and be willing to suffer what Jesus suffered, you have to. You have to have a conviction that you're right, that hell awaits on the other side of not doing that. Most people cannot think through ideas that complicated and be certain enough that they'd be willing to be torn down. Well,

[Jordan Peterson]

That's reflected. That's reflected to some degree in the structure of, especially the Catholic Church. And, and, and Dostoevsky pointed to that in the Kamazov. There's a scene in the Brothers Kazov where Christ comes back to earth in the midst of the Spanish Inquisition and he performs his miracles and goes about. Goes about his spiritual business, goes about being the process of the word. And the inquisitor comes and arrests him and throws him in prison and then comes down in the middle of the night and says, look, you know, we've. We don't need you around. You're a lot of trouble. We've taken your impossible message, your impossible demands, and we recast them so that flawed people can manage. And the last thing we need is you to show back up and destroy everything we've done to make what you had to say palatable, because people just can't manage it. It's too much. And Christ listens, and at the end he kisses the inquisitor who turns white and leaves. And. But he leaves the door open when he leaves. And. And that's. That's a complicated answer to your question, but you are right in a sense that it's too much to ask, but you're wrong, and that people turn to lesser solutions, mediated solutions, like a belief in an external Christ. Let's say. That's. That's one way of thinking about it. Rather than a joint belief in an internal and external Christ, which would be more comprehensive, and they turn to that instead of. Of seeking out the whole adventure. The problem with that is. And this is the problem, is that you don't have a choice about your cross. Exactly. You only have a choice about how you will bear it because death and. And hell are coming for you, and that's that. There's no escape from that. And so all you can choose is the manner in which you confront it. And you can do it voluntarily, wholeheartedly, in good faith, with courage, or you can do it any of the insane multiplicity of other ways that clamor for your attention. That's right. My name is Legion. Right. There's a word. There's a reason for that. Right, so. So the. The Christian message fundamentally, is that your best bet, all things considered, truly all things considered, is to take the whole burden on, like wide eyes, wide open. Right. That's what Abraham does, for example, when he goes on his great adventure. It's the. It's a. And that's what Job does. There are precursors to this idea in the Old Testament stories. It's in some ways fully revealed. That's a good way of thinking about it in the New Testament stories. So Christ's claim is that he embodies the Spirit in the Old Testament. You think that's right? I think that's the simplest explanation. And it has to do. You said already that people can allow ideas to possess them. So what idea should you allow to possess you? Well, the insistence in the Judeo Christian tradition is that you should invite in this the spirit of your ancestors. The unified, monotheistic, creative, loving, kind, truthful spirit of your ancestors. Something's coming in. Or a multitude of things. How about a diversity of things? How about a rainbow of things or a plurality of things? What, under some united flag? The union of diversity? I don't think so. It's no wonder that we believe in the union of diversity when we believe that a man can be a woman. If we believe those things, there's nothing we won't swallow. No camel too big to go down our throats. No totalitarian lie we won't rush to embody. So you asked earlier, where are we headed? Like, every single person is making up their mind about that. Well, they always have, but it's really evident at the moment, and it's going to become a lot more evident than it is.

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

Because people are moving in the wrong direction.

[Jordan Peterson]

No, they've always done that, but not this fast. Interesting, right? Because we're, you know, we're. We're in a. We're in a runaway cycle of. Of transformation. And yeah, I think we're in a

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

positive feedback loop where social media allows simplistic ideas.

[Jordan Peterson]

We're in a lot of positive feedback loops.

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

Yeah, it I, I, the only solution I see is that's the dragon.

[Jordan Peterson]

That's its own tail. The positive feedback loop.

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

We interpret the Ouroboros differently.

[Jordan Peterson]

Well, it's many things, you know, because it is a symbol of chaos. But one of the things it is is a runaway positive feedback loop.

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

Interesting. I see that as the. What ends up happening when you don't have the right foundational model.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah, definitely.

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

That you can't make progress because your core foundation is such that you eat your own progress.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah.

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

Through incompetence is the easiest way to think of it. You have the wrong model. That's, to me, what the Ouroboros is about, which is the whole idea that

[Jordan Peterson]

you're, that's why it emerges when the father dies,

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

you know, because it's the rule.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah. If the, if the father is a corpse, the Uroboros makes itself manifest. The Mesopotamians knew this when, when the. Okay, so the Mesopotamian gods killed their father Apsu and tried to live on his corpse. Well, that's what we're doing when we mouth slogans. We're trying to live on the corpse of the past. And instead of embodying its living spirit, they try. They slay the past there. They have no regard for the past, which is also what we're doing, by the way. They slay the past and attempt to inhabit its corpse. Like Geppetto in the Whale. It's the same idea. And Tiamat shows back up. She's the Dragon of Chaos, and she. And her goal is to destroy everything. And that's one of the precursors. That idea is one of the precursors to the Flood myth. And the word timeout is, they say, etymologically, cognate with the word tohu, vabohu. And that's the chaos out of which God makes order at the beginning of time. All these ideas are linked.

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

So if you inhabit dead ideas, you will bring back chaos.

[Jordan Peterson]

Of course, the dead, yes. The dead ideas can no longer. They can no longer sustain you in your active contending with the present. This happens in the Lion King. What happens when Scar takes over the pride? What? What happens when Scar takes over Pride Rock? Pride Rock. It's so comical. Scar takes over Pride Rock. Well, why? Well, he's scarred. That's the first thing. He's intellectually arrogant, obviously. And the whole kingdom turns into a wasteland, a dry, sterile desert wasteland. That's always the case. It's always been the case. And, and we're seeing the archetypal outlines more clearly now because Things are changing at a ever accelerating rate and so God only knows. What does Jonathan Pageo say? Giants will walk the earth once again? They already are.

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

What is the Enlightenment? Why do we have to get to the other side of it? Or why do you think maybe we already.

[Jordan Peterson]

The Enlightenment is the belief that the material world speaks for itself. It's not true. You have to see facts through a lens of value. The postmodernist got that right. That's why we are in the culture war. To some degree is the postmodern critique was correct. We see the world through a story and the facts now indicate that. I've talked with Carl Friston, for example, one of the world's great neuroscientists. Many people know this. Now I asked Friston, is a, is an object a micro narrative? He said yes.

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

So even we have to understand what to do with it.

[Jordan Peterson]

Function. You bet, you bet, you bet, you bet. You don't just see the world. You see the value of the world. And you don't, you don't see the world and infer the value. You see the value, you see the value. And, and the, the implicit structure of your incons unconscious is the, is the matrix of value through which the world reveals itself. And properly formulated, that matrix has a multi dimensional narrative structure that's coherent, that's reflected in the structure of the biblical stories. And we know that. Well, we say, well, what's the foundational document of Western civilization? Well, obviously it's the Bible, like forget the theology historically. Well, what does that mean? Well, it means that, it means it's the seed from which your perceptual matrix grew. You're a more or less coherent echo of the biblical corpus. That's what you are. And the more you know of the stories, the hyperlinked stories, the more fully fleshed that incarnation, internal incarnation becomes. The Bible was written in consort, you might say, with the, obviously with the function of the human nervous system both individually and collectively, was woven together over thousands of years and also evolved to match the structure of our memories, all of that and the structure of our attention. So the postmodernists, when they realized that we saw the world through a story, which was a brilliant discovery and was made in many disciplines at the same time, by the way, they jumped to the, they jumped to the next question, which was, well, if we see the world through a story, what is the story? And they said, well, it's power and it's twin sister, it's evil twin sister hedonism, but power. They were Marxists. It's all about power. Have it your way. Play with fire, see what happens. Power. I think power is interesting too, because you might say, well, why would you want power? Like if I could just ask you to walk along with me, why wouldn't I do that? Why would I have to exercise power over you? Well, how about I want you to do something that you don't want to do? Well, what? How about something for my immediate gratification? That's why Pageo Jonathan Pagio has said that the Marquis de Sade is the evil brother of the Enlightenment rational mind. It's like absolutely same thing. Same idea explored by Dostoevsky and in Crime and Punishment with Raskolnikov. Yeah, Brutal.

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

All right, so let me say, if I'm understanding you correctly, that to get on the counter Enlightenment train, we could sum it up in a tongue in cheek way and say, facts are dead.

[Jordan Peterson]

Facts are always dead. Facts are always dead. That's why you can't follow them. There's as many. There's more facts than there are things you can't orient yourself. Imagine I drop you in the middle of a desert. It's like all the facts are at hand, man. You're still going to die. Why? Because the. Because the territory isn't the map. Because the land doesn't speak. How about that? How about all of that right now?

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

Can I give you my favorite example of this?

[Jordan Peterson]

Sure.

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

Okay. This is true. What we think of as the entire world, everything that we can see is 0.00035% of the electromagnetic spectrum.

[Jordan Peterson]

Right? Right. Good example.

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

So looking at you, I should see a number of photons in a given wavelength that are reflecting off of that fabric, but I don't. I see black, I see red, I see gold, whatever.

[Jordan Peterson]

You see tools and obstacles.

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

Yes, for sure. And once I understood, oh my God, I'm seeing a ridiculously gross simplification of what is really in the world. Then I realized my brain is made up of algorithms. And once I realize my brain is made of algorithms. And algorithms are designed to push you to see certain things, to conceive of them in a certain. I suddenly really wanted to understand what are my algorithms driving me to do. And every idea.

[Jordan Peterson]

Sure. That's why Jung said every person has to figure out the myth that they're living.

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

Whoa, whoa.

[Jordan Peterson]

It's the same thing.

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

Yeah.

[Jordan Peterson]

What story? Here's two ways of thinking about it. What story are you acting out? Or what character resides in you? That's another way of thinking about it. Or what spirit have you allowed to possess you? Or what spirit have you invited in and consorted with such that it can possess you? So when Cain is bitter. Cain from Cain and Abel. Cain is bitter because his sacrifices go unrewarded. So he's bitter because his work is not successful. And everyone should be able to identify with that. There's no difference between work and sacrifice, by the way. They're the same thing. We. When we work, we sacrifice the present to the future.

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

Saw that clip from your book.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah. Okay. Okay. So now Cain's work is unsuccessful, so he gets bitter. And so. And he's jealous as well, of Abel, who sacrifices are accepted and who's thriving. And so Cain. Cain's countenance falls. He becomes depressed and anxious and nihilistic and resentful and starts to shake his fit fist at God. He did. He does what Job's wife tells Job to do when Job is being tortured. Job's wife says, shake your fist at God and die. Well, Cain shakes his fist at God and kills. And so that's. That's even worse. So Cain calls out God, just like bitter atheists do constantly and for. They have their reasons, and says, you know, I'm. What the hell's going on here? What kind of world did you make where I'm breaking myself in half with my labors and nothing is succeeding and everything is bitter and pointless? And God says, if you did well, you. You'd be accepted. And then he says something much, much worse, which you figured out already. He said, sin crouches at your door like a sexually aroused predatory animal, and you've invited it in to have its way with you. That's dark, right? Well, it's terrible. It's terrible. And there's echoes of this in other mythological stories. So what it means is that Cain is suffering and there's. There's nothing sinful in that as such. Right? Because the innocent can suffer. Cain suffers, and then he turns in the direction of temptation. He starts to nurse his resentment. That's another biological metaphor, to nurse your resentment. He starts to brood over his resentment. Resentment, Right. And so what that means is that spirit of arrogant resentment takes. He invites it in. It takes up residence within him. But then he engages in creative. He engages in a creative dialogue with that spirit. It's. It's not merely possession. It's. It's joint cons. It's conspiracy. It's conspiracy between the eternal spirit of darkness. That's a good way of thinking about it. And the living human soul. That's what happens when you get resentful,

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

man, when I hear you talk. This is, this is exactly what it feels like to me. J.K. rowling, the first Harry Potter book is really simple and by the last one, it's heavy. And she was clearly maturing the writing in the story with the people reading it. When I look at we who. Yes. When I look at we who wrestle with God as the more mature next step in the 12 rules of life,

[Jordan Peterson]

it's sort of a return to Maps of Meaning.

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

Interesting. So you don't feel that it's the successor to 12 rules of life?

[Jordan Peterson]

It is, in the way that you just described, because I suppose it's a hybrid. See, Maps of Meaning was so difficult. It's. It. It took me 30 years to unpack it to the point where I could make it straightforwardly comprehensible, especially in writing. But even in, in lecturing, I unpacked really over 30 years. And then I got good enough at that so I could write a book that was accessible. And then this book is. I hope it retains its accessibility, but it's. It's a hydrogen bomb. This book really.

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[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

I mean, look, I haven't read it yet, but I'm going to plant a flag here and say, this is how I think your books go. Maps of Meaning, which is how I found you, helped me understand why.

[Jordan Peterson]

Why were you motivated to plow through that?

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

Because I'm a filmmaker at my.

[Jordan Peterson]

Oh, yes, so the story part.

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

Yes. And so I took away from that. This is why these structures, these characters, these relationships, this is why they resonate with the human animals.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yes, right, right.

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

12 Rules for Life were, hey, I see you suffering. I see nobody's talking to you. Let me give you some simple rules that will really help you out. Then you go on your own cross carrying journey. Coma, illness, crazy town. And you come back with the Deathly Hallows version of. Now I'm gonna give you these, the mythology, and I'm gonna tell you exactly what you wrestle with to learn what spirit not only lives inside you, currently, what spirit should live inside of you. All of the human experience has already been thought through. I can't give it to you in a bunch of simple packages of the rules for life because those will become dead wood fast. I've got to get you into the thing. There's a reason you titled this book we who wrestle with God and not what you can learn from God.

[Jordan Peterson]

That.

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

That would have been a title more people would have understood. But there's obviously something to this idea of wrestling with living ideas, making it personal, figuring out what your relationship is with this stuff.

[Jordan Peterson]

When, when, when, when. When Jacob is wrestling with God. That's worship. That's. That's true worship. That's why he. He's awarded the name Israel. He's the leader of the chosen people because he wrestles with God. So. That's manna for the suffering, because it means that if you're genuinely suffering, then you're. God's there in your grasp, right there with you. That's a good way of thinking about it. In the wrestling. Socrates was a wrestler, Literally, right? And he was. He was a very powerfully built person, and he wrestled before he was a philosopher. It's the same thing. And everyone. Thing is about the chosen people of Israel. Everyone wrestles with God. Now the question is, you know, in what spirit should you wrestle with God? And I would say, remember who you're wrestling with. That's what Job. That's what God tells Job when he reminds him that, you know, God was there at the beginning of the time. Beginning of time. Defeating Leviathan, fashioning the world. Remember who you're wrestling with. Have a little humility or a lot. Plenty enough to strip you of your dead wood, right? And if you're all dead wood, then the fire of God looks like hell.

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

Can I get you to read something that you said? These are your words. Oh, verbatim. This is from your ark speech. This was when I felt like, okay, I actually really understand what he's doing now. It starts there with the muscle emojis and just goes to the bottom.

[Jordan Peterson]

Read it out loud.

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

Yeah, I think it's better in your voice because this. This for everybody listening. This is part of the speech he gave at the ARC conference.

[Jordan Peterson]

We're so foolish. We regard those propositions, religious propositions, as something approximating primitive superstitions, when in fact they're the most brilliant intuitions into the fundamental structure of reality that have ever been offered. We predicated our civilization on those presuppositions. And look at it. It's not so bad. We've brought wealth and plenty to billions of people around the world. We've been struggling uphill properly. And if we were wise and faithful and courageous and responsible, we could continue to spread that to everyone. We could eradicate absolute poverty. We could bring about a time of abundance and opportunity for everyone. And we'll do that. We can do that if we hoist the world on our individual shoulders and operate collectively in this harmonious manner and continue the struggle uphill toward the City of God. And that's the truth. It's the truth. It's not some superstition. It's not some primitive defense against death anxiety. It's not the opiate of the people. It's the call to divine responsibility. And to the degree that each of us acted it out in the confines of our own life, we do what I suggested at the beginning of this conference, which is tilt the world toward heaven and away from hell. Yeah, that's. That's all right.

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

Amazing. It hit me very hard when I first heard it. I don't believe in God. How do I come to.

[Jordan Peterson]

What is Paul say when people say that? He says, I don't believe in the same God you don't believe in. Do you think. Are you struggling to find your way?

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

Yes.

[Jordan Peterson]

Is it an honest struggle? Yes, that's the belief. It's not a statement. Religious belief is not a statement about facts. It's not a scientific theory. This is why the enlightenment is done. That was wrong. That isn't what it is. It's a struggle. It's the moral struggle. Or you could say maybe more clearly. See, you say you don't believe, but what you mean is you can't reconcile your conceptions with your intuitions, really. And that is the modern predicament. Because you. Do you believe that what happened in Auschwitz was wrong?

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

Yes.

[Jordan Peterson]

Okay, well, then, you know, you've established one pole of the. Of the belief in divinity. You've just established the malevolent pole. And that means the benevolent pole is ill conceptualized. Still implicit. That's it. Still implicit. That's what God is. That's what God is in. In the belly of the whale is implicit. Still implicit. But that doesn't mean it's not there. Called or not called. God is there. That was Carl Jung, the carving over his. The castle he built with his own two hands. It's there. You just don't know it. But you know to some degree because you're struggling and you're struggling away from Auschwitz, let's say. That's good. You great. You know, the person Running away from hell is also running towards heaven. Now, maybe your pathway would be a little straighter if you knew a little bit more about heaven. But away is something out of hell. Is something out of hell. Towards what? There's the next question, I suppose. Out of hell towards what? Towards what? Toward. Toward a neutral. A neutral normality. Or. Or upward. Away from hell. Up Jacob's Ladder, towards the highest possible heights. That's the dwelling place of the eternally uniting spirit. That's a good way of thinking about it. That's Jacob's Ladder. And where does it end? I don't know. If it does end, it. It disappears into the heights. And what's at the top? Something that recedes when you approach it.

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

I come at everything from a very materialist standpoint.

[Jordan Peterson]

Not everything, I think. Not the evil. Not your realization of the reality of evil.

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

Oh, to me, that there's no incongruence there. That that's just a nature of, say,

[Jordan Peterson]

there was necessarily an incongruence.

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

Interesting. So for me, that's the same. I come at that. Just humans are algorithms, and you have algorithms that could lead you to evil. I get why in certain circumstances, in a truly amoral universe where humans are

[Jordan Peterson]

the creators of algorithms as well.

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

Yeah, sort of there's. Look.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah, sort of. That's right.

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

Biology is. Is at play. But females select who they sleep with, and that has huge implications. We all get to invite ideas into our world. So for.

[Jordan Peterson]

Well, there's an order. It's like. I think one of the ways of thinking about good, thinking about it is that it's the same as the dynamic between musical knowledge and musical production in composers. Like, the composers are adhering to a set of guidelines. You would say they're. They're. They're operating in accordance with a certain order, but they can produce an endless, literally endless proliferation of forms. And human beings are both of those things. They're. They're the order that gives rise to. Gives rise to what is new and alive. But they are also the thing that is alive. They're both at the same time. That's the hero in. In. In relationship to the. The father of the king. That's Osiris in relationship to Horus, or that's Horace, sorry, Horus, the Egyptian God in relationship to Osiris. We're both. That's partly why there's a trinitarian view in Christianity. So because there's a. There's a. The Father is like a structure. That's a way of thinking about it. And the Son is The Son is the incarnation of that structure and the Spirit is the intermediary between the two. It's something like that.

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

I'm trying to get people to understand that they're having a biological experience because I want them to be able to predict the outcome of their actions by understanding the nature of their mind and the minds of the people they're interacting with.

[Jordan Peterson]

With.

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

I have a feeling you're doing exactly the same thing through a different form of encapsulated wisdom. That wisdom being the biblical corpus. How right does that feel?

[Jordan Peterson]

Well, the monotheistic hypothesis is that everything meets. So I don't have any problem with the evolutionary biologists, for example. Well, once we sort out our theological presuppositions and our biological presuppositions, they'll be the same thing. Yes, oh yes, you can see that, that, that convergence is already happening. That's already happening in many, many ways. There's, there's a tremendous concordance, I would say, between the ethos that's laid out in the biblical writings and the. What would you say, the analysis of reciprocal altruism. So, and you know, Brett Weinstein is moving rapidly down that road, for example, in his conceptualization of the Spirit that organizes human individuals and, and societies.

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

So do you think what they're discovering is that the narrative structure and the just time tested way that these stories have been passed on into our generation prove that that's just the best encapsulation of that wisdom in a way that people can use in their own lives?

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah, well, sure, sure, you could, you could almost think about that as by definition, I mean, the stories in the biblical corpus are the ones that burn themselves into our imagination and memories. Well, why? Well, because they have a concordance with that structure, the stories. This is where Dawkins would have gone with the idea of meme, if he would have pushed it eventually. The memes that best match themselves to the structure of our psyche are the ones we conserved. Yes, obviously. How could it possibly be any different? How could it possibly be any different than that? Obviously that's the case.

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

That obviously assumes a base assumption that you will react the most strongly to the things that are most true. If you don't have that base assumption, you won't, that won't be obvious to you. You'll be like, it's not real, therefore it's. And you will completely discredit the emotions.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yes, yes, I said.

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

Because if you take a Sam Harris or you can do that when you're

[Jordan Peterson]

confused conceptually though too. And that can block your vision. So, and, and that's what's, that's part of what happened as a consequence of the Enlightenment. We, we didn't understand what we were doing and we didn't understand the relationship between what we were doing and the world of facts.

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

It was super useful, man. Well, the Enlightenment.

[Jordan Peterson]

Absolutely, absolutely.

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

Why did it break down? Why does it fall apart?

[Jordan Peterson]

Because the world of facts doesn't speak. Because the empirical hypothesis is wrong.

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

Will you give me that? It's like Newtonian physics versus Einsteinian physics where it's so close, it gets you so far, but then ultimately it falls down. You realize there's a whole universe to be unlocked. There's.

[Jordan Peterson]

There's an, there's a reasonable analogy there. The, the problem is, it's like the follow the science ideas that science isn't an animating spirit. It's not a guide. And so the world of facts. See, the empirical hypothesis is that we derive all our information from facts. It's just not the case. That's not.

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

I'm going to change that word for you and I think it will help you get to what people are trying to say. It's utility.

[Jordan Peterson]

That's value.

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

Who cares about facts? It's utility. What I'm trying to get people to understand.

[Jordan Peterson]

American pragmatists figured out in the late 1800s.

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

Yes. So, but you were saying people look at the world and they see. They don't see a water bottle. They see I can quench my thirst. They see utility. So someone. I'm putting words in their mouth and I don't know them well enough. But like if I were to sit down with Sam or Dawkins, I have a feeling where, where they buck is. I don't need the encapsulation of wisdom in this story that I've seen kill millions of people throughout history. When people even.

[Jordan Peterson]

That's, that's, that's a very. See. Both Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins identify the totalitarian spirit with the religious spirit spirit. And that's a failure of discrimination on their part. They're not the same thing. The religious spirit can be perverted by the totalitarian spirit, but that doesn't make it identical to it. That's exactly what the postmodernists claim when they talk about the. It's exactly the same claim that the post modernists are making about systemic racism is that the system itself is nothing but an embodied embodiment of oppressive power. It's exactly what Harris and Dawkins say about the religious system domain. It's precisely the same claim, and it's not true. It's not true. When religious ideation is perverted, it perverts in the direction of power. But the truly religious have known that forever. I mean, Christ himself is crucified by the people who use the religious enterprise as a means to power. That's the Pharisees. This is. This isn't new. So now can. Can the religious enterprise be perverted by those in power? Well, obviously the most effective psychopaths use what is highest to serve what is lowest.

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

But they will also smuggle things into the works that were convenient and useful at the time to justify conquest, whatever.

[Jordan Peterson]

Oh, sure.

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

And then that stays in the utterance of that. That philosophy, that religion. Then do some pretty horrible. Like, it's easy to understand where Sam is coming from. Especially with Islam, when somebody does a thing that we consider pretty heinous and they point to the book and say, I did it, because it says to do this. In that. Then, yes, now you've got.

[Jordan Peterson]

It requires particularly careful separation of the wheat from the chaff to get those things straight.

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

And is this why you say we wrestle with God? We're not just taking every word of the Bible on its face. We are pulling from.

[Jordan Peterson]

You can't. You can't take every word on its face. It's not even technically possible because the meaning of each word is dependent on the word, obviously. But the history of the word and then the history of the word insofar as you've encountered it, and then the word in that phrase, and then the phrase in that sentence, and then the sentence in its paragraph, and then all of the relationships between all of those levels and all the other sentences and paragraphs in the whole book. Like, it's not like you can point to the facts in the Bible. I mean, that just doesn't work because the Bible's actually the structure through which the reason it doesn't work is because the biblical corpus is a representation of the structure through which facts are interpreted. It's not the facts themselves. It's a deeper form of truth. It's a deeper form of truth.

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

Okay, well, let me take a truth

[Jordan Peterson]

through which truth is seen.

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

Okay, I think what I hear you saying is you need the narrative because the narrative forces a hierarchical structure to the facts that are being discussed. And without that perceived even, it gives you a framework with which to order the facts that you're trying to deal with so that you don't have to reinvent that sequencing of hierarchical along facts alone by yourself.

[Jordan Peterson]

Well, it also gives you Protection against the false consensus of the group.

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

Whoa, say that again.

[Jordan Peterson]

Well, look, people might say. They might say, well, our knowledge is only a social construct. And then maybe they mean truth by consensus. You know, so let's assume that there's a world of facts that you can orient yourself in. We'll just leave that as an assumption for now. And then we'll say, well, people come to truth by consensus. It's okay. Well, what, what if the consensus is the Nazi consensus? Well, then either that's a transgression against a more fundamental truth, or it's just a variant of an infinite number of equally valid consensual truths. Well, you can go down that morally relativistic pit if you want, but that's a form of hell, because eventually the logical culmination of that mode of thinking is that. That there's no value distinction between things, in which case you can't even move forward because you only move forward towards something better. And so it just leaves you bereft. Now, the alternative is to say, well, there is a central core of hierarchical truth and that to some great degree, that's embedded in tradition, in which case we can use tradition as the staff. The, the, the, the flag pole, let's say, like Moses staff, which is exactly what Moses staff represents, by the way. That's the tradition around which even our consensus must revolve. Right? And that's the conservative insistence that's one way of thinking about it, is that there's a vertical axis of orientation upward towards God, mediated by tradition, and there's a horizontal axis that it's. That's part of the ongoing conversation and consensus of the moment. But you got to ask yourself, and you already have asked this question. It's the question soldier, and it's posed if everyone has gone insane, if everyone's possessed by the lie. Well, first of all, to make that claim is, Is also to make the assumption that there's some truth that's now being ignored. But then on what grounds does the man who is honest stand? Because it's obviously not on the grounds of consensus, because the consensus is the lie. That's the nature of a totalitarian state, right? When the consensus becomes the lie, you're in a totalitarian state. And that obviously implies. Indicates more directly that there's a truth. There's a truth outside of that. Now, the truth is a process rather than a statement of facts or even a statement of faith. You know, and partly because. Partly because of the, of the mode of enlightenment thinking, we think even Christians think And probably especially Protestants. Not that I'm singling out the Protestants because that wouldn't be fair. That, you know, to believe in Jesus is to say a set of facts and then say you believe them like they're a scientific theory. Well, you're missing the point, which is what the orthodox Christians have been trying to tell the Protestants for a very long time. And the Protestants know this to some degree. The point is the imitation of Christ. That's the ultimate expression of faith. It's not proclaim. It can also be proclamation of a set of beliefs, but that's not what it is. Fundamentally.

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

When you say faith, what do you mean? Faith that it will work.

[Jordan Peterson]

Faith is what you bet your life on.

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

Huh?

[Jordan Peterson]

But that's a definition.

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

I worry that a lot of people bet their life on that this is really true, because then they can just spout the bumper stickers and they can shut the argument.

[Jordan Peterson]

They're also. They're not just betting their life, they're betting their soul. Right. That's worse. That disappears with death.

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

Let me play with an idea here really fast. Is it possible that part of what makes religion so useful is that even if you are trying to treat it like a dead bumper sticker slogan, that the wisdom that it encapsulates is so useful that even if you were just blindly doing it because God told you to do that, your life will be better than if you were to not not?

[Jordan Peterson]

Well, yes, yes. And I would also say that even if you don't think so, your belief structure is permeated by the implicit beliefs. Dawkins believes in the truth. He believes in the redeeming power of the truth. He believes in the redeeming power of the communicated truth. Well, there's no difference between that and worshiping the Word, the divine word. It's the same thing. If that wasn't the case, the scientific enterprise wouldn't have emerged out of the Christian ethos. Dawkins, though he doesn't know it, is mostly a Christian, and so is Harris. Now, Harris has drifted off into meditative space because he had to find a God that was so ineffable that his rational intellect could not tear it down. So that was Sam's solution.

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

But the question is, why would he worry about his rational intellect tearing it down? It's only because I think, and this is. This is one of the things I'm dealing with, with which is, if you ask me to believe that it is scientifically true, that everything in the Bible is literally correct, I'm done, tapped out, finished. No way. A level of absurdity that I just can't even entertain. Like I. I couldn't look myself in the eye and be like, yeah, I actually believe it. Whereas if you say to me, hey, this is the ultimate encapsulation of wisdom. So if tradition is experiments that worked, I forget who said that, but I think that's a lovely way to think of it.

[Jordan Peterson]

That's a good one.

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

If that's true and this story is. Has encapsulated these in a way that the human mind can absorb through the narrative and that this has just withstood the test of time, that if you blindly believe this and act in accordance, your life will actually be made better.

[Jordan Peterson]

You could say the Exodus description is a very accurate description of what actually happened, but all the people who were there at the time were blinded by the facts.

[Interviewer / Joe Rogan]

Blinded by the facts? Why do you say blinded by the facts?

[Jordan Peterson]

Well, how much? You already said, for example, that when you look, you use some trifling percentage of the available electromagnetic spectrum. Well, when you are anywhere doing anything, what fraction of what's going on in reality do you perceive? Well, I would say the biblical accounts of what happened are more accurate than the accounts of the people who would have been. Than the accounts we would have generated had we been there. There are. They're a glimpse behind the scenes. That's another way of thinking about it. If you work in university maintenance, Grainger considers you an MVP because your playbook ensures your arena is always ready for tip off. And Grainger is your trusted partner, offering the products you need all in one place, from H VAC and plumbing supplies to lighting and more. And all delivered with plenty of time left on the clock. So your team always gets the win. Call 1-800-GRAINGER visit grainger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done.