Q & A: The Meaning and Reality of Individual Sovereignty

Ladies and gentlemen, I'm sorry to interrupt. I wanna welcome you to our VIP reception with Dr. Jordan Peterson. We're so glad to have you all with us. I'll just be brief. I do want to especially thank Don Sebastiani of Don Sebastiani and Sons for very generously donating the wines that we have tonight for the reception, and I hope you'll enjoy them. Dr. Peterson will be here momentarily to take photos for all those who are interested. Right afterward, we're going to have a Q&A session where you can personally ask questions with him and have a conversation, so please enjoy yourself and thank you again for joining with us. Thank you.

So my question is related to an interview you did with Camille Paglia not long ago, and you were referring to Robert Sapolsky's work about the zebras and how if the lions don't go after the zebras because they're camouflaged into the herd, not the landscape. And Sapolsky would put a red dot on a hunch and the lions would then go after that zebra. And I get that; I believe that's true. But my question is, how do the lions communicate with each other to go after the one zebra with the red dot?

Well, I think the answer to that is that lions are a lot smarter than we think they are. You know, well, you think about it. You know, like hunting animals have to be very, very intelligent when they hunt in packs because they're obviously communicating with one another constantly and they isolate an individual that's identifiable in some sense. And they seem to be able to determine perhaps from its behavior, perhaps because of the behavior of the hunters what that animal is. But I mean, to be a predator means to manifest substantial intelligence, and I don't think we understand it very well at all.

(I agree, I think you're telepathic.) Yeah, well animals are strange, you know? You know how they can pick up your emotions. They're very good at decoding nonverbal behavior. And so they're communicating through their posture and so forth, but I don't think we understand it very well at all.

You bet. Another question?

Dr. B's here, a college professor here in California. You said some things that are a little bit disheartening to me as an educator for our youth who are bringing them up into this new society and educating them to think deeply about what the meaning is for themselves as individuals. How do you see current academics as failing our students now?

Well, you know I really think faculties of education should probably just be burned to the ground, you know? I mean, they're failing them. They're failing. The faculties of education in particular are failing them in a variety of ways. The first is that I've seen no evidence coming from the faculties of education that our understanding of how to educate children more efficiently has progressed at all in the last 40 years. In fact, I think it's gone backwards.

And a lot of the things the faculties of education had pushed, like self-esteem, which actually doesn't exist because it's measured improperly, like whole word learning, for example, like multiple intelligences—all these things have actually set the cause of education back substantially because they're not based on anything that's real. And then the introduction of... of, well, this very complex gender education to me is nothing but ideology; it's being introduced to children who are far too young and who have enough confusion in their life without adding that additional dimension.

But most importantly I think that the education system doesn't teach kids to read well, it doesn't teach them to write well, it doesn't teach them to think about thinking, so they can't think critically. And it does almost nothing to help them understand that they have a character that they could develop. You know, I mean this has been true for a very long time and there's historical reasons for it.

But, be very good, you know, to have it. What grade do you teach?

(Um, college.) College? Oh college. Well even with the college kids, like no one's ever sat down with most of those kids and asked them, for example, to write an essay of any length and with any degree of seriousness on who they would like to be. And I don't mean career-wise, although that's part of it and why to justify that. It's an unbelievably useful exercise.

And so, especially if you're in the humanities, your job is to teach character development, and we just don't do that well. We tend to tear everything apart and put nothing back together, and it's a terrible thing for young people, so that's some of the problems.

Hi, Dr. Peterson. Another education question, we have a daughter who's in fifth grade in San Francisco. She's in a private school because the public schools here are by and large abysmal, and they are. I recall hearing a lecture of yours where you said as soon as the school starts teaching your kids things like equity, diversity, and inclusion, pull them out. And our daughter's school is deep and wide into that, and there seems to be no escape. So, my husband and I agreed that we would do whatever you say tonight. So, he said... So his solution is that we just need to teach her our values, our individual value system at home.

Well, I say let's think about pulling her out. So what do you say?

Um, how good are you at teaching her your individual values at home? Like can you help her think it through? Is she confused by it?

Um, she is confused by it, but she's mostly rebelling. And whenever I try to bring it up, she gets very angry.

And is she rebelling against your attempts to counter it, or is she...? What's she angry about?

She's angry because she loves her friends at her school. She's afraid of us pulling her out, and she's pretty defensive of her school.

Well, okay. So the first thing I would say is that I wouldn't give you advice because I don't know the particularities of your situation well enough. I think that your... given what you just told me, your attempts to provide her with the values that you can provide her with at home are probably her best long-term defense in any case.

It isn't obvious to me that you're going to find a place where this isn't a problem. So, and she's in grade five?

She is, and by the way, my husband keeps whispering "I told you so" in my...

Well, one of the prerogatives of being married at least from time to time. So I would, I think... It's pretty... You could try the values move for a good while before you do anything more radical, you know? There's something to be said for minimal necessary force, and you don't want to set up any more rebellion on her part than is absolutely necessary.

I don't know if that'll be sufficient, but hopefully it will. It's helpful. Thank you.

Yep, you bet.

You bet. Hi. Um, how do... as a student at this university, how do I...? I mean it's hard to me to sometimes... I mean, I see the university like crumble like every day. Like in all this ideology, like, I just find it hard to like... How do I keep myself like motivated or like... like...? Finding it meaningful to continue and like...?

Well, your best bet in university is you at least have the chance to read. You know, and what you need to do is to—I have a list of books on my website which you may know about or may not—you could go read all those books.

(I've been reading all of them.) Good, good. Well, the thing is that the best thing you can do if you're inundated by foolish teaching is to go read all the books that people have thought are great because lots of them are great and then you can make your peer group the people who wrote those books, and hopefully that'll be enough so that you'll be a lot more than you were, and that would be something.

But you have the opportunity to do that. Even if you're not encouraged to do it, you can do the reading, and I don't know of any better... That, and I would also say to write, you know, write. Read something great, write about it. Get your thoughts in order. That will help straighten you, and you might as well read the best since it's there and it's free. Which is also something quite remarkable. I don't know anything better than that.

Dr. Peterson, a lot of what you say really resonates with me, and so I listen to it quite a bit, but sometimes I feel as though you take the position that these people who are concerned about sexism, racism, and other kinds of discrimination are a bunch of whiners, and I wonder what you really feel about that and how you would address that issue.

Oh, I think it's true. A lot. And I mean it's not that I don't think that there are forms of arbitrary prejudice that are counterproductive, obviously that's the case, and I think that that's detrimental to everyone.

I mean, it would be wonderful to build a society where people were invited and encouraged to participate based on their level of skill in relationship to the required tasks, right? That's what we'd want. And there are arbitrary barriers. But the victim culture that's been generated on the university campuses is not only unwarranted in my estimation, given how much better things are, say in the United States, on the sexism and racism front than say 50 years ago, or 40 years ago, or 30 years ago, or 20 years ago.

There's been unbelievable improvement, and not only that, the emphasis on microaggressions and safe spaces and interference with freedom of speech are definitely making students less resilient rather than more resilient. And every psychotherapist worth his salt knows that, because the way that you help people overcome their anxieties is by exposing them voluntarily to things that they, neither things that they're afraid of and are disgusted by.

And it's the core... it's the core... apart from getting your story straight, it's actually the core of all successful psychotherapies, and so by protecting students, there just isn't anything you can do that would make them less resilient than what's being done in the universities.

And Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff in their book "Coddling of the American Mind" laid that out pretty nicely. The American Psychological Association and the American Psychiatric Association should have put out statements in this regard years ago, because everyone knows if they're trained properly that this is just not how you go about doing it.

It doesn't mean... that doesn't mean that if you're concerned with arbitrary discrimination, that that somehow makes you whiny. Like I don't believe that because discrimination is real and it's pointless. It's harmful.

(How do we address it?) How do we address it?

I think... (As a society.) Well, I think we are addressing it first of all because we're much less prejudiced than we were, like at any other point in known history. So that's the first thing, is that things have improved at a rate that's so dramatic that it's almost unbelievable.

But, the way I think that we improve it is that we crush it out inside our individual souls. You know, for me, this is... that's why I concentrate on the individual. Organizing ourselves into tribes and making that our paramount identity and then teaching students that the appropriate way to view history is as the battleground between identity groups is just a reversion to tribalism.

And that's like whenever a society reverts to tribalism, all that happens is that violence breaks out. There's... because obviously tribal groups are violent, and if you can't speak between your tribes because they're so clearly different demarcated and there's no communication, all there is left is violence.

And so I just don't see that as... I mean, even if the people... let's give 50% of the people who are complaining about discrimination—they're genuine concern. Their solution is inappropriate. All it's going to do is cause more trouble.

And the idea that, you know, there shouldn't be a uniting narrative, I think that's completely absurd because it's a uniting... we're all here. We're all peaceful at the moment despite our pathologies because there's a uniting narrative. Everyone knows what they're doing here, and so everyone acts in a manner that allows everyone to predict each other.

And that's why we're peaceful, because we're all half crazy. You know, and there's lots of times we're not peaceful. You need those uniting narratives, and they have to be superordinate to the group identity.

And... (We all look inside ourselves, every single one.) (Society seems to say "everybody look at yourself carefully and see if you're doing discrimination.") ("And if you are being discriminatory, stop it.")

Yeah, well, that's it, and it's not just discriminatory. I'm sure that, you know, my sense is that the average person, myself included, has more than enough sins on their conscience to keep themselves busy polishing themselves up for the rest of their life.

And so I think that's a really good place to start because you know, you take the damn responsibility on yourself, and if you're looking outside for someone to blame, then that's the first sign that there's probably something wrong.

And it's not like I don't know that some people have it rough. Some people have it rough, and it's because of external things that have happened to them, but their best bet still is to take the responsibility for fixing that onto themselves.

And you weaken people if you say that they're the passive victim of external forces, and then they become the passive victims of external forces. It's not good.

So, yeah.

Um, is there a generational divide in the themes of the questions that you get, and which ones do you find the most entertaining?

Don't really think there is a generational divide particularly. I haven't noticed it.

Um... Most entertaining... God, that's a tough one. I mean...

(Did you have fun?) Haha, yeah. Look, I mean... I wouldn't say that what I've been doing for the last three years has been fun... but it's been unbelievably worthwhile and meaningful, you know? Like, it's definitely been... I've continued to do it because I can't think of anything better to do than to come to an event like this and to talk seriously to people about issues that I hope are fundamental.

And the evidence seems to be that, as far as I can tell, that it's doing a substantial number of people a substantial amount of good. And so that's not fun precisely, but it's better than fun. But I can tell you one thing that, well, this is how it's better than fun in some sense.

You know, I mentioned this in my talk tonight. It's very... affecting... to travel all over the world and to have people that I don't know come up to me constantly. Like if I was outside during a day, it would happen 50 times and say "look, I was having a hell of a time, and here's why and here's the things I've done to change, and it's way better."

And you know, there isn't anything you could hope for that would be better in your life than to be able to travel to places you've never been, everywhere, and for perfect strangers to come up to you on the street, politely and tell you that their lives are much better than they were, and that it was because of... paying some attention to what I've been communicating—not originating, but communicating.

So, that's a great thing and as long as that continues, then I'll continue doing this and I'll be content with whatever fun I manage to extract from the process.

So we will just do one more because I'm starting to not be very coherent, and that's always a good place to stop. So who's got the mic?

(I got the mic. If logos speaks habitable order into chaos, and we reflect that by speaking truth) and that's good, then when we fail to speak truth, is that evil and how has it differentiated from the original chaos that was being spoken to?

Well, it's definitely... I would say that it's, I would say yes, that it's evil. That that's the right way of thinking about it. The initial chaos is more... it's more blurry potential. Like it has the alternatives of going many ways. If you... like I've dealt with families, say in my clinical practice who have practiced many generations of deep lies. And so there's a potential there, right, that the lies generated, but it's almost impossible to set it straight.

Like once you cast something like that into being, it's much more difficult to... turn to the good. You know, you know it's obvious. You know, you think "oh, this is the day I'm finally gonna tell off my boss," and it's like maybe you should have had an intelligent conversation with him at a slightly lower voice tone three years ago, you know?

And so it's a little late, and you go there and you sacrifice your job because you can no longer control your anger, and now you're unemployed, and you don't have a record, a good employment record for your next job. And now your family doesn't have anything to rely on. It's like that's chaos, man, but it's not easy to set straight.

Whereas normally, as long as you haven't done anything too pathological, what opens up in front of you is paths that could go in either direction. You know, it's not that hard to set it straight. But once you've made the mistake, well, you have to fix the mistake and then you have to recast the potential, and that's hard. It requires—you have to admit that you did something wrong.

You have to have the humility to note that you're the one in error. You have to calculate the strategy for setting it right. You have to implement it, and then you have to decide you're not going to do it again.

Right, that's the full... what do you call that? When you go to Catholic Church, and you...

Confess! You have to confess, and you have to repent, and you know, and you have to atone. And that's what you do to eradicate evil, is you confess, and you repent, and you atone.

And those out to atone is to... that's at-one, right, to restore that initial unity. It's very, very difficult. And the more things like that you pile up around yourself, that lower the probability that you'll straighten it out. So, that's how it's different.

Yeah.

All right. Ladies and gentlemen, very nice to be here tonight.