Sean Plunket: Full Interview: New Zealand

All right, great. I think I've almost got you all. Your first, let's get the pronouns out of the way. What would you prefer? I told you, Professor Dr. Jordan.

Jordan: Jordan's fine. I like it that way as well. Um, Jordan, my first question for you and the reaction here in New Zealand to the very idea that you're coming here or that you're fronting on this show today, I just gotta say, and I've watched you for a couple of years, you are one of the most hated people online. Why do you think it is that?

Jordan: Well, I'm hated by a very small minority of very noisy and committed people. Yeah, and so they're noisy and committed, and so they can make a lot of racket, and they are very good at it and often professionally trained to do so. And they're very casual with their—what would you call it?—epithets. I mean, I was listening to you introduce me, and you listed off about 20 terrible things that I might be, many of which were contradictory. But that doesn't seem to make any difference.

Interviewer: So, you kind of get your celebrity gets co-opted from people on all sorts of parts of the political spectrum and extremes of the political spectrum, doesn't it?

Jordan: Well, I think there's some of that. I don't know if it gets co-opted too much on the radical left, let's say, although I certainly face the majority of my opposition from the radical left. But the radical right types are not very fond of me either. There was a new book written called Dianetics by a rather reprehensible individual named Vox Dei. And if you want to find out what the ethno-nationalism about me, that's a pretty good read. I wouldn't call it precisely complementary.

Interviewer: Look, on a personal level, and I'm someone who has fallen foul of the vagaries of Twitter pylons, but what's directed at you is at a whole different level, Jordan. And you've admitted, I know that you have—or not struggle—but you admit you've had episodes of depression in your life. I know people who have been horribly affected by the most minor pile-on on social media. How do you, as an individual, take or channel that hatred to good? And I imagine it affects your family as well.

Jordan: Well, part of it is that I have a pretty solid family. You know, I have lots of people behind me. Like my wife is firmly behind me without hesitation. My children are behind me, and they're smart and mature. And my parents are behind me. And I have a good set of friends. And also, generally, I try not to talk about things that I don't know something about, which also helps. Yeah, so—and I'm not impressed with the sorts of ideological positions that have been put forth, especially by the left-wing radical types in the universities. And I understand what they're doing and why reasonably well. And I feel that whatever vitriol happens to be directed at me is trivial in terms of its danger in comparison to the overwhelming social danger that these ideologies are producing. And so better to do something about it now than to wait.

Interviewer: Also, in a social media world that is dominated by extremism and hatred and vitriol, people I know who have watched you are literally dumbstruck by your ability to remain civil and to engage in debate without getting angry at those who often absolutely lambaste you. I think I've only seen—there was a debate you did with Stephen Fry where an American pastor had to go, and I think I saw some fire there. I think you were genuinely upset. But you seem to have a remarkable ability to play the ball, not the man or woman.

Jordan: Well, that debate, the Munk debate that you're talking about, mostly I was upset about the foolishness. You know, the person I was debating with called me an angry white man, and it just struck me as so rhetorically foolish and inflammatory and unnecessary, all of those things at the same time. First of all, he was in Canada and not in the United States, and those sorts of statements actually don't go over very well in Canada. And my race had absolutely nothing to do with what we were talking about. And so it was just the kind of troublemaking statement that does nothing but make things worse. And I'm never happy when I see people behaving in a manner that only makes things worse. And so that—and I felt even—it's a funny thing. I can't say exactly I felt bad for him, but I thought it was so foolish of him to undermine his own credibility in that manner. It was just the sort of performance that removes all patience. You know, a bad rhetorical statement and unnecessary racist comment, a rhetorical flourish that had nothing but counterproductive consequences, as you can see by the YouTube commentary, added nothing at all that was productive to the debate, didn't address the issues at hand, was a cheap method of scoring points, a way of playing victim. I mean, it was altogether a second-rate performance, and because he had academic pretensions, was a professor, I have a lot less patience for professors and professional journalists than I do for, you know, other people because, well, because they're supposed to—well, that's their profession.

Interviewer: I thought Stephen Fry was brilliant in that debate, and he started out soggy, didn't agree with a lot of what you said, but he was gonna stand next to you and fight you aside. And he also said, "The world would be a much better place if everyone was less convinced of how right they were."

Jordan: Yeah, well, Stephen Fry is really something. It was a pleasure to meet him, and he's quite the remarkable person. So that was one of the very good things about that evening.

Interviewer: We're gonna take a break, Jordan, and then I want to talk to you about an interview I did yesterday and if that's typical of the stuff that you get. Yeah, that was the interview, man. We would Dr. Jordan B. Peterson here, I made you talk, Beth, and just to see—and we would talk to Jordan B. Peterson, cultural phenomenon and, according to Auckland Peace Action, the biggest threat to New Zealand's way of life and civilization that I don't know we've seen since the last earthquake. They came out earlier this week and threw a lot of labels at Dr. Peterson, and the spokesperson came on with me yesterday simply so I could ask them to, well, provide the proof of their accusations. I didn't think he did that well, or they did that well, Jordan.

Jordan: Well, it was quite the remarkable interview. I think that I don't know how many people have watched it, but I listened to it, but I suspect quite a few, and it's no wonder because it was a real feat of journalistic persistence, I would say, on your part. You didn't let your interviewee off the hook for a moment, and there wasn't much content there. There was a lot of exactly the same sort of thing that's been happening for the last two years. It's really quite appalling that what seems to happen generally in the journalistic sphere on the negative side for me is that there's a list of epithets that are—it's like all the radical leftists have a list of epithets that are sort of at hand. Maybe they have them on a little sticky on their computer: misogynist, homophobe, Islamophobe, transphobe, bigoted, racist. Then there's often some either Nazi, I don’t forget you can addiction either location there, know that. And—and or there's Jewish Hill, which is another one that comes up now and then. And the idea seems to be that if you don't agree with what someone says, that you just lay out the longest possible list of pejoratives that your imagination, your collective imagination can generate, and hope that one of them is sufficiently true in some sense because of something you once said, that it sticks and you're done. And it's getting downright dull. I mean, well, I decide that it seems to me that liberal journalists throughout the Western world have been lining up to try and take you down.

Jordan: Yeah, well, I mean, I've had a fair number of journalists who are being supportive of me. Now whether or not they are on the liberal side, they're certainly not on the radical left side. Yes, this has been happening pretty much non-stop for two years, and they're basically out of insults as far as I can tell, which in some sense disarms them. But they're actually getting rather dull to read because it's always the same old thing. Although the person you interviewed yesterday did have a new twist, which was "greatest threat to the civilization of New Zealand," which was really quite impressive as far as pejoratives went.

Interviewer: All right, so we've dealt with Auckland Peace Action. I know you're in Australia now. Has the, if you like, the violent opposition to you for whatever reason, is it starting to subside? And I know there haven't been protests, as I understand, so far in Australia. There were a few in Adelaide, but about twenty-five—and they—it wasn't exactly clear what they were protesting. They seemed to be more concerned about homosexual rights, which I don't really know what that has to do with me. But it had to do with whatever they were interested in protesting. But there was nothing in Melbourne at all, though there was quite a large police presence at the venue while there were a lot of people there. There was about 5,500 people, but there wasn't a single protester. And I would say that, yes, overall, the virulence and also the frequency of the hit pieces in the media has declined rather precipitously in the last three or four months. And I think it's because, well, because it's become dreadfully repetitious and because no smoking pistol of any sort has emerged. You know, people have gone over virtually everything I've said to students for the last 20 years because almost all of it is recorded and scoured my Twitter feed and my Facebook and, you know, all the social media platforms that are usable and haven't been able to find anything so far that's of sufficient reprehensibility to take my reputation out. But the dot—so that we had—Jordan come on, yeah.

Interviewer: Yeah, well, it's not just a bit weird, it's very weird, but you know, it's not something I were absent let's say. All right. Um, I want to go back two years, and in many ways I look at you, and if I was gonna put you in a fable, you're the guy who said the emperor has no clothes—the Emperor of wokeness, of political correctness, of third-wave feminism. Did you plan two years ago to be where you are now, a cultural phenomenon—a global cultural phenomenon? Was it all part of some clever manipulation of, you know, modern social media, or did you just stand up and say, "I'm not gonna do this"?

Jordan: Well, I mean, I was writing a book, and I was hoping it would be successful, so there was that. And, you know, I had been experimenting quite substantially with YouTube, putting my lectures from the university on YouTube and some lectures that I had done for a small television show, and they were developing a certain following. So I had about a million views far before the political controversy hit. But no, I mean, there's no way of predicting what happened. It's a completely unpredictable phenomenon, but I can't say that I said what I felt like saying as carefully as I possibly could, and I'd pretty much had enough of it. I mean, seriously, I've had enough of it, and I'm not happy with the radical leftists. I think the postmodern philosophy is intellectually vapid, nihilistic, malevolent, destructive, arrogant, and narcissistic, impractical as well, all at the same time. I think that what's happening to the humanities and social sciences borders on fraudulently criminal, if it hasn't already passed the line. And I'm absolutely no friend whatsoever of radical leftist utopians. I feel that there's, after a hundred years of evidence of complete bloody catastrophe on the side of the radical left, it's time for us to wake up and notice that something has gone wrong on that end of the spectrum. And I don't see any responsibility being taken for that at all. You know, I've called publicly for the moderate leftist types who might have some sympathy for to draw some lines. It's like, "All right, we know that things can go too far on the left. When exactly where? Where is it that you go too far?" Now, my sense it's with the equity doctrine, which I think is not really emotionally powerful, unfortunately. It doesn't have that kick that's necessary to make something really stick in the memory. But I think the idea of equality of outcome is dangerous beyond comprehension.

Interviewer: All right. I want to talk about a few things going on in New Zealand, which is part of the culture war. We're part of the global community, and we connected online. Fist up we have a cabinet, the Labour Party, the largest member of our coalition government. It has a quota, a male/female quota for cabinet posts.

Jordan: Yeah—yeah. What do you think of that?

Jordan: I think there's absolutely no excuse for it. I think that it's a—you know, the radical leftists are always yammering on about biological essentialism, which they associate with something akin to fascism. You know, the idea that there are mutable biological characteristics that define people, and yet they're the first people to insist that if you're going to have a cabinet that is, let's say, both competent and representative, that you have to divide it according to identity categories—and first and foremost, perhaps the ones of sex. And, to pick your cabinet by genitalia is not an acceptable technical move. And exactly the same thing happened in Canada, where 25 percent of our major party's elected officials were female, but 50 percent of the cabinet members ended up being female. And all that means—what that certainly means is that the least the most qualified people were not selected because it's statistically impossible for them to have been selected. It was cheap virtue signaling. And it's also technically impossible, even from the perspective of the leftists themselves with their intersectionality, because they insist that people have to be judged in relationship to their oppression on multiple dimensions simultaneously. And I've done some back-of-the-envelope mathematical calculations. If you have ten dimensions that mark you out, let's say, in terms of your group affiliations that characterize you, then you're the only person like that in the world. So as you multiply—all you have to do is do the math. As you multiply the number of groups that have to be given favored status because of their hypothetically oppressed situation, then you make it increasingly impossible for equality of outcome to even be something that can be practically implemented without a bureaucracy of terrifying proportions.

Interviewer: We also have a Ministry of Women's Affairs in New Zealand, and the Minister for Women's Affairs, as she's known, suggested recently that there were too many white old men on boards, New Zealand of private and public companies, and just suggested that they needed to move aside so there could be more diversity. Your response to that suggestion?

Jordan: Well, what's her racial and ethnic background, just out of curiosity?

Interviewer: Leanne Genta, she's a member of our Green Party here.

Jordan: Is she white?

Interviewer: Yes.

Jordan: Well, maybe it's time for her to bloody well move aside and let someone who isn't white have her position.

Interviewer: All right. So, I take it you don't agree with Julia, and also, look, they've tried this in Scandinavia, where they put quotas for females on boards, and part of the idea was that if you did that, that you would increase the rate at which women would move through managerial and administrative status rankings, and that has had zero success.

Jordan: This and also is Jordan—that actually women can somehow up the financial performance of ties? Sure, you don't believe those stats?

Jordan: Well, there's no evidence for that. What elevates the financial productivity of companies is quite clear: trade, conscientiousness, which is a marker for integrity and trustworthiness, and diligence. Diligence and dutifulness is a very good predictor of long-term economic productivity, and so is general cognitive ability, and that holds across sexes and races. And the reason for that—and this is the non-racist and non-sexist way of looking at the world, by the way—is that there is far more difference between individuals within groups than there are between groups. Because, look, the fundamental racist, sexist, ethnocentric proposition is that there are more differences between groups of people than there are within groups of people. Yes, that's essentially the racist doctrine. Yeah, and so we need some black people because, you know, all those black people are the same. And unless we have a voice or two from a black person, then we don't have that set of identity issues represented. Well, it's just simply not the case because most of the diversity comes at the level of individual personality and temperament, and the literature on that is crystal clear. You know, these are pseudo-intellectual claims made by people on the radical left, and they're very dangerous because they're easily shifted into the sorts of things that the radical right likes to enjoy, which is: oh, I see there are immutable differences between genders, sexes, and the races, and they're of substantial import, and that we need to take them into account. Would we—what would you say, formulating such things as immigration policy? So, no, there's no evidence that those claims are correct, and there's counter-evidence for much of it. For example, in Scandinavia—and this is as close to psychological fact as any facts that exist—is that as you increase equality of opportunity, which means you open the doors for more and more people, and especially, let's say, with regards to sex—and that's had a big effect because, of course, there's far more women in the workforce than there once was—you increase the degree to which outcomes differ on multiple dimensions. And that's partly—there's a variety of reasons for that, at least a dozen, and they're all important—one of which is that women, especially once they hit their 30s, prefer to work part-time, and that's not bad or wrong, and it's certainly not an indication of systemic sexism. So the radical types like to have one explanation: everyone isn't exactly the same with regards to outcome; therefore, the system is a corrupt patriarchy. It's like you can learn that in one minute in a propaganda course in university, and then you have an answer for every problem that ever besets you politically for the rest of your life, and there's no excuse for it. It's appalling scholarship.

Interviewer: I want to come back to that point. The other thing—a proposed bill we have before our Parliament is the idea of six self-identification to make it easier for people to alter their birth certificates if they choose to identify as anything other than the six they were born as. Your views on that sort of legislation?

Jordan: Well, the first thing I would say, it might be useful to really assess some important problems. That would be the first thing. You're dealing with an absolutely tiny minority of people. Not that that's completely without import. But the second thing is it has to be thought through, and it's not. I mean, I don't know if you've been followed. We just had a little hiccup there, and we're talking to Dr. Jordan B. Peterson, who's joining us from Sydney. Jordan, we were talking about sex self-identification changes or proposed reforms in New Zealand. You said fiercely it's a tiny number of people affected, and secondly you say we need to think it through. In what way?

Jordan: Well, one of the things that's happened, for example, so really what this is is an attempt by a certain ideological movement to put forth the insistence that sex is only a sociological construct, that it's only something learned, and so that it can be changed at whim, which is also a strange thing because if it's learned, it can't really be changed at whim. And also if it's learned, it could be unlearned, which is something that the people who are putting this legislation forward aren't really thinking through because that opens up the opportunity for people who would like to reform, people who would like to change their gender back to say normative behavior because if it's learned, it can be unlearned. But more importantly, sex roles are not only learned, they're partly learned, and there's plenty of biological differences between men and women, and many of them aren't trivial. Like men and women are more the same than they are different, but the differences are quite marked at the extremes. And so what we're seeing partly as a consequence of this now is the movement of, say, trans women into female sports. You saw this in Minnesota just the other day, I think it was Minnesota, where a newly transitioned trans woman has been shattering the weightlifting records for women's amateurs, we've hidden so she, here with a Commonwealth Games competitor, it was a form of mine. It's absolutely insane. You know, I mean, first, the fact that it's allowed to begin with is beyond comprehension. It's a real sign of cultural insanity. And the second is that psychologically, it's almost incomprehensible. I can't imagine how you could be a man who transformed himself into a woman in all the ways that that's possible and then decided to go compete in a high-level sports arena with women who've been training their whole lives to hit the peak of their ability and then to absolutely bloody demolish them, say, after a year of work and then to tout that as some sort of victory for the oppressed. It's completely what's narcissistic beyond comprehension, and it's a sign of what happens when you don't carefully think things through. All sorts of unexpected consequences tend to manifest themselves, and you see the same thing happening now with rapid onset gender dysphoria and the treatment of very young people with very powerful hormonal and surgical techniques designed to permanently alter their psychophysiological structure. And like we're gonna pay for this in a big way in 15 years when these kids grow up and hit adulthood and start tossing out lawsuits, as they certainly will and should. We're going to look back and wonder just exactly what the hell was wrong with us.

Interviewer: So it's—it's—it's well—it's Jeff, I've been by this ideology that has been formulated by people like Judith Butler, who absolutely insist because they have no biological knowledge whatsoever that all the differences between men and women are socially constructed. It's just—which is absolutely not true, absolutely.

Jordan: In general, Tim's, Jordan, and we have it in this country and indeed everywhere we look at the Millennial Generation, they get a bit of stick here, they called snowflakes. They seem to get outraged not only on their own behalf but on behalf of others at the drop of a hat, and they use social media as elsewhere in the world to call out the things they find offensive or that their feelings. Do you think there is a collective generational psychosis occurring because of social media?

Jordan: I don't know if the Millennial generation is any less sane than the Baby Boomers. I mean, the Baby Boomers have plenty of trouble, and they caused plenty of grief and misery in the 1960s and experimented, you know, crazily with psychedelic drugs and a wild lifestyle and promiscuous sex and all of those things. And I don't think the Millennials are any worse or any better. I do think that there is a small subset of them who are rather dependent and rather narcissistic and who are being encouraged in both of those by reprehensible adults in positions of authority, primarily in the universities, to make the most of their victimhood feelings and status. And I do think that the social media platforms also allow for disproportionate effect of social effect of people who have extreme views, that also, in combination with the increasing death of the standard collective media, which is increasingly desperate for attention, and so those spends more and more attention paying to people who have extreme views on the right and the left, making exceptions that prove the rule.

Interviewer: Well, it's possible. Oh, I bet. I mean, I've certainly been represented as an extreme figure, and that's really something that, apart from the fact that I'm adamant in my opposition to the radical leftists, which is rather rare among intellectuals, which brings us actually—art yet rather nicely, Jordan—what I want to talk about. I asked people to call in yesterday, and it was remarkable the variety and number of people who sent me messages and rang and said simply reading your book had changed their life. And can I just put a call out? If you want to talk to Jordan, we've got a quarter of an hour. Oh, eight hundred eight four four seven four seven. If you'd like to ask a question or send a message or just say something to Jordan, you can ring him now. Oh, eight hundred eight four four seven four seven.

Jordan: It also seems to me, as much as I see all the hatred against you and the controversy around you online, jeez, there's a lot of love there, and there's a lot of positivity, and you seem to be engaging and smiling and with young people. There's some good stuff happening here, isn't there?

Jordan: Oh, yeah, way more than that. Like the vitriol, the vitriolic aspect of it is only a sporadic bother to me, usually in the aftermath of a particularly difficult interview with a journalist. But the tour—I mean, I've been to about 140 cities now around the world, and the average audience size is—well, it's varied between 2,500 and 8,000, with I would say an average of about 2,500 to 3,000. And there—the events are unbelievably positive. So most of the time, I'm surrounded by nothing but positive responses. And when I go out on the street, mm-hmm, no matter where I go, you know, in a typical hour, I'll be stopped by six or seven people. They're usually young men because the media has convinced y'all—well, my ex is gonna say yesterday we had just as many young women and middle-aged women and middle-aged men ringing in.

Interviewer: Well, that's good. I think that's changed to some degree because of the book. But all of the interactions that I have with people on the street or in airports or so on, they're all incredibly positive. People are very polite. They come up; they're usually apologetic for interrupting. They introduce themselves. They tell me that watching my lectures or listening to the audio or reading the book has changed their life. They usually tell me a story about what's changed. They have a better—let's do that in real time right now, Jordan. Say hello to Rachel.

Jordan: Hello Rachel.

Rachel: Oh kyaa to Jordan. I'm very nervous to be talking to you, and I'm gonna not be very good at being precise in my speech, and when I keep it very brief, to say, um, thank you. That's all I wanted to say. I'm one of the people whose life has been changed immeasurably by your book, and your lectures, and everything that you stand for has really had a massive positive influence on me. So I just wanted to tell you how grateful.

Jordan: So what's changed?

Rachel: It would take a very long time to get into it, but I have struggled with mental health issues for the majority of my life since puberty. I'm 26 now, and I've been through every type of treatment, counseling, therapy, medication—everything you can think of. And, you know, things have helped me briefly for a little while and got better than crashed again. But your book, I guess it's the adoption of personal responsibility more than anything else. And the more responsibility I take on, the more I find I'm able to, and the more unable to get myself out there and put myself in situations I wouldn't have normally had the confidence to. I'm standing up straighter—not back great to keep in my room yet, but I'm working on little things. Everything just that way. But the more I take on, the better it gets.

Jordan: Yes, well, that's a good rule. That's a good rule. You know, that's a good psychotherapeutic rule is the more that you take on without overloading yourself, you know, because you have to be sensible about it, the more you find that you have abilities that will manifest themselves that have been hidden up to that point because of fear and avoidance. And so, more power to you as far as I'm concerned. And I'm very glad to hear that what I've been doing has been helpful. Good on you.

Interviewer: Right. So, Mary joins us now. Welcome!

Mary: Thank you very much for this opportunity. I'm Dr. I was staring into the abyss, and now I'm not. I moved through my life. I purposely consider every action and its reaction. I treat myself like I'm someone I care for. Freedom—it's been a revelation to me encountering you. I was in a very, very, very dark place. You somehow—I found you online, unfocused through Dave Rubin or whether it was ship user, or I'm not quite sure how it happened. But I've seen your lectures; I've listened to your lectures on Genesis, and it's just been a remarkable turnaround in my life, in my family's life, and I just want to say thank you.

Jordan: Hey man, I'm thrilled to hear it. So do you have any sense of what in particular did it—like what was it that struck you?

Mary: I think it was just the purposeful way that you spoke, and it was just such plain English. It was as you've described previously. There were some rules—a sort of clichés—but they hadn't been spoken of in a very long time. And it was as the previous caller said, the personal responsibility, the taking care of oneself. And it just struck such a chord. I knew some of the things that you were saying than before, but I hadn't heard them in a very long time. My father used to say you have to stand up with your shoulders back, and finally there was a game, but it was being said in a different way.

Jordan: Yeah, well, the thing is you need to know why—that's the thing. And that's what I tried to do with my lectures. And partly because I'm a behavioral psychologist, it's like we have all these moral rules, and people are told the rules, but they're very seldom given a multi-dimensional explanation of why the rules are necessary. You know, it's, "Well, you should do it because that's what people do," or "That's because, you know, that's what good people do," or "It's your responsibility," and all those things are true. But it'd be an explanation of why it's true and how it's related to the responsibility that gives your life meaning and also improves the world, your family, and the community. That's often lacking. And so that's what I was trying to provide, and it's clear—and in English as clear as I could manage it. And so, you know, I've tried to make it practical and useful for people. And I'm really very, very happy to hear that it's worked for you and for your family. I'm thrilled to hear it, as I always am when I hear a story like that.

Interviewer: Peter joins us now. Welcome, Peter. How are you doing?

Peter: Yeah. Yeah, hello. How are you doing, Peter?

Jordan: Very, very well.

Peter: Hey, um, have you in a moment of self-reflection had a look back on this amazing and astounding following you've created and wondered where it's going to end up? Because at the risk of sounding oxymoronic, you're probably the closest thing, particularly in manatees, to a messiah.

Jordan: Well, I thought about that. I wouldn't say precisely in those terms. I mean, one of the things I did learn from studying Carl Jung years ago was that if you're going to talk about archetypal stories, which I do all the time, that you have to be very careful not to confuse yourself with the archetype. You know, and so I'm very cognizant of the danger of the kind of popularity that I'm experiencing, and I do mean the danger because the higher you fly, the faster you can fall. And you have to be very careful to ensure that you're not increasing the probability of that. I try to make sure that I credit other people with many of the ideas that I formulated because I've learned a lot from reading the great clinicians and philosophers of the last, say, 150 years and from my clinical practice and so on. And so I think of this endeavor not as something that I'm doing but as something that we're all collectively engaged in because I know that—I know that there's an old idea that every person is a center of the world and that the weight of the world, for better or worse, weighs upon the shoulders of each person. And I really believe that's true. And so if you know that, then it keeps the egotism and the arrogance down, partly out of sheer terror, and it makes it much more effective to deal with people. Like when I'm lecturing in front of an audience, I'm not lecturing to them; you know, I'm lecturing with them, talking about problems that we all have, including me, and aims that we all need to develop, including me. And you have to include yourself, so to speak, among the sinners and the reprehensible types in order to communicate with people properly. And I do my best to ensure that I'm starkly aware of my shortcomings and faults at every moment I can possibly manage. And I have family and friends who also help keep what I'm doing in check and to make sure that it's not going sideways in some manner, that's, you know, where I'm taking things for granted or becoming arrogant or any of that. And so, so far, that's worked out well, and hopefully, it will continue to.

Interviewer: JA, welcome to the program.

JA: Oh, hi, Joe. Thanks for talking with me, Jordan.

Jordan: All right, you—how are you doing?

JA: Good, thank you. So I’m a young academic in New Zealand, and one of the problems, or one of the obsessions, I would say we have in universities is a fixation on race and gender. So I'm—I would call it a centrist position, somewhat liberal-minded—but what advice would you give a young academic pushing against what I see as the far-left gender of the universities?

Jordan: Well, the first thing I would say is there are a lot more moderate types of your sort than you think. And so if you're a careful person and you're thinking things through and you have things to object to, you can be sure—virtually sure—that a majority of people agree with you, even though they're too cowed, let's say, to speak up. I would say get your thoughts in order, you know, so you know what you stand for. And then I would also say don't agree with anything that you don't agree with because all that'll happen—and you're a young academic—all that will happen if you compromise your intellectual soul like increment by increment over the next ten years is that you will end up alcoholic and bitter, hating your job, despised by your undergraduates, and absolutely sick of your existence. And like you gotta keep that really firmly in mind because every time you're called upon to stand forth for something you believe in, it's a test of character and courage, and it's easy to put it off because it's a lot of trouble. You know, it's a lot of conflict, and you might think, "Oh God, do I really have to go through with this? I've got other things to do." And if the answer is, "Well, I better stand up for what I believe in now because if I keep letting it go increment by increment for the next ten years, I'm going to end up in a position that is absolutely dreadful." You know, you'll be much older than you need to be, and all of the thrill that should be part of teaching young people and doing research and staying on the cutting edge of knowledge—all of that will have been taken away by the ideologue who already knows everything and insists that they get to regulate what you think and say. So I'd have the small fights one by one and value others.

Interviewer: Oh, look, yeah. Dr. Jordan Peterson, you are awesome, man. Already books, we were following you. I’m assuming psychology and philosophy myself. I did a degree, and I'm doing my post office here. And a lot of what you say—you know, there’s a wee bit of Nietzsche in there, and I totally agree because we live in a society where, for me, I often say what I think, and I have to moderate that. But particularly today, in our society, when you do that, you're in way more trouble for offending someone or something. And I love the fact that you kind of get it out there. And I wish that, you know, I had that opportunity to just—and get it out—and people didn't even get over one question I was wanting to ask you, though. I mean, I'm a Christian, but I studied Marcus Aurelius, and I read his book, and I fear those books. Are you into Stoicism?

Jordan: Um, not I wouldn't say specifically. Lots of people who have been studying stoicism have talked to me and suggested that I should be. The overlap, I think, is that the stoic virtues have been radically underplayed in our society because we have this idea that life is easy and that we should be happy. And, well, first of all, life isn't easy, and perhaps we should be happy, but there's lots of times when we're not going to be in.

Interviewer: Alright, I hate to break this up, but coming up to the news, we've got calls stacked up. I'm hoping to meet you when you come here, and I'd like to invite you now if you get any spare time in your schedule to come under the studio because that's really our boards of fill with people who want to talk to you. I also want to thank you enormously for your time today and for assuring us that you will not, you know, lead to the downfall of New Zealand civilization as we know it.

Jordan: Well, I hope—I hope I think you have quite a civilization and that would—I’d hate to be the bringer of its downfall.

Interviewer: Oh well, hope that doesn't happen. Lovey told you, Jordan. Thank you very much for your time.

Jordan: Dr. Jordan Peterson: "First of all, if you don't have a purpose, then it isn't that your life becomes neutral in a meaningless sense; it's that your life becomes characterized by unbearable suffering because the baseline condition of life is something like unbearably suffering."