Oh, Canada | Julie Ponesse

What do you want to say to Canadians now who are having maybe a hard time understanding why the truckers and the people who support them are so, you know, are so committed to this position? What do you want to say to the truckers themselves?

"Oh, to the truckers, keep your heads, gents! Don't take the bait. You know what you're doing: producing a community. They're cleaning up the streets, trying to care for the homeless, keeping a playful spirit about this. That's crucial, you know, to do it with a sense of play. That's a sign of mastery; it's a very difficult thing to attain. And don't let your frustration translate itself into violence. Be careful, be careful, be careful! There's a lot resting on what you do to every single one of you. Yeah, yeah, so eyes open, like ethical stance forward: caution, bravery, truth, care."

[Music]

"Hi, everyone! Welcome, Julie Panessi here. It's my absolute pleasure; I'm so honored to be joined by Jordan Peterson today, who I think will have some very interesting insights into the current situation that's happening in Ottawa. Of course, there are a great many things going on today—very scary days. This moment, I think, is electrified; it will be seen as electrifying in human history. There are many things we could talk about, but what's really punctuated today is this situation that's developing by the day, by the hour in Ottawa. So thank you so, so much, Jordan, for joining us today. I should say, I think anyone who bothered to click on this interview probably knows who you are already and you don't need much of an introduction. We could easily give a list of your academic and professional accomplishments, but what I really think of when I think of you are two different things. One is you have brought intellectualism into the public sphere in the best possible way, and secondly, you are, as far as I can tell, unwaveringly and fearlessly dedicated to ideas, to following those ideas to their logical conclusions. I've seen you say on many occasions that you don't know to apologize when you err, but I think you are unapologetic in your pursuit of the truth and a depth and insight, and you are uncancelable. You are heroic in that, and we need that voice in this very difficult and concerning situation. So I'd like to start there. Let's welcome—thank you for joining us. Let's talk about heroism for a minute. Because the truckers in Ottawa and those supporting them have been called heroes by people supporting them and sort of on the anti-mandate side, but they've also been called things like terrorists on the other side. Which is it, do you think?"

"Well, I guess we're going to find out as the weeks progress because it's a constant choice, you know, and it seems to me that the truckers and the protesters that accompany them, by and large, have been making the right choices. The demonstrations have remained peaceful; they're not taking the bait, and we'll see what happens this weekend because they're going to be increasingly provoked as the political situation becomes increasingly unmanageable for all—the people who are insisting that the mandates stay in place, with no good reason, as far as I can tell. The data seem to be fairly convincing, and I think having actually, for several months, that Omicron is a rather serious flu and no more than that. The John Topping study that was released the other day seems to indicate quite clearly that lockdowns didn't have the desired effect on mortality. Now, people are criticizing the study and saying, well, that wasn't the only positive effect. It's like, yeah, but you suspended our fundamental civil liberties, so let's go to the hard data, shall we? And we certainly haven't paid the price for the lockdowns yet—not by any stretch of the imagination. So we'll see. I hope the truckers keep their head and maintain peace and civility in the most cautious of matters because it is a tinderbox, and when you're all sitting inside a tinderbox, it only takes one idiot to light a match. So, you know, the word hero comes from the Greek for 'defender' or 'protector,' and that is sort of the opposite of a terrorist, isn't it? So it'll be very interesting to see how this goes."

"You know, I can't get out of my mind—this idea has really gotten a grip on me the last few days—that this trucker convoy is the single most powerful resistance we might call it that the Canadian people will be capable of to challenge these mandates. Yeah, and it's a grassroots thing, which is so interesting, watching the NDP react to this. It's so stunning to me that Elon Musk tweets out in favor of the truckers and Jagmeet Singh, who's an actor unparalleled in his falseness, perhaps only by Trudeau, has so clearly indicated how little he wants to do with the working class. It's something remarkable to behold. And I mean, the truckers are making an articulate protest, in some sense, right? They're there with their trucks; that's their protest. They're standing their ground and they've had enough of the assault on our fundamental freedoms, essentially. And it's up to leaders like Trudeau and Singh and the Conservatives to articulate those voices and to bring them forward peacefully and to attend to them instead of demonizing them and then doing these unbelievably appalling maneuvers—first of all, focusing on the Confederate flag. The mainstream media is absolutely complicit in this. It's like that is so preposterous that it barely—it’s so surreal it's hard to believe it's even true, as if the Confederate flag has anything to do with Canadian history, as if it ever has or as if there's people rallying behind that in some important sense. And the same thing can be said about the single swastika flag, which is one too many, obviously. And the idea that the Terry Fox statue was desecrated compared to, say, what happened to the John A. Macdonald statue? People should have kept their mitts off the Terry Fox statue, obviously! But I understand the truckers have put guard around it now, and what the legacy media is doing with the trucker protest is beyond reprehensible."

"I think the most dangerous thing I've seen actually is the political attempts to shut down the GoFundMe funding—that's unparalleled; I think that's an unparalleled act in Canadian history. I truly think that's the worst thing that's happened to us so far. You know, I'm constantly surprised. I'm not by nature a cynic, you know, and I'm not cynical about our public institutions in general, although not invariably. I'm not cynical about politicians. But the act of sheer short-sighted, narcissistic, self-righteous idiocy that went into blocking the GoFundMe funding is—I just can't believe that! I cannot believe that our political leadership can be that unconcerned even about their own well-being. What sort of precedent does this set? And it's basically a form of theft—collusion between a fairly large corporate entity like GoFundMe and the governments, like collusion between the government and the press, which is almost total now in Canada. And I don't say that lightly. I mean, Brian Peckford, who I interviewed on my YouTube channel about a week and a half ago, who as a mainstream is a mainstream political figure and one of the drafters of the Canadian Charter of Rights—like a respectable guy, but was never a radical, relatively well-regarded by the left and the right alike in the 1980s, a solid guy—told me flat out that the reason that he announced his legal challenge to the authority of our government on my YouTube channel was because he didn't think he could get the truth told about what he was doing by any reliable Canadian news outlet. And that’s—what do you do when someone like that says something like that to you? It's beyond comprehension."

"Well, I was going to ask you, what do you do when you feel that our main media outlets are not accurately reporting the situation?"

"It's interesting because our experiences are very different. You haven't been in Ottawa or in Canada since this started, right? So you have a perspective only that's coming through various kinds of media and other sorts of information sources. I was there Sunday through Tuesday, and I have to say that being there—and I can say I had my young daughter with me—out walking on the streets talking with truckers. And I didn't feel afraid one moment. I didn't see most of—no, I'm not—you know, I wasn't every place at every moment, of course—but I did not—what I'm seeing reported in CTV and Global and CBC—it's like a parallel reality! It's a planned—no, worse than that; it's a planned parallel reality which is fundamentally equivalent to a totalitarian encroachment. I mean CBC should be shut down! Canadians should just say enough! There's absolutely no excuse whatsoever for another single dollar of Canadian taxpayer money to go to support that appallingly corrupt, ideologically warped, politically correct, collusionary media source with the federal government. It's inexcusable! And the rest of the media—well, it's part of their pronounced death spiral. You see a little exception to that—the Toronto Sun has had some decent reporting; you see it pop up now and then in the National Post, you see it pop up now and then even in the Globe and Mail. But by and large, it's almost impossible to see what's actually going on in Ottawa. Can't even get a reasonable estimate of the number of people there. And I've also heard, let's say that the closed-circuit cameras that normally monitor the city, which I believe you can get access to by public feed—many of them have been shut off. It's like, you know, now is that true? Is it not true? I don't know if it's true. It wouldn't surprise me, but it's also—if it is true, it's also—well, it's beyond my capacity to imagine that we're in this situation."

"Isn't it all feeling just a bit dystopian to you? Or a lot dystopian? That, you know, Friday, the police were talking about doing digital tracking and now protesting isn't allowed, and the Prime Minister just is describing the supporters as championing abuse and racism and money—you know, we were talking about GoFundMe—money is being taken—sexism and Islamophobia. Every bloody playbook in the radical left lexicon—it’s like, you dare to drive your trucks to Ottawa to oppose our possibly illegal mandates, probably illegal mandates—what's wrong with you? You must be all of these terrible things! And then let's get the press in on it too. And then, you know, I would hope that the Conservatives, for their part, would stand up in some sort of opposition, but I know full well, because I've talked to people who know, that COVID policy is being governed entirely by public opinion poll, which is a terrible way of sampling public opinion because it's impulsive and narrow, which is why we have a parliamentary system to begin with. We don't have rule by direct democracy because it's foolish; it doesn't allow for any sober second thought, let's say. And so the politicians scare the public, and they do that with the collusion of psychologists and behavioral experts, scare them into compliance. And so then they're all scared, and then they sample public opinion, which is terrified by misinformation and say, 'Oh, look, people support more mandates!' and that scares them further, and away we go. And the Conservatives, for their part, instead of—although Moe and Kenny have taken some more forthright actions in the last week— instead of seizing the moment, which they clearly had in front of them, they just blew their party into fragments like on the very day they should have been articulating the concerns of the people that they are supposed to represent. And they could have capitalized on that even in the narrow political sense; it's just beyond comprehension."

"Let's talk about democracy for a minute. We know that the Prime Minister's office has made it very clear that the Prime Minister will not speak with the truckers, and up to this point, O'Toole also decided not to speak with the truckers. Now we have new leadership in the Conservative party. What kind of act of democracy is that, do you think? And is there an obligation on the part of our leaders to respond to protests?"

"Well, it's a tough one, right? Because it's very hard to discriminate between protest and extortion in some sense, right? And we can't have a situation where merely by creating a civil disturbance you get access to the highest levels of leadership. But by the same token, I would say that the fact of the scale of this protest and its seriousness is an indication of a breakdown in communication between the populists and their leaders. And then I would say there's a two-fold reason for that. One is the politicians have ensconced themselves in something resembling an ivory tower and are not in direct contact with their constituents in the way that they're morally obligated to be in contact. And then there's a failure on the part of the Canadian populace as well, because one of the things that's happened over the last three, four, five decades maybe is a continuing civic engagement on the part of the populace. This cynicism about the political sphere, the refusal to engage in the building of local civic institutions, all replaced by a notion that politics is somehow nothing but a snake pit and no decent person would ever get involved. And so you have an abdication of responsibility on the part of each Canadian, I would say, which clearly needs to be rectified, and then this isolation of the political class from the population—that’s replaced by a reliance on hypothetical experts in the medical and the political domain and sampling of public attitude by opinion poll. This is not a recipe for a stable polity, as we can see."

"So you mentioned before we started recording—we were just chatting—that we are going to be dealing with this kind of situation for a long time. What are the implications if we lose this fight?"

"Well, I don't know what it would mean to lose it. I mean, I can't see how the mandates can go on forever. Country after country is dropping them; I cannot see how they can be sustained in the face of that for any length of time. But God only knows. I mean, it seems to me that perhaps even a majority of Canadians, if they were sufficiently cowed, would accept these restrictions and mask mandates permanently. It's already been two years, and a huge public outcry—although it's hard to tell what the proportions are—against the truckers and in favor of what continued mandates while they're afraid. I remember there was a poll a few months ago showing that 50% of Democrats in the U.S. thought there was a 50% chance of being hospitalized with COVID, and 25% of Republicans believe the same thing. And I’m sure the proportions are very similar in Canada. People are afraid, and the politicians should be coming out and saying, 'We got this!' Like there's always things to be afraid of, but that isn't what's happened. If the—I really have no idea how this is going to go. I think what will happen is that a few provinces will carefully test the public opinion waters, which seems to be happening, say, in Saskatchewan and Alberta, and say, 'Well, here's a way out in a month; how's that settling?' And if that works out, they'll say, 'Well, maybe we'll try it in two weeks', something like that. And if that happens, maybe there's a pathway forward. But our Prime Minister could easily double down because he has the—he's a teenage actor fundamentally. The fact that he ran away at the beginning of this and then lied about why, in two ways: security concerns and exposure to COVID, it's like, 'A little convenient,' I would say. And really, did you need two lies to justify it? Wasn't one enough? Apparently not. And the fact that he ran away at all is just also jaw-dropping—jaw-droppingly stunning to me! It's like, does he believe that matters to so many people? I mean, I think it's starting to matter to more and more, but why don't people look at that, look at that fear and cowardice and call it out for what it is? And then why are they not afraid of not having a leader? I think it's easier for them to believe that the truckers are dangerous, like Confederate rebel dangerous, whatever the hell that means in Canada—Nazi dangerous. This whole Nazi thing is just beyond comprehension. Canada doesn't have a radical right wing! Well, I think it's easier for people to believe that the truckers are January 6th-level insurrectionists than it is for them to believe that they have a leader who is that immature and cowardly. Because we think about it—I mean, both of those are—those are both nasty pills to swallow! But if you're a middle-of-the-road Canadian and you've had an implicit belief in the stability of your political institutions, which is reasonable because they've been incredibly stable, you believe in the general goodness of your leaders, which has also been a valid presumption, and now you're forced to swallow this pill, which is, no, things are so bad that your leader, who’s a teenage actor, literally ran away in the face of some political opposition or these people can’t be trusted? Well, obviously, it's much easier to believe that the truckers can't be trusted! And then that's played up, of course, in the media—it's like, well, what about the swastikas? And what about the Confederate flag? And people also still trust CTV; they still trust CBC, especially older people. And it’s no wonder they do because once you could! And they're not up on the technological revolution, and no bloody wonder because who is! And so people are being asked to abandon faith in some sense in political establishments and political leadership or demonize the truckers. Well, it's not surprisingly they pick the latter."

"Do you think people like living in fear in some sense? I mean, I guess in a way that sounds crazy. Why would anyone want to live a fearful life? But as you have said, for two years, we have voluntarily, pretty easily, agreed to all of these mandates in the absence of really any kind of solid evidence to support them. I mean, now we have a situation—the practical upshot of all of this is you can be an asymptomatic COVID-positive person dining in a restaurant while an uninfected, unvaccinated person is waiting outside to pick up their takeout order, right? And yet it seems like many—most, I don't know; where we're at in terms of the numbers—feel like, 'Well, that's all right!'"

"I don't think people like living in fear, but they like to believe that they're on the side of compassion and security when uncertainty and threat looms, and so that's the moral. And it's an easy moral victory. Remember? I used to watch The Simpsons all the time, and the wife of the Reverend on The Simpsons, her response to any political question was 'Think about the children!' Let's think about the children! And that's—and our whole society has slipped into that kind of edible virtue, which is a reflexive, infantile compassion. And there's a presumption underneath that the manifestation of that compassion, which is appropriate for infants, is the only valid political response to every single question. And so you frighten people, and the good thinkers—the maternal good thinkers—think, 'Oh, well, security and safety protect the infants.' And fair enough because you've got to protect the infants, but we're not infants! Or are we? And so our whole political discourse is warped by that strategy—in safety, right? We have this pure culture—this safe."

"Do you think that's historically unprecedented? Are we more obsessed with...?"

"Yes, definitely."

"Why is that?"

"Why? Because of the large-scale movement of women into the political sphere. That's a huge part of it. Women are more agreeable than men, and so compassion for them is an easier moral—it's the easiest moral option that's available. And this is a real struggle, right? Because how much you should push forward bravely and how much you should secure the home front—that's a constant question. But we have had a mass movement of women into institutional and political arenas, and so that's one element of it that we haven't contended with at all, and no one will even ask the question. And then there's another issue that's relevant to this too, is that the female mode of anti-social behavior is reputation destruction. Like males engage in physical conflict, but that isn't how—especially anti-social males—they'll use physical dominance as a means to obtain their narrow self-interested goals. That's a bully, and bullies become criminals. That's not the female anti-social pathway. The female anti-social pathway is gossip, maliciousness, and reputation savaging, and there's a very well-documented psychiatric literature looking at anti-social behavior in women; I'm not making this up out of whole cloth."

"The problem with that is it scales on social media! So male aggression doesn't—for proximity in some sense. Our COVID response is a gendered issue."

"Yes, yes! Well, you can see that in the attitudes. The only Canadians right now who support mandates full out are women over 55. And I think, yeah, well, they'll wonder, 'That's what a grandmother should do!' You know, because what you're suggesting, I think—and correct me if I'm wrong—is that things like compassion and empathy, which seem morally good or morally neutral, maybe morally good, are sliding into this safety obsession, which have really become a kind of myopia, right? Because it's made us focus exclusively, not just on harm avoidance, but on a certain kind of harm avoidance in a certain sphere. And that has generated these mandates that have the appearance of protection, which can't help but sound good."

"Yeah, that's right! Well, and who could you possibly be to oppose that? You know, what makes you so sure you’re not a predator? I mean, you and I have both been called evil."

"So yes, yes! Well, and that is part of that security—the feminine security response! Now, I’m not blaming women for this; this is a very complicated problem. But that which threatens the integrity of an infant is a predator. Now, the question is, what happens when that scales? Now, the psychoanalysts said this is a Freudian idea: The Good Mother necessarily fails, and that's exemplified by Michelangelo's Pietà. It's like a symbol of the female crucifixion. It's to offer your children to be broken by the world, and that's a major sacrifice on the part of women."

"Absolutely."

"Absolutely, and that's female—it just gives me chills!"

"Yeah! Well, no matter whether it's like—it does evoke those kind of feelings of the very unnatural to think that you would have done that!"

"Yeah, well, but the alternative is to devour them, right? That's the Freudian nightmare! It's like if you don't propel your children out to the world, so you're the supporter of the call to adventure, which is terrifying! It's terrifying! My daughter-in-law, she was with her son Elliott for 18 months, and then she went back to work. She made arrangements with a woman who had a couple of little kids in daycare, and she brought Elliott to take care and let him off. And he was ready for it—they'd prepared him for it—but he cried when she left! And she just left. And then, she could have hovered on the boundary there and tortured him to death for like three hours, right? Because of her misery in abandoning her child, in some sense, and the misery of losing her infant because that's with that mark! And then she went home and cried. It's like, good for her! She went home and cried; that was the right thing to do. Not to demonstrate her inability to let go of that maternal attachment when it was appropriate, which is really an act of transcendent heroism on the part of a mother. And that's not—that's not that reflexive compassion that all too often is confused with moral virtue in our culture."

"The fact that you feel sorry for people does not mean that you're good!"

"Now, it might be one element of what could make you good if you were good, but that reflects reflex, isn't it?"

"Let's say that again! The fact that you feel sorry for people does not mean you're good; it's not a sign that you're good. So feeling sorry for people, we might think that that's empathy."

"Well, it is in the most primordial sense. It’s what makes you go 'Ah!' when you see a kitten, you know? And fair enough, but going 'Ah!' when you see a kitten on a plate—that's neither a sign of your aesthetic sophistication nor your moral virtue. And so, because moral virtue is a multifaceted phenomenon, and this is also in some sense what the politicians have forgotten. It's like, 'Follow the science!' Well, what data, and selected by who, which scientists? Yeah, good luck!"

"No kidding! Good luck! It's such a lie; it's a philosophically shallow lie too, but it sounds great and we've been conditioned to believe that that's where truth and goodness reside. Science has become a synonym for moral purity and perfection, I think."

"Well, it's also the case that it allows the politicians to advocate responsibility in the face of a crisis. It's like, 'Well, we're deferring to the experts.' It's like, 'No, no, there's no differing to the experts if you're a politician—there's consultation with a diverse range of experts!' That's a whole different thing! It's like, 'Well, we're deferring to the physicians!' What about the economists? You forgotten about them? What about the physicians who disagree with each other? Yeah, well, and the economists always disagree with the biologists too because the biologists are always—generally, bluntly speaking, most of the Malthusian environmentalist types are biologically minded. You know, oh my God, the sky is falling! Well, the economists say, 'No, we can innovate our way around this, like we have in the past, and we don't have any obvious limit to resources.' And there's a real argument to be had there! What are the limits to economic growth and prosperity? Are there any? Where are they located? Well, this is a real argument! But the idea that you can defer to the biological catastrophists is an abdication of political responsibility and self-destructive most likely."

"Well, everybody can watch for themselves! Just watch what happens to energy prices in Europe! Just watch, and just watch what happens to poor people because it's coming, and fast! I think one in ten people in the UK have already received at least one disconnection notice from their utilities—one in ten! So, you know, and in Canada, the same reflexively compassionate popinjays are going to war on, in a fundamental basis, the western economy. You know, the oil and gas industry—are we going to see greater disparity between the upper and lower classes? Higher levels of homelessness? Higher levels—"

"We're certainly going to see greater disparity! All that COVID policy has driven immense amounts of capital to a small proportion of people. I mean, everyone knows this! How many houses were had so much cardboard they could hardly even figure out where to store it because of Amazon purchases? Now, Amazon sells everything! And, you know, in some sense, hats off to Jeff Bezos because look at the supply chain that he managed to keep going under dire conditions during the pandemic. But on the other hand, every cent he made, in some sense, was taken from small business people! And we've decimated the small business community! And to think of that as somehow less dangerous than the pandemic is utterly foolish! I think the move that was made this week to scuttle the GoFundMe funding for the truckers is more dangerous to our collective health than the pandemic. Just that one move."

"We'll see! Can you explain that a little bit? Why is that so dangerous to our health—collective health?"

"Because the government just polluted with a corporation to steal money from citizens who were expressing their typically and efficiently—no problem, no discussion, no problem with a moral overlay. Well, we're going to give it to approved charities! They didn't even say they would refund the money! Now you can ask for your money to be refunded—that's real nice, eh? So someone mugs you; it says, 'Well, if you ask me, I’ll give you it back to you.' It's like how about you don't steal it to begin with? Or if you do that, you just return it? Or the money says, 'I don't approve of what you were going to do with that money; I have a better idea for it!'"

"So we talked about gendered aspects of this mandate situation earlier, but can we talk about race for a minute? Because it's this protest situation in Ottawa and those challenging the mandates have been accused bluntly, blatantly, of being racists. Why did we get there so quickly? Is that just a scapegoat, the race issue?"

"Well, no, it's not just a scapegoat. I think that the fundamental contention of the radical left—so I would include the forces that are pulling Justin Trudeau's strings in a philosophical sense and in a practical sense to some degree, but certainly philosophically because he's possessed by a set of ideas. He's the partial avatar of a very destructive set of ideas, and when push comes to shove, those ideas control his thoughts. And so the fundamental contention of the radical left is that there is nothing but power that motivates discussion and categorization and speech. It’s all the war of all against all, and we divide ourselves into our various power-based hierarchies: racial, ethnic, gender, sex, age, and then we fight like mad for our individual selfish dominion within each of those domains. And so there's no place for the supposition that the opposition might be the honorable opposition, right? Where you're both united in the apology. It allows for discourse. There's merely the accusation that you're playing a naked power game because that's what everyone does. And that's the fundamental contention of the radical left: that the act of categorization itself—it's the presupposition of the implicit association test—that the active categorization itself..."

"So that upon which discourse itself relies is nothing but the manifestation of the corrupt will to power."

"And this categorization is diffusing, isn't it? As soon as you accuse someone of, 'Oh, you're just a racist; you're just a misogynist; you're just a Confederate,' whatever it is, it does seem to pull the rug out from under them."

"Well, well, well! It really pulls the rug out from underneath all of them who aren't that! See, if you are that, let's say you're a psychopath, and then for you, the will to power is everything in the narrow sense—that's about three percent of the population. It's not a very effective adaptive strategy, by the way. The naked expression of power doesn't work for chimpanzees, doesn't work for rats, it certainly doesn't work for people! That whole idea that it's nothing but power that mediates the relationship between human beings is not only ethically appalling in the deepest possible sense, it's also scientifically unjustifiable. It's simply not the case! But if it was the case, so let's say you accuse me of that, and I am—that's like, you think I care about your accusations? It's like you're not making me feel guilty. Psychopaths don't feel guilt! Now, the people you will make guilty with an accusation—I'm sure you've experienced this when people came after you—it's like the first thing you do if an angry mob goes after you is you think, if you're a reasonable person, you think, 'Well, I probably am a little racist, and I probably am a little sexist, and I probably am a little impolitic with my words, and all these people are angry, and so maybe I said something wrong.' And so then you scour your conscience. It's like God Sad, in his recent video, which was quite comical, he showed himself whipping—he's whipping himself with a whip, self-flagellating, apologizing for being a friend of mine. And obviously, he was doing it satirically, but there's a truth in it, which is when the mob comes after you and accuses you of nothing but motivation by the desire for naked power, well, there's a part of you that is like that. And so if you're a conscientious person, you're going to retreat, and you're likely going to apologize, in which case you're just dead."

"Did you ever apologize? Did you? Or did you—what happened with you?"

"Apologize for what?"

"Well, for whatever you were being accused of."

"I never apologized for refusing to comply with my university's mandate. I never apologized for speaking publicly about it. I never have and won't apologize for continuing to try to have discussions about the truth. That doesn't mean that I or who I'm talking with will always get it right; surely, we'll make mistakes. Everyone makes mistakes! The truth isn't a set of facts; the truth is an approach to discussion. That's what Joe Rogan's so good at—that's why he's so popular! It's not because Joe knows the truth; it's because he acts out the truth in his speech and his actions."

"So, yeah, that's a whole different thing—a whole different thing. One of the things that's deeply troubling but so interesting to me is how things that seem to be so fundamentally Canadian, I mean literally encoded in our fundamental documents like our Charter of Rights and Freedoms, our constitution—our freedoms and rights—the language of freedoms and rights! But now if you invoke these in discussion or to make an argument, you're accused of taking advantage of your privilege. What do you think about that? Is it impossible? I mean, is it wrong in a democracy like Canada to talk about freedoms and rights? Is it impossible to be unprivileged in talking about them?"

"No, the letter is not like that. You know? Well, well, that's—that's where the discussion should really focus. Okay, so let's talk about privilege. Okay, so you're accusing—let's say you're accusing me of privilege—okay, well, you too! Let's talk about you too! So, for—I was at this gathering once in LA; it’s really quite comical. It was in an extremely rich gated neighborhood, and they had a big enough lawn so it was like a forum, and the speaker came out and talked about the one percent who controlled everything and how appalling that was, and how we should be—how good thinking people were on the side of the oppressed. And I was looking around, like it was in a Dali painting! It's like, what the hell? And so at the end of this speech, and everyone was clapping away, I stood up and said, 'I don't know if you guys noticed, but you are absolutely in the one percent! Like beyond any possible doubt!' Not only in the United States—in all likelihood, you're in the one percent! But if you look at your position globally, it's more like one tenth of the one percent! So, what the hell are you talking about? It's like, so let's talk about privilege."

"Well, every single person on the planet has—has dealt an arbitrary hand in some sense, and some of that is an unfair burden—the natural lottery, as John Rawls said; the natural lottery. And some people are dealt a pretty rough hand, although it’s not evident a priori who's dealt the roughest hand! You know? Now, sometimes you meet people and you think, 'Oh my God! Objectively, you know, yeah, it’s all threes, it’s really not good!' And that is painful for everyone. But, and so everyone has their honored advantages and their unearned disadvantages! Everyone! So first of all, we universalize that—we say, 'Yeah, we all have honor and privilege!' It's like original sin. It's very much like original sin! And then the question is, well, you have to understand, and then you say, 'Well, there is a moral burden that comes along with that. You have privilege and advantage that you didn't earn; it's given to you. It's a set of talents!' Let's say a gospel commentary on that is, 'To those who are, to those to whom much has been given, much will be demanded.' And that's actually—although it's a warning and it's a—what would you call it? It's a moral injunction. But it's also an escape route, you see! Because we have everything. We have this field of opportunity in front of us, and because some of that is unearned, we have an existential moral obligation to atone. And what that means is that we have to use the unearned privilege that we all have in a manner that's so good that we can say, 'Yes, I was granted these gifts, but look at how I've multiplied them!' And you need that—not because you should be good, although you should be; it's because you will become the victim of your own conscience if you don't do that. And then when the mob comes after you, you will fold because they'll say you don't deserve what you have, and the part of you that thinks, 'Yeah, I'm not really living up to my possibility,' it just—it breaks you in half! Privilege is inevitable; to criticize it is just to criticize a natural fact of nature in some sense. But there's a question, if I understand you—that there's a—I mean, privilege gives you a certain—certain rights, certain entitlement, certain advantages, but with those come responsibilities. So you don’t get commensurate, you know, at all! And everyone who thinks this through for 15 seconds knows that! It’s like you don’t think—you call yourself out on your moral shortcomings! You do it all the time!"

"And if someone pokes you there and you’re weak because of that, you'll fold! And the left particularly—the left has become unbelievably good at using this as a weapon. And part of what I'm writing in my new book is a chapter on this topic in defense—like, what's your defense? Live up to the responsibilities intrinsic to your privilege because it's the only defense you have when the mob comes! And they will come; they're coming! So you have to be able to say, 'Well, I talked to this guy yesterday—a couple of days ago—who’s got a pretty decent fortune, you know? And so he wrestles with issues of privilege. He's distributed $60,000, $2,000 scholarships to underprivileged kids—97% high school graduation rate, 80% college graduation rate among the recipients of the scholarships! It’s like, well, when the mob comes for him, he can say, 'Hey! $60,000 scholarships! Buddy, what have you done for the world?' You know? And he shouldn't be doing that in a triumphalist manner because pride goes before a fall, but, but, and what's interesting about him too is he spent his money, once he accumulated it, he spent it very carefully, not judiciously. Not with a haphazard compassion, right? In a targeted, thoughtful, morally appropriate manner so that he didn't cause more trouble with his money than he saved us from. This is all very difficult, you know?"

"The protesters are the ones being accused of sort of taking advantage of their privilege by standing up for their and other people's freedoms, but we're not highlighting the fact that they're working class people, walking around, speaking with them! They're also very tough people! They've been on the streets in Ottawa, they've probably been driving for many days, if not a week! They've been on the streets in Ottawa! I walked around and did an interview—had to hold my phone up, but I could last a maybe a minute without my glove on before, you know, the sharp pains start hitting you because it’s so bitterly cold there! These people have been sleeping, eating, everything outside round the clock, with very few exceptions, for a week now! They put their money where their mouth is, right?"

"You know, and—yeah! Well, and it’s so fascinating to me, as I said before, to watch the privileged elite leader of the working class response to this, especially on the side of the NDP! Because the public polls indicate that if you vote NDP, you're like 75-25 against the truckers! And there's nothing more annoying than uppity working-class folks, you know? And that's especially true to the privileged ideologically adult elites who want to claim moral superiority over them by leading those poor sheep into the promised land. It’s really—you couldn't make it up if you wanted to; it's so ridiculous!"

"You don't have to make it up; we've seen these paradigms in literature and history. The Greeks were great at this, right? I mean, we're just copying what's come before us! But I want to ask you, you know—you seem to have an ability to see slippery slopes, we might call them, better than most—when you're at the top of one of these precipices, pointed downward, you know, about to degenerate, we might say, into some pretty worse things. And what are the signs of that?"

"Well, I think one of the—for me, one of the signs was violation of fundamental principles. These principles, like the principle of freedom of speech, which is not just one freedom among many! The Conservatives make a huge mistake on this front all the time because they talk about, 'Well, how about viewpoint diversity?' Without noticing that now they've made diversity the superordinate moral imperative and have subordinated freedom of speech to that, which means they've lost! They instantly lose when they do that! Freedom of speech isn't one freedom among many, and it's not a right—not in any—not in the truest sense! It’s a necessity, and it's a moral responsibility. You're afraid of all the others, possibly! That's right, that's right! It's the precondition for all other freedoms, and it’s—you have the right to speak freely so that the truth can be investigated. And the truth needs to be investigated because the truth is very complicated, and it's dynamic in some sense because the future is different from the past. And so there's a cutting edge we have to stay on to stay adapted because the future is literally not predictable from the past. And then, literally, it's not partisan, right? Everyone should be invested in discovering the truth! Everyone should—it should matter equally to it! It does! It does matter! I mean, the truth is not partisan in that different partisan stakeholders will have a different, a priority presumption about which pathway forward is correct, but that's all based on previous experience, and previous experience is a partial, but not total diet! And so the proper way forward literally emerges as a consequence of the free discourse between diverse agents! And so as soon as that's interfered with, the process of thought itself is interfered with. And thought is the process that—"

"Isn't it? I mean, what's thoughtful? Is it not the process that adapts us to the horizon of change? I mean, that's what thought does! And there's no distinction between free speech and thought! In fact, most of our—even our internal thought is mostly conducted as a variant of an argument! Or as opposed to thinking that truth has to be—you know, instrumentally in order to achieve some goal, we might think even more fundamentally? Truth just is an expression of our essence of being humans! And if we’re not doing it, or thought, if we’re not doing it right, we’re not human anymore!"

"Well, the instrumentality issue is dead relevant! I mean, one of the reasons when I did this interview, for example, and all the discussions I have on my podcast—they're not instrumental! Like I didn't come on this podcast because I thought, 'Well, I'm going to talk to several thousand truckers, let's say, and here's what I want them to think, and so I better make sure that I talk in this manner, and I have to make sure I hit these talking points!' And there's none of that! Zero! And because I want to find out what happens in the moment, right? We're just going to have a discussion, just right."

"This week, this was so comical! So CNN, people came after Joe Rogan, and—yes—did they? I didn't hear, yeah! And one of them said essentially, 'Man, what's going on here? We thought this whole bureaus devoted to fact-checking and the truth and all these experts hired, and why the hell aren't people listening to us when they listen to Joe Rogan?' And he's just winging it! And I thought, 'Just winging it, eh? You try just winging it in front of 11 million people for five years and see if you're still standing, buddy! You think just winging it is so easy?' Well, first of all, why aren’t you doing it if it's so damn easy? And second, isn't it something that with all your resources, you can only garner like one-tenth of the audience of one man who has zero production expertise in his studio? He just puts it all out online, and all he does is have honest conversations! I mean, insofar as he's capable of that. You know, Joe stumbles, and he knows that and admits it, and sometimes it gets too, you know, buttoned down on a given point. But fundamentally, he's just trying to do what we're doing here! We're supposed to have—say, leave him alone! Whoever wants to listen to Joe, go listen to Joe for goodness sakes! Part of me now thinks, 'Hey, keep at it, guys! Every time you attack him, a million more subscribers for Joe! They kick him off Spotify; he would have a new platform like in two days with twice as many listeners!' And so Joe's got to the point where, as long as he continues to be careful—and he is being there! I don't think he can be canceled; in fact, I think all the attempts to cancel him only redound to his credit and increase the rapidity with which he's destroying the entire legacy media!"

"This issue of canceling is so abhorrent to me in a democracy! All of this legislation that focuses on, you know, hate speech and limiting what can be said on the internet! And what's so ironic about it is that, as you might know, John Stuart Mill, who was, you know, one of the fathers of utilitarianism and very often invoked in this current sort of collectivist setting with the mandates, right? He himself was an advocate for free speech because he said that the problem with squashing free speech—it’s not just that you might learn something new that you didn't know, but you have the opportunity to put your own beliefs under the microscope and to think about new reasons why you might believe or don't believe them! So even on the metric that a collectivist, arguably a consequentialist, a utilitarian like John Stuart Mill is using, canceling censorship is not good for humans, let alone democracies that have free speech as one of their fundamental pillars! You know?"

"Well, the only real rationale for opposing free speech, apart from ignorance, which is that you don't know that free speech isn't just another right, and you don't know it's indistinguishable from thought, is the conclusion that you've already figured it all out! So you don't have to think! Or you're trying to hide something! Well, that's the other possibility, but those two—those two things go hand in hand very frequently, is that, yeah! It's very often that people who are trying to hide something justify that to themselves with a kind of totalitarian certainty about their beliefs! They double down on them to hide their own moral iniquities! And so you have to believe that people like Rogan shouldn’t be allowed to just have a discussion with whoever they want, and wing it! And do you think that because you think you already know? And you know, if your life is perfect and you're already living in the kingdom of God, then more power to you! You know, maybe you're right, and you can shut down free discourse! Because the heavenly heights have already been scaled! But I haven't met anyone like that yet! Most people I know think with not too much thought that there's some things they still have to learn and some ways their lives could be improved! And how are we going to approach that? Especially—you want to find out how you're wrong—you should talk to people who don't agree with you! Now, maybe 90% of what they say is not worth attending to—could easily be! Probably the same goes for you, but 10% might be just what saves you in the next crisis! Like this is one of the things I loved about being a clinician is that I talk to lots of people who are really different than me, like seriously different from me! And if I wasn't learning something from them when I was in discourse with them, it was because I wasn't conducting the discourse properly!"

"And they taught me valuable things! Even if you don't learn truth, even if you don't learn more reasons for why your position was right, at the very least, you have benefited from a very rigorous mental exercise."

"Yeah, well that helps you, as you said already! You want to differentiate and assess your own beliefs! Well, why? Well, because your beliefs aren't a set of facts at your disposal. Your beliefs are tools that you use to navigate the world, and the more finely tuned those tools, the more different—like I have a shed at home, a shop with all sorts of power tools in it! And one of the things I learned because I've renovated houses a number of times—one of the things I've learned is that if the job is difficult, you don't have the right tool! And then you can go down to Home Depot, which has like 50,000 square feet of tools, which is just phenomenal! And you can find some little gadget that somebody spent half their lifetime devising that makes that job easy! Well, that's ideas! Ideas are tools! They're not facts! And you have to sharpen them and take care of them and keep them, differentiate them; you put them away in the right way, right? Maintain them! That metaphor's beautiful!"

"You know, it seems like, so talking about both the truckers situation and then the Joe Rogan situation, it seems in many respects like intellectuals or elites have gotten us into this mess and it's the truckers and the Joe Rogans of the world that are getting us out of it, arguably! You know, what does this say about education and academia and civil discourse and democracy moving forward?"

"Well, it says that the highest and the lowest always have to be united! And what that means is that—well, I learned that in part from watching Wagner's Die Meistersinger, the opera, because he—the libretto elaborates on that theme in an absolutely stellar manner. Because in his opera, it's the opera details out the actions of guilds of men, and so each guild is made out of domain experts. So one of the heroes is a cobbler who's an expert shoemaker. You think, well, who cares? He makes shoes! It's like, well, you have good shoes, so that isn't a concern of yours! But if you didn't, you'd think it was very important, and if you're a good enough cobbler, you get to sing! And if you're a good enough singer, you get to elect a master singer! It's a lovely structured sequence of metaphors! And so one of the things Wagner did so well in that opera was to point out that true expertise means the differentiation of abstract knowledge all the way down to the point of behavioral implementation! And it's one thing I really like about being trained as a behavioral psychologist. I'm very interested in psychoanalytic theory, but it's very abstract, existential psychology. It's very abstract, meaning of life stuff—it’s like, yeah, but where does the rubber hit the road? Well, the truckers know that, right? They really know that because they're down there moving goods to people; they're doing the actual work in the most fine-grained manner! Now they might have a problem with high-order articulation, and it's up to their leaders—I'm not so sure about that."

"I'm not so sure either! [Laughter] I don't have a challenge every Canadian to get themselves there and talk to some of these truckers! I think they'd be very surprised! They don't have trouble with enunciating blunt truths! But, you know, you were pointing to problems among the intellectuals. Well, the intellectual chattering class is criticizing the truckers! There's a divorce between the intellectualized framework, ethical framework, and that practical reality that the working-class people represent! And I mean, your observation that the truckers and the Joe Rogans are serving as redemptive agents is a reflection of the idea of the brilliance of individual sovereignty! The notion of individual sovereignty as the basis for political stability! It's like, well, who should you consult? Well, not just the people with ideas! The people who drive the trucks! Well, why? Because they're navigating the roads; they're delivering the goods in the real sense, so they know things!"

"Yeah, you bet! Well, and are they the people? They have their families—they're—they're—their life is real! It's not abstracted to the point where the abstractions themselves become a problem! It seems like they're almost like a litmus test for how we're doing and the things that we're getting wrong and they're showing us in the face! Look! It's almost like a—like a boil that’s finally erupting! Look! These are the problems, right? We would have kept silent if you didn't screw things up so much! But now we have real problems! You're not fixing them!"

"Yeah, well, you saw the same thing with the Yellow Jackets in France! It's like corrupt energy policies started to make energy too expensive for ordinary people. It's like, well, we have to save the planet! It's like, well, how about not on our backs, there, guys? And so, and we're going to see a lot more of that! I suspect, especially if the elite types and their utopian schemes—if the elite types with their utopian schemes keep walling themselves off from the people that they hypothetically represent. This is why the UK jumped out of this! This is why the UK voted for Brexit! It's like the common people thought, 'No, too abstract! Too much of a Tower of Babel! The leaders have gotten too far away from the people they represent.' And I think they made the right decision! So more power to Rogan and the truckers!"

"I know you’re tight on time, so I'll just ask you one last question. You know, I know you're not at a university anymore; you don't talk to classrooms full of students, but now you speak to hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people! When you speak, what do you want to say to Canadians now who are having maybe a hard time understanding why the truckers and the people who support them are so, you know, are so committed to this position? What do you want to say to the truckers themselves?"

"To the truckers, keep your heads, gents! Don't take the bait! You know what you're doing: producing a community. They're cleaning up the streets, trying to care for the homeless, keeping a playful spirit about this. That's crucial, you know, to do it with this—with a sense of play! That's a sign of mastery; it's a very difficult thing to attain! And don't let your frustration translate itself into violence! Be careful, be careful, be careful! There's a lot resting on what you do to every single one of you! Yeah, yeah! So eyes open like ethical stance forward: caution, bravery, truth, care! So far, truckers have exemplified the fundamental Canadian—what would you call it?—ethic of decency, and that's not nothing! Yeah, there's an ethos—the ethos of decency! And we're in times where sudden events can produce catastrophic consequences! And so keep your heads! If you're on the side of the right and the good and the true, it will prevail! If you can tolerate the intermediary heat, so don't—don't explode prematurely! And keep aiming up, man! More power to you!"

"Yeah, we all need them! Jordan, thank you so much! This is going to mean an awful lot! And when we're done here, I'm going to get it in the hands of the truckers right away and share it as widely as we possibly can because there's so much insight and so much—you have so much! I mean, aside from all of the wisdom, you have such an obvious care for people and for humanity! And I think that’s why one of the reasons why we all respond to you so much! So thank you!"

"You could also tell them to be reassuring and to say, because this is what the politicians should be saying! It's like, look, to all of you who are afraid: there is plenty to be afraid of all the time, but we got this! We got this! We can do it! We don't have to let things deteriorate! We don't have to deteriorate into violence and sectarian squabbling! We don't have to burn down the institutions, right? We got this! So, so grandmas, calm down! Clearer heads will prevail with goodwill!"

"Yeah, thank you! You just don't know! Thank you! Very nice to meet you!"

[Music]