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huh? Messes up my hair. Good to see you. What's
going on in your coat today? Every day is a new
one. Yeah, well, I've got this suit maker, LGFG.
Dimitri, the crazy Russian, and he... He pays
attention to what I'm doing and makes me the
suits that he thinks are suitable. You've gotten
quite extravagant, though. Sometimes one half
of the suit is one color. It looks like you're
getting bored. You just want to switch it up
a lot. He sends me these damn things, and I get
them, and I think, there's no way I'll wear that.
There's no way I'll wear that. And then I put
it on, and I think, huh. I like that. Yeah. Yeah,
yeah. And Tammy puts up with it. Is it everyday
suits now with you? I'm in a suit pretty much
all the time. Is there a reason for that? Well,
the original reason was probably because of my
father. He was a teacher. He always wore a suit,
even in the 70s when that started to become,
you know, like 1950s thing. And I asked him one
time why he did that, and he said it was to show
respect for his students. And then when I was
a professor, well, when you start to be a professor,
you're not that much difference in age from your
students to begin with. It's a good way of laying
out a demarcation. And that was helpful. That's
useful. You know, people like to know. how the
hierarchies are delineated. And professors like
to think that they're everybody's buddy, but
that's not the right relationship. And so that
was helpful. And then when I went on tour in
2018, I realized that I was going to speak live
in front of several hundred thousand people over
the course of the tour. And I thought, you've
got to think when you have an opportunity like
that, that if you had the least amount of sense,
you'd pull out all the stops. So I bought some
expensive suits. Then one of the things that
happened in consequence of that was that people
started to come to the lectures in suits. And
so about, I'd say about 40 % of the audience
dresses formally. And lots of the young guys
who come, they tell me when I meet them afterwards
in the meet and greets, for example, that they
bought their first suit to come to the lectures.
And so, you know, I wouldn't have ever expected
that. And then Dimitri showed up about two years
ago with this portfolio of suits. He designed
one for each of the rules for my first book.
And he put the rule. underneath the collar at
the back and designed the lining custom lining
on all the suits as well and so i gave him a
crack at it because he put so much work into
it and and that worked out real well he's very
very creative yeah that two uh color suit there's
lamb's wool on one side and goat's wool on the
other and it's a heaven and hell suit so yeah
no kidding hey this is covered with iconography
Christian or Catholic and Orthodox, I've got
one of each. And that's because I was out on
tour with my new book, for my new book, which
is called We Who Wrestle With God, which we will
talk about today, I hope. So that's the same
story, man. How does one wrestle with God? Do
you wrestle with God? With every word. So what
does that mean? Well, look, man. Well, you know,
look, here. Part of the reason that you're so
successful, in my opinion, is because you actually
say what you think. Like, you're not putting
on a show. Actually, you have no reason to put
on a show. You put on a whole bunch of shows
and they've already been successful. You know,
and you're actually asking the questions that
are genuine questions and people can trust you
because of that. And that means that you're letting
the words emerge as they come to you. Doing that
with each word, that's a decision, you know,
because you can use your language to manipulate
and you can use your language to, for your own,
say, hedonistic purposes or to gain power. Or
you can just say what you think. Every, like
all of those different choices are a decision.
That's a wrestling. That's a moral decision.
And it shines in every word. And so it's super
important. That's part of the reason why in the
Christian canon. The word is the basis of reality,
right? It's the force that, it's the process
that generates the order that's good out of possibility
and chaos, right? And so that's, and Israel,
the word Israel means we who wrestle with God.
So that's the chosen people, right? And so what
that means at a deeper level even is that if
you're genuinely wrestling with your conscience,
then you're... Someone who's chosen by God. And
I think that's right. That's accurate. It's interesting
what you just said. One of Terence McKenna's
lectures, he talked about a very profound psychedelic
experience that he had where he was given this
revelation that the world is made out of words.
that everything is made out of words. He had
just some sort of a profound understanding of
what words really mean. Well, how much of the
reality that surrounds you has been, what would
you say, has emerged out of the realm of possibility
because of what you've said? A lot. And you have
this huge influence on the world that's all a
consequence, all, almost all a consequence of
what you've said. And so there's an insistence
in the Judeo -Christian canon that the capacity
that words have to shape possibility is akin
or identical to the process that generates reality
itself. And I think that's true. That's why in
the opening chapters of Genesis we're described
as... formulated in the image of God. We're like
a microcosm of the process that gives rise to
order itself. It's a very different view than
the bottom -up materialistic view, let's say,
of the enlightenment in the scientific world.
It's a different way of looking at things. It's
the notion that what is in front of you is a
field of indeterminate possibility. It's got
some implicit structure, as the scientists insist,
but it's open, and you... grapple with it, like
you grapple with your dawning consciousness in
the morning. What confronts you in the morning
is a field of possibility. And you approach that
with a certain kind of orientation. And you use
your words and your linguistic capacity to think
to shape that possibility. And if you do that
properly, then you make... This is the Genesis
1 insistence. Again, you make the order that's
good or very good, and that depends on your orientation.
So in the Sermon on the Mount, for example, which
is an instruction manual, Christ tells his listeners
how to orient themselves in the world properly.
So he says first, aim with all your heart at
the highest good you can imagine. Now, you'll
get better at that as your vision clears, but
that's the orientation, to do what's right. You
might say, like Pontius Pilate said, well, what
is right? What is truth? But most people know
the difference between right and wrong. You know
at least step by step what would move you forward
and upward. So you orient yourself to the highest
possible upward place. Then you make the assumption
that other people have the same intrinsic value
that you do. So that's your initial aim and presumption.
And then you pay attention to the moment. And
that's... Well, that's often the statement that
gets Christ confused with the hippies, you know,
to consider the lilies of the field who don't
toil or spin. But that's not the instruction.
The instruction is to aim up with everything
and then having that firmly in mind, to pay attention,
as much attention as you can to each moment,
to allow the words to come. to you that best
suit that upward aim, not to subordinate your
language to your own machinations or manipulations
or your own hedonistic desire, but towards what's
right. And if you do that, then what emerges
out of possibility is akin to the garden, to
the original garden in Genesis 1, and it's the
order that's good. Truthful language brings about
the order that's good. And that's... Well, that's
a very accurate way of portraying the role consciousness
plays in bringing about reality. And that viewpoint,
by the way, isn't limited to the Judeo -Christian
canon. You see the same thing in the Taoist representation,
because in the Taoist world you have a domain
of order. That's the black serpent, and you have
a domain of chaos. Sorry, I have it reversed.
The domain of order is the white serpent, and
the domain of chaos or possibility is the black
serpent in the Taoist image, the two snakes head
to tail. And your job is to walk the line between
them, and you can tell when you're walking that
line because that's where things are maximally
meaningful. And so that's another element of
this vision, which is that if you orient yourself
with upward aim, and you straddle the line between
order and chaos, then things become maximally
meaningful around you. And Musk, you know, I
just did a podcast with Elon Musk, and he talked
about resolving his existential crisis, the existential
crisis that he experienced when he was about
11 or 12. It was a crisis of faith, essentially.
And the way that he resolved that, and then...
motivated himself so intensely was by understanding
that if he pursued the path of the expansion
of knowledge, that that would be intrinsically
meaningful. That's the path of growth. That's
the path of adventure. All of that. It's aligned
with what matures you and makes you more responsible
and sets the world in order. And the instinct
of meaning signifies all that. And so I've written
a lot about that. in this new book, We Who Wrestle
With God. And that's what I've been lecturing
about in 60 different cities, walking through
these biblical stories one by one, partly because
we have this wrestling match going on in our
culture, let's say, between the nihilists and
the atheists and the true believers, you might
say. And one of the faults of that war is that
no one stops to... elucidate or delineate exactly
what it is that we're arguing about. So you have
people like Dawkins, they parody the traditional
conceptions of God, a superstitious being, nothing
more than a defense against death, anxiety, or
the opiate of the masses, the old man in the
sky. The conceptualization of God in the Old
Testament and the New Testament is unbelievably
sophisticated. And to reduce it to that kind
of parity is a stunning disservice. Dawkins is
an odd duck. He's an odd duck because I think
he knows also that there is some value in psychedelic
experiences, but he's scared to have them. He
won't look through Galileo's telescope. But,
you know, he's had major health crises, right?
Didn't he have some sort of a stroke? I don't
know. I don't know. I believe he did. I believe
he had a major health crisis. It's like, how
much time do you have left? What are you going
to do? Are you going to just not try it forever?
Are you just going to dismiss everything forever?
And I feel like people that dismiss things like
that, this reductionist perspective, you're essentially
saying you have the answers. To dismiss the whole
question of God or of whatever you want to call
it, higher power, a creator of the universe,
the universe itself as a conscious entity, whatever
it is, to dismiss it just because you're trying
to decipher the writings of fairly comparatively
unsophisticated people. Because we're talking
about people from many, many thousands of years
ago without access to the information we have
today. And then you're also dealing with the
fact that many of these stories were of an oral
tradition for over a thousand years before they
were ever written down. So to just dismiss that
as superstition and silliness without any curiosity
about the root. of these things why they resonate
with people and to just say that this is superstitious
nonsense that people choose to believe in and
this reductionist perspective of the known reality
that we currently exist in it's it's a foolish
way of interfacing with something and it's shocking
when a obviously brilliant man has a foolish
way of interfacing with a very complex situation.
Well, it's especially odd in his case because
he's also the formulator of the idea of meme.
And a religious story is a meme that's been selected
by time and crowd. That's a good way of thinking
about it. It strikes to the heart of the matter
in ways that are sophisticated beyond... Conscious
understanding. Can I tell you a story? Sure.
Okay. It's a good story for the psychedelic experience,
perhaps, at least as an analog. So in the story
of Exodus, there's a number of circumstances
under which Moses has an encounter with God.
And they're very useful stories to understand
because they point you to how that can make itself
manifest in your own life. So the first real
encounter that Moses has with God is... in the
story of the burning bush. And by this time,
Moses is an adult. He's left his home. He's gone
out and he's got married. He's apprenticed as
a shepherd, which was a very, very hard job in
those days because shepherds not only had to
protect the weakest and serve them, but also
keep the lions and the wolves at bay by themselves
out in the wilderness. It was a very hard job.
And Moses has mastered this. So he's grown up
and he's adopted. a role that's like a standard
social role. You know, he's a husband, he's a
shepherd, he's an adult. Okay, and so kudos to
him. But then one day he's out in the wilderness
by the Holy Mountain. I think it's Horeb in that
story, but the Holy Mountain is always the place
where heaven and earth touch. And so there are
all sorts of transformation stories that occur
in the biblical accounts at Mount Horeb or at
Mount Sinai where God and... earth meet and he's
out near the holy mountain and something attracts
his attention and he goes off the beaten path
to investigate okay so that's the first thing
that's the first bit of wisdom to derive from
the story you'll have your role and you should
have your role as a socialized adult right so
you're kind of a type that way you're maybe even
a cookie cutter type but you've adopted this
this this mature social role It doesn't make
you a full individual, but it's better than being
immature and staying in your father's tent, for
example, which is what Abraham does until he's
very old. So something attracts Moses' attention,
and he goes off to investigate. And then he sees
that it's a burning bush. And so what's a burning
bush? Well, it's the tree of life, and life is
often represented as a branching tree. And it's
on fire because it's compelling, because fire
is compelling. And fire is alive. It's a symbol
of life because everything that is alive burns.
That's what metabolism is. And so a burning bush
is like life itself intensified to the ultimate
degree. And that's what attracts Moses' attention.
And he gets closer and closer to it, which means
he investigates more and more deeply. And as
he... investigates more deeply. He starts to
understand that he's nearing the depths. He's
on sacred ground. He takes off his shoes. And
that's an indication of his willingness to transform
in identity. And he continues to investigate.
And then the voice of being itself speaks to
him from the depths. And it tells him that it
reveals itself to him as the ground of being
itself. And it transforms him into the leader
who invites his people away from slavery and
who stands up against tyranny. And so that's
the story of Moses' baptism. And so what does
that mean for the ordinary person? Well, it means
that you need to grow up and adopt a role. You
need to mature. You need to become an adult.
You need to be a good man in your time. But then
you have to pay attention to see what attracts
your attention, what calls to you, because there's
an autonomy about that, right? You don't get
to pick what interests you. It picks you. And
you can... respond to that call and investigate
or reject it. Those are your options. And if
you reject it, you stay in your box. But if you
follow it, something will call to you. And then
if you investigate that, that will transform
you. And if you investigate it deeply enough,
it'll transform you into the person who can stand
up against tyranny and who can lead his people
away from slavery. And that's how God is defined
in that story. God is the thing that calls to
you to take you out of your role shape the manner
in which your psyche transforms itself as a consequence
of your diligent investigation into what calls
to you. And so that's the God that's portrayed.
That's one. image of the god that's portrayed
in the old testament are you aware of uh some
of the more recent um work that's been done by
scholars in israel where these guys have now
come up with this hypothesis that the burning
bush was actually uh it was a dmt experience
and that the burning bush was most likely an
acacia tree that the acacia tree is apparently
rich with dmt and they think you know the way
you get a DMT experience is you smoke it, right?
And that they had some method of achieving psychedelic
states through this. And this is where Moses
is encountering God. Have you read any of that
stuff? I know about the theorizing, and it's
certainly the case that people have been using
psychedelic experiences for we don't know how
long. Hundreds of thousands of years, no doubt.
And they've had a profound cultural consequence.
One of the things that a psychedelic experience
does is amplify that sense of intrinsic interest,
right? So it strips your perceptions of their
inhibition by memory. That's a good way of thinking
about it. So that you see what's there instead
of your habits of perception. And so it's a way
of amplifying, you could think of it as a way
of amplifying what's represented in the biblical
corpus as a calling. And the thing that's odd
about the calling, well, you know, when you're,
you can think about it this way. When you're
laying out a podcast, when you're participating
in a podcast, you're following a golden thread,
right? You're following where your interest takes
you and your curiosity takes you. And that's
not something you can pre -plan, right? It's
something that happens in the moment. So imagine
that you're focused on your goal of having the
most interesting. Conversation possible and communicating
what's derived to the broadest number of people.
So that's the overarching goal. Okay, now you
focus on the moment and a spirit arises within
you. That's a good way of thinking about it.
That's the logos. A spirit arises within you
that leads you on a pathway that's an investigation
into the truth. That's part of that calling.
The psychedelic chemicals, they heighten that.
They heighten the manifestation of the underlying
mystery. That's another way of thinking about
it. They do that neurochemically. And so now
what's the association between that and religious
revelation in the Bible? We don't know. We don't
know. Have you read any of Marco Allegro's stuff?
No, no, no. John Marco Allegro wrote a book called
The Sacred Mushroom of the Cross. Oh, yes. Yeah,
yeah, yeah. I read that back. Oh, my God. 1974?
So you probably read it before it was bought
up by the Catholic Church. Oh, I didn't even
know about that. Yeah, it was bought up by the,
like you used to have to get old copies of it
if you wanted to buy it. And then it was recently
republished. Yeah, yeah, I read that a long,
long time ago. I had no idea what to make of
it when I read it. I thought, oh, huh, I have
no idea what to do with this. It's a problem
because to really understand what he's saying,
you'd have to have a deep understanding of those
ancient languages. Yeah, right. Yeah, it's a
very difficult book to evaluate. Because there's
very few people that are even qualified to...
Many people have disputed some of his... He has
one claim that the word Christ can be traced
etymologically... How do you say that? Etymologically.
Etymologically to an ancient Sumerian word that
means a mushroom covered in God's semen. And
so it was his assertion that the idea was that
they thought when it rained that rain was the
giver of life and it was literally God's semen
that made things grow and that these mushrooms,
because they would show up so quickly. You know,
if it rains, if you go to bed, you could look
out at just your lawn and it's complete grass,
not a mushroom in sight. And you can go to bed
and then wake up in the morning and there'll
be big mushrooms there. It's really weird. And
that these things, when they would eat these
psilocybin mushrooms that would appear out of
nowhere, they genuinely were referring to them
as God. That this was like a gift from God and
that that was tracing back to the origin of the
word Christ. But it's very tortured, like to
really understand and to be able to dispute it.
You'd have to have a deep understanding of Aramaic.
You'd have to have a deep understanding of the
original doctrines. Like, what is the actual
translation? What does it mean? You'd have to
understand the ancient Hebrew version of it.
How does it differ? All the webs of associations.
Oh, God, it's so crazy. When we read it in English,
I mean, what was the original version? The original
version, all the ancient letters in ancient Hebrew
also doubled as numbers, right? So words had
numerical value, like the word God and the word
love apparently have the same numerical value.
That is a bizarre concept for us to try to wrap
our heads around, a language which you know that
words also have numbers in them, that your letters
also mean numbers, and that there's value. certain
numerical value to certain words and that you
would use them in the context of these conversations
you would understand where I don't understand
I don't have that I have English it's like we
have math we have language they're separate and
you're missing something in what they're trying
to say so what John Marco Allegro is doing he's
taking The oldest version of these stories on
record, right? He's taking the Dead Sea Scrolls.
He's taking stuff that's literally written on
animal skins. And one of the ways that they deciphered
it to try to put it all together, they had to
take the DNA samples of these parchments to try
to figure out which ones are from which cows,
if they're from different cows. And that's part
of the way they figured out how to put all the
stuff together. This guy studies this for 14
years. And he was the only ordained minister
that was a part of this deciphering committee.
I think there was 14 people. I don't remember
how many people. It might have been 20. But it
was the only one of them that was agnostic. So
he had become, when he had started studying theology.
He kind of lost his faith apparently, you know,
we started realizing there's so many versions
of these stories They're coming from different
places. He became sort of like hey, I think I'm
agnostic I'm just gonna like step back and have
this approach of not knowing not not not having
a doctrine not having an ideology that I'm attaching
myself to And so then when he goes through all
of this, this is a straight -laced scientist,
by the way. This is not like some guy looking
for psychedelics to be a part of everything.
Yes, it's a very serious book. Right. And there's
a lot of those people that are doing that. They're
looking for psychedelics to be a part of everything,
sort of to validate or justify their own use
of these things. He wasn't doing that at all.
And he wasn't like Wasson, where a guy who went
down and experienced the psychedelic experiences
in Mexico and then came back and described them
for mainstream. literature this guy was doing
it like a scholar and his whole purpose was just
to decipher the dead sea scrolls but it was so
compelling to him when it was over he like had
to break ranks and he had to write this book
and then they they took that book out of circulation
i believe find out what happened with the sacred
mushroom in the cross how it was because he published
another book shortly afterwards that was the
Dead Sea Scrolls and the Christian myth and I
think it felt to me when I read that one it's
almost like he has to write a book because they
took the other one away because it's kind of
like saying most of the same stuff but he believed
that it was that what they were writing about
a lot of it was fertility rituals and psychedelic
experiences and that he would they were hiding
a lot of these stories Like they're hiding the
knowledge underneath these stories to try to,
in parables and all these different ways, to
try to obscure it from the Romans and obscure
it from the people that conquered them. So they
wouldn't know the secrets of this thing, this
ritual in which they would experience God. So
why is it that psychedelic use has played the
role that it's played in your interests and your
pursuit of knowledge? What do you think it's
done for you that... That's been valuable. I
think we're in a weird place in society where
the term drug is a is a blanket and it covers
things that have vastly different effects. It
covers caffeine. It covers nicotine and it covers
dimethyltryptamine, which is crazy. It's crazy
that all those things are drugs. Adderall is
a drug. Benzodiazepine is a drug. There's a million
of them. They're all different and they're all
drugs. And the idea that psychedelics are a drug,
for lack of a better term, that's what we use.
I don't think that's what they are at all. I
think they are probably why we became people.
I think they are probably why society advanced.
And I think every great ancient culture. probably
celebrated them and used them. It seems like
there's so much evidence out of Egypt of the
use of psilocybin, various different drugs, various
different psychedelic experiences. The iconography
of the pineal gland seems to be a big part of
multiple cultures, not just Egyptian, but even
Catholicism. If you go to the Vatican, There's
this enormous pine cone that is a statue there.
And I was very lucky when I went to the Vatican.
We got a guide. We hired a private guide that
was a scholar from France. And when he's not
working in the summers, he gives these tours.
And they're very thorough. And he was a brilliant
guy. I wish I could remember his name. I should
probably find it out to give him credit. Brilliant
guy. So he takes us through showing us all this
artwork. It's incredible explaining why they
had little penises and that there's, it was explained
the whole thing that big penises were thought
to be barbaric and it was not representative
of like somewhat of class and dignity and education.
And so we get to this pine cone and he says to
me, he goes, do you know what this represents?
And I said, is it the pineal gland? And he goes,
yes. And then we start this conversation of why
these Catholics would have this enormous representation
of the pineal gland, which they reference as
the seed of the soul. And that this gland, which
is in the center of your brain, is thought to
be literally a third eye. And on reptiles, it
actually has a cornea and a lens, this gland.
Like, literally, it's exactly where the third
eye of Eastern mysticism is. And they've got
a representation of it right here. And it's thought
to be where dimethyltryptamine is produced. And
this whole... This whole connection to it is
so old that it seems like you go back to the
John Marko Allegro stuff. You go back to the
Dead Sea Scrolls, which are the oldest version
of the Bible. The only version that I believe
the only version they have in Aramaic of all
those stories. And if he's right, if John Marko
Allegro is right. It all kind of makes sense
that these people were having these experiences,
much like the Greeks were with the Eleusinian
mysteries, much like multiple different cultures
in the Amazon, all over the world have experienced
these profound ceremony. These experiences that
lead to these journeys into the spirit world,
these connections with higher consciousness,
this something that when you're experiencing,
it seems very, very real, but also very preposterous
when you try to explain it to people that aren't
experienced. You know, it's like Hendrix. Like,
are you experienced? Have you ever been experienced?
Well, I have. Like, it's that. Like, with that
understanding that that's possible, the world
changes. Because now you know that that's possible.
You could live your whole life and not know that
the most shocking, profound thing in existence
is three hits away. Three hits away. And all
of a sudden you're in a completely different
universe in 20, 30 seconds. That's nuts. And
the fact that that is dismissed. That people
look at it as like, oh, you're just escaping
reality. It might be the source of civilization
itself. It might be the source of language. It
might be the source of the expansion of the human
mind over a period of two million years, the
doubling of the human brain. over a period of
two million years, which Terence McKenna felt
directly coincides with the shifting of the tropical
rainforest turning into grasslands, which would
force these primates to experiment with new food
sources, and these undulate cows that were everywhere
that would shit, and then these psilocybin mushrooms
would grow in their shit. Observed primates flipping
over these cow patties, looking for beetles and
grubs and things to eat. It's everywhere. You
could see it all over Africa. If there's something
on that, they're going to try it out. And if
these things are trying it out and they're doing
this over a period of two million years and they
develop language and culture and weapons and
they start thinking about things and they become
different than every animal around them. And
this was McKenna's stone date theory, which I'm
sure you're familiar with. And Dennis McKenna,
who is a legitimate scientist, Dennis explains
it even better. Because he explains it with the
actual mechanisms that your brain – the things
that fire up when you encounter high -dose psilocybin
experiences that would lead you to the development
of language. Glossolalia, the connection of sounds
and objects and bringing things together in a
manner of communication. Also – They realize
that in low doses, it increases visual acuity.
It makes people more amorous, makes people hornier.
They're going to have more sex. They're going
to be better hunters because they could see better.
They're going to be more sensitive to the environment.
They're going to be more aware. Edge detection
is different. There's like so many different
things that happen that if you're thinking about
what made people people. It's a mystery. We want
to pretend that we understand things because
of the fossil record and this and that. Sure,
we kind of understand. But every now and then
we find a new human that we didn't even know
exists, like Denisovans. What was that? Not even
20 years ago, I don't think. So now there's a
whole other branch of human beings that they
weren't even aware of 20 years ago. Whatever
the fuck happened that took us from all the other
primates that are still here and made us this,
it's pretty profound. And I have a feeling that
psychedelics were at least involved in that process.
That's my belief. And my belief is that the sweeping
psychedelics act of 1970 that they passed essentially
to target civil rights activists and anti -war
activists. That's what they did. They wanted
to go after the hippies. And they went after
the hippies with MK Ultra, with Tom O 'Neill
so brilliantly. outlines in his book chaos they
went after it and they created the manson family
they created that family they they taught that
guy how to do that so that that guy would kill
people and he would be a psychopath and now hippies
would be psychopaths and then all this anti -war
shit would just get stopped by sensible people
then schedule one everything everything psilocybin
marijuana all down the board everything becomes
schedule one the most illegal of illegal things
So all these people who are experiencing all
these Ken Kesey people and, you know, all the
LSD people of the 60s, all those people become
criminals instantly. And they just threw water
on the whole movement. And it worked. It really
worked. It was Nixon and all the people that
were in charge back then. If you look at what
happened from 1960 to 1980, this confusing era
of the 70s where the effects are wearing off.
And then you get into the 80s and everybody's
doing coke and they have makeup on and big hair
and the music sucks. It's like something happened.
Something happened. And what happened was. They
completely removed the very thing that had changed
culture so radically from the 50s to the 60s.
Like, I'm a gigantic fan of 1960s automobiles.
I love them. There's something about the shapes
of them. The way they sound. Part of it is that
I grew up in the 80s, and those were the cars
we all wanted. When we were kids, if a guy drove
by in a 1969 Camaro, we would all be like, whoa,
look at it. Look at that thing. There's something
about those shapes. There's something about the
designs of those cars that resonates so strongly
today. A 1990 car ain't worth shit. Nobody wants
your fucking 1990 car. 1990 Camaro, get the fuck
out of here with that thing. But if you have
a 1968 Camaro, people will stop in a parking
lot and stare at it. What is that? I think those
guys were on drugs. I think all those guys were
on drugs. I think the guy who created a Corvette
had to be on drugs. These guys were, they felt
something the same way Hendrix felt something
when he was on stage playing guitar in a way
nobody had ever heard before. That guy came out
of nowhere and everybody was like, what the fuck
is he doing? It was so different that Eric Clapton
watched him for the first time and was like.
I should probably quit playing guitar. Like,
what the fuck am I doing compared to this guy?
Like, Jesus Christ. Everybody was, like, humbled
and confused by it. Psychedelic, inspired, 100%.
100%. And there's something about throwing water
on that in the 1970s that I think has done a
massive disservice to our civilization. A massive
disservice. Because it's equated these things
with people that have poor discipline and bad.
social skills and ne 'er -do -wells who fail
in society, and that's not true. And all these
people that I know that are billionaires, I know
people that are super rich people that run these
financial institutions, and I know a lot of brilliant
venture capitalist guys and brilliant tech guys.
Almost all of them are enthusiasts. Almost all
of them have had these experiences and they're
all kind of quiet about it. And it's very unfortunate.
It's very unfortunate because of these stupid
laws that were passed 50 years ago. We've gotten
ourselves in this weird crunch where we've made
things illegal that could. massively help people
progress in life and sort things out if we could
figure out how to manage them correctly if we
could run proper studies about what is the correct
dose is there a person that has a certain sort
of biological makeup that makes these drugs problematic?
Should we find out? Maybe someone's allergic
to them. There's many medications and many different
compounds and many plants and natural things
that people are allergic to. Let's avoid that.
Let's try to figure out what works for some people,
what doesn't work. Let's have legitimate counselors
that could guide people through experiences,
people that have experienced it themselves and
can understand how to do this with intent. and
possibly aid your life. They have been shown
to be hugely beneficial for soldiers, for our
military men and women coming back from overseas
experiencing horrific trauma to help them get
past that. And yet they're illegal still. We're
both middle -aged men, right? So who is telling
us what we can and can't do? This is preposterous.
This is... Other men our age that haven't had
these experiences maintaining this control on
them in a completely ignorant way. They don't
even know what they are. They don't know what
these things are. They don't know what the experience
is. And yet they want it to be kept out of the
hands of kids. We've got to keep it off the streets.
We've got to keep drugs away from our society.
And you don't know what you're talking about.
It might be why we're here. And it also. The
absence of it might be why we're so fucked up.
It might be why we're so disconnected, why we're
so disjointed. And our society is so hypocritical.
I mean, the most pro -life people are also pro
-death penalty. It's like across the board, everything.
The people that, you know, want no crime but
don't want to stop the emergence of crime by
funding programs to try to fix the inner cities.
Our whole thing is disconnected. And I have a
feeling that a big part of that is that we have
not been given access to tools that have helped
people literally become what we are today. And
if you read Brian Murrow Rescu's work and if
he's correct and these people that are studying
the Eleusinian mysteries and the literal emergence
of democracy as we know it, probably all of it
came out of psychedelic experiences. So I had
Timothy Leary's old job at Harvard. That comes
with a lot of weight. Yeah, and I knew some of
the people that knew him. And so you could say
that what happened in the 1960s, and this is
relevant to the psychedelic experience, let's
say, is that the emergence of mushrooms in particular
and then LSD indicated to a swath of the population
like Leary and like Ken Kesey our perceptions
were locked in kind of a box, in a box that we
weren't even conscious of. I suppose that's the
box of conformity. And the psychedelics released
a wave of non -conformity. And Leary crystallized
that with his tune -in, turn -on, and drop -out.
Now, there was a major problem with that, and
that was partly what... led to the kickback.
So you might say that the first stage of something
approximating a religious revelation is the understanding
that your perceptions have been constrained by
forms of conformity that were so extensive that
you didn't even understand them. You didn't even
know they were there. And so you're freed from
that. And then maybe the first response to that
is the celebration of an unlimited hedonistic
freedom. But the problem with that is that freedom
from constraint and hedonism is not freedom.
It's just subjugation to a kind of instinctive
chaos. And that emerged with the hippie culture.
And Leary in particular made a huge mistake when
he said, tune in, turn on, and drop out. He should
have said, tune in, turn on, and grow up. I'm
dead serious about that because there's... There's
a different form of responsibility that emerges
once you realize that you were constrained by
a conformist box, let's say like Moses when he
was being a normal shepherd, that you can step
outside of that. But you don't step outside of
that into worship of the golden calf like in
hedonistic orgies. You step outside of that with
a more conscious upward aim. technologies like
psychedelics isn't accompanied by that framework
of enhanced responsibility, then it can degenerate
into a kind of hedonistic chaos. And that's what
the Nixon types were reacting to. They were terrified
by it. And they had the reasons to be terrified
because as you're intimating, these technologies
are unbelievably, unbelievably potent and destabilizing.
Now, that destabilization can be... used for
better let's say for better or for worse right
and it should be used for better that's complex
it's a very complex thing to manage and so Carl
Jung said that the one of the main functions
of religion was to stop people from having religious
experiences and what he meant by that was that
a direct experience of the transcendent is enough
to shake you to the foundation and to destabilize
not only you but your culture this is why for
there's another scene in the story of exodus
but could you explain further like expand on
what he was meaning by that but they keep you
from having religious experiences well if everybody
goes their own enlightened way let's say there's
no there's no social cohesion there's no unity
of purpose There's nothing but fragmentation.
And part of the danger of the hippie movement
in the 1960s was a counter -social fragmentation.
Now, so you can imagine, you know, things get
so constrained that everybody's exactly the same,
and that's a complete totalitarian catastrophe.
But you can imagine the opposite catastrophe,
which is that, well, everyone's letting it all
hang out and doing their own thing, and that's
equally. Right. And so there's some balance in
the middle. Well, that's that balance between
chaos and order that we were referring to earlier.
It's also an ignorance of the structure that's
involved in maintaining a society. Definitely.
You need discipline and people need to work to
maintain the society that you enjoy to be so
free and to be a hippie. Well, you can imagine
that that complex social order can be maintained
by something like mindless obedience. Right.
That's suboptimal. What you'd really want is
enlightened responsibility. Right. That's a great
way to put it. Right. That's a very hard thing
to pull off, though, because it means that you
have to leap out of the box of social constraint
and you have to take the responsibility onto
yourself. Now, that's a hell of a lot better
if you can manage it, but that is definitely
not what... Kesey or Leary, for example, were
preaching to the masses. But what you're saying
is like an admirable thing that people should
aspire to. It's the best possible. It's the highest
goal. Let me give you another example of this,
if you don't mind. I'm going to use another biblical
story. Why are you biblicaling? The lights are
flickering behind you, almost like God is interacting
with us. There's spirits in the room, Jamie.
Have you noticed the light flickering? If you
haven't noticed it, keep an eye on it. Hopefully
they're the right spirits. Well, I think they
always are. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So in the story
of Abraham, Abraham is an old man when the story
starts. As soon as you start talking about Abraham,
start flickering again. It's going now. It's
one of my tricks, man. I'm telling you, dude,
it's never happened before. This is wild. So
Abraham is like 70 years old when the story starts,
and we don't know anything about him. He's completely
nondescript. He's a case of failure to launch.
So he has rich parents, and he has everything
he needs at hand. So he can live the life of
a satiated infant. Like he's in the throes of,
what would you say, materialistic plenty. And
the voice of God comes to him. But it's characterized
in a very particular manner. So God comes to
Abraham as the call to adventure. And that's
a very useful thing to know. So in the Moses
story, God comes to Moses as that which attracts
his interest and takes him off the beaten path.
In the story of Abraham, God comes as the spirit
of adventure. And God makes Abraham a deal. It's
a very specific deal. And it's the best possible
deal. This is the covenant, by the way. This
is the covenant. So God tells Abraham, if you
leave your zone of comfort, If you remove yourself
from your father's tent, if you move away from
infantile materialistic satiation and go out
into the terrible world, and you do that voluntarily,
you have the adventure of your life. This is
what will happen. You'll be a blessing to yourself
that's genuine. So instead of being racked with
self -doubt and being self -conscious and taking
yourself apart with guilt and shame, you'll ride
the wave of adventure and you'll feel that your
life is a blessing. Not only will you feel that,
it will be a blessing. That's the first thing
that will happen. The second thing that will
happen is that other people will notice and your
name will become renowned and that will be valid.
You'll be a blessing to other people in that
regard. Your name will be upheld. So you'll stand
out among your peers, but in a justifiable manner
that's a consequence of your own intrinsic merit.
The third thing that'll happen is that you'll
have the opportunity to establish something permanent.
For Abraham, it's a dynasty, right? He's offered
the possibility of being the father of nations.
And the fourth thing that happens is you'll do
it in a way that's of cardinal benefit to everyone.
And so what happens in that story, this is so
cool. It's so remarkable. It's the answer to
the selfish gene, by the way, as well. So what
this story does is it takes the call to adventure,
which is the instinct that makes children move
out into the world. It's the spirit that you
encourage if you're a good father. It lines that
up and it says if you follow that and let it
pull you out of your zone of comfort, your life
will be a blessing to you, your reputation will
grow, you'll establish something permanent, and
you'll do that in a way that's good for everyone.
Right. So that's a hell of a good deal. And that's
that's the story of Abraham. OK, so why is that
relevant to the psychedelic debate? Because if
you're going to move into the zone of the transcendent,
you have to take on the requisite responsibility
or the process of transcendence turns into something
like a descent into unstructured chaos. And that's
not an improvement. It's just a movement from
tyranny into the desert. That's a good way of
thinking about it symbolically. What happens
in the Exodus story, because it also details
out how this should be structured, is that Moses
has a vision of individual responsibility and
social organization that's maximally responsibility
-based. So Moses tells the Pharaoh to let his
people go, but that's not the phrase. The phrase
is, God tells Moses to say this. He says, let
my people go, so they may worship me in the desert.
And so you move out of the tyranny. That's what
happens, let's say, in the throes of a psychedelic
experience is that the preconceptions are shattered.
Now you're somewhere unstructured. Okay, well,
you can't worship what's unstructured. You have
to find the proper structuring for your new freedom.
The vision that's put forward in the book of
Exodus is a vision of multidimensional responsible
identity. So you take on responsibility for your
own life. You take on responsibility for the
life of your wife or your husband. You take on
responsibility for your family. You're a model
for your community. You serve your state. You
do what you can for your nation, and that's all
united under your highest upward orientation.
And that's ordered freedom. That's ordered freedom.
It's not the same as the hedonistic freedom that
the people like Nixon and the sort of right -wing
conservatives of the 1960s were terrified by,
that kind of hedonistic anarchy. It's not freedom.
It erupted out of nowhere. I mean, we're right
now in 2024. I want you to imagine 2014. It's
the same. It's the same. There's nothing different
other than the threat of AI and war and socially.
The world's the same. You go from 1956 to 1966,
you have a completely different world. Completely
different world. Everyone's going crazy. The
opposition to the Vietnam War has got people
in the streets. Ken Kesey, Tim Leary, tune in,
drop out, all that. This world is changing in
this radical way. There'd been nothing like it.
And a lot of what you're saying about these experiences
happening and people just disconnecting and not
having discipline and structure and just experiencing
these things and just... disconnecting completely
from society was the problem that was the problem
it's a major problem well it's still a problem
now to some degree because people who are pursuing
let's say non -conformist freedom don't understand
that the replacement for freedom isn't hedonistic
anarchy and that's partly because it's self -defeating
it's also pointless it's also pointless and meaningless
and it's partly pointless and meaningless because
imagine then this is part of the implication
of the story of Abraham is that the instinct
of meaning comes to you when you pursue a pathway
that specifies, what would you say, the limitless
development of your integrated psyche. But it's
not just the psyche, it's the integration of
the psyche with all the different levels of society.
Like, for example, insofar as you're well put
together, you're going to be a highly functional
husband to your wife, right? Like your own psychological
Organization, integration cannot be divorced
from the union that you make with your wife.
They're the same thing. And then you can extend
that to your kids. For you to get your act together
means simultaneously that you establish the proper
relationship with your wife and with your children.
Those are the same thing. And then if you can
manage that, you do the same thing with the broader
community. It all stacks up musically. And so
then mental health doesn't become how your psyche
is organized internally, which is what the clinical
psychologists misled people into believing. It's
more like the harmony that obtains from the psyche
upward through society when everything is stacked
up properly to the... up to the highest level
possible of being. And that's another definition
of God. So one of the things I tried to do in
this book is to actually define what it is that
we're arguing about. Because the old man in the
sky superstition doesn't cover the territory.
So, for example, if you look at God in the story
of Abraham and you say, do you believe in that
God? What you're asking, even though you might
not know it, is do you believe that there is
a call to adventure? following that call will
not only integrate you, but serve society in
the highest possible manner. And that's a very,
that's a pretty straightforward question. It
has very little to do with anything that's even
vaguely superstitious. Like, is that call there?
You certainly reward it in your children if you
have the least bit of sense. And so I've been
trying to define what it is that we're arguing
about. And so there's another definition, too,
that you see this in... the story of Adam and
Eve. So in the story of Adam and Eve, one of
the ways God is characterized is as the spirit
that calls you on your pride and presumption.
So then you ask yourself, well, do you believe
that exists? It's like, how often in your own
life has pride gone before a fall? Is there some
spirit that's operative in being that... shows
you the error of your ways when you get ahead
of yourself or not? And if the answer to that
is no, you say, well, you have no conscience?
Nothing calls you on your moral impropriety,
your overreaching? No one wants to be near you
if you're one of those people. That's for sure.
And is that real? So one of the ways God is presented
in the Old Testament is this. dynamic between
calling and conscience, right? So there's the
calling that is indicated in the story of Abraham
and Moses that pulls you forward to the adventure
of your life. And the other side of that is the
constraint of conscience that tells you when
you're wandering off the straight and narrow
path. That's more the voice of negative emotion
and threat detection. And calling is more like
the voice of positive emotion that pulls you
forward and invites you. But you need the dynamic
between those two. That's the... Pillar of light
and the pillar of darkness that guides the Israelites
across the desert. Jonathan Paggio helped me
figure that out. Just flattened me when he laid
it out. Because I could see the Taoist view of
the world and the ancient Jewish view of the
world stack on top of each other. And the implication
of the story is very straight. It's like you
leave a tyranny and you're lost. What guides
you when you're lost? The interaction between
what calls you forward and upward and the constraints.
of your own conscience that warn you when you're
deviating from the straight and narrow path.
That's a definition of God that emerges from
Exodus. And the balance of the mind to be able
to figure out which is which and how to apply
them. And the balance of the mind, this is why
you have to have the least amount of problems
in your life and keep your body as healthy as
possible so you don't have all these other things
that are influencing the way you interact with
the world. You got to have a balance of everything.
All of it has to be kind of balanced together
in order for you to have the judgment. Yes. Otherwise,
you can't see. Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. You
have to be able to see it. And it's hard. And
you have to want to see it. Yeah. So why do you
want to see it? Me? Yeah. It's just my instinct.
That's just I follow my instincts with everything.
I always have. Why? I don't know. I think because
I didn't have a lot of guidance when I was young.
And because, you know, I was a latchkey kid and
parents divorced, split, you know, a lot, a lot
of moving. I think I developed my own appreciation
of my instincts, of my thought. And I had seen
enough people by the time I was a young boy ruin
their lives. And I'd seen these poor decisions
right in front of me. I'd seen poor thinking
and excuse making and laziness. Right, so you
could see the negative consequences. Yes, I'd
seen all these things. And because I didn't feel
protected, I genuinely felt like I was on my
own and I had to figure things out on my own.
I developed a very early trust and recognition
of the importance of that. And it's led me through
my entire life. Everything that I ever did that
was like a big risk was like a calling to me.
Every single thing that I ever did. From getting
into martial arts, I went from not doing it to
doing it every day, all day, seven days a week.
It was a calling. It was like my mind interfaced
with whatever that was, martial arts was, and
said, this is my ticket out of here. This is
my ticket to be a different person. Was that
discipline? What was the ticket do you think
I don't even know if you call it discipline back
then because it was more of an obsession So when
you're obsessed with something it doesn't require
discipline because you can't wait to do it again
Discipline Mike Tyson said it was a real calling
for you Mike Tyson said best He said discipline
is doing something you hate but doing it like
you love it. Mm -hmm, you know like When you're
in training camp like Mike Tyson was for a big
heavyweight fight, you're pushing the limits
of your physical endurance and recovery because
you're trying to achieve an adaptation. You can't
maintain fight -ready fitness all year round.
One thing that people don't understand about
fight -ready, when a guy like Islam Makachev,
who is the UFC lightweight champion, the pound
-for -pound best fighter on earth, When that
guy is fighting, when he gets into the cage on
the day, whatever it is, that Saturday night,
this is a peak. performance and training that
cannot be maintained you want he wants to catch
it right when he's right there when the body
hasn't broken down yet the immune system hasn't
broken down yet the endocrine system isn't fried
the adrenals aren't fried you you're getting
it to right when your body can recover and is
forced to maintain this insane level of fitness
And then you have to take a break. Like you cannot
maintain fight camp all year round. You will
not be able to do it. Your body will break down.
So you. My point is that requires discipline.
Right. Because you're no longer in the inspiration
realm. You're not in the obsession realm. You
are, I'm sure, as well. But there's no fucking
way you want to do it. There's no way you want
to do more sprints. There's no way you want to
do all this stuff. You must do it, though. You
must do the calisthenics. You must do the live
wrestling drills. You must do the shark tank
where they throw in a new fresh opponent every
round. for five rounds so you're dealing with
rested killers and you're exhausted you have
to do that and that's not that's pure discipline
and generally enforced discipline by coaches
because it's so rigid it's so hard to do that
you need someone over you with a stopwatch go
let's go let's go let's go and everybody has
to get up and go at it because even the most
disciplined their body recognizes they need a
break right so that's pure discipline What I
had was this obsession that made that hard work
easy. Right, right. So that's a key thing. So
that's a key thing. Okay, so now imagine that
underneath that, there's an implicit or unconscious
goal. Okay, so I'm saying this for a very specific
reason. So the positive emotion that motivates
people is always experienced in relationship
to a goal. Now this is a very important thing
for everyone to understand, because it means
that if you don't have a goal, you have no positive
emotion. And it also means that the higher your
goal, the more positive emotion you experience
when you're moving towards it, because positive
emotion signifies progress towards a goal. So
you need a goal. The goal of the deepest religious
traditions is the ultimate goal, by definition.
So the idea is that you need a goal. And so you
should pick the utmost possible goal. That's
another good definition of something like the
kingdom of heaven or the realm of the divine,
the ultimate goal. Now, you have a goal, and
every time you see movement towards it, you're
going to get, what would you say, you're riding
on the energy that's associated with movement
towards that goal. That's dopaminergically mediated.
That's the same systems that are affected by
cocaine and methamphetamine and so forth, all
the positive emotion drugs. So you need a goal.
That goal, now you can imagine this, that if
you're attentive to the action of your own instincts,
or the divine voice, I don't think those are
distinguishable, then a goal is going to emerge
that catalyzes a series of transformations. This
is what happens to Abraham. So, he has a series
of adventures after he decides that he's going
to go out in the world. And every adventure is
marked by the erection of a sacrificial altar.
and a recommitment of his upward aim. Now, there's
two reasons for that. One is that he reminds
himself that he's aiming upward, and he's on
an adventure. And the second is, he admits to
himself that with every transformation of character,
something has to be sacrificed. So, you know,
so, now, I'm curious about this in your own life,
right? So, you started obsessively committing
to martial arts. What did you have to give up
to do that? Social life. Okay. What else? That's
basically it. I was a kid. Okay, social life.
I didn't really have responsibilities other than
school, so I would leave from school and go right
to training. Okay, so there's an emergent idea
in that story of adventure -led transformation
that with every profound transformation of character,
something that's not appropriate has to be let
go of. That's why, by the way, that's why Abraham's
story culminates in the sacrifice of his son.
Because the sacrifices get higher in value as
the developmental progression upward continues.
And that's basically the story of individual
development, right? Follow the call of adventure.
Aim upward. Continually remind yourself of your
fundamental goal. And then let go of everything
that isn't appropriate as you transform forward.
So Abraham ends up with a new name because of
doing that. That's how different he becomes in
the course of his adventure. It's like Jacob.
Jacob becomes Israel and Abram becomes Abraham
because the consequence of him following the
pathway of adventure, the calling, is a transformation
that's so complete it's as if he's a different
person. And those stories are maps of that transformative
process. So they culminate in the Christian view
of things with the ultimate sacrificial offering.
So that's the idea that lurks in the New Testament
is that The ultimate in transformation is brought
about by your willingness to put absolutely everything
on the line, no matter what. Right. And that's
a very different view of the religious enterprise
than something like defense against death anxiety.
Right. It's the ultimate adventure. And that's
the willingness to welcome everything about life
that's terrible and painful and malevolent, to
welcome that with open arms, to accept that.
And that's predicated on a deeper idea even.
which is that sacrifice is the basis of community,
which is exactly right. Because you have to give
up something to be in relationship to the future
and to other people. Right. So the biblical corpus
is an examination of, what would you say, levels
of sacrifice moving downward to the ultimate
possible level of sacrifice. So in the Abrahamic
story, Abraham is requested by God to offer up
his son. Right now he does it. He gets them back.
The threat isn't carried through. And what does
that mean? It means, first of all, that everything
in your life, no matter what it is, including
your relationships, should be made subservient
to the highest possible aim. It also means that
a good father sacrifices his children to what's
highest. That's the offering of your child to
the world. The faithful offering of your child
to the world. That's what Mary does. It's a famous
statue of Mary in St. Peter's in Rome. Michelangelo
made it when he was like 23, some ridiculous
early age, brilliant statue. Mary is holding
the body of her son broken in her arms, looking
serene. He's an adult off the cross. It's like
the female crucifixion. And the idea is that
the good mother, the proper father. offers their
children to be broken by the world in the pursuit
of what's highest. There it is. Yeah, yeah. He
was 23 when he made that? That is insane. What
were you doing when you were 23? Telling shitty
jokes. Single block of marble. Isn't that insane?
That's an indication of sacred femininity. See,
the psychoanalysts said in the early part of
the 20th century that the good mother necessarily
fails. And so what does that mean? Well, every
woman who brings a child into the world knows
that the child is going to be broken by death
and malevolence. Right? And so motherhood in
its highest aspect is the offering of the child
to the world to be broken. That's what's portrayed
in the Abrahamic story too with regards to Abraham.
To get your child back, you offer them to the
world. That's a profound indication of faith,
right? That life is worthwhile despite its suffering
and its evil. And it's so good. Like the work,
like look at his foot. Just look at the detail
on the way the toe bends, the heel. It's insane
how good it is. He was so good. The fact that
he figured out how to be that good at 23 years
of age is just so shocking. Well, also so inspiring.
So inspiring. But stunning. Like stunning how
good it is. Yes, and stunning what it means and
where it's placed. And the understanding of anatomy.
Did he really? Wow. Insane. I mean, that guy
left behind so much. Like, what is that about?
What is it about these unique individuals? like
him, that their work transcends time. That's
life eternal, that ability to transcend time.
Yes. Thousands of years later, people will be
looking at those. So what happens in the Abrahamic
story, because it's relevant to your question,
so God offers Abraham the opportunity to be the
father of nations. Okay, so imagine this, imagine
this as a father. So we use father as a generic
word, right? Everybody has a father. So there's
a generic aspect to it. There's a role that you
play if you're a father. And then you could imagine
there's a role you could play as a good father.
And if you're a good father, you're radically
encouraging. And you encourage your children
to go out into the world and prevail. You teach
them to handle serpents. You don't protect them.
You don't shelter them. You push them out and
you say, no matter what comes your way, kid,
I've got confidence that you can handle it. No
matter how terrible it is, no matter how challenging
or daunting or malevolent it is, you've got it.
And when you see your children doing that, if
you're a good father, it fills you with what?
It fills you with gratitude and love. To see
your children acting that out, even at an early
age, to taking the risks of their first steps
or climbing their first play structure or going
out in the playground to make new friends when
they're strangers or going off to school alone,
all of that, you think, it's dangerous out there.
It's like, good, go. I know you can handle it.
Okay, so that's what Abraham plays out. He plays
out that archetypal role. And the idea there,
this is... why I made reference earlier to the
idea of the selfish gene. Dawkins characterized
human reproduction as selfish. That's wrong,
because the human reproductive pattern is multigenerational.
And if you want to establish the pattern of fatherhood
that's going to cascade down the generations,
that will make your descendants successful in
the multigenerational manner, then you follow
the spirit of adventure, and you imbue your children
with that confidence. And that's how that...
pattern that establishes the dynasty. So Abraham
is the father of nations is established. So human
reproduction is way more complex than just sex.
Far more complex. It's a multi -generational
commitment. So now the promise that God makes
to Abraham in part is that if you fall into that
pattern of maximal adventure and courageous movement
forward, that your life is imbued with a meaning
that... with the meaning that transcends time,
and that you embody something like an archetypal
and eternal spirit, and that's the spirit of
the Father. That's why Abraham understands that
he's made contact with the God of his ancestors.
And if you're a good father, you have that spirit
dwelling within you. And the Christian insistence
is that that spirit's identical to the Logos
that bears the weight of the world on its shoulders
voluntarily, and that that's what brings everything
into being. Stunning. It's a stunning conceptualization.
And I think it's right. It looks right to me.
And the idea that sacrifice is the basis of the
community, that's just obvious. Like, the fact
that you're married, so what's the sacrificial
gesture there? Well, all other women. That's
sacrifice number one. Then it's not about you.
It's also not about your wife. It's about the
stability of your union across time. And it's
about the stability of that union insofar as
that's a reliable foundation for your children.
So that's sacrificial too. You give up your whims
in the present so that the future is stabilized.
You give up your immaturity so that your children
can thrive. That's all sacrificial gesture. And
we figured that out. That's why we put the crucifix
at the center of our society. Because we figured
out, even though we didn't know it, we figured
out that... The stability of the community is
predicated on the willingness of the individual
to sacrifice. And the exploration in the New
Testament is the limits of sacrifice, right?
So do you think that that's what people think
of when they think of the cross? It's very hard
to know what people think about. I would say
it depends on their level of sophistication.
Right, that's what I'm getting at. I don't think
it's ever been explained to me that way, and
I don't think most people think about it that
way. When they think about it, they think Jesus
died for our sins. There he is. Praise Jesus.
Right, right, right. It's a very formulaic, surface
-level understanding of what it is we're talking
about. Well, I think it's partly because it's
partly... And there's a merciful element of it.
And this is what Jung was referring to when he
said that religion helps protect people against
religious experience. The full revelation of
the significance, let's say, of the imitation
of Christ, which is supposed to be the foundation
of Christian belief, is in fact the demand that
you walk the same pathway. And it's the most
terrifying demand. So Jung described the Christian
passion as an archetypal tragedy. Now, there
was a reason for that. So think about it this
way. Think about it technically. So imagine that
a hundred great storytellers told the most painful
possible story. And then imagine that you aggregated
all those stories and you distilled them into
one story where all the terrible elements were
present. Okay, so now you have a representation.
You have a representation of the worst life can
throw at you. Okay, so let's take that apart
a bit. So the first thing that makes a tragedy
tragic is that the tragedy befalls a good person.
Because if a tragedy befalls a villain, it's
just justice. It's not a tragedy. So it has to
be a good person. So then to amplify that, you
would not only have the tragedy befall a good
person, you'd have it befall... A good person
that everyone knew was good, but was not only
good, was the best, and that was persecuted because
he was good. So that sort of limits it out in
that direction. And then you might say, well,
what does he have to face? Well, and the answer
would be, well, the worst life has to offer.
Okay. Early death. Early painful death. Early,
painful, humiliating, unjust death at the hands
of his friends, at the hands of the mob, under
the thumb of a tyrant. Right. brought about by
people who knew that he was not only good, but
the best of men. That's an archetypal tragedy.
And then it doesn't limit out. So then you have
the death that occurs in consequence of that
and its voluntary acceptance. But that's not
where it ends, because the mythology surrounding
the crucifixion story insists that Christ harrowed
hell after the crucifixion, which meant that
he confronted not only death, but malevolence.
and in consequence transcended both. And so what's
the underlying psychological message? It's something
like the calling and the voice of conscience
informing people that in order to thrive properly
in life and to become who you could be, if you
could be everything you could be, you have to...
voluntarily take on the weight of the worst life
has to offer, including the depths of malevolence
itself. And you think, well, obviously, Joe,
you know this. Like, how are you going to adapt
to a situation you won't even admit to? Right.
Well, so how could it be otherwise than for you
to become everything that you could be? You have
to embrace all of the catastrophes that life
has to offer. How could it be other than that?
You're going to hide? You're going to pretend?
Right. How's that going to work? No one thinks
that'll work. Right. And so, and you're right,
there is this defensive element to the, particularly
the Protestant religious tradition, although
I don't want to single out the Protestants specifically,
that insists that, you know, the work has already
been done. But there's a lot of ambivalence about
that in the Christian canon because there's an
equal insistence that, no, you're supposed to,
you're supposed to take all this on voluntarily.
And that not only that, not only that, that it's
such an interesting idea because it makes so
much sense psychologically. So imagine that as
your courage grows so that you can confront more
and more of the horror of life, that a spirit
begins to develop within you that gives you a
strength that's commensurate with your daring.
That's walking with God. That's the same thing.
So the promise is that if you had the courage,
something would be with you to... allow you to
bear up nobly under the burden and all the clinical
evidence supports that proclamation because what
you see in people in the therapeutic transformation
is that insofar as they're willing to confront
what terrifies them voluntarily they get stronger
and then imagine that there's no there's nothing
but a metaphysical limit to that and i think
that's right I can't see how it cannot be right.
It makes sense. It resonates with how we know
people that have overcome great things in their
life and become these very unusual and unique
people. I've got to pause because I have to use
the restroom. But let's jump right back into
it. Where were we? Well, we were kind of bringing
We Who Wrestle With God to a close, I would say.
I've got other projects I want to talk to you
about. Okay. All right? Sure. We're launching
Peterson Academy today. So online university,
we hope. We'll see. We've got, we're launching
with 20 courses. Best lectures in the world.
Very, very high quality production. We invited
the best lectures I could find down to Miami.
Eight hour courses on the topic they really want.
Highest possible production. Quality. And we're
hoping we'll make a high level university level.
university -equivalent education available to
everyone for approximately one -twentieth the
cost. So that's the plan. You want to see the
opening salvo? Sure. Yeah. Put it up, Jamie.
Yeah, yeah. Let's take a look. I ran this before
my lectures, this last tour. You've got to put
the headphones on if you want to hear it. Yeah,
yeah, okay. Why did I decide to build an online
university? Well... There is a crisis now in
higher education. The president of Harvard University
resigned today. Does calling for the genocide
of Jews violate Penn's code of conduct? We have
a problem of affordability and cost, spiraling
student loans. We have a groupthink emerging,
and that warps the entire academic enterprise.
I experimented with putting my lectures online
and found that I could teach far more people
at very low cost than I could at the university.
And I thought, well, why not scale that? What
I'm hoping to do is to find the best lectures
in the world. and to bring them to as wide as
possible an audience. He came to me and he basically
said, I want you to do the best course that you've
always wanted to do. We want to bring you the
highest quality education possible at the lowest
possible price. It's extremely high level content
that anybody can use to educate themselves and
it's available to everybody. Well, that would
be good. I think it's funny because I got cancelled
at the university so I could try to return the
favour. I think they're doing that to themselves,
right? Yeah, well, we couldn't have a better
marketing campaign than the universities themselves.
It's similar to what's going on with mainstream
media. Yeah? It really is kind of the same thing.
Yeah, well, it all derives from the same source,
right, is the capture of higher education by
this godforsaken ideology that's... Bizarre.
Yeah? Bizarre how successful it is and how many
people just are compliant. Yeah. That's for sure.
That's for sure. Do you see it turning around,
though? It seems like it is a little. It seems
like more people are pushing back against it
now than ever. When you have institutions that
are thoroughly captured, it's very difficult
to retrieve them. You know, we've been arguing
about this. I've been arguing about this with
my team, Fort Peterson Academy. I mean, is it
possible to rejuvenate the bricks and mortars?
institutions of higher education and well one
answer to that is things that are dead rot and
the universities seem to be rotting everywhere
and maybe that's because they're dead maybe it's
because their time has come and it could be that
that's the case I mean I I hope not I loved working
at Harvard in particular it was a amazing institution
I had a very good time at McGill I had a good
time at the University of Toronto it's a real
pain to see these institutions degenerate but
They're ideologically captured. That's not good.
And thoroughly. And it's a very rotten ideology.
It's the spirit of Cain, the resentful spirit
of Cain. It's not good. They're unbelievably
expensive. They take terrible advantage of their
students. Plus, the average quality of the educational
experience is actually very low at most places,
not everywhere. Hillsdale College, I think, is
a marked exception. But most places, the lectures
aren't good. And we're in a situation now. It's
kind of like what happened with YouTube in a
way. YouTube enabled you, for example, and Spotify
as well, to emerge as an independent commentator,
and you've cornered the market in some ways on
that. There's no reason. The universities could
have seen this coming 20 years ago. They could
have found their best lecturers, and they could
have filmed their courses in the highest possible
quality manner and taken advantage of this new
communication technology, and they didn't. That's
not a good sign. It's so funny, we bring our
professors down to Miami, professors from Oxford
and Cambridge, and they're so relieved to come
there. And the reason they're relieved to come
there is because they're treated badly by their
own institutions, these great professors. They're
treated with contempt. They're paid miserably.
That's especially the case in the UK. All we
have to do is... appreciate them. I tell the
professors who come to Peterson Academy, like,
here's the deal. You can say exactly what you
want in exactly the way you want. You can teach
what you love. We'll put a studio audience together
that actually wants to listen to you. That's
the only reason they're there. We'll offer you
a financial deal that's better than you can get
with any book. We'll give you more reach than
you could ever also hope to get with any published
manuscript. You can bring what you know to the
world for next to nothing. We figure we can offer
a university, quality, high level university
quality equivalent for about $2 ,000 over four
years. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. We have a great social
media platform. So I don't know, you tell me
what you think about this. So we've been wrestling
with price, right? Because pricing something
is very difficult. And part of the problem with
social media platforms is that they're free.
And you might say, well, that's not a problem.
It's like, it is a problem because things that
are free get overrun by parasites instantly.
And so You get the trolls, you get the bots,
you get the bad corporate actors, you get the
scam artists, because there's no barrier to their
participation. And so we put a $450 cost on our
offering per year for the early adopters. That's
available now. And we're hoping that the fact
that there has to be a bit of a financial sacrifice
on the front end will make our social media network
high quality. clean because there's a little
bit of skin in the game to participate so we've
taken the best elements of the popular social
media networks and amalgamated that and we're
hoping that we can produce a community of people
who are responsible and achievement oriented
and upwards striving and intellectually curious
and bring them together so they can form their
own communities as well as participating in the
lectures and so I'm extremely excited about this.
We got lucky, too, because we set up a production
studio in Miami, and we have state -of -the -art
film crew and editors. But just when we started
to film, the AI illustration capacity came online,
and we filmed everyone against a white background.
And so we can fill the whole background with...
with imagery and graphs and comments. Can you
run a trailer for, just pick one of the courses
at random, because this is actually how the courses
look. So the trailers are very tightly edited,
but so are the courses. And so let me show you
one of them so you get a sense of what we've
managed to accomplish. A lot of fascinating questions.
Where do we come from? Where are we going? What
is the universe made of? How can we possibly
understand the grand landscape of the cosmos?
When you look back in space, you look back in
time. It's amazing we've been able to do this,
to study the properties of the cosmos, time scales
of billions of years, size scales billions of
times bigger than our own. And now the question
is, can we go back to time equals zero? Can we
go back to before time equals zero? And what
does that even mean? I hope in this course to
keep striving and asking these great questions,
because without great questions, there can be
no great answers. And without great answers,
there can be no understanding. Wow. Brian Keating.
Fonjo. Pretty badass. Yeah, well, and I was so
happy when I saw the trailers, you know, because
Michaela and her husband, Jordan Fuller, they've
been working very diligently on this for about
three years, and they basically built it from
scratch, you know. And I didn't have any idea
how the courses would look, you know, because
that's actually a pretty difficult thing to pull
off. But I'm very happy with the trailers. They're
extremely... Every course has its own style sheet.
So each course has its – there's an overarching
style to the platform. But every single course
has its own illustration, ethos, and quality.
Yeah, well, you can see them. Now, would you
be – is this just for personal education? Or
will you be giving degrees? We're going to approach
that in two ways. So we'll offer certification
at different – time spans so you know generally
it takes you four years to get a degree but you
could imagine that it would be useful to have
a one -year certificate a two -year certificate
three -year certificate four -year certificate
like there's no compelling reason why it has
to be four years we'll keep very detailed records
of our students academic progress and they'll
be able to offer them directly to employers so
we want to be able to assure employers that anybody
who's gone through The certification process
that's part and parcel of Peterson Academy has
done the work and met the standards, and the
standards will be high. Now, simultaneously,
we're working on technical accreditation, right,
so that we can pull this, so that we can have
this operate as a standard university. Now, there's
trade -offs in that because the accreditation
processes themselves are captured by the same
forces that have captured the universities. And
we're not going to compromise the quality of
the offerings by kowtowing to... accreditation
processes that are producing the same problem
that we're trying to address. Now, I'm in discussion
with a number of different jurisdictions to move
accreditation forward. And if that happens, it
can also be applied retroactively. So if we can
figure out how to do it without... with an administration
or a jurisdiction that's willing to do it, and
we don't have to compromise the quality, then
we'll go the classic accreditation route. Otherwise,
I'm just going to go directly to employers and
say, look, we're going to be very, very careful
about who we grant certification to, and you'll
be able to rely on the certification from Peterson
Academy as an indication of intellectual ability
and also work ethic, and we'll document that
by the record -keeping process that we use as
part and parcel of the platform. So I think we
can do it. We're going to do it one way or another.
How are you going to be able to assure that these
students, because it's all remote, right? Yeah.
How are you going to be able to assure that they're
actually doing the work, that they're not utilizing
AI? Like, are you going to have them write things?
I can't tell you how, but we are going to. Oh,
okay. Yeah, well, look, I've tested. Tens of
thousands of people online. So I set up an online
testing service that was used primarily by a
company called the Founder Institute. And we
tested 50 ,000 people, 60 ,000 people over five
years in about seven different languages. And
we built and developed technology to capture
people who are cheating. So they don't know how
we're capturing them. And I'm not going to tell
you, but we know how to do it. And, you know,
and that's obviously a problem, but it isn't
an insoluble problem. And I think we've already
solved it. So and then once we move towards more
formal and stable accreditation, there are lots
of companies have emerged as a consequence of
the COVID lockdowns to make sure that. remote
compliance with testing requirements can be achieved.
So there's lots of ways to solve that problem.
It's very exciting. It's really exciting. There's
all sorts of weird possibilities that emerge
from this too because the technology now exists
and we've had some of the videos converted already
to have the lectures translated into the world's
major languages. The technology that's cutting
edge uses the professor's voice and intonation
in the second language and matches the mouth
movements to the language. Yeah, they're going
to do that at Spotify. Yeah, it's seamless, man.
It's seamless. They're doing it with podcasts.
I think they're initially going to do Spanish,
German, and French, I believe. Those are the
first three languages, but they eventually will
scale out. Yeah, yeah. So that's just like, that's
just laying there. It is unbelievable. Have someone
teach a lecture in Russian and actually make
the mouth movements. Everything. Well, it's extremely
exciting, especially in regard to the developing
world. Because there'll be more people in Nigeria
by 2100 than in China. And the median age of
African is 19. So there's an immense opportunity
in the developing world to capture the market
for higher education. And it would be a wonderful
thing to be able to bring this to the world.
And I just can't see why not. You know, the courses
are very efficiently taught. We have AI -mediated
testing services, and we can use the tests themselves
as educational tools. You know, so imagine you
have a test, you get a question wrong, and you
get feedback that it's wrong, and it'll tell
you where in the lecture or the reading material
that you made the mistake, so you can go back
and review. And so even the testing itself will
be educational. And, you know, we're hoping to
develop a community that... is composed of people
who want to engage in lifelong learning. And
it also means that you don't have to be like
18 to 22 to attend this university. You can stay
a part of it for the rest of your life. And we're
hoping that spontaneous communities will develop
and that we can bring people together for conventions.
So, you know, if we can get enough people on
the platform, we'll have conventions in different
cities where we bring our lecturers, you know,
to a stadium or to a theater for a weekend. And
everybody who's part of the university can come
and listen to their favorite lecturers. And we've
got educational institutions who are already
interested in partnering in that regard so that
they can be brought to their institution for
like summer. time three -day courses and so and
it's so fun too because we can use video and
audio and that's a wonderful thing as well because
as you know well far more people can listen and
watch than can read now you have to read to partake
in our courses as well but it's a great opportunity
and it's so fun to have the professors come down
there and be thrilled about it most of We want
the professors we already have to teach multiple
courses because they're very good lecturers,
and they've, I think, all, without exception,
enthusiastically agreed to continue participating
because we took the idiot restrictions off them.
It's like, teach what you want to the people
who want to listen. No holds barred. It's so
fun. It's so fun. With the state of higher education
the way it is today, How does it recover or does
it just get replaced? Well, I guess what I'm
hoping at least that the Peterson Academy will
do with the production quality of our courses
is up the ante. It's like even if we fail financially
because, you know, we don't know how to price
this. How the hell do you figure out something
like that? We've argued about it a lot and we
don't know what the potential financial market
might be. But at minimum, you know, we'll be
able to launch the courses independently if the
platform itself doesn't take off. We're going
to show Harvard and Stanford and Oxford and Cambridge
what's possible with regards to lecturing with
the new technology. I mean, they're stuck in
like 1860. And, you know, with these like online
large courses that places like MIT, for example,
have launched, basically all they do is put up
a camera and videotape a lecture. It's like...
You can't do that. YouTube and the technologies
that allow for the dissemination of video, they're
their own medium, right? The medium is the message.
You have to use the bloody technology. You can't
stay stuck a century back, which is why we've
done tight edits and filled in the backgrounds
with images. There's just no reason that that
can't be everywhere. Right. So, and why would
you pay? Look, people probably pay $300 ,000
for an Ivy League education because that's where
they meet their wife or their husband when it
gets right down to it. Is that really what it
is? Well, Joe, look, you never know what an institution
is doing. Okay, so what does a university do?
Lectures, accreditation. Okay, but that's not
all. It gives you an identity for four years
while you sort your life out. It gives you an
opportunity to mature away from your parents.
It gives you the opportunity to build a new...
network of peers, not only living peers, but
peers in the historical tradition. And it gives
you an opportunity to meet the person that you
might be with for the rest of your life. That's
a big deal. And it's a selective opportunity
because you bring bright kids together who are
hardworking and they get a chance to meet each
other. That might be the whole value of an Ivy
League education. It's hard to specify these
things. Now, we're trying to replicate that on
Peterson Academy with the social media side.
And, you know, that's a new technology and we
don't know how it'll work. But the fact that
it's selective and it won't be full of trolls
and bots and bad corporate actors should mean
that people will be able to build social networks
that are of high value. Because that's one of
the things, obviously, that's what you do in
a bloody MBA program. You know, it's not what
you learn at an MBA program that confers the
value of the degree. It's the fact that it was
bloody difficult to get in because the GMAT is
an IQ test, essentially, and the social network
you build in the MBA program. You carry that
with you while we're doing what we can to replicate
that online. And we're going to make sure that
we offer potential employers a record of our
students' progress and success so that they have
some sense that the person who they hire has...
done the apprenticeship work on their own necessary
to accredit them as, say, a valid student and
a hard worker. And I think we can do that, and
I think we can do it more effectively than universities
do it. I know how to measure these things. It's
going to be very interesting if that becomes
a criteria in which people are hired. If it really
does become a thing and it becomes something
where people are accepting that as an education
and seeking people out in that regard, It's going
to be very interesting to see if more of those
emerge. If you start a trend and then... Well,
at minimum, we can assure a potential employer
of two things. We didn't attract a woke crowd.
And we didn't indoctrinate our bloody students.
So that's not a bad minimum. You know, you can
assure intelligence, you can assure... a work
ethic because they've completed the course material
and properly, we can ensure that's properly measured.
But we can also say, here's a bunch of things
they didn't learn. Right. And the courses are
subversive in the most traditional possible way.
So we have Larry Arnn, for example, who's the
president of Hillsdale. He did a lecture series
on Churchill. Where are you going to go to university
to get a lecture series on Churchill? And Arnn
was Churchill's primary biographer, one of his
primary biographers. So that's a big deal. We've
got Nigel Baker from Oxbridge lecturing on the
legacy of UK colonialism. Well, you're not going
to get that anywhere else. And he's a great lecturer
and he's a brilliant man and very, very courageous.
And Larry Arnn is exactly the same category.
So the technology we're using is revolutionary
in a variety of different ways. The lectures
are high quality, but the whole ethos of the...
educational offering is completely different
than what is on offer, say, at the typical Ivy
League, Harvard, for example, which is such a
catastrophe. Like, I was there at Harvard in
the 1990s. I loved that place. It was really
forward -looking and aimed at excellence with
very minor exceptions, like truly minor exceptions.
It was a powerhouse, man. And I went back and
saw a bunch of my old professor friends a month
ago, you know, and they've all joined. Free speech
movement at Harvard. And they're fighting against
their own administration. And these were like
the best professors I ever met in my life. And
that's what they've been reduced to. When did
it start? Specifically in the universities? Yes.
It started with the incursion of, what would
you say, a modified Marxism in the 1960s and
then really accelerated in the 70s. It sort of
went like this. You know how things fail. Gradually,
gradually, gradually, then suddenly. And it hit
a critical mass in terms of failure probably
around 2014, 15, pretty much when things blew
up around me. That's why they blew up around
me. You know, I mean, it was so ridiculous. And
what do you think ultimately caused it to not
course correct? What do you think ultimately
caused these universities to give in to that?
Okay, let's talk about ultimate. So let me tell
you a story, an old story. There's a myth from
Mesopotamia called the Enuma Elish, which is
one of the oldest stories that we have. And let
me just lay out the story, because these ancient
myths capture the fundamental dynamics of culture.
They're winnowed to do that. Okay, so the Mesopotamians
believed that the world emerged as the interaction
of two forces. We already alluded to them. Chaos
and order. They had a god of order. Apsu. He
was a male god. He's the patriarchal. Patriarchy.
You can think of Apsu as the patriarchy. And
a female god, Tiamat. Tiamat is a dragon and
a dragon of chaos. And the word Tiamat is the
same word, etymologically, as the word Tohu Vabohu,
and that's the chaos that God makes the world
out of at the beginning of time in the Hebrew
accounts. Okay, so you have Apsu and Tiamat,
and they come together. Chaos and order come
together, and they produce the first world. And
in the Mesopotamian account of things, that's
a world of higher order gods. Now, those higher
order gods forget their ancestors and go about
their business, and they get increasingly fractious
and undisciplined and noisy and hedonistic and
immature. And at one point, they kill their father,
Apsu, and they try to live on his corpse. Right.
So you see an echo of this. It's very complicated.
You see an echo of this in the story of Pinocchio.
You know, there's a scene in Pinocchio where
Geppetto ends up in the body of a whale. Okay,
so here's the underlying biological dynamic.
It's so remarkable. So imagine a society sets
itself up according to a set of principles. And
it stores, it creates a giant storehouse of wealth.
Okay, that's what a carcass is. So if you're
a primordial herder, your wealth is in the bodies
of your herd animals. A body is a symbol of stored
wealth. In the Mesopotamian pantheon, the careless
kill their father and live on its corpse. That's
what's happened to the universities. So since
World War II, the West has gathered huge storehouses
of value everywhere. Harvard's a great example.
Immense endowment. Remarkably valuable brand.
Disney's another example. And what's happened
is, and this happens all the time, if you have
an unguarded storehouse of value, the parasites
come marching in. Right. And they try to live
on the corpse. Now, they can for a while because
it's a storehouse of value, but they kill the
spirit. Now, what happens in the Mesopotamian
story is that... Chaos itself comes flooding
back in the form of Tiamat, who's extremely,
the goddess of chaos, who's extremely angry that
her husband has been sacrificed by the careless
denizens of the world. That's the death of God.
So, yeah, and the Savior emerges in the Mesopotamian
story. It's so interesting. So the Savior that
emerges to set things right has eyes all the
way around his head, so he pays attention, and
he speaks magic words. That's Marduk. And so
the Mesopotamian Empire was an avatar of Marduk,
and he's the spirit of responsibility that sets
the world right. Okay, so what are we seeing?
We're seeing the invasion of storehouses of wealth
by the parasites, fundamentally. Has that killed
them? I don't, I can't think through how you
would rescue an institution, a typical upper
-level university institution. What are you going
to do? How are you going to do that? You're going
to fire 80 % of the people? Who's going to do
that? Right. No one's going to do that. Now,
you could say, well, we'll make DEI initiatives
forbidden. They're kind of doing that in Florida.
But all you do is change the words. I mean, that's
what the postmodernists did with Marxism in the
1970s when it no longer was fashionable to worship
Stalin after everybody realized that he was a
psychopathic murderer. All that happened was
the French intellectuals changed the terminology
and they invented a form of Marxism that was
even worse than Marxism, which was really quite
the bloody achievement. Do I think they can be
rejuvenated? I can't see how. Well, when you
have people like the president of Harvard that
gets fired for plagiarism but maintains the exact
same salary in a different job. Yeah, as if demotion
to a full Harvard professor was, well, you know,
she's not suitable to be president, but she can
still be a fully tenured professor at Harvard.
Really, she can, eh? With that publication record.
I just interviewed Carol Swain. Do you know who
Carol Swain is? Black law professor from whom
Gay plagiarized much of her work. Yeah, fun.
So what do you do with an institution that's
that far gone? You saw what those university
professors did at Congress. Yeah. And they thought
they were right. They didn't even look put upon.
They looked, no, sorry. They looked put upon
and shocked when they were challenged by the
congressman. Because they're not accustomed to
being questioned and also to communicating outside
of their bubble. In their bubble where their
opinion is held in high esteem. Yes, and everyone
else is an idiot as far as they're concerned.
Well, when the woman from Penn, when she was
smiling every time she was answering these questions.
I'd never seen anything like that. Like I knew
that the universities had become warped. And
the warp is very deep. So I talked about the
Mesopotamian story. And there's another angle
of deep warping. The spirit of Marx is a very
old spirit. It was alive in the French Revolution.
It was alive in the Soviet Revolution. You can
trace it all the way back to the story of Cain
and Abel, as far as I'm concerned. And the story
of Cain and Abel is the story of the fundamental
human dynamic after the fall of man. So insofar
as we're historical creatures, the story of Cain
and Abel lays out the... essential psychological
conflict that characterizes human beings. And
so you have Cain on the one side. So Cain, Cain
doesn't bring his best to the table. He makes
second -rate offerings and lies about it. And
then they're not accepted by him or his fellow
man or women or by society or by God. And that
makes him bitter. And instead of learning, he
takes his complaints to God and he says something
like, well, what the hell's going on here? I'm
breaking myself in half, making my sacrificial
offerings, and everything's being rejected. What
kind of stupid cosmos did you produce? And God
says to him something very interesting and complicated.
He says something like, you're blaming your bitterness
on your failure, and you have failed, and you
know it, and you didn't have to, but it isn't
your failure that's making you bitter. you've
invited something in to inhabit you that's turned
you against yourself and what's good. He says
to him, sin crouches at your door like a sexually
aroused predatory animal, and you invited it
in to have its way with you. And there's a sexual
metaphor there. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. That's heavy.
It's rough, man. It's rough. You don't get to
be a high school shooter till you've had a thousand
hours of brooding over your misery. And so that's
what God tells Cain. And that makes him violently
angry and murderous. And so he kills Abel. He
kills his own ideal. And Abel, you have Cain
who makes poor sacrifices and whines about it.
He's the perennial victim, shaking his fist at
God and the world, refusing to learn from his
experiences. And he becomes... And you have Abel
who... makes the right sacrifices and aims upward.
That's the pattern. Two spirits. That's the Joker
and Batman. That's Lex Luthor and Superman. That's
Voldemort and Harry Potter. It's Satan and Christ.
Like it's this eternal recurrent pattern. And
one of its manifestations is Marxism. And another
one of its manifestations is postmodernism. And
so this is a very old story. It's a very old
story. You can understand Cain's point, you know,
because people do break themselves in half in
life trying to struggle forward and they're not
successes in their own eyes and they're rejected
by other people and it undermines their faith
in being itself. You can understand that. But
you're called upon to bring your best to the
table no matter what happens to you and to maintain
your faith and your courage and to aim up. There's
no excuses. Your past trauma, there's no excuses.
It doesn't matter what it is. And so there's
this battle. And what's happened in the universities
is the universities have been captured by the
resentful spirit of Cain. And so it's all flowered
up with postmodern language. There's no ultimate
unity. That's the claim of the postmodernists.
There's no overarching narrative. It's like,
that's what the postmodernists claim, skepticism
with regards to metanarratives. It's like, well,
what do you mean by that? You mean that everything
culminates in disunity? That's your theory of
being? So how the hell do we come together as
a society then? And around what? Well, everyone
goes their own way. Yeah, that's called war.
So there's some, is there a higher unity in which
everything participates or not? Well, the postmodernists,
it's like, no. Have it your way. Nihilism, disunity,
anxiety, hopelessness, social disintegration,
conflict. That's that pathway. And that's just
where it starts. That's the optimistic view.
So we're trying to present at Peterson Academy
and the other enterprises that I'm engaged in,
we're trying to present a unified underlying
vision and a traditional unifying underlying
vision. And I think that it's understandable
what we talked about in the first part of this
interview. Once you understand, that sacrifice
is the basis of community. And once you understand
that there's an ultimate form of sacrifice and
that that's what's demanded of you if you're
going to strive upward, then the contours of
the religious story that undergirds the West
fall into place. And that's a very remarkable
thing to observe. And I think that's going to
happen. I think that's... I think we're at the
end of the Enlightenment and something new is
striving mightily to emerge. Well, it's also
interesting that these higher education institutes,
even though they do have, you know, the way you're
describing, they're extremely wealthy. They're
extremely valuable. The name brand to them is
still extremely potent. They have so many things
going against them in terms of like an objective
analysis of what's good for your education and
what's good for preparing for your future. And
then on top of that, they're burdened with this
insane financial problem. The insane problem
of, first of all, student loans being something
you never get out of. Indentured servitude. And
the fact that we all know that the human frontal
lobe, especially on males, doesn't even fully
develop until you're 25. So you're kind of taking
advantage of a developing mind and locking them
into an insane. burden of debt and ideology and
ideology and so you're strapped with debt so
you must work and then you must work within these
structures that have been infected by this ideology
because everyone's coming out of the universities
into those places into those businesses and corporations
and they're deeper and deeper interwoven into
the structure of these businesses to the point
where they're inescapable and then you can't
leave because you have financial burdens you
have all the student loan debt to pay off Right.
Something is an alternative to that if it can
become effective to the term, like if people
can get employment. You know, it's interesting.
Well, as soon as we determine the accreditation
route, like I said, I'm in active communication
with a number of people who are interested in
accreditation. But I have to figure out if that's
the right route. If it isn't, I'm going to work
directly with interested employers to make sure
that. what our students obtain as a consequence
of going through the Peterson Academy process
is recognized by them as a marker of a high quality
applicant. Yes. I know that that problem is solvable
because I know how to do that. Well, there's
a lot of employers now that are kind of discounting
the ideas of degrees. Elon is a big one of them.
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, there's quite a few people.
You shouldn't dismiss someone as being qualified
for a certain position just because they've gone
through some very formal process. Not if the
formal process isn't predicated on... General
cognitive ability and conscientiousness. Right.
If it's predicated on bullshit and grift, which
a lot of it is. Yeah. What do you think is going
to happen with society in general with the implementation
of AI and the inevitable erosion of jobs? I don't
know if the erosion of jobs is inevitable. No.
Well, we've thought that before. Well, first
of all, the first thing I would say is like all
bets are off. Right. Right. All bets are off.
Right. We're going to have hyper intelligent
AI within five years. In fact, we already have
it. Well, I'm being pessimistic. Right. I've
used chat GPT and grok and some systems that
my colleagues have developed for. We built our
own large language models in house. So I built
my colleague, Victor Swift, built a large language
model for me, trained on my books, and I used
it to help me write. this next book, because
I could come across biblical passages that I
couldn't understand, and I could ask this AI
system for a first -pass interpretation, and
it could do a good job. And we're going to release
that along with the book. Yeah, so that was really
something. And I'll tell you, ChatGPT and Grok
were unbelievably useful as research assistants.
So they're about as smart as high -end undergraduates.
They lie a lot, and you have to corner them like
mad to get them to provide you with information
that's valid. What have you found them lying
about? Oh, they make up references that don't
exist. So, for example, for ChatGPT, about a
quarter of the academic references it produces
for you don't exist. What? Yeah, yeah. Well,
it doesn't know. Like, it will produce a reference
for you that's completely plausible, except that
it doesn't exist. If I ask ChatGPT a question,
it'll answer and it'll give me the references
because I asked for the references. Then I have
to go and look up all the references and read
them, first of all, because you're supposed to
read the things you refer to. But also, I have
to make sure that it's not, you know, wandered
off into some hallucinatory pathway. But that'll
be taken care of in no time flat, as far as I'm
concerned, and Musk has already got plans to
do that. So what will the addition of these AI
systems mean to us? God. Well, I talked to Elon
about this when we had our interview, and it's
going to depend to some degree, Joe, on how we
train the damn things. So there's this problem
called the alignment problem. That's how the
engineers describe it, which is how do we know
that these AI systems will have human interest
in mind? And you think, okay, how do we make
machines that have human interests in mind? And
then you think, oh, well, we have the same problem
with adolescents. How do we ensure that we train
our children so that they have their own interests
and broad social interests in mind. And the answer
is, the answer always has been that you provide
them with a classic religious and humanities
education. Because that provides an axis of stability
around which all other knowledge can be organized.
Now, the problem with the large language models
at the moment is they're hyper -trained on modern
text. And so they're ideologically addled and
woke. And so we've been experimenting with training
LLMs on a more classic... So we trained one on
the King James Bible and we haven't released
it because I don't know what to think about it.
It's like you can ask the King James Bible a
question. What the hell does that mean? Right.
Seriously, what does that mean? And before we
release it, we also want to make sure that we
have it. We've developed the underlying technology
properly. OK, so what's the answer to your question?
What AI will do will depend on the intent of
the people who design it. Here's a terrifying
thing. You tell me what you think about this.
All right, so your thoughts are orienting phenomena.
So you think so that you can lay out a pathway
to a desired destination. And then you can evaluate
the thought to see if that's a good strategy
to get there. Okay, so there's an implication
that comes along with that. A thought enters
the theater of your imagination in relationship
to your goal. So you can formulate that in religious
language. The spirit that answers your prayers,
the nature of the spirit that answers your prayers
will be dependent on the nature of your prayer.
Yeah, that's for sure. Right. So imagine that
you're harboring feelings of resentment and bitterness
as you're plotting your... economic pathway forward.
And so you're trying to think about what you
should do, but you have the spirit of resentment,
bitterness sitting on your shoulder. The thoughts
that enter your mind are going to be a consequence
of your possession by that bitterness to the
degree that you've allowed it to shape your goal.
So here's a corollary of that. This is stunning.
It's a upward, in the highest manner, the spirit
that informs your thought will be the spirit
of the highest possible aim. And God, that's
something to know, man. So that's what a religious
practice, a fundamental religious practice is
for. It's like, get rid of the corrupt motivation.
Get rid of it. Get rid of it. Pray. for the salvation
of your soul that you're aiming right because
your aim is going to determine the content of
your thoughts and that is how it works technically
that's how it works neuropsychologically your
thoughts are the handmaiden of your aim right
which is why we're always worried about sociopaths
because they never abandoned that corrupt motivation
yeah well they're they're basically the best
way to think about the narcissists and the hedonists
and the histrionic types and the borderlines
and the antisocial personalities is that they
never matured cortically. So like children come
into the world in a way as a bundle of competing
subcortical motivations, right? And they're very
powerful motivations. Anger, for example, you
watch a two -year -old have a temper tantrum,
it's quite the show. And they want short -term
immediate gratification. Now what happens as
your cortex matures? You transcend those lower
order instinctual motivations. That would be
the Freudian id. And you start to regulate your
behavior in relationship to your own future.
So you stop doing stupid, pleasurable things
in the moment that will compromise you. And you
start to be able to incorporate the views of
other people. That's how kids at three start
to develop the ability to have friends. And the
more sophisticated you get, the more other people
and their perspectives are part of your perceptions.
And the more the future is taken into account
in your actions. And the cortex is actually there
so that that can happen. And it has to happen
in a social context because you have to pick
up the society of your peers, obviously. And
so conditions like psychopathy, or even power
-seeking for that matter, are conditions of radical
immaturity. And so that's how you explain their
emergence. One of the things that's interesting
about that is it provides a very powerful argument
against moral relativism. It's like there's a
real difference between maturation and immaturity.
Maturation is productive and sustainable. And
immaturity is divisive and destructive. And there's
no ifs, ands, or buts about that. And so, see,
it's a different view of mental health. Because
the classic therapist -produced... view of mental
health is that mental health is sort of inside
you you know it's in your psyche it's in your
mind but it's not like your mental health is
the harmony of your existence in relationship
to the future and other people right and that
that sense of well -being that can infuse you
if you get the balance right isn't a reflection
of the proper structuring of function of your
mind or your brain. It's a phenomena that emerges
when everything is in its proper place and operating
harmoniously. That's what you experience in music.
Music represents that. Everything in its proper
place. That's what Adam is called upon by God
to do in the story of Adam and Eve. To subdue
the world. Subdue everything in its proper place
so that the whole structure operates in a harmonious
manner. It's a much more expanded view of what
constitutes mental health. Anyways, education
should serve that, right? And so if you take
the staff of Moses that's planted in a single
place, the community grows around that. That's
the same as the magic wand of Gandalf, that idea
of a magic wand. It's the traditional ethos.
associated with transformation and sacrifice
around which communities aggregate themselves.
And a proper humanities and religious education
inculcates that center structure so that knowledge
can be organized around it. The last time we
talked, I suggested to you that we see the world
through a biblical lens. Literally see it. I
mean literally. It structures our perceptions.
And I've investigated that far more deeply. What
seems to be the case with a corpus of stories
like the biblical library is that if you know
the stories, it structures your psyche so that
you have a place to put information. And so that
enables you to understand the current world and
everything that's happening, but to place everything
in the right context. And so the transmission
of an unbroken cultural edifice... Story -based
edifice is the manner in which you solve the
alignment problem, unite your society, integrate
your psyche, pursue what's meaningful, and protect
yourself from chaos and anxiety. And a solid
education has been the traditional way of ensuring
that that occurs. And so, well, that's what we
hope we can offer with Peterson Academy. That's
the purpose of my books as well, to elucidate
that. And so can the universities do that? I
don't think so. I don't know if they have that
philosophy. The philosophy and the way you're
laying it out resonates with me. I think it's
accurate. I think when I'm in harmony in my life,
it all seems to make sense. It all works together.
What you're saying, it just rings true. I don't
know if they're so infected. with this ideology.
That flies in the face of it. They rejected it
wholeheartedly. The premise of the postmodernists
is that there's no uniting metanarrative. If
you had to define postmodernism in one phrase,
that would be it. And so what have they done?
Here's the association with Marxism. Okay, so
the Marxists have a counter -narrative. It's
the narrative of power. And it is a very powerful
counter -narrative. Because if you don't put
the proper uniting... principle at the pinnacle.
Power emerges immediately because people play
power games. You can attain a certain degree
of success and a fair amount of domination by
playing a power game. And so Marx observed that
one of the cardinal power games is economic.
And it is probably the cardinal power game, right?
There's economic disparity. Those at the top
do take advantage of their position at the top
to stabilize their position. In a functional
society, productive people are at the top. But
even among those at the top, there's still power
-seeking crooks. And so now Marx, of course,
would say that, well, everyone who's economically
successful is a power -seeking crook. And, you
know, that's a great thing to believe if you're
a reventful. a resentful Satanist like Marx.
Well, that's how the losers look at the world.
Well, that's for sure. But there is some justification
in it because among the successful, there are...
Yes. Right, okay. And a large percentage because
that's the culture in which they're existing.
Yeah, well, a dangerous percentage. Yes. And
a critique of power is always a valid critique.
Okay, so what the postmodernists did when Marxism
became ethically unacceptable, and that happened
in the 1970s, is they just, they metastasized
it. I said, okay, we've got a victim -victimizer
narrative that's played out in the economic sphere,
and that's basically Marxism. We'll just multiply
that until the same interpretive framework can
be applied to all possible group distinctions.
That's basically intersectionality. So sex is
an oppressor versus oppressed narrative. Gender
is an oppressed versus oppressor narrative. Ethnicity,
race. ability, attractiveness, height, any qualitative
distinction is now recast as a battle between
oppressor and oppressed. It's an unbelievably
brutal story. It's basically equivalent to the
claim that the spirit of power is the ruler of
the cosmos. How can they do all this and ignore
the possibility of an oppressor, like a male,
adopting the... identity of the oppressed of
a female and entering into female spaces and
oppressing females. You can see that it can't
be dealt with because... Wild, right? That is
wild. Look, one of the things you see that's
very characteristic of the utopian left is the
absolute insistence that anyone oppressed is
a victim. It's like, okay, we'll give the devil
his due. Some oppressed people are victims. But
some people who claim to be oppressed aren't
victims. They're the worst kind of monsters that
the most deranged imagination could barely conceptualize.
Utopian, naive, radical progressives refuse their
imagination for evil. And that delivers them
into the hands of the absolute bloody psychopaths.
Right. And they just don't see it. It's like,
oh, those trans people, they're just striving
to be free. It's like, you wait. You wait until
you have one of them in your house, buddy, and
you're going to find out just exactly how naive
you are. So how do they protect themselves? They
just deny the existence of malevolence or attribute
it to socioeconomic inequality. All criminals
are victims. It's like, no, first of all, lots
of people who are victims aren't criminals. In
fact, Poverty does not cause criminality. That's
a lie. And it's a very damaging lie to the poor.
Because if poverty was equivalent to criminality,
the logical thing to do is just to lock up all
the poor. Right. Right. Well, there are many
pathways from poverty forward, and one of them
is criminality. But you can say the same thing
about wealth. So the idea, and that's basically
a Marxist theory of causality, is like, well,
those people's oppression is what's causing their
lack of law -abiding conduct. It's like, no,
no, wrong, seriously wrong, and dangerously wrong,
and ridiculously naive. That's not how the world
works at all. Right. You're also, in a sense,
you're encouraging this kind of behavior because
you're not punishing people for it, because you're
saying it's not their fault. Or you're even valorizing
it. Oh, you poor thing. Right. And you're allowing
more of it to take place. Well, we know that.
So the dark tetrad types. So those are the subclinical
psychopaths. OK, so they're psychopathic. That
makes them predatory and parasitic. That's the
definition of a psychopath. Okay, they're narcissistic.
So what does that mean? They want unearned social
status, right? They're Machiavellian. So what
does that mean? It means that their use of language
is subordinated to their demand for hedonistic
gratification and power. So like you and I, in
principle, we hope, we're trying to pursue a
thread of conversation that leads to further
development, let's say, for us and for the audience.
But I could easily be in here thinking, okay,
what the hell do I have to tell Joe to increase
my social media status? Right. Right. And to
play this situation as a game to enhance my own
status or to further my selfish desires. That's
Machiavellian. That was the dark triad. And what
further investigation revealed that you had to
add an additional dimension to that to fully
flesh out the picture. Sadism. What's that? Positive
delight in the unnecessary misery of others.
That's the dark tetrad types. Well, dark tetrad
types portray themselves as victims. Right? That's
one of their Machiavellian strategies. So now
your question is, well, how do we segregate the
real victims, so to speak, from the false victims?
And one of the answers to that is, like, beware
of those who claim victimization as a justification
for their moral... What would you say? For the
moral transgressions. I did this because I'm
a victim. It's like, really? Right. Really? That
was your reason? Poor you. That's your story.
You monster. There are no monsters. It's like,
if you think there are no monsters, you're naive
and willfully blind to the point of delusion
and... What would you call it? What do they say?
There are none so blind as those who will not
see. That certainly applies on the malevolent
side. And then from the point of view, if you're
looking at the people that are committing crimes,
there's the unfortunate reality that people mimic
their environment. And if you grow up in an environment
where there are no positive role models and you
see nothing but rampant crime around you, even
good people go down bad paths. You get, okay,
so antisocial personality is somewhat heritable.
There is some familial transmission. There is
a role played by fatherlessness in particular.
And that's perhaps because... fatherless boys
tend to turn towards a gang orientation and the
gangs of adolescents have a short -term time
horizon so they future discount badly and that
produces a proclivity for short -term gratification
and that includes like idiot criminal behavior
right yeah yeah so what you need in a father
you need someone who encourages encourages intelligent
upward aiming sacrifice and an orientation towards
others and future development that's what the
spirit of the father really does is that encouragement
so and that what reward for delay of gratification
so that's another indication of the relationship
between say upward striving moral orientation
and maturity if you're mature you can delay gratification
and what does that mean it means you've integrated
the future into your perceptions And that has
to be socially scaffolded, especially for men.
Women, they get initiated by nature. In every
society that we know of, men have to be initiated.
Because that catalyzation of maturity is a difficult
thing. Difficult and unlikely, but possible and
necessary. So how do you reach the people that
are young adolescents that are trapped in that
vicious cycle? Yeah, well, I think I can tell
you the answer to that. You know, a lot of young
men have been watching and listening to the sorts
of things that I've been writing about and producing.
And every time someone comes up to me and tells
me that reading, say, 12 Rules for Life had helped
them, I ask why. It's like, okay, good. What
changed? And the overwhelming pattern of response
is something like, I started to understand the
necessity of responsibility. Now, you might then
ask, well, you hear from your parents, in principle,
you hear from the school system, although that's
probably gone, that you should grow up and be
responsible. Why did it make a difference? Why
did it make a difference to you to read that
in what I wrote? And the answer is, I think the
answer is I didn't take the standard conservative
approach. I didn't say you should, you must,
you ought, even though those things are true.
I said, there's no difference between responsibility
and adventure. That's a killer thing to know.
The heavier the responsibility, the more profound
the adventure. And so everyone knows that, but
it's not, it's not catalyzed. I just watched
The Hobbit a while back, classic adventure story,
and of course, what, it's Bilbo, to begin with,
it's Bilbo. He's this little hobbit, right, sounded
like Abraham, he's living his comfortable life,
and the wizard comes along and says, it's time
for you to develop your shadow side, because
of course he becomes a thief, and to go on your
adventure. And he agrees to do that, and it's
a weighty adventure, he has to contend with the
ring of power. Right. That's the ultimate in
temptations. That's the temptation that Christ
is offered by Satan in the desert. The temptation
of power. And that's the temptation that Bilbo
has to contend with. Well, he has this adventure.
Well, what's the adventure? It's responsibility.
He has to carry that ring. And it is one of the
rings that unites everything. Power. It's just
the malevolent ring that unites everything. And
so I've been suggesting to young men in particular,
it's like, you want to get your life together?
Take the path of maximal responsibility. Not
because you should, even though you should. That's
not why. It's because that's the pathway of maximal
adventure. So you say, well, what's the meaning
of life? It's the meaning that reveals itself
when you take the pathway of maximal responsibility.
That's exactly the message of the crucifixion.
That's precisely the message. pathway of maximal
responsibility. And that's a terrifying thing.
There's no difference between that and the dragon
and treasure stories that are unbelievably archaic.
The greatest possible treasure is to be found
where the danger is most intense. Right. Always.
Right. The dragon guards the gold. Always. Right.
Well, and so one thing to know is that if there's
a dragon, there's a treasure somewhere. Really?
Right. Really? You know, my family and I have
really learned this in the last six years because
we were subject to continued assaults in the
public sphere that were designed to be deadly.
What do you mean by that? Designed to be deadly?
Oh, interviews with journalists in particular,
snake journalists whose every single utterance
is designed to entrap the person being... interviewed,
into saying something that will devastate their
reputation personally to enhance the status of
the interviewer. Like the Kathy Newman conversation.
Well, Kathy at least had a bit of a sense of
humor. But the intent. Oh, yeah, the intent.
That's the serpent, man. That's the intent. It's
like, well, Nellie Bowles, who interviewed me
for the New York Times, now part of the Free
Press, she admitted that. She said that her job
at the New York Times, like the job of many of
the reporters, was to find someone, demolish
their reputation by any means necessary, and
elevate their status in consequence. Wow. Yeah.
What a terrible job. Brutal. Isn't it terrifying
that that's the old gray lady? That's the most
trusted and respected source of news? And that
their intent was just to destroy? Yeah, it's
quite something. It wasn't the news. It wasn't
real journalism, the nuanced various elements
of what a human being is, the pros and cons,
the goods, the bads, the ugly, the battle that
they have. Not that. No, no, no. Not an accurate
assessment, not an objective analysis of the
person. Pursuit of status. Yeah. Well, that's
part of that. The danger is that people know
that now. And people know who's doing that now.
And then they go after them. And you see that
now. And journalists say, oh, it's attack on
journalism. You're not doing journalism. You're
doing hit pieces. And you're doing it under the
guise of journalism. But it's not journalism.
It's kind of evil. Yeah. It's kind of fucked
up. Yeah, kind of. I've seen quite a bit of it
where I'm like, especially with people that I
know the actual story and what was really going
on behind the scenes. I was like, this is maddening.
This is wild. Well, we started to learn after
this had happened two or three times, like there's
a kind of a process, because you're exposed to
that. And then there's an intermediary period
where it looks like it might succeed. And that's
very. Stressful. Right. That's usually when people
come out with their apologies. Right. Because
they're just terrified. They're going to lose.
Well, I did lose my job and I lost my clinical
practice. Right. Right. So like the costs are
real. So your situation in Canada was that they
wanted you to sign up for re -education. Oh,
no, no. That's already. That's the plan. Right.
I couldn't sign up. They said already that I
have to do that. Right. But we have an appeal
in at the moment that's blocking it. And this
is all just, what it affects is what in Canada?
If I don't undergo the re -education process
successfully, they'll suspend my license and
will also say why. They'll say, well, Dr. Peterson
is uneducable. He's unprofessional. He's violated
the ethical tenets of his profession. Right,
just because you have a different perspective
on things than they do. No, it's because I'm
actually telling the truth that clinicians bloody
well know and are too cowardly to admit. So,
you know, they went after me for four reasons,
probably. One of them was the entire transcript
of the last conversation I had with you. Whoops.
Right, that was submitted as a complaint because
I was talking about the climate lies. They went
after me because of the comments I've made about
the trans butchers and liars, the surgeons and
the... therapists who are enabling them. That's
a major part of it. That's a major part of it.
They went after me because I went after Trudeau
and his former chief of staff. And what else?
Those are the major three. There's probably four
complaints aligned with each of those dimensions.
And so that's cost me about a million dollars
in legal fees so far. So it's a very hard battle
to fight. It's very annoying because the accusations...
continue to flow in, even though that's a choice
of the college. And I've already been sentenced
to re -education of indefinite duration, till
they're satisfied that I've learned whatever
the hell lesson I'm supposed to learn. So the
only reason that isn't happening is because we
now have an appeal in front of the Supreme Court
in Canada. And so I don't think it'll succeed,
but we'll see. Is it important to you to maintain
your license or is it important to you to win
this? There's two things that are important to
me, likely. One is I'm not going to let a pack
of ideologically addled moralists, lying moralists
who are facilitating the butchery and sterilization
of children take away my license, not without
a war. So that's one thing. The second thing
is... I'm likely, I'm in a prime position in
Canada to undertake this battle against the woke
licensing boards because I have the money and
what the hell are they going to do to me? I'm
not practicing. They can't take away my income
and likely they can't blacken my reputation except
among those who are willing to. assume that the
licensing colleges are playing a straight game.
So really, there's nothing they can do to me.
Plus, if it was only a personal thing, apart
from the fact that I'm not letting my license
be taken by a pack of intellectually addled hypocrites,
I don't really, there's a part of me that's deeply
ashamed to be a psychologist at the moment. I'm
so appalled by my compatriots. They know that
this gender dysphoria Pathology is a lie. They
all know it. And they won't say anything. Now,
partly they won't say anything because the consequences
for saying something are not trivial. But the
consequences for not saying anything is that
people like Chloe Cole end up with their breasts
cut off when they're 15. Right. Right. Well,
that actually matters. Right. So practically
speaking, in a sense, the battle doesn't mean
anything to me because I'm fighting to remain
a member of a club that I don't really want to
be part of. But is there a principle at stake?
Well, there's a variety of principles at stake.
And so if I stop or lose all of the woke licensing
enterprises, they'll just have their sway. All
the physicians in Canada are terrified to say
what they think. Anybody who's governed by a
professional college, they censor themselves
like mad. And it's really appalling for psychologists
because all of the psychologists who are properly
trained, they know that all of this is a lie.
And not just a lie. A malevolent, vicious, and
destructive lie. Everything about it's a lie.
You know, Musk revealed the other day that the
professionals that were interacting with him
in regard to his transitioning son, told him
that if he didn't abide by their dictates, that
his son was much more likely to commit suicide.
That's a lie. No one who's educated as a psychologist
believes that to be true. No one. At minimum,
if you're educated, what you understand is that
underneath gender dysphoria is something more
substantial, which is a proclivity towards depression
and anxiety. If you're depressed and anxious,
you have a higher risk of suicide. You have to
account for that before you attribute any of
the remainder to gender dysphoria as such. And
everyone who's a psychologist also understands
that body -focused discomfort for women at puberty
is normative. Because when women who have a higher
probability of being depressed and anxious do
become depressed and anxious, it... preferentially
takes the form of bodily discomfort. That's been
known forever. So, Chloe Cole, for example, no
one explained that to her. No one sat her down
and said, well, you're not very... She told me
that the reason she decided to transition was
because she kind of had a crush on Kardashian
and that body type, you know, hyper -curvy, hyper
-feminine. And Chloe realized when she entered
puberty that she was probably going to have a
boyish figure. And Chloe's... a very attractive
person, she would have had no trouble attracting
the attention of men. But, you know, she was
11, 12, what the hell does she know? And she
wasn't going to be the woman she had envisioned.
She didn't really understand that, you know,
there's a variety of female forms that men find
attractive. That's for sure. And she certainly
would have fallen into that category. She didn't
know that it was typical for girls to undergo
a fair bit of... confusion when they hit puberty
and that that would take the form of negative
emotion. No one told her that. They just rushed
her down the puberty blocking and surgical pathway.
That's inexcusable. It's evil. Yeah, it is. It's
the worst thing. It's the worst thing I've seen
professionals do, not only in my lifetime. I've
studied atrocity for 40 years. I've never seen
anything worse than what's happening right now.
And that includes the sorts of things that were
done in the camps in Germany. At least the goddamn
Nazis admitted what they did was wrong. They
tried to hide it. We trumpet it as a moral virtue.
We're freeing the children. It's like, no, I
don't think so, mothers. I think what you're
doing is sacrificing your child to the parading
of your moral virtue. Oh, my son, he's so confused.
He thinks I's a girl, but I still love him. That's
how wonderful I am. Jesus Christ, Joel. You have
no idea how dark that is. It's dark. It's unbelievably
dark. And it's attached to an industry now. Yeah,
that's for sure. Which is very scary. An industry
and an ideology. There was an article that was
recently released where this person admitted
that they said it was, what was the exact phrase?
That the way they described gender transition
as life -saving medical care in order to get
insurance for it. Yeah, yeah. Because otherwise
insurance won't pay for it. They were willing
to describe it in that way to ensure that people
would profit off of it, which is wild. It's terrifying.
And it's so strange because I never would have
believed that this could happen. If you had asked
me 20 years ago if this was going to be a main
concern, that people were worried about their
children being roped into this ideology and convinced
that they're authentic. And then sterilized and
mutilated. Yes, exactly. I know. I know. Well,
it's no wonder people see. Even Michael Schellenberger,
who broke the WPATH files, when we talked about
the role the WPATH played in establishing their
own ideology -addled butchery as the standard
of care for the American Medical Association,
the American Psychiatric Association, the American
Psychological Association, Schellenberger said
that after he had listened to Abigail Schreier
and I talk about this transmutilation, he was
so appalled that he literally couldn't believe
it. He just shelved it. He said, there's no way
this can be true. And I can understand that because
the more you look into it, the worse it gets.
It's unbelievably bad. These surgical procedures
are so brutal and so experimental that they're,
I'm going to say it again, they're worse than
what the Mangali types did in the concentration
camps in the 30s and 40s. And that's a pretty
goddamn low bar. And it's no wonder people don't
want to believe it. And people say, the lefties
I've talked to, the centrists, well, it doesn't
happen very often. It's like, oh yeah, how often
is too often? Like once is too often. And it's
not once. That's for sure. No, it's happening
a lot. In fact, you're punished by your governing
boards if you don't go along with it. And what
about the recent law that they passed in California
where the schools... don't have to tell the parents
that the child has transitioned at school. They
hide that information from the parents. Well,
they're just letting those children be free,
you know, those ignored children who are looking
desperately for a pathway to, what would you
call it, inclusion and celebration. Oh, you're
so brave. And then they're encouraged. That's
for sure. And then they're given positive feedback.
Yes, definitely. Which is a real thing. Especially
if they're alienated kids to begin with and who
are unsettled in their identity. Yeah. Right.
And aren't being guarded by anyone and are vulnerable.
Right. Right. Right. Right. Oh, yeah. And the
parents are indoctrinated into this whole woke
ideology as well. Or terrified. Right. Indoctrinated
or the Munchausen by proxy types who get off
on the fact that they have a child that's such
a burden but are still really, you know, what
would you say, bearing up nobly under the weight.
And that is a very dark inclination that is well
documented. Yeah, well, that's the devouring
mother for you. That was what Freud warned about
back in, like, 1880. Yeah. She's a little too
close. You remember the witch in the Hansel and
Gretel story? Mm -hmm. Yeah. Gingerbread house.
That's a little bit too good to be true when
you're lost. What's inside it? The witch that
wants to fatten you up for her own delectation.
That's the devouring mother. That's the maternal
instinct gone mad. Right. Everything good is
has the potential for pathology in proportion
to its goodness. So Lucifer is the intellect
gone mad. Right. The devouring mother is the
mother who's a little too close to her kids.
Right. A little too close. Jesus. Brutal, Joe.
It's just so stunning how widespread it is. At
least the UK is pulling back on this stuff, but
they have socialized medicine, so they actually
have to go on data. Canada hasn't pulled back.
Which is wild. Yeah, and entirely predictable.
Yeah. Yeah, most of the European countries have
woken up, but I don't think it's going to slow
it much because there's a huge underground market
in puberty blockers. You know, I've talked to
experts who figure that the ratio of people on...
black market puberty blockers to medically prescribed
puberty blockers is at least 10 to 1. Oh, God.
So they're just self -administering this stuff?
Yeah, right. Oh, God. And it's essentially chemical
castration drugs that they used to use on pedophiles.
Oh, God. Yeah, that's for sure. That's what it
is. And when you tell people that and they deny
it because they don't know and then they find
out, it is so stunning. They also don't want
to know. Right. And no wonder. Yep. Anyways,
that's why we're trying to educate people. Well,
Jordan. I'm very happy you're doing this. I really
am. It looks amazing. I think it's fantastic.
I'm going to try some of them. I'll try some
of your courses. It looks exciting. Yeah, yeah.
Well, let's go down a bit, and I'll show you
some of them. So we've got Brett and Heather
Weinstein. So that's fun. Jonathan Paggio on
symbolism and Christianity. That's excellent.
James Orr, he's from Cambridge, lecturing on
Plato. Marion Toopey on the economics of human
flourishing. That's a very optimistic course.
There's Brett and Heather, Evolutionary Inference.
And is this available currently? It's up now,
man. It's up now. Yeah, yeah. The Greatest Leaders
of History. That's a great course. That's very
inspiring. John Vervaeke. I really like John.
He's so damn smart. The Boy Crisis with Warren
Farrell. I did a course on Nietzsche on Beyond
Good and Evil. Do you want to run that? That's
a fun preview. Sure, let's run that. We'll wrap
it up with this. Okay, okay. I write in a single
sentence what it takes other men a book to write,
that it wasn't egotistical because it happened
to be true. Beyond Good and Evil is a cardinal
work, a prodroma to the entire intellectual and
political history of the 20th century. Brilliant,
romantic, insightful, deep, psyche -shattering.
dancing bit of literary genius. He's had a remarkable
impact on thought over the last 140 years. It's
reasonable to say that he philosophized with
a hammer because his thought is extraordinarily
condensed. To read Nietzsche is daunting psychologically.
He's like a motivational speaker. He's practical
in the way that philosophers seldom are. Nietzschean
philosophy is a call to arms. To familiarize
yourself with him is to arm yourself against
a sea of trouble. And since you will encounter
a sea of troubles, you better pray that you're
armed. And this is one way to do it. All right.
How to philosophize with a hammer. Jordan. Thank
you very much, my friend. Hey, man. It's always
a pleasure to see you, Joe. It was very fun watching
you on Kill Tony, too. Oh, thank you. Yeah, yeah,
yeah. That was fun, and that was a good opportunity.
You were great, too. I can't wait for that to
come out because it's fun. No, thank you, sir.
It's always a pleasure to be on your show. Always
a pleasure to see you. Bye, everybody.