Jordan Peterson - John Stossel - The FULL Interview

Last updated: Jun 2, 2023

This video by John Stossel is an interview with psychologist Jordan Peterson, who discusses the importance of taking responsibility in finding meaning in life, the need for a balance between power and peace, and his criticisms of certain feminist ideologies.

The video is an interview with psychologist Jordan Peterson, who discusses his views on responsibility and finding meaning in life.

He talks about how young men are excited by the idea of taking responsibility, and how there is a hunger for a different perspective on life than the one that has been promoted for the past 60 years.

Peterson also discusses the concept of toxic masculinity and the importance of being competent and dangerous, rather than weak and harmless.

He criticizes the feminist movement for not speaking out against the oppression of women in Saudi Arabia and warns against the dangers of over compassion and hyper protectiveness.

Finding meaning in life requires taking responsibility.
People are hungry for the other side of the story, which is responsibility.
Being competent and dangerous is necessary to be peaceful.
Some feminists have an unconscious wish for brutal male domination.
Being capable of violence is not the same as being violent.
Peterson's message has been taken to heart by many people, both men and women.
The government has no business governing the content of voluntary speech.
Social constructionism is the theory that underlies the proclamation that gender identity is only a social construct.
All the protests that have been leveled against him have had exactly the opposite effect of that which was intended.

Jordan Peterson: The FULL Interview - YouTube

Jordan Peterson on Responsibility and Finding Meaning

Peterson believes that finding meaning in life requires taking responsibility.
He gave a series of lectures on the Old Testament that focused on responsibility and truth.
People are hungry for the other side of the story, which is responsibility.
Responsibility is where most people find the meaning that sustains them through life.
Adopting responsibility for your own well-being and serving your community can ground you in life.
It's not in happiness or impulsive pleasure that people find meaning.

Jordan Peterson on Competence and Power

Peterson believes that people should make themselves competent and dangerous.
Being dangerous is the alternative to being weak.
Life is difficult, and you're not prepared for it unless you have the capacity to be dangerous.
Being powerful and formidable is necessary to be peaceful.
Being naive, weak, and harmless is a bad idea because it means you can't withstand the tragedies of life.
Naive, weak, and harmless people end up bitter and dangerous.

Jordan Peterson on Feminism and Compassion

Peterson claims that some feminists have an unconscious wish for brutal male domination.
He questions why feminists line up with Islamists and don't criticize them.
Compassion is a vice if it's taken too far.
You shouldn't treat adult men as if they're infants.
Dividing the world into victim and oppressor and assuming that all moral virtues are on the side of the victims is not a good way of conceptualizing the political world.
There's a danger in over compassion and hyper protectiveness.

Jordan Peterson: The FULL Interview - YouTube

Jordan Peterson on Toxic Masculinity

Peterson believes that there's been an attempt to identify masculine competence and power with tyranny.
Toxic masculinity is hard on young men and women.
It's helpful for people to hear that they should make themselves competent and dangerous and take their proper place in the world.
Being powerful and formidable is the alternative to being weak.
Weakness is not good, and naive, weak, and harmless people can't withstand the tragedies of life.
People who shoot up high schools are weak.

Encouraging Autonomy and Responsibility

Encouraging children to take risks is important for their growth and development.
Protecting children too much can lead to their destruction.
Separating oneself from one's child and allowing them to make hurtful mistakes is difficult but necessary for good parenting.
Harshness is necessary for good parenting, just as it is necessary for dealing with the elderly in extended care homes.
Compassion in excess can lead to destruction, as seen in the motif of Hansel and Gretel.

The Importance of Strength and Self-Control

Being capable of violence is not the same as being violent.
Being harmless does not equate to moral virtue.
Strength is necessary for being good.
Being good requires the combination of the capacity for danger and the capacity for control.
Weakness cannot be equated with moral virtue.

Response to Criticisms

Peterson's message has been taken to heart by many people, both men and women.
Most of the people who watch Peterson's lectures are men, but this may be due to the arbitrary baseline of YouTube viewership.
Peterson has never encouraged abuse of women or hatred towards trans people.
Peterson's stance on compelled speech is an anti-government stance, not an anti-trans stance.
The issue is compelled speech, not transgender people.

The Government's Role in Speech

The government has no business governing the content of voluntary speech.
Compelled speech violates English common law tradition and is unconstitutional.
Hate speech laws are a mistake and limit free speech.
The issue is not about what people want to be called, but about the government attempting to exercise tyrannical control over voluntary speech.

Compelled Speech and Social Constructionism

There is a difference between privately negotiated modes of address and legislatively demanded compelled speech.
The legislation that Jordan Peterson objected to writes a social constructionist view of human identity into the law.
Social constructionism is the theory that underlies the proclamation that gender identity is only a social construct.
This theory is wrong because it has no grounding in biology.
As societies become more egalitarian, the differences between men and women increase rather than decreasing.
The more egalitarian the society, the lower the probability that women will enroll in STEM fields.

Radical Leftist Doctrine

The radical leftist doctrine is that human identity is purely learned.
Radical leftists believe that if there's no central human nature, then human beings can be transformed sociologically and politically into the image that the radical leftists would prefer.
This doctrine is based on the idea of reshaping society on an egalitarian basis with equality of outcome for everyone.
These ideas are unbelievably pathological, divisive, and deadly.
Challenging this doctrine can result in being called a transphobic piece of [__].
Letting the unreasonable opposition speak can manifest themselves as unreasonable and then everyone can see it.

Protests and Backlash

Protesters accosted Jordan Peterson after a free speech rally at the University of Toronto and videotaped it.
They were calling him out on his hypothetically bigoted stance with regards to Canadian legislation.
The video went viral and had about four million views.
The comments were a hundred to one negative.
All the protests that have been leveled against him have had exactly the opposite effect of that which was intended.
Protesters at Queen's University were quite ugly and pounded stained glass windows for 90 minutes, leaving blood on the window.

Remaining Calm

Remaining calm is better when being screamed at by unreasonable opposition.
Letting the unreasonable opposition speak can manifest themselves as unreasonable and then everyone can see it.
Remaining calm can help to discredit the opposition.
Remaining calm can help to maintain a rational and logical argument.
Remaining calm can help to avoid escalating the situation.
Remaining calm can help to maintain a professional demeanor.

Marxism and Identity Politics

The campus situation is the consequence of the hegemony of neo-Marxist and post-modernist thinking.
Identity politics invites division into tribalism on the right and the left.
The left speaks for the dispossessed, but that doesn't mean you get to play identity politics.
The idea that men tyrannically dominated everything is a weak argument.
The principles that govern the west and the capitalist principles distribute themselves across the world quite effectively.

The Importance of Individual Sovereignty

The West's idea that the individual is sovereign over the group is the greatest idea of mankind.
If you don't treat yourself and the people around you that way, all hell breaks out very rapidly.
The phrase "speaking your truth" fits in with the rule "tell the truth or at least don't lie."
The biblical corpus lays out two fundamental ideas: whatever God is, is the force that uses truthful speech to transform chaos into order.

The Need for a Balance Between Power and Peace

The world is a place where there's a lot of suffering and malevolence.
People need to take responsibility for their own lives and find meaning in life.
There's a balance between power and peace that needs to be maintained.
The idea of the hero is someone who voluntarily confronts the unknown and brings back something of value to the community.
The idea of the tyrant is someone who uses power to oppress others.

Criticisms of Certain Feminist Ideologies

The idea of the patriarchy is a simplistic and ideologically motivated explanation for the complexity of human history.
The idea of the gender wage gap is a consequence of multiple factors, not just discrimination.
The idea of toxic masculinity is a dangerous and counterproductive concept.
The idea of the oppressed and the oppressor is a simplistic and ideologically motivated way of looking at the world.
The idea of equity is a dangerous and counterproductive concept.

The Importance of Truth and Responsibility

The fundamental idea is that a habitable order is good if truthful speech is used to generate it.
Human beings are made in the image of that power.
If you lie, you warp the structure of reality.
There has to be an overarching conceptual framework that we all agree on or we can't exist peacefully.
Speaking your truth is a form of narcissism.

The Danger of Political Correctness

People are asked to operate privately and productively under strictures that they can't really tolerate.
People become angry and bitter when they have to repress their resentment.
People have to decide whether to put up with unreasonable strictures on their behavior or push back against politically correct tyranny.
Conceptual words are set up so that the challenge isn't present.
University disciplines like women's studies are completely homogeneous in their internal viewpoint.

The Problem with Fighting Inequality

Inequality is a painful reality and every system generates it.
There is no evidence that fighting inequality reduces it.
Laying inequality at the feet of the capitalist world or western society is ignorant.
Inequality is a way worse problem than that.
The humanities and social sciences, particularly women's and ethnic studies, are ideologically motivated and corrupt.

The Need for Dialogue and Balance

There has to be a balance between power and peace.
People have to engage in continual dialogue to organize their desires and needs into something that's collectively inhabitable.
People have to consult their own resentment and decide whether to put up with unreasonable strictures on their behavior or push back against politically correct tyranny.
People have to take responsibility for finding meaning in their lives.
People have to inhabit a truth that's universal simultaneously.

Criticism of Marxist Doctrine

Disciplines like gender studies and sociology aim to produce radical leftist activists.
These disciplines feed students with toxic ideological brew that society is essentially tyrannical and compassion trumps everything as a moral virtue.
Marxist doctrine is clearly murderous, as demonstrated by the 100 million corpses stacked up.
Communism has been tried everywhere under all sorts of different conditions by all sorts of different people with all sorts of different rationales, but the end consequence was always the same.
Communism has nothing to do with calling somebody by the name they want to be called.

Collectivist Claim and Radical Egalitarianism

The collectivist claim is that the proper motive is better, so we're all in this together.
People are best conceptualized as part of their group identity, and you are obliged to respect that identity no matter what.
This drives legislative moves that make address that takes into account group identity of paramount importance.
The thread still exists, connected at least in part through the doctrine of radical egalitarianism.
The idea that equality outcome is the goal to be desired is wrong hypothetically and practically for a variety of reasons.

Importance of Diversity and Hierarchy of Value

Equality before god and law is where it stops, and then we're as different as we can be after that.
We actually want to be different because we don't want to pursue the same things and succeed in the same way.
Eradicating success as part of the price you pay for eradicating failure is a terrible doctrine in every way.
It's mostly motivated by resentment, and it leaves no one with anything to do.
Success is a possibility, and that opens up the landscape of success and failure.

Success of 12 Rules

12 Rules is unbelievably successful, having sold 850,000 copies in two months.
It's a difficult and dark book, but fundamentally optimistic.
It's almost never happens with non-fiction.

Watch the video on YouTube:
Jordan Peterson: The FULL Interview - YouTube