The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast

A lot of it came from my reading of Jung because he's the only person that I've ever read who seems to know about such things even knows that they exist.

That's why I read Jung extensively and Nietzsche and Dostoevsky and Sonshinets and those are the people I ran across others as well, that who seemed to have some answers as far as I could tell.

a book on couples communication, Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say was a selection of the Book of the Month Club

I when I was talking to friends to wall I read part of his book on difference and there was this section that he cited from a female author who she said she threw up her hands in dismay because she couldn't stop her young boy from playing with guns

very famous book on aminita mascaria they can't remember his name at the moment wasaw that was wasaw he was the first person he introduced psilocybin psilocybin mushrooms into western culture

the great to read George Colors book on Jewish theology as a chapter on Judaism in Islam and certainly the great father of Orientalism the Iganaz Goldzahir he actually said that he felt that Islam was the only religion that somebody of a philosophical bent could actually accept and he wanted to to really bring in the gift of philosophy into Judaism

both my father both my parents ended up making the declaration of faith before they died so my father read Ghazali and ended up becoming Muslim

The Goodness Paradox is the title of this book and it refers as a paradox to the fact that humans are so extreme with regard to aggression and non-aggression so we're extremely aggressive in the sense that like chimpanzees we have these demonic tendencies to go off and kill members of neighboring groups using our overwhelming power when we can get a big group attacking a small group and so on in a way that that no other species know the mammals do and in a way that horrifies us in retrospect often it makes us drop our drop drop our jaws at our own behavioral possibilities.

And equally it is very clear that people grow up to be spontaneously thoroughly moral and kind and tolerant with each other we have these two tendencies and you mentioned this division between two types of aggression a proactive and reactive.

And I think you know we actually have a really good story for it now a really good understanding and and it yeah well some of it in the book some of it you outline intense attempts by people within human social groups everywhere to socialize children into controlling their reactive aggression.

And I think that's the residue of a population that would have been 100% like that if you go back 300,000 years ago you know all our babies would have been highly aggressive and would have retained that aggressiveness throughout life.

And I think you pause it that that was a consequence of decreased size of the brain areas associated with reactive emotions that's part of it anyways.

I ran across Dr. Rangham's work back in 1996. He wrote a book with Dale Peterson, Dementic Males, very provocatively titled A Study of Aggression in Primates, including human beings, and an analysis as well of sex differences. And I learned an awful lot from that book.

And so but you know by 20 years later 96 when I published Demonic Males with Dale Peterson I think it was pretty clear what was going on and then as I said you know another 30 years later the data were really coming in very very solidly and I I mean in some ways I wasn't too keen on the title of Demonic Males because it's a little bit in your face but I wanted to make is that it is very extraordinary because we only know two species on earth or in that stage we only knew two species on earth in which males live in groups often with their relatives and go out on raids to kill members of neighboring communities and those which infanseize in humans.

Well I wasn't I wasn't I wasn't certainly wasn't suggesting that I mean I can imagine though that a scientist in her position would want what would you call to be damn sure of the proposition before releasing it on the world.

I think it was in your in the book catching fire maybe is it in that book do you document is it is it in that book that gorillas that the documentation of gorillas spending up to eight hours a day doing nothing but chewing leaves.

Charles Jones and Tima Oak and Dismantling Racism workbook 2001. God only knows what that is but it's everywhere, the characteristics of white supremacy culture perfectionism which is an element of conscientiousness, which is a fundamental trait, sense of urgency, defensiveness quantity over quality, worship of the written word paternalism, either or thinking notice this is all written or thinking. Notice this is all written in words, by the way, power hoarding, fear of open conflict.

I read Charles Murray's book Human Diversity and the section of that book on jitter is etch very powerfully in my mind I thought he made many strong arguments there and around this point about differences in interest and then of course that causes people to invest in different kinds of behavior and that leads to differentiation and their occupational profiles and other.