The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast

I wrote a book on it [inclusive and sustainable growth], and I'm just so incredibly optimistic about humanity's future and the art conference really helps for me underscore a lot of those themes.

And I also have my own book, "Sustainable," which was endorsed by Pope Francis and Larry Fink wrote the forward that talks about these dozens of these examples of hope just as examples and also provides this criticism of the ESG, which I'm not going to leave. I believe that we would be better off just abandoning the whole project.

The Sunday Times referred to his first book, The 48 Laws of Power as the Hollywood Backstabbers Bible and it can be difficult to find people who acknowledge its influence because of its controversial nature.

And so here's the one for June 7th and I think it's relatively representative of the book. June 7th never impune people's intelligence. Then there's a subtitle or an introductory idea, The best way to be well received by all is to close yourself in the skin of the dumbest of Brutes, Baltasar Grassian.

He only has book knowledge whereas I have real knowledge.

Her parents paid for her to get a good education. If my parents had had as much money if I had been as privileged, he's not as smart as he thinks.

She may know her narrow little field better than I do but beyond that, she's really not smart at all. Even Einstein was a boob outside physics.

Mary Harrington, author of Feminism against Progress, which was published in 2023.

So Mary, you launched your book Feminism against Progress in spring of 2023.

I've drawn from Ivan Illich's 1980 book Gender in the book to understand the transition which Illich reads, and I agree with him, as really not a moment of empowerment but as a significant loss of agency.

Our mutual friend Louise Perry wrote recently wrote a very persuasive book detailing all of the ways it hasn't really worked out like that and all of the ways which as you've just outlined the sexual revolution was considerably more to the benefit of um opposite are selected all these narcissistic psychopathic highly sexed and not particularly fatherly men seem to have been the net beneficiaries of this technological transformation

And so there's a notion at the bottom of our culture that the pathway to redemption for women is the adoption of a heroic mode of being you know in the face of life's difficulties and and problems

I read this great book once called The Wealth of the Wealth and Poverty of Nations by man named Richard Landis and he analyzed Japan in particular because he thought Japan was a very interesting case history the Japanese have a very disciplined culture and after World War 2 was a westernized culture and Japan is very very wealthy but Japan has no natural resources so then you might say well what's the basis of Japanese wealth and the answer is something like well it's an ethos the Japanese are very disciplined and the fundamental transaction between two Japanese is honest I think you could say that there isn't any other natural resource except air maybe there we breathe the only natural resource is trust and trust is predicated on like you can't trust productively unless people are honest and if people are honest and trustworthy then they can cooperate in a manner that makes abundance not only possible but inevitable and that means that the technology has to be embedded in an ethos and that ethos has to facilitate trust and so the way that you make a society rich isn't as a consequence of them being blessed with natural resources say or even with technological prowess it's that all of that's embedded in an ethos and and that ethos is the one that enables people to cooperate and compete productively and generously and that's the ethos that seems to be laid out in the biblical corpus and though that's the case you're making in your book I agree and you could just ask yourself to it I mean you think about our technological advances you think about AI now but why is it I mean if you look at science alone my contention would be science alone is at a loss to explain why those who are not the most intelligent however you define it why those who are not the strongest however you define that why they should not be privileged in some way in other words if you look at what what's the natural world where that is true right and this is Darwin natural selection and you had the social Darwinists of the last century who we rightly despise and condemn now but they would have said that's just science we're just applying to the human realm what we've observed in the natural scientific realm and why should it be that those who have the AI technology that can displace thousands of workers why should they not be the ones who have most power in society I don't think science can rely on that to us well there's irrationality there like I think the rational stance is that if I can take what you have then why shouldn't I yes a why isn't that a rational stance in fact right the Romans would have thought that was a rational stance absolutely and the Greeks would have thought that was a rational stance and I would say it's partly because it does have its own self evidence if you're weak and despicable and I can just take what you have and there's nothing you can do to stop me why isn't it the case that your own contemptible weakness isn't evidence that I should be allowed to do whatever I want with you that is not irrational now that doesn't mean it's not wrong and so now I would dispute you know I would dispute to some degree if you don't mind momentarily the the the the social Darwin or Darwinist argument you know because I talked a lot to friends to wall the primatologist and you know do wall has shown quite clearly that among chimpanzees who do have quite a patriarchal social structure and who are extraordinarily powerful physically and brutal beyond belief like they hunt colibus monkeys those things weigh 38 pounds and they eat them when they're alive right there's no pity in chimps and so the chimps will tear each other apart and they do that in their chimp war but do wall has shown very clearly in his analysis of the chimps that he's studied over the last 20 years that the biggest roughest toughest social Darwin triumph male is very very likely to meet an unbelievably violent end and to rule very briefly over a very unstable and malfunctioning community he showed that the the stable alpha males sometimes they're the smallest male in the troop they're the most reciprocal individuals in the entire troop male or female they do the best at tracking social relationships and engaging in essentially reciprocal altruism and so that's the state that's the basis for a stable polity even among chimpanzees so it's another bit of evidence but this time from the scientific side that power it doesn't look like in a biological community or in many biological communities that its power and dominance per se that are associated with let's say biological success reproductive success so you know there are situations baboons are more baboons are more violent but even then it's it's not by no means as simple as the most powerful male is the one who propagates this genes forward and it's certainly not the case in complex social organizations not true with rats for example

If you look at his his theory of capitalism The Wealth of Nations if you look at his theory of moral sentiments which I think he actually wrote beforehand you can see that it's embedded in a particular social context which is frankly very biblically informed and when you divorce it from that context you get something that I suspect he would not have approved of he would have said oh wait wait wait wait no no no no that's what I'm talking about so I think that that's where we are with with much of that I am not a Losefare conservative I never have been and in my party that's heretical to say that you know you don't believe in Losefare but I just you know I am not because I think that it does not capture these deeper intuitions that you've been talking about and it does not preserve the most important things in life and in the nation you know a nation is not a corporation a nation is not premised on pursuit of profit you know I have nothing against pursuit of profit in the business realm that's great but that's not what a nation is you know a nation is held together by mutual bonds of belonging a shared sense of purpose and moral vision that's what a nation is and we've got to we have to preserve that tend that and cultivate it if we don't we end up where we are now which is at daggers drawn

Aristotle writes that we're more garrious comes to the Greek word for flock that horses or bees right and that means and so it's this nature of man but then logos is not when we talk we can see you know how to get from A to B.

Aristotle says the younger particularly given to that their bodies are really great and getting better all the time.

In book 10 of the ethics he describes this beautiful activity and you have to become you have to get the moral virtues first you have to be courageous and you have to be moderate you have to be just and you have to be what you have to be wise.

Aristotle says if you're afraid of the bees buzzing around you you will not be capable of this you see it requires all the virtues and years of work.

the highest human activity in Aristotle is a secular version of the highest human activity or any religion communion with God and that's contemplation is called and it's hard to get your soul to state to be able to do that.