Jordan Peterson on "The Truth"

Hello, freak bitches. But why would I put my job on the line to have an opinion about compelled pronouns? I know why. Because the ability to speak your truth is the bulwark against hell. And losing your job? That's nothing. That's nothing compared to where things can go when they go badly. For me, it was just preventative. It's like, this isn't going in a good direction. Well, should you take a risk? It's like, you don't have that choice. You're silent? That's a risk. Now, most people don't understand the risks of silence. I happen to understand the risks of silence because I've been studying them for 40 years. Is it frustrating for you to get so little support for these actions and for your protests? Well, I wouldn't say that that's what happened. I don't mean so little support, because you get a lot of support outside of the university. It's okay. It doesn't matter where the support comes from. I mean, it's disappointing in the same way that it's disappointing for me to say, I think the universities now do more harm than good. That's disappointing. But it's not surprising to me. It isn't as if intellectuals are characterized by an intrinsic moral superiority. Oh, they're smart, so they'll leap to the defense of what's right. It's like, no. There's no evidence for that. Intelligence and moral wisdom aren't the same thing. And if you're corrupt and smart, all that makes you is way more treacherous. It doesn't make you less likely to be corrupt. It just makes you much more... You're 50 snakes instead of 2, or you're 56-headed snakes instead of 2. I've had clients who had very serious personality disorders who were very intelligent. It's like, that's not necessarily a good thing for them. They're just better at arguing for their pathology to themselves. That is a real problem where people automatically assume that intelligent people are going to be healthy. Yeah, well, they're healthy in that often they do better in the world. More successful. Yes, their skills are more marketable and so on. But there's no evidence that there's any relationship between intelligence and morality. I mean, God, let me tell you a story, man. One time I had this client. This woman was just ruined. She looked like a street person, you know, and she had very dirty clothes. And she was so shy that she couldn't even approach you. She had to shield her eyes from you as if you were emitting light. And she did that to everyone on the street. She was bent over and humble like a Chinese peasant brought before the emperor, you know. And one of the things I was doing with her in behavior therapy was trying to just get her to present herself in a more normal manner so that people wouldn't shy away from her, you know, be instantly prejudiced towards her. And she'd come to the behavior therapy clinic. And she wasn't bright, this woman. I think she had only had like a seventh grade education. She was quite intellectually impaired. And she lived with her sick aunt who was schizophrenic and who had like a satanically possessed alcoholic boyfriend that was always tormenting my client. She lived in absolute hell. But she had this dog and she used to take it out and walk the dog all the time. And then she'd actually come to the behavior therapy clinic partly because of her own problem. But she'd come to this place called the Douglas Hospital. And she'd been an inpatient in the Douglas Hospital. And in the Douglas Hospital there were these long-term psychiatric clients. And they looked like something out of a Hieronymus Bosch painting or Dante's Inferno. I mean, these people were—this is way worse than one flew over the cuckoo's nest. These people were seriously destroyed. And they couldn't be let back out on the streets during deinstitutionalization. Like, they were lifers. And she had decided that part of the reason she wanted to come to the hospital was because she had been institutionalized there. And she thought that maybe when she took her dog out for a walk, she could go and get one of those damn inmates and take them out for a walk too. Now, that was a person who was moral. Dumb as a post. Just screwed in 50 different directions. Nothing going for her. And she had the bloody moral capacity to decide that there was someone worse off than her. And believe me, that wasn't easy to find. And that maybe she could do them some good if the hospital would let her. Which they didn't, by the way. Yeah, well, that's the story of the soul. That's not the intellect. That's for sure. So, I didn't expect any support from my colleagues. And it isn't that I don't care if I got it. But in some sense, it's irrelevant. It's irrelevant to me. Because my goal was, I'm not saying those goddamn pronouns. And the reason I'm not saying them is because they're made up by left-wing ideologues. And I don't like left-wing ideology. I don't like ideology, period. And I know where corruption of speech leads. And I'm not going there. And, you know, one of the things I tried to learn when I was taking apart what happened in Auschwitz. And trying to put myself in the position of an Auschwitz camp guard. Which, by the way, you can do if you use your imagination a bit. I wouldn't call it exactly the world's most pleasant meditative experience. But you can call up parts of yourself that would be capable of taking someone who just got off a transport train. And having them carry a hundred-pound sack of wet salt from one side of the camp compound to the other and back. You can conjure that part of yourself up if you want. And that'll teach you something about what you're like. People don't do it because it's too frightening. But I know perfectly well that I could do that sort of thing. And so once I learned that I could do that sort of thing. And maybe that I could even enjoy it. I thought, okay, fine, I get it. I'm going to see if I can figure out how to live so that if that opportunity was presented to me, I wouldn't take it. And I think that's the lesson that people need to learn from the 20th century. It's like, that's what human beings did, okay? Well, we're all human, okay? So how is it that we should live so that we don't do that again? Part of that is to try to say the truth. No matter what. Because the alternative is worse. And it is worse. The truth no matter what. And that is the real problem that you see with being forced into using these made-up pronouns. Yeah, absolutely. It's my language. I'll take responsibility for what I say. I am not saying your words. And being compelled to say your words. By law. Well, that takes it past the point of absurdity to the point of tyranny, in my estimation. And I've seen some criticisms where people are saying, you know, he's talking about this, but really he's grandstanding because no one's doing anything legally. But the potential exists. Oh, that's such rubbish. But that is one of the arguments. Yes, they wouldn't have changed the damn criminal. They put it in the hate speech category and altered the criminal code. It's as simple as that. And then you could say, well, no, we didn't really mean it. It's like, oh yeah, you did. You really meant it. Two of the social justice warriors that have debated me the last two months accused me directly of hate speech. All I had to do was poke them a tiny bit and they came right out with it. And then the university's legal team reviewed everything I said, carefully, believe me, and they decided that, oh, it was not only illegal to not use these compelled pronouns, it was probably illegal to make a video saying that I wouldn't use them. Because otherwise, why would they write me a warning letter and tell me that I violated university policy on the Ontario Human Rights Act? Think they did that lightly? Have they acted on this at all? No. Well, they've acted in that they sent me two warning letters and told me to stop talking. But you don't. The idea that I was going to be teaching in January again, because I teach all my undergraduate courses from January to May, that was on the table. And I think the only reason that it hasn't happened, one of the reasons it hasn't happened, and I'm not attributing nothing but malevolence to the university administration, because obviously it's very complicated, and they did agree to host the debate, for example. But the idea that I wouldn't be teaching in January, and still might not be, is by no means... That was a perfectly plausible outcome. And had this not caused a firestorm, much of which has emerged in support of me, then I would say there was a 50-50 chance that I would have had my teaching privileges revoked. It's happened to other professors. So the idea that I'm making it like this is a tempest in a teapot, it's like, yeah, okay, fine. Why did you change the criminal code then? And why did you put it under the hate speech laws? Exactly. So, no, it doesn't wash. And the fundamental proof of that is the university's response, because for sure their legal team crafted those letters. You know, it was like, recalcitrant employee, you're responsible for them. Okay, what do you do with a recalcitrant employee? You write them a letter telling them what they're doing wrong and asking them to stop. Then if they don't stop, you write them a second letter that's more strongly worded. Then if they don't stop, you write them a third letter, even more strongly worded. Then you take disciplinary action. That's like HR 101. That's how you do it. So here we sit at the end of November, closing in on December, you're literally a bit more than a month away, and you don't know whether or not you're teaching your courses in January? It seems highly probable that I'll be teaching them. I wouldn't say it's certain, but if I'm teaching them, it's because the cost of having me not teach them would now be too high. It's not because the university believes that what I'm doing is either necessary or acceptable. If someone who's listening to this or watching this feels compelled to act out in your support, how can they do that? I think they could do the future authoring exercise. And that that would be the best way to act out in your support? Yes, and I'm dead serious about this. It's like, sort yourself out. Sort yourself out before you try to figure out the world. That's the primary objective. That's your most important thing that you can do. Sort yourself out. Sort yourself out and marshal your arguments and put yourself in order so that when someone pushes you a little farther than you should go, you can say no. And you know what's going on now. Yep.