DoctorOz: Jordan Peterson on Bridging Divides & Spiritual Solutions

So what should our leaders, especially political leaders, be doing? They seem caught up in all this, as religion has lost much of its grasp, and we have reduction. They should be reaching across the aisle. The Democrats already have the Democrats. They don't have the Republicans. Well, they're citizens, too, those anti-vaxxers. I understand the tactic is to reach across the aisle, but the belief systems aren't allowing that now. So putting your psychology out there. Yeah, well, that's because the lefties think they're right, and the right-wing people think they're right, and they're both right, except they need each other, and they actually don't really understand that. It's like, you know, I talked to John McWhorter yesterday, professor at Columbia. Me? Yeah, yes, he's a very interesting character, and he said that when he was young, he really didn't like Republicans at all, and then he went off to the Manhattan Institute, and met a bunch of them, and they were not who he thought they were at all, and so he sort of had to give up that enmity, and, you know, if you really understand that the, and partly understand this, because I know that political belief is embedded in temperament. You know, you think, we think, because we're rationalists, that you come to your political convictions through a rational process. It's like, no, you don't, you're not that rational, and hardly anyone is. It's like maybe a couple of political philosophers, maybe, but probably not. What you tend to come up with is rational justifications for your biological temperament. So taste buds. Yes, exactly. And so, you know, we, now, insofar as the psychology is accurate, and it's contaminated, because psychologists are prejudiced against conservatives, so it's contaminated, but I've tried to decontaminate it, and just to look at the underlying science, and what seems to be the case is the primary virtue of conservatives is conscientiousness, and conscient, you want to live with a conscientious person, man, except they might be a little, you know, on the too orderly side, a little too perfectionistic, because every virtue has its vices. Conscientious people, once you know where you're going, you say, hey, conscientious people, get over here and, like, make this work, and they attend to all the details, and they're into it because they're dutiful, and it's built into them as a rewarding process. That's the conservatives, and they tend to be lower in creativity, and that's partly because there's a real tension between static implementation and efficiency, and the explosive nature of creativity. The liberal types, they're more creative and open. Hey, this is a new idea, hey, this is a new idea, but they're all over the place, and they can't stick to anything, and they're not good at implementing if they're high in openness and low in conscientiousness, so they need to say, well, I've got this great idea, and then the conservative comes along and says, are you so sure that that idea will only do what you think it will and nothing else, which is like, you should think about that. You know, I had a conversation with one of my close friends a couple of days ago. He's building this new electronic device. He's really smart. He's built a lot of world-changing things. Like, he's one of four or five people in the world who's doing this. He said, I've been thinking about this a lot. It's probably more revolutionary than the internet. Yeah, no kidding, and then I thought, oh, God, do we really need something more revolutionary than the internet? And like, he's impelled to build it. He's conscientious and open, and he will build it, but I'm hoping, and I know him, and he is wise, and he is deep, thank God, and I hope that he's, you know, maybe the best thing to do would be for him to jump off a bridge so it doesn't happen, and he knows that. He jokes sometimes. Well, I'm building Skynet, ha ha ha. It's like, well, from someone else, that would be just, you know, a pretty funny joke, but from you, it's like, that is maybe what you're doing. Well, let's talk about this leadership issue, because, I mean, at a high level, I think everyone understands what the bigger issues are, but the inability for leaders, political or any other capacity, to create a philosophy that unifies us again has stunned me. I would have thought. It's not a job for the politicians. It's not a job for the politicians, because they say, and everyone knows this now, politics is downstream from culture, and that's what I've been saying for 10 years. Look out. The universities lead culture. Look out. Here, this is coming. You think it's just some intellectual issue. Just, just some intellectual issue. It's like, you have no idea how revolutionary this is. Look the hell out, people. It's coming, you know, and so, and so the politicians can't solve this. It's a spiritual problem, fundamentally, or I could say a psychological problem. The cultural tsunami has become so dominated with one strain of its virus, and you know, bacteria and viruses can infect you, but so can ideas. So the ideas that have taken over academic centers, which are frustrating to many, irritating to some, and feared by a few, like you. And only characteristic of a small minority of the people in those academic centers. I'll give you an example. So I was disinvited from Cambridge. I had been invited by the Cambridge Divinity School, which is kind of interesting. Yeah, it's a great honor. And the reason I didn't, yes, that's for sure, to talk about Exodus. It's like, really, that's happening? And I got disinvited because I was wearing, I took a picture. I had it, a picture was taken of me during a meet and greet following one of my lectures with this man who was wearing a T-shirt that criticized some of what he thought of the presuppositions and actions of Islam. Okay, so here's what happened. Because it's kind of interesting, I think, and it's very germane to our discussion. I probably had my picture taken with 15,000 people in a year, because after my lectures, there was 160 of them, I met people, about 100. So it's 160 times 100, 16,000. And I had about 15 seconds with each of them, and it was the kind of interaction that we acted out, you know, like eye contact and pretty deep for a 15-second interaction. And it can be that if you're very attentive. And so it was quite exhausting, but also very exhilarating. And this guy, I was in New Zealand, this guy was in line, and he stopped at the beginning of the line. And he looked at me, and he went like this, which meant, I have this T-shirt on, and I'm not sure I should be doing this and having my picture taken with you. So I looked at the T-shirt, I had about 20 lines on, and I pretty much read it at a glance. And it was kind of harsh. And I thought, that's your T-shirt. You have a right to say what you want. And so, okay, that didn't mean I agreed with it or disagreed with it. So I read it and thought about it. And then I had my picture taken, and then that picture was, you know, blown up out of, I thought, proportion, but perhaps not. I mean, you know, the conflict between Islam and Christianity is not trivial. And who knows how, what is a misstep and what's a proper step forward. Maybe I did something dreadful, you know. But it was one of 15,000 photographs. That's the first thing. And I can't be responsible for every T-shirt that everyone wears, and what was I supposed to do? Anyways, I took the, I had the picture taken, and that was why I got disinvited. Or was it an excuse? Well, perhaps it was both, you know. And I'm not saying I was blameless or that I was blameworthy. That's not part of this discussion. But I can tell you that was the decision. But let me take you back to this fundamental. Oh, sorry, sorry. I just wanted to close that off. Some of the professors at the Divinity School were not very happy that I got disinvited, and so they started to change the invitation code at Cambridge. And they pursued that over a few years. And so they put together a pro-free speech platform, essentially. They could only get a few people from the extended faculty, about 7,000, to speak publicly in favor of it. But then they put it to a secret vote. 85% of the 7,000 or more who voted voted in favor. The chancellor stepped down. Now, this wasn't the direct cause of that, but it was a tentacle of the direct cause. And hypothetically, they're going to change the laws in England. So when we were talking about this virus- Change the laws that- Govern how universities invite people to the campuses. The government's playing a role in that now. Yes, yes. Because they don't trust universities. Well, they think this is a real problem. Okay, so, but it was 15% of the faculty who were opposed to this idea, so really in favor of disinviting an heir to well like me. And so the reason I brought all that up is because, yes, these ideas dominate, but not really. Like, it's 15% of the institution. So then there's another question. Given that it's only 15%, why are they so dominant? Well, people are afraid. That's part of it, a big part of it. But I think they're just not afraid of the right thing. That's the thing, you know. It's no wonder they're afraid. It's like, you know, you can get stripped down and demolished if you put your toe in this argument. And the right thing to be afraid of is the failing of our society if we don't put the right thing at the top of the pyramid? Yes, yes, that's definitely the right thing to be afraid of. Always, at every moment of your life, that is the right thing to be afraid of. Some of those 85% of faculty at academic institutions who could be the philosophers, the thought leaders, who craft a philosophy to reunite humanity must be out there trying to do it. Oh, a lot of them are like, they're the real thing. They're the specialists who are diligently pursuing their specialty and not involved in the political fraca. So those ideas are percolating through politics. I see the problems here in Canada, in the United States, across the world. It's the same problem everywhere we're here. I talked to this journalist, very famous Canadian journalist, Rex Murphy, about a Canadian political debate. So it was a debate between the people who were running for the leadership, essentially, of our country during the last election a month ago. And 80% of the people who watched my discussion with Rex about the debate weren't Canadian. It's like, what the hell? Well, it's because it's the same problem everywhere. Again, why are we seeing solutions? If it's, the trope is, it's the fault of the internet. It's the fault of social media. You can never blame the atomization of humanity. In the United States, the argument is that the federal government has purposefully, or at least allowed, the dissolution of the middle layers of society, the social groups that would have brought people together. And this has been studied. Well, and we're being fragmented terribly by our unbelievable technological prowess. It's like, who knows how to deal with all this stuff? We get all that. There's a lot of people making diagnoses. As a doctor, I'm looking for solutions. So now that I've identified you're about to die, I'd like to know what antibiotic to put you on, what chemotherapy to use, what kind of knife do I use when I cut your belly open. I gotta get some action steps here. So the world turns to people like you, Jordan Brown, put this burden on you, to try to help us understand what is the path forward. What would a wise political leader adopt as a philosophy? Not an ideology, a philosophy that might actually make it easier for- Love your enemies. That's the right statement for politicians. Like, they're actually not your enemies. If you think they are, well, you're dangerous. So that's part of it. The basket of deplorables, that wasn't acceptable. So let me challenge you on that. I want to answer the other part of that question. So part of the reason I'm a great admirer of Carl Jung is because he saw all of this coming. And here's what he thought. So in his view, our scientific enterprise emerged out of alchemy. Alchemy was a thousands-year dream. And the dream was that immaterial reality was part of the solution to deliver us to the promised land. Health, wealth, longevity. It wasn't spiritual, it was material. It was a counterposition to the Christian, say, emphasis on spirituality. Maybe the Jewish emphasis on spirituality. But in that dream was also a tremendous amount of spiritual, psychological ideas. Because the philosopher's stone, to pursue it, you had to be an ethical person. To make base metal pure, you had to be an ethical person. Tremendous amount of fantastic imagery about the essential, deep nature of ethical behavior. And Jung believed that the materialist dream exploded out of that and became the scientific revolution and produced all this technological wonderment that we see around us at an ever-accelerating pace. But the wisdom that was in there didn't do the same thing. And so we need to be as good as we are powerful. There's no other solution. And so for me, it's not a political solution. It's a psychological solution, a spiritual solution. And that's partly something that Jung also emphasized, because he dealt with people on an individual basis. Like, we all have to be better.