DoctorOz: Jordan Peterson on the Origin of Our Values

Explain the vision of people who don't think the war is at the top of that pyramid, of that pinnacle, of that monument. Oh, well, it's a hard, it's a really hard thing to get straight and, you know, a lot of young people are being badly educated by ideologues and they're idol worshippers, you know. They have a value in mind and it's often a laudable value. Diversity? Sure. Inclusivity? Sure. Except what about exclusion? Well, we shouldn't exclude anyone. Really? You're going to put together an orchestra. You're not going to exclude anyone? You're going to put together a basketball team? How about the people you sleep with? You're not going to exclude anyone from that category? It's like you're stuck with the problem of exclusion. So how does that fit in with the inclusivity argument? Diversity? Okay. Well, what about unity? Equity? Well, what about freedom and diversity? Because equity and diversity, it's like, oh yeah, how do those jive? Exactly. Because they're opposites, actually. Well, yeah, you're contending with the problem of the juxtaposition of opposing values. Fair enough. But, you know, that's your holy triumvirate? You're sure about that, are you? And there's no dark motives lurking underneath your insistence that that be the case. Like resentment and jealousy, for example. I understand why the wisdom of the word has been passed along. And that's something that all of us have responsibility for. I'm just not sure where the philosophies that have undermined it have been developed and why they're so powerful. You mentioned the French philosophers, but you can go back to Marx and many others whose belief systems are much more prevalent today than I would ever have imagined when I was a young person growing up and learning what I thought was our value system. How did they come up with ideas that seem to have undermined a at least 3,000-year-old patriarchal tradition? The people of the world were probably 12,000 years of human history. Oh, more, more. At least. I'm going back to Göbekli Tepe in Turkey, but at least 12,000 years. Yeah, since the last Ice Age, at least. 15,000 years, right? It would scare me to buck that without at least respecting that there's some danger from throwing away what happened 10,000 years ago to let someone figure out how to survive with his family that ultimately led to our civilization. Well, part of the Enlightenment was terror of opaque mysticism. And that's something that people like Carl Jung are accused of all the time. And fair enough, there's some utility in clarity of thought, and there's some utility in the development of fully fleshed out explicit rational systems. But there's some danger in confusing such a system with the religious enterprise, which is that in part, but much more. But these are very difficult conceptual distinctions to make. And so what happens when a modern rational atheist argues with a religious person is that there's a presupposition that frames the argument, which is that the religious enterprise is best conceptualized as a set of explicable, explicit, statable, rational propositions in the same manner that a scientific description is. So the atheist will bring that frame to the debate, and the debate will take place within that frame. Well, then the religious person instantly loses before the argument even gets going, because first of all, that's not what the religious enterprise is. And second, when you turn the religious enterprise into that, and then you look at the set of explicit propositions, and then you apply rational criticism and scientific thinking to that, it just falls apart. But it's not the right move. No one would do that with a Dostoevsky novel. And you say, well, that's not real. It's like, well, then we're back to the same problem, aren't we? It's more than real. It's more than real. Yeah, and here's the problem that the scientists won't address. Well, some of them. These are blanket statements. From whence do we derive our values? Well, they're not necessary. It's like, yes, they are. And the scientists have actually proved that. I'm fairly well-versed in the biology of perception. We look at the world through a structure of value. We cannot see without imposing a structure of value. We cannot hear without imposing a structure of value. From whence do our values emerge? Well, we don't exactly know. Some of it's revelation. Ideas appear in the theater of our imagination. From where? Well, they just appear. Really? That's your explanation, is it? Those ideas, they have a very long history. As old as we are, they don't just appear. And you didn't just think them up. And so some of it's consensus, because we all have to agree on the values, right? Consensus isn't science. That's not science. Science is anti-consensus in a very profound sense. Value is consensus. But it can't just be consensus, because the group can be wrong. So then what's the relationship between the value structure derived by consensus by the group and the individual who notes that the group has become archaic and tyrannical and has to be updated? Well, that's a very thorny problem. It's really the problem that bedevils conservatives and liberals. Because the conservatives say, don't muck around with what works. And the liberals say, yeah, but it worked yesterday, and now it's today. And so then you say, well, how do we solve that problem? And the answer is, we talk. Honestly, that's how we solve it. The conservatives aren't right. And the liberals aren't right. They both temperamentally drift toward a certain viewpoint. The conservative is more stable, and the liberal is more transformative. And transformation brings chaos. Look at Moses. It brings chaos. Tradition is secure, but it turns to stone. And so then the reason the divine word is at the top of the hierarchy in part is because it's the mediating principle between those two sets of values. And so that's part of the eternal process by which we solve problems as they emerge. So what's the solution to the problem? Well, the problem changes. So it's a meta-solution. It's a mode of dealing with problems. And the divine word is a mode of dealing with problems. That's what it is. And so that's why it has to be at the top. And why has COVID brought out so much of this so rapidly? That's a really good question. I mean, how serious is COVID? Well, we don't know. How serious did we treat it? Well, we treated it as if it was so serious that we could sacrifice our civil liberties. The totalitarian state did that first, and then we imitated it. Is it that serious? Why were we prepared to do that? What does it mean that we did that? Is that worse than the plague itself? And all this nonsense about vaxxers and anti-vaxxers, it's like, yeah, this is the underlying issue. Is the solution worse than the disease? But we don't know, right? So we're battling it out. You could imagine that maybe in the 1950s, COVID would have hit and people would have just gone about their business. I think they basically did that with polio. Now, I don't know that historical period that well, but it isn't my understanding that there were years-long lockdowns as a consequence of the polio epidemic. And that was no joke. So, you know, some of it is, well, it's a real disease. There it is. And some of it is, well, what's up with the political system? Some of that is, well, it's become contaminated with religious propositions because we don't sort, we don't, something I'm working on trying to delineate, which is this statement Christ made in the New Testament. And someone showed him a coin. Caesar's head was stamped on it. And it's a coin. So it's like the sun. It's divine. And Caesar's like God because he's the head on the sun. And so it was Pharisees and lawyers trying to trap him into saying something that was heretical so they could dispense with him, essentially, which happens time and time again in the narrative, and which is one of the things that makes it such a compelling read, that realism about that happening, you know, and the completely unexpected nature of the answers, which is very difficult, very difficult to imagine how someone could have just imagined that. I mean, the answers are not only unexpected, but they're the sort of answers often that you think a more totalitarian religious thinker would have edited out of history real quick, right? So anyways, Christ basically says, render unto God the things that are God's and render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's. And that's part of subduing things, right? Putting everything in its place. Well, some things are God's, not all things. Interestingly enough, some things are actually Caesar's. Okay, so then we dispense with God because aren't we rationing? It's like, well, then everything that was God becomes Caesar's. Well, then what? Well, then your political enemy is Satan. That's what you think. Well, and what's the right response to a person like that? Well, you know, it doesn't take much thought to figure that out. So it's true socially, and you know, you think about that statement, you couldn't, you could hardly imagine a statement that had more socio-political impact. I mean, serious thinkers trace the development of the idea that church and state should be separated, which is such a revolutionary idea, to that statement. That's the biblical justification for that, right? So this is a big deal, this statement. Okay, so it's true socially and politically, but it's also true psychologically. It's like some things are God's things. Those are the religious things. You say, well, you know, do you believe in God? Well, what do you mean by belief? Well, to worship, let's say. That's different than belief, but it's worship that's part of the injunction. Worship means to embody, to imitate, to act out, to put yourself on the line for it. It's not, I accept the explicit validity of this set of statable propositions. That's what you do if you're a philosopher, maybe, or a scientific thinker. It's not the same thing. Not at all. And so we have this conceptual confusion. I'm answering your question. It's part of why these criticisms work. It's because we misconstrue the target of criticism. Why? Because it's really complicated. If it's not, if religion isn't a set of statable propositions, and we kind of think that statable propositions are the best way to describe reality, well, then what is it? Well, it's a dream that we're waking up from and still in. Well, we don't know what to do about that. We're trying to figure it out. That's why I liked Carl Jung so much. It's like he knew that and he was trying to figure it out. It's like we need to make the dream conscious. That's what I'm trying to do with the Genesis lectures is to make the dream conscious. Look, this is what we've been doing. What does it mean? Well, here's what it means. And then all these young men came and listened. What the hell? What's going on? Well, they know something out there. They're not being told it. Well, there's a thirst. I've read recently, too, that young people are turning back to the churches in quite significant numbers. And maybe that's partly because they are starting to understand what they're doing. It's worship. That's imitation. Well, what should you imitate? How about the best? Well, why wouldn't you do that? Well, it's hard. So is imitating the worst. That's also very hard. And like, do you really have anything better to do than to imitate the best?