Sometimes there's a glitch in the matrix where the limitations of the old operating system are laid bare and something new pokes through
They've been dozens of responses to the jordan peterson channel for interview already. What makes this one different?
Well, I have a pretty unique perspective in
October last year I went to Toronto to interview Jordan Peterson at his home you came in from where I came in from London
last night, I turned the interview into the first full-length documentary about Jordan Peterson's ideas I
Was pretty sure he'd soon become a lot more famous and be recognized as one of the most significant public thinkers
but I couldn't possibly have predicted how he'd break through to a mass audience a
few weeks later Peterson did an interview with journalist Kathy Newman on Channel four News in the UK a
Program I worked on as a reporter and producer for ten years
It was a sensation
Millions watched it online
Tens of thousands commented an overwhelming majority felt Peterson had been unfairly represented
And in the week since it hasn't stopped
Peterson has been asked about it constantly on the most high-profile online shows
12 rules for life so without reading this
So what you're saying is
There's only 12 things you need to do in life right, that's it well yeah this
This interview that you just did with this woman Kathy Newman shit was that in the UK
it was Channel 4 UK so what does this glitch say about the state of mainstream media and
the culture at large
By diagnosis of what's actually happening is that people are moving further and further away from?
what is what thinking actually is I'm at or more into merely running a script and
What does Jordan Peterson actually think that's so controversial you are?
misrepresented more than anyone
I know in a weird way. You are villainized in a weird way where I can't believe that these people are honestly
looking at your opinions and
Coming up with these conclusions. I believe this encounter struck such a nerve because it's a cultural watershed moment
But seen properly as Peterson would say it's archetypal in that it contains layers and layers of meaning
That go right to the heart of the biggest rift. We're seeing playing out in the culture
Over the next 50 minutes. I'm gonna do my best to unpack it
From the clash between new and old media. There's also why YouTube is gonna kill TV
Because television by its nature all of these narrow
broadcast
technologies they rely on forcing the story all the way down to the mythological an
Archetypal level I thought of ideologies as fragmentary mythologies
That's where they get their archetypal and psychological power, but in the postmodern world and this seems to be something that's increasingly
Seeping out into the culture at large you have nothing but the tyrannical father nothing
But the destructive force of masculine consciousness and nothing, but the benevolent
Benevolent great mother and it's a it's an appalling ideology, and it seems to me that it's sucking the vitality
Which is exactly what you'd expect symbolically
It's sucking the vitality of her culture and to ask how do we move forward constructively rather than just adding to the polarization?
I've been a journalist for 16 years in the newsrooms of the BBC in channel 4 and then making documentaries I
moved away from the frontline of news some time ago and started learning psychology
Which is what first drew me to Jordan Peterson?
from a distance I've started to see the blind spots of the establishment media much more clearly I
Spent some of the best years of my working life at Channel 4 News and have a huge amount of respect
And gratitude to the program
But I'm making this film because I feel so strongly that if we can't have open conversations about the kind of topics Peterson is raising
We're in serious trouble
My book went up to number two and on amazon.com in the US the next day right it's number one in Canada
it's number three in the UK all on Amazon I
Couldn't have asked for more publicity right and so I could also be sitting back and saying well. You know she tried to
My a person who regarded herself as my ideological opponent
Tried to go after my philosophy and my reputation on national TV
Failed brutally and has been taken apart for it. It's like
This is a good day, but I don't regard it as a good day. I don't think it's a good day
I
think that it's evidence of the
Instability of the times that we're in it would have been much better
For me and for everyone else if what we would have had was a real conversation
You said that it's actually a sign of the times where things could go really wrong for all of us really soon
Yeah, we're playing with fire. Yeah, what do you mean by this? Can you can you elaborate?
Well things go wrong in cultures all the time right you get you get the polarization
Increases until people start to act it out
Peterson is one of a new breed of thinkers made famous almost completely by the internet not the broadcast media
Part of a powerful new informal network being called the intellectual dark web
The mainstream media is based on an old dying model that is being replaced by new media
And new technology so quickly that its faults are becoming glaringly obvious
Fortunately, thanks to YouTube podcasting and however else you get shows like this one the mainstream media's stranglehold on information
Which really is a stranglehold on your ability to think clearly about the issues of the day is crumbling at an incredible rate?
Now the question is who and what will replace it a few months ago one of my favorite people to sit across this table from
Eric Weinstein came up with the phrase
Intellectual dark web to describe this eclectic mix of people from Sam Harris to Ben Shapiro to his brother Brett
Weinstein to jordan Peterson all of whom are figuring out ways to have the important and often dangerous
Conversations that are completely ignored by the mainstream
It's why I would argue that this collection of people are actually more
influential at this point than whatever collection of cable news pundits you can come up with
If you think I'm being hyperbolic about the growing influence of this group just check the traction that these people get on Twitter or Facebook
Compared to our mainstream competitors twitter may not be real life as I say in my Twitter bio
But it is some barometer of what the zeitgeist is right now
what unites this group of thinkers is a sense that the set of ideas that have run Western culture for years are breaking down and
That the chaos of the moment is the attempt to find new ones
It's nearly all happening online part of the problem that we have right now in our culture is
Trying to diagnose the level at which the discussion should be taking place
And I think the reason that this is a tumultuous time is because it actually is a time for discussion of first principles
and it's that first principles are
Virtually at the level of theology because the first principles are the things that you assume and then move forwards like well
What should we assume well the dignity of the human soul let's start with that you can't treat yourself properly without assuming that you
Have a relationship with another person you can't stabilize your family
You can't have a functional society, so what does it mean for this human soul to have dignity?
well
The part of the idea is that you're participating in
Creation itself and you do that with your actions in your language
And you get to decide whether you're tilting the world a bit more towards heaven or a bit more towards hell
And that's actually what you're doing so that's a place where the literal and the metaphorical truth comes together and people are very
They're terrified of that idea as they should be because it's a massive responsibility
They also argue that the central problem is polarization
boosted by social media
Peterson's work looks at how people are hard-wired to see the world differently a lot of what determines your political
orientation is
Biological temperament far more than people realize so for example
left-leaning people
liberals, let's say although that's kind of MIS misnomer, but
We'll keep with the terminology liberals are high in a trait called openness, which is one of the big five personality traits
And it's associated with interest in abstraction and interest in aesthetics
it's the best predictor of liberal political leaning and they're low in trait conscientiousness, which is dutifulness and and
Orderliness in particular whereas the Conservatives are the opposite?
They're high in conscientiousness
They're dutiful and orderly and they're low in openness and that makes them really good managers and administers ministers and often businessman
But not very good entrepreneurs
Because the entrepreneurs are almost all drawn from the liberal types and so
These are really fundamental
fundamentally biologically predicated differences, and they're you might think about them as different sets of
Opportunities and limitations, and and certainly different ways of screening the world and
Each of those different temperamental types needs the other type
Let's call this a diversity issue if you start understanding that the person that you're talking to who doesn't share your political views
isn't
Stupid that's the first thing necessarily. They might be but so might you be no stupid. He isn't the
Differences in intelligence are not the prime determinant of differences in political belief
All right
so you might be talking to someone who's
More conscientious and less creative than you if you're if you happen to be a liberal
But that doesn't mean that that person's perspective is not valid
And it doesn't mean that they wouldn't outperform you in some domains because they would so one thing to remember is
People actually do see the world differently. It's not merely that they that they're possessed of love
ilie informed opinions
the whole point of the dava democracy is to
Continue the dialogue between people of different
Temperamental types so that we don't move so far to the right that everything
becomes
encapsulated and stone and doesn't move or so far to the left and everything dissolves in a kind of
Mealy-mouthed chaos and the only way that you can you can navigate between those two
Shoals is by is through discussion, which is why free speech is such an important value
It's the thing that keeps the temperamental types from being at each other's throats in
The aftermath of the Trump election that came as such a shock to most of the media
One of the most widely shared analysis pieces was from deep code
It describes how the establishment mainstream media perspective based around liberal values of openness and inclusivity
He calls the blue church is being challenged by a new web-based
insurgency a red religion based on the values of tribalism
The culture were the the 20th century was a decisive
success for blue any
effectively a route for red
So what we see first is that red was forced to move into a deeply exploratory phase
Second that it did this in a context
Where as it turns out?
things were changing meaningfully quite significantly in fact it from my perspective in a world historical level the emergence of
entirely new forms of
communication and therefore entirely new sense-making and coherence
He concludes that the blue church is in the process of collapse as its dominant ideology
Can't adapt to changing reality
But that a combination of the two sets of values of blue and red is essential
we are conscious and
Effective in the world in groups, not as individuals and the ingredients of those groups
Include aspects that are currently showing up as both red and blue I
Propose somewhat strongly that
Neither red nor blue as pure
Elements contain the ingredients necessary to actually be adaptive to reality
This is a disaster in fact
It's a little bit like
Separating the hand and the eye
Now you're the eye can see if the eye takes itself as being the essence of virtue it separates itself from the ability to do
The same thing with the hand for most of human history these groups have actually always commingled
They're necessary that they actually relate to each other in a deeply healthy and direct fashion
their separations into armed camps is
Extinction area actually you know the values of red that you think blue needs to integrate you also may also reintegrate. Oh well
That's actually pretty easy
Responsibility I mean we've actually even seen it
The ability to
Make a commitment and keep it
Which which by the way ideologically shows up is either duty or loyalty, but those are both ideologies the the deeper sense is that ability
Responsibility both of the individual in the group level the ability to actually really make a
Personal sacrifice on the part of the group that's actually a deeply
read value
and I don't mean that by the way as
Politically ideological certainly there are people who?
Are currently part of blue who feel that deeply what I'm saying is that that shows up much much more intensely in
Read and when you're feeling it in blue. You're actually feeling a red value, and that's good mixing is crucial
Because that's very Jordan Peterson esque -
How would you how do you define Jordan Peterson?
Or do you think the fact the issue is that he is is not definable within one of those two camps
Yeah, I think that's the point
I think that he grasps directly the fact that human beings can only actually make sense of the world by virtue of
communication with other human beings and this is all about the notion of admixture that one must have a mixture of of
What I mean he uses the mythopoetic to make sense the order order and chaos
The way right the taoist way is the alchemical admixture of order and chaos
And that's it like that's how you do it, and so if you bias towards orderliness
You find yourself in a rigid non adaptive
non creative non exploratory framework
Which will die because the world changes if you bias towards chaos
You you eat your young and evaporate
Which also ties for obvious reasons?
And the key is to actually enable these things to be in
relationship with each other and vital healthy relationship with each other, and I think that's in some sense the essence of what he's
Focusing on and instead of the core what he's asking about Peterson is hard for the broadcast media to get a handle on
Because the depth of his thought means he doesn't fit easily into any of their categories
The clash with Kathy Newman was his breakthrough a moment where the new world met the old
To give the context from Kathy Newman side she has to do dozens of interviews each month
Peterson is hard to get a grip on and he sure as hell looks controversial
She's also focused on getting sound bites for a five minute cut down of the interview for TV. Not a long conversation for online
The interview was ridiculous. It was a ridiculous interviewing. I listen to it or watched it several times
I was like this is so strange
It's like her determination to turn into a conflict - it's one of the issues that I have with
Television shows yeah, because they have a very limited amount of time, and they're trying to make things as salacious as possible
They wouldn't have these sound bites these clickbait sound bites
And she just went into it incredibly confrontational not trying to find your actual perspective
But trying to force you to defend a non non realistic perspective. Yes well
I was that I was the hypothetical villain of her imagination essentially. No this is also. Why YouTube is gonna kill TV
Because television by its nature all of these narrow
broadcast
technologies they rely on
forcing the story right because
It has to happen now
It has to happen in like often in five minutes because they only broadcast five minutes of that in interview
They did put the whole thing up on YouTube to their credit
It it it hasn't ceased to amaze me yet. I think that they thought that the interview went fine
after the interview Channel four News found themselves at the center of an online storm
Which included some nasty personal and misogynistic attacks?
It's understandable that they just wanted it to go away
But online is forever
and as the center of gravity continues to shift away from traditional media this interview is I would argue a
slow-motion and
Continuing car crash for Channel 4's credibility, so why did it happen?
Partly the limitations of the medium of TV, but also because of the institutional political blindness of the mainstream media
I've always considered myself of the liberal left, but especially since the election of Trump
I've been trying to understand what happened and I'm convinced that the polarization
We're seeing is mainly driven by the shadow side of liberalism in particular where supposedly
Inclusive social justice liberalism stops being inclusive and secretly judges and despises people that don't think the same way
the rebellion of Trump and brexit was a direct response as
Yuri Harris argues in this article in Colet the new gatekeepers of the media have become a new bourgeoisie
Enforcing a rigid etiquette and using the rights of the oppressed
as an excuse to put forward a vision of the kind of society they personally want to live in
on the surface level
it's about how a narrow social justice worldview embodied by Kathy Newman in the interview became the new status quo and
How this institutional bias of much of the mainstream media?
Means it can't see or understand the forces that are challenging this new consensus
The counterculture used to be on the left, but once it won. The culture war it left space for a new counterculture
The biggest manifestation is the red pill phenomena which the mainstream media?
Mistakenly assumes is the same thing as the OLT right? I was surprised to just discover the overlap between
What I minute II particularly like
Greek philosophy and stoicism and
The alt-right who I've always thought of you know if I come across on the tour. I thought the most kind
Swivel-eyed bogeymen you know
completely unpalatable
extremists in their in their basements and then to discover that
You know a lot of them were a lot of people in stoicism were also really into the alt-right
Made me wonder. What was going on and why?
People like me were getting radicalized
I'm drawn into if you explain. What stoicism is for
Stoicism is basically an ancient Greek philosophy, which was became very popular in the Roman Empire
You know with like the Emperor Marcus Aurelius was a stoic for example?
And it's in some ways like a Western form of Buddhism
It's like a therapy for the emotions it teaches you to take
Responsibility for your thoughts to take and thereby to take some control over your emotions
so in some ways it's putting forward a model of
strength and integrity and kind of resilience
Amid adversity and rapid change so for that reason it's become very popular in the last 10 years I
Think this is also. Why from my perspective at least someone like Jordan Pederson
Is often looked from the outside as being aligned with the alt-right because he has a similar message
But it's but there are crucial differences. I think between what we would consider
I mean certainly white nationalism would be an essential part of the alt-right
I would say of any useful definition, and yeah, that's that's certainly not characteristic of of Jordan Peterson from my experience
No, there's a crucial difference at least between stoicism and the alt-right
Even though a lot of alt writers into stoicism in that stoicism, and and maybe Jordan Peterson as well
I don't know. I'm not an expert on him talk about the way to gain strength and
maturity and power is
Internal it's to take responsibility for your own thoughts and feelings
Whilst I think people sometimes men might look for that sense of power and control
externally by
suppressing or
Segregating anyone who they feel threatened by whether that's other colours or other sexualities or
Gender so there's a crucial difference there one is about kind of inner
Integrity and and and just kind of being strong within yourself
and the other is about trying to take control through the kind of exterior I
Mean every public appearance that I've made that's related to the sort of topics that were discussing is overwhelmingly men
It's like it's like eighty-five to ninety percent
And so I thought wow that's weird like what the hell's going on here exactly, and then the other thing. I've noticed is that?
I've been talking a lot to the crowds that I've been talking to not about rights
But about responsibility right because you can't have the bloody converse. What are you doing? You can't have the conversation about rights without the
conversation about responsibility because your rights are my
Responsibility that's what they are
Technically, so you just can't have only half of that discussion, and we're only having half that discussion the question is well
What the hell are you leaving out if you only have that half of the discussion and the answer is what you're leaving out
Responsibility and then the question is well
What are you leaving out if you're leaving out responsibility and the answer might be well, maybe you're leaving out the meaning of life
That's what it looks like to me. It's like here you are
Suffering away, what makes it worthwhile, right?
You know you're completely. Oh, you're completely you have no idea what you're
You it's almost impossible to describe how bad an idea that is
responsibility
That's what gives life meaning
It's like lift a load
Then you can tolerate yourself right because look at your useless
Easily hurt easily killed. Why should you have any self-respect?
That's the story of the fall
Pick something up and carry it pick make it heavy enough so that you can think yeah well
Useless as I am at least I could move that from there to there well
What's really cool about that is that when I talk to these crowds about this the man's eyes light and that's very good
I've seen that phenomena because I've been talking about this
Mythological material for a long time and I can see when I'm watching crowds people you know their eyebrows lift their eyes let light up
Because I put something together for them. That's what mythological stories. Do so I'm not taking responsibility for that
That's what the stories do so I say the story and people go click click click
You know in their eyes light up, but this responsibility thing
That's a whole new order of this is that young men are so hungry for that. It is unbelievable. It just blows me away
It's like really that's what's that's the counterculture?
Grow the hell up and do something useful really I could do that oh
I'm so excited by that idea no one ever mentioned that before it's like rights rights rights rights Jesus
It's it's it's appalling. It's and and I feel that that's deeply felt by the people who are who are coming out to
To listen to these sorts of things to they're they've had enough of that
So and they better have because it's it's a non-productive mode of being
responsibility man
Peterson is part of the counterculture that he describes himself as a classic liberal and yet he's frequently
Described as right-wing by the media
This is not limited to Peterson
James d'amours infamous Google memo was described everywhere as an anti diversity screed
Despite him specifically stating he wanted to encourage more diversity in the workplace
Many believe that the Channel 4 interview was a significant moment in exposing this mindset as dogmatic
reactionary and fixed so during the interview we see an example of a
Delusional framework that is what appears to be largely incapable of perceiving and reacting to reality in real time
but much more interesting is what happened afterwards which was the sort of the
self-healing and policing mechanism of the larger social consensus of how when how the blue church
Reactively goes about maintaining the integrity of its frame
And so what ended up happened was there was a break in the frame there was a glitch in the matrix the
Mechanisms of the blue church reacted to endeavor to control the frame and to convert it into a way of sense of
Making sense of the what occurred that still maintained the integrity of its frame?
Do you mean when they tried to characterize it as sort of?
abusive trolls and you're right hero, and all of that exactly exactly it's sort of a
to use of a military language it was a fallback position that was a
Reactive almost instinctual and not almost in fact precisely instinct was that pure habit there was no
Thoughtfulness or even
strategic
Action there it was if if X then Y and in this case Y is. Here's a set of things that one does to
re-establish the dominant frame and
Now we're now were two levels deep you know the first. Level was a
sort of self-evident disaster, but then the second level was also a relatively self-evident disaster and
There isn't really a third level
In this approach so it ends up happening, and this is again. You can kind of just think about this from ordinary psychology
This is how?
delusions fall apart
As try as we might our desire to interpret reality to mean what we wanted to mean at the end of the day. We'll always
Be checked against what reality actually is
It may be some time. You know we're pretty good at making things up and pretending, but eventually
Reality is reality this isn't to say that Peterson is not controversial
He's saying things that challenge the most deeply held assumptions of the new establishment narrative
I guess the other reason that people are on
My case to some degree is because I have made a strong case which I think is fully documented by the scientific literature that there
Are intrinsic differences say between men and women and I think the evidence and that this is the thing that staggered me is that?
No serious scientists have debated that for like four decades
It's that argument was done by the time. I went to graduate school everyone knew that human beings were not a blank slate that
biological forces not
Parameterised the way that we thought and and felt and acted and and and valued everyone knew that the fact that this has become somehow
debatable again is just
Especially because it's being done by legislative Fiat. They're forcing it
Part of Peterson's argument based on years of psychological research is that much of the political?
Conflicts are due to try to integrate the different political temperaments of men and women
we were talking about the relatively the relative evolutionary roles of men and women this is speculative obviously and and
Because our research did indicate. It's tentative research so far that that the the the SG is
SJW sort of equality above all else philosophy is more prevalent among women
It's predicted by the personality factors that are more common among women so agreeable this and high negative emotion
Primarily agreeableness, but in addition. It's also predicted by being female and so I've been thinking about that a lot because
well men are bailing out of the humanities like mad and
Pretty much out of the university is except for stem the women are moving in like mad
And they're also moving into the political sphere like mad, and this is new right
we've never had this happen before and we do know know do not know what the
Significance of it is it's only 50 years old and so we were thinking about this
and so I don't know what you think about this proposition, but
imagine that that that historically speaking, it's
something like
Women were responsible for distribution and men were responsible for production
Something like that and maybe maybe that's only the case really in the tight confines of the immediate family
But that doesn't matter because that's most of the evolutionary landscape for human beings anyways what the women does did was make sure that everybody
Got enough
okay, and that seems to me to be one of the things that's driving at least in part the SJW demand for for equity and
Equality it's like let's make sure everybody has enough. It's like look fair enough
You know I mean you can't you can't argue with that
but there's there's an antipathy between that and
The the reality of differential productivity you know because people really do differ in their productivity
I think that the SJW phenomena is different
and I think it is associated at least in part with the rise of women to political power and and
We don't know what women are like when they have political power because they've never had it
I mean there's been queens obviously and that sort of thing there's been female authority figures and females have
Wielded far more power historically than feminists generally like to admit, but this is a different thing
And we don't know what what a truly female political philosophy would be like, but it might be
Especially if it's not been well examined
And it isn't very sophisticated conceptually it could easily be let's make sure things you've distributed equally. Well, yeah
Why
One of Peterson's main influences is the psychologist Carl Jung
Young psychology was built around the concept of the shadow all the things about ourselves. We don't want to accept our anger
negativity
Unconscious judgments, and how we need to integrate all those disowned parts to grow
I'm convinced. That's what's happening on a vast cultural level
since leaving channel 4 news
I've retrained as a counselor and started leading personal growth workshops for men
And thought a lot about how these unconscious gender dynamics are playing out in the culture
One of the central concepts is Jung's idea of animus and anima possession
How each have both an inner masculine and feminine essence in?
A man when he's unconsciously possessed by his feminine side his anima he becomes withdrawn
Moody and reactive and when a woman is possessed by her male side the animus
she becomes aggressive and dominating and
How many women are pushed into that by the nature of the modern workplace?
The Kathy Newman I know is warm compassionate a successful and talented journalist none of this is criticism of her
Just the role she was playing in the interview
I would say technically and this is might be interesting for people who are interested in union psychology
If you want to understand what Carl Jung meant by animus possession which is a very difficult concept?
Then that that interview was a textbook case of
having a discussion with someone who is animus possessed life has been moving forward for three and a half billion years and
It moves forward in these pattered and manners like the dominance hierarchy for example, so that's that let's call that the masculine archetype
It's part of the masculine archetype in fact the onus
Proclamation was that the female representation of the male
so that's the animus is the
Dominance hierarchy it's the patriarchy
So that's that that's the unconscious archetype, which I think is extremely interesting given
what's happened say in the women's movement because that's what's projected onto men and
and
It can be projected in a very negative way
it doesn't have to be but it can be and so an animus possessed woman treats a man as if he's the
Manifestation of the tyrannical patriarchy he's a group he's that group of men
Yeah, the group of bad men actually you watched the Jordan Peterson Kathy Newman entity. What did he what did he think I?
My whole body contracted, and I I felt so sad for
womanhood I felt
disappointed and I
Could see how
the shadow part of womanhood was acting out I could see how the
collective rage was acting through Kathy Newman and
This is what happens is that when that's unknown its projected blindly on to
Whatever stick wherever it sticks
and it was very clear that she already had an agenda and she already had a projection that she was just
Looking to state she was she was just looking to have that confirmed so I felt on behalf of women
I felt sad and disappointed because we need to have intelligent
conversations, and I also want to say that this isn't
even though the the specific example is the Kathy Newman Jordan Peterson interview, it's not specific to
- Kathy Newman I think the fact that that interview has resonated with so many people that it's been so popular shows that actually something
archetypal was going on in that in that interaction
And I think as well why it's gone viral is a lot of people watching it
Recognize those dynamics. They're like I've been in conversations like that
I've been in this conversation where nothing I say works where nothing I say gets through
So there's something sort of fundamental about about the masculine feminine dynamic. That's going on in there
What do you think that is I think Jordan Peterson? He's everyman Kathy Newman
She's every woman I can tap into that rage like this
I know it in myself and women that say they don't they're just denying it because it is in the collective
So in that sense it just highlighted what what's that?
It's wonderful because here we really get to look at why is this so?
Important why is it so important to listen to?
To a thinker like Jordan Peterson and take it seriously and say what can we do with it?
It's just so obvious that it's needed
Because if this is where we are if this is where society and cultures is if this is the ability to have an intelligent conversations
Conversation then we are in trouble, I really feel that there is this
collective
subconscious rage that is just
boiling in women and it's coming up in so many ways we see we see in the media and
What's going on is this?
unknown
Rage that comes up in in many different ways um
And on one hand it needs to come out we need to clear it it needs to be expressed it needs to
Be acknowledged on the other hand it's not enough. This is only like this is breaking the ice
So that the next step of evolution, can you know?
Consciousness can start coming through and that's what I'm lacking in women. It's really to take
responsibility for what we do as women in our
Manipulation in our seduction in our control, and and it's so easy for women to say
but that's just because we angry and men did this and patriarchy, but it's
It's such a lack of
responsibility and this
Women really need to know I mean, that's the the kind of shadow work is
The acceptance that we all have shadows that men certainly have a shadow. There is a shadow around masculinity
but there's also a shadow around femininity and
while part of the cultural conversation now is toxic masculinity and everyone knows what you mean by toxic toxic masculinity if
You talk about toxic femininity
Everyone still knows what you mean, but you can't have that conversation
Which is it's it's interesting?
What is allowed to be said and what is not allowed to be said at the moment and that that I think is?
is very
Dangerous that certain topics certain conversations are off are off-limits
And this is where we see where we see the victim persecutor dynamics activates it because women
become the become the victims, and we make ourselves the victims and we
Persecute men but in that aggression in that rage and when we are the victims. We are in perfect control
we become the persecutors because we say
It's all about blame
Men did this and men need to take responsibility
But in that we become the persecutors, and it's also very difficult as well because one imagines that that
Combative attitude is something that has served her well in the past and it's something that
She's maybe felt forced into because of the nature of the society that she's operating in so it's a kind of catch-22 situation
for the many successful women because they feel that they're pushed to be more masculine and
Then when they're more masculine they get judged for being more masculine
It's it's very sad and and and I can see that dynamics being played out absolutely
But I think the only thing we can do is to take responsibility okay?
I'm doing that do I really want to compromise my femininity do I want to compromise my integrity?
Do I want to compromise my gender and?
Play that or is there another way that I can be powerful without being aggressive without playing a power game
But resting in my natural power
resting in my natural dignity
Resting in that deep rootedness that we both have in our genders that
When we are peace with it and when we acknowledge it in ourselves
It's there as a natural thing and and this is the thing I don't want to make this personal about Kathy Newman
Because it's it's in that potential is in every woman, but it's because we are persecuting our own femininity
What's being played out that we're doing it to ourselves because we don't trust that it's good enough to be a woman
We don't trust that we can have conversations that come from a felt embodied perspective. We don't trust that we're connected to truth
because these these
Masculine ways have been have been very strong and women have been denying their own power
In my work over many years of working with this I find that very few women
Grew up in households which really?
Loved admired respected honored
cherished the feminine and
So there is intrinsically for so many women who've grown up in the I don't know the last hundred years that say
A kind of devaluation of the feminine that gets taken on and of course and as well as abuse
aggression all sorts of things so very
Many women out of an intelligent strategy to survive
Develop their masculine side as a defense against that devaluation for the feminine and over time they become very
Identified with that masculine side the male equivalent is animal possession
in anima possession it's the loss of relaxed confidence in the
Groundedness in the masculine and is overwhelmed by his own inner feminine side
a passive withdrawn
moody
bitchy
Complaining
not showing up kind of guy, which I think is really so much what feminists are angry about I
Don't see them as really angry about the masculine per se but it the way that
Males behave, and you know I have got a lot of compassion for that
Because for myself and most men that I know we weren't really shown how to be as men
We didn't really get initiated into it and so and then this strong thing comes from feminism
And we feel like it's it's maleness. That's wrong, and it's not it's not maleness. That's wrong. I don't even think feminism
feminists hate
The masculine it's like what the call is really for men is to develop their masculine
strength
presence courage
be relaxed and confident be protective and be strong and
Under this kind of assault which has come from a lot of animus possessed women a lot of men have retreated
And I think gone into feeling guilty about being men and have become passive
Indecisive and in that way a kind of feminized man has emerged
Those who followed Peterson's thought
recognize his analysis goes all the way down to the bedrock to the
Archetypal structures of consciousness itself the thing that I really see happening and you can tell me what you think about this in annoyance book
Consciousness which is masculine symbolically masculine for a variety of reasons is is viewed as rising up?
against the countervailing force of tragedy from an underlying
Feminine symbolically feminine unconsciousness right and it's something that can always be pulled back into that unconsciousness
That would be the microcosm of that would be the Freudian eatable mother
Familial dynamic where the mother is so over
Protective and all-encompassing that she interferes with the development of the competence not only of her sons
But also of her daughter of her children in general, and it seems to me that that's the dynamic
That's being played out in our
Society right now is that there's this and it's it's related in some way that I don't understand to this to this
Insistence that all forms of masculine Authority are nothing, but tyrannical power so the symbolic representation is
tyrannical father with no appreciation for the benevolent father and
benevolent mother with no appreciation whatsoever for the tyrannical mother right and that's that and
Because I thought of ideologies as fragmentary mythologies
That's where they get their
archetypal and psychological power right and so in a balanced representation you have the terrible mother and the Great Mother as
Anointment laid out so nicely and you have the terrible father and the great father
So that's the fact that culture mangles you have to death well
It's also promoting you and developing you you have to see that as balanced, and then you have the heroic and adversarial individual
But in the postmodern world and this seems to be something that's increasingly
Seeping out into the culture at large you have nothing but the tyrannical father nothing
But the destructive force of masculine consciousness and nothing, but the benevolent
Benevolent great mother and it's a it's an appalling ideology, and it seems to me that it's sucking the vitality
Which is exactly what you would expect symbolically, it's sucking the vitality of our culture you see that with the increasing
demolition of of young men
And not only young men in terms of their academic performance
Which like they're falling way behind in elementary school way behind in junior high and bailing out of the universities like mad and so
And I well the public school education it's become completely permeated by this kind of my anti male propaganda
I mean, and I need to mean public schools are just a form of imprisonment. You know right now
They're particularly destructive to young men who have a lot of physical energy
You know you know I identify as transgender gay mic myself way
But I do not I do not require the entire world
To alter itself okay to fit my particular the self-image I do believe in
The power of hormones I believe that men exist and women exist and they are biologically different. I think that I think there is
no cure for
the culture eles right now except if men start standing opera in demanding that they be
Respected as men here's the problem
You know this is something my wife is pointed out to she said well men are gonna have to stand up for themselves
But here's the problem. I know how to stand up to a man who's
Who's?
unfairly
Trespassing against me and the reason I know that is because the parameters for my resistance are quite well-defined
Which is we talk? We argue? We push and then it becomes physical?
Right like if we move beyond the boundaries of civil discourse
We know what the next step is ok, that's forbidden in in discourse with women
So I don't know like it seems to me that it isn't men that have to stand up and say enough of this even though
That is what they should do it seems to me that it's saying women
Who have to stand up against their crazy sisters and say look enough of that enough man-hating enough?
Pathology enough bringing disgrace on us as a gender but the problem there
And then I'll stop my little tirade is that most of the women. I know who are saying are busy doing same things, right?
They're off they have their career. They have their family
They're quite occupied
And they don't seem to have the time or maybe even the interest to go after their their crazy harpy sisters
And so I don't see any regulating force for that that terrible femininity, and it seems to me to be
Invading the culture and undermining the the masculine power of the culture in a way, that's I think fatal
I really do believe that I too I too believe these are symptomatic of the decline of Western culture
And we and it will just go down flat. I don't think people realize that you know
Masculinity still exists okay in the world as a code among jihadists, okay?
And when you have passionate masculinity, okay?
Circling the borders like the Huns and the Vandals during the Roman Empire that that's what I see I see this culture rotting from within
okay, and
disemboweling itself literally
We have this
Bit of combat let's say
It produced a scandal
Now we actually talked about it
Yeah
No tricks just a conversation
And then everybody wins right because I can admit whatever mistakes
I made she can admit whatever mistakes
She made we can drop the persona
So you're saying the polarization that we're seeing right now that we are speaking out. It's not
In the future we will act out that polarization well if we don't if we keep
Accelerating it especially if we keep accelerating with lies. Yeah, you know and and this this whole
channel for
Rat's nest is like 90% lies. Maybe more and
You know a lot of its ideologically motivated lies, but it doesn't matter it still lies like Kathy as I said
There was virtually nothing she said in that interview that was actually
Coming from her like like a deep part of her the soul of her or so it was all persona
It was all persona and and and all
use of words in a in a
Expedient manner as tools to obtain I think probably
probably
status dominant status and reputation
I mean what advice would you give to people to?
To navigate this new world the first is for your mind. Be aware of the fact that the habits of the blue church and
And how it works
Don't work anymore recognize that your way of making sense in the world that used to work
Don't work, and you really really need to set yourself free to begin learning the new
child's mind beginner's mind
second
this by nature must in fact be exploratory so
Swim, do not make sense prematurely in spite of the fact that the world feels dangerous inside of that you may want to
protect yourself in this dangerous world
Doing so too quickly did not allow the natural exploratory
Approach to do what it needs to do
really, just listen and
Learn go all the way dad back down to human base
Turn inward
Learn how fear shows up in you
Learn how not to allow fear to drive the choices that you make
Learn how to listen to the whole way that all of you perceives. What's going on become more integrated with your own body
Go out into nature
Spend a lot of time not connected to the chaos
That's going on and a lot of time
Reconnecting yourself with your fundamental capacity to perceive reality in all the different modalities these human beings have the capacity to do
Then relearn how to use other human beings as allies in figuring out how to make sense of the world I
mean that really relearn like we have been abused and
constrained by
institutional frameworks that remove us from our own native capabilities
So relearn that understand how to be a friend and an ally how to have a conversation with somebody where you're really listening closely
To get a sense of what their perspective brings to you where you're not obligated to agree with them
We are not obligated to move out of what you feel is right to form some new
Consensus reality, but where you're actually authentically?
Recognizing that their perspective has some capacity to bring richness to your perspective
This by the way is almost exclusively possible in person and what we're doing right now is an OK version of it
But we need to be very mindful the fact that
Linear broadcast is bad and even interactive
Bandwidth like this. It's not good enough. You know you've got to learn from raw
Physical and get yourself into places where your consensus reality, and your habits are willfully destroyed
Human to human conversations and and get as far away from ideology as you can
Your job is not to know what the fuck is going on
Your job is to be absolutely certain that you have no idea what the fuck is going on and learn how to feel from raw
chaos from raw uncertainty
up
Then and only then are you finally able to begin the journey of
Beginning to form a collective intelligence in this new environment
That's my advice
this is why we've created rebel wisdom to host these conversations to try and unpack what's going on and
through our workshops and events
Start to build this collective intelligence for the future
To see longer versions of the interviews featured in this film and our full-length documentary about Jordan Peterson check the rebel wisdom website
Help us create more films about these subjects by sponsoring us on patreon and come to our events to have these conversations in
person
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