Joe Rogan & Jordan Peterson on Modern Tribalism

What's exciting to me is that I think this is the first time in my life that I've ever seen so much communication on these subjects. And I think so much recognition about the consequences of tribal toxic tribalism. This tribal thinking that everyone seems to be engaged in on the right and on the left. I mean in America you need to go no further than going back and forth from CNN to Fox News to say something's wrong here. These are supposed to be news outlets. You have two completely different narratives and that has nothing to do with what we're talking about with gender politics and radical left socialism and Marxism. What you're seeing in universities though is a radical departure from what I always considered universities great for. What I always considered universities great for is separating from your parents, challenging belief systems and being engaged in the works of brilliant people who you can compare all of their findings and their discoveries and sit down and debate them in class. When I was a kid, when I was in high school, I went to a very good high school, Newton South High School in Newton, Massachusetts. One of the things that they did is they put on a debate between a guy from the Moral Majority which was this right wing Christian group that I don't even know if they're around anymore. This was 19, I was 14 so 81. Barney Frank who was that congressman is now one of the first openly gay guys in Congress. You got to watch these two people in this auditorium debate their points. This Moral Majority guy had this right wing Ronald Reagan sort of point of view and Barney Frank who's kind of crazy and he got busted in some male prostitutes scandal but the gay community that's not that big of a deal. Barney Frank took them apart. It was brilliant to watch but it was a real debate. It was fascinating and he got to see a mediocre mind versus a great mind. You got to see this little thing and I was like wow. This is one of the things that's always attracted me about the idea that two people with differing viewpoints can get together in front of a neutral audience and these people can sort of decipher which way these people are thinking and why they're thinking. Yeah, well bad as that is and rife with conflict as that is, the alternative is to separate as you pointed out into two camps that don't talk. The thing is the consequence of not talking is that you fight. That's the end game because the only way you can stop from fighting with other people is by negotiating with them. One of the things that's also interesting and this is partly why Silicon Valley leans to the left is that a fair bit of your political preference is determined by your biological temperament. It's strongly influenced. So if you're a creative type who's kind of disorderly then you're likely to be on the liberal left end of the distribution and if you're a non-creative type who's orderly and especially if you're orderly then you tend to be on the right wing end of things. Why is that? Why do those variations exist? They exist because some of the time your best strategy is to do what other people have done and shut the hell up and just do it. Run the algorithm. The pathway's already laid clear. It works. Stay in the damn rut and move forward. That's the conservative approach. When things are going right it's the right approach. The problem is that sometimes it's not the right approach because something has shifted and so something new has to emerge. Then there's a bunch of people who are adapted to the new and those are the entrepreneurial and creative types and of course they dominate Silicon Valley because it's a very entrepreneurial what would you call it, geography. So they're going to lean to the left but they have to understand, people have to understand that the left and the right need each other. The liberals and the conservatives need each other. Liberals start companies. Conservatives run them. The problem with the conservatives is they can only run a company in one direction because they're conservative. They don't think outside the box. So if the company is working and the product line is good and everything is stable like hire some conservatives because they'll maximize efficiency and they'll move down that track. But if the track is no longer going in a good direction because something's changed, the environment's changed, well then you've got to bring in the creative people. And so we need each other. And the only way that we can survive the fact that we're different and the fact that we need each other is by continually talking. We have to talk constantly. It's like, well how much of what we're doing should we preserve versus how much of what we're doing should we transform? And the answer is we don't know because the environment keeps changing. So what do we do about that? We talk. Now I was on a CBC, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation interview a couple of days ago and they took me to task. I tweeted out this invitation to the Keck boys to fill out this program that I developed called Future Authoring. And it helps people make a plan for their life. Explain the Keck boys. Yeah, well they're an online group. I know what it is but- They run Keckistan. It's this fictional polity. It's a satire of identity politics, essentially. We're going to be our ethnicity. Highly demonized satire. Highly demonized satire, right. And with good reason, with some individual examples of racism and Nazism and- Yeah, there's lots of misbehaving. It's like graffiti. It's like online graffiti, something like that. And the Keck boys are the ones who are often using the peppy memes, for example. The left regards peppy as a hate symbol. Peppy the Frog. Feels good frog. That's right. That's right. That's kind of a reprehensible frog. And so I tweeted out to them, I said, Keck boys, seek your 4chan, rescue yourself from the underworld, use code PEPPY for future authoring. So it's free for one week. So they had to figure out what it meant. And then I showed this picture of Michigan J Frog, which is the frog from old Warner Brothers cartoon, Dancing Frog, that wouldn't perform when anyone was watching it. So CBC hauled that out and said, well, look, aren't you appealing to the radical right? And I said, well, no, what I'm doing? I said, look, these people are attracted by the radical right, although they're satirists and juvenile satirists and graffiti types. And they're playing a weird satirical fun. They're having fun, being naughty. That's exactly what they're doing. They're provoking. And my sense was, well, why don't you develop yourself as an individual and get the hell out of the ideological trap? So here's my program, which helps you write about your future. And that'll help you decide who you are as an individual, because that's the way out of the ideological trap. It's like, and that's the way, obviously, what's the way out of tribalism? First, the way out of tribalism is not to never join a tribe. You actually have to join a tribe as you mature, right? Because what happens is, first of all, you're an infant. Then you have your parents to make a relationship with. But then when you move from your parents, you have your tribe. You have your group. Maybe it's the music you listen to. It's the gang you hang around with, whatever. You have to be socialized into the tribe. You have to. Because otherwise, you stay a dependent infant. Okay, but now you're socialized into the tribe. Well, is that where it ends? It's like, no. The next thing to do is differentiate yourself from the tribe, while still knowing how to behave within the tribe. Well, that's the call to individualism. And that's, I think, what the West got right. We figured that out. You're more than you're... You have to be a member of a group, because otherwise, you're not socialized. You're not good for anyone. You have to be able to play on a team, man. You have to have team loyalty. Okay, but that isn't where you should stop. You should take the next step and become a fully developed individual. And see, the problem with being just a group member is that the group... It's the problem with conservatism. The group is a fixed entity. It has its rules and its regulations. And if you're a member, that's all you are. But the group can go badly wrong. So the group needs individuals to keep the group alive and revivify it. So you have to become an individual, so you can revivify the group. That's the call in the West, to heroism, essentially, to noble way of living, is to develop yourself past your group identity, so that you can reconfigure the game when that becomes necessary. And I think that there's a very influential line of developmental psychology, pioneered by Jean Piaget, that laid that out as a developmental... What would progression? First you're a child, then you're a member of a group, then you're an individual. It's like, get to the individual level. That's the solution. It's a solution to tribalism. But you have to accept responsibility to do that. And this is what your future authoring program is basically all about. I mean, it's a wonderful program. And along with this book, Rules and Guidelines for Life, I think it's one of the things that a lot of young people are lacking is a structure to how to go about establishing who they are in the world. Yeah. Well, that's... You know, what's really cool, and it's been really quite remarkable, I would say, is that what I've noticed when I've been speaking publicly, say, over the last year and a half, because there's a hole in our culture where there should be a discussion about maturity, truth and responsibility. No one's talking about that. Yes. Okay. And when I start talking about that, I'll say, look, like, what should you do with your life? Well, take care of yourself, but take care of yourself in a way that also means that simultaneously you're taking care of your family, and that... and also means that simultaneously you're taking care of the broader community. So that's kind of your goal. So orient yourself towards that. Personal success, but in a way that your success breeds success. Because if you're going to establish an aim, why not establish, like, a really good aim? That's a good one. It's good for you. It's good for everyone else. Okay. That'll give your life some meaning. Now, adopt, make a plan, generate a vision. That's what the Future Authoring Program helps people with. Develop a vision of what your life could be like if it was worth living despite all its suffering. It's like, what would you need so that you would be happy to be alive? You'd find your life meaningful so you don't get all bitter and resentful and cruel and hostile and ideologically addled and, like, murderous and genocidal. It's like, none of that. You think real hard. How would you have to configure your life so that despite its suffering and the malevolence that's part of it, that you would regard it as worthwhile? So that's up to you to develop a vision. Then put a plan into practice. And so when I talk to people about this, and most of my audiences are young men, it's probably about 65, 35. More and more women are showing up, but that's about what it is right now. The halls are dead silent. You could hear a pin drop. Because nobody's said so clearly for, like, 50 years that almost all the meaning that you will need to get you through the hard times of your life is going to be a consequence of adopting responsibility. Not of rights and impulsive action. Impulsive freedom. Like, fine, rights, yeah, got it. Freedom, no problem. Even freedom to do impulsive things. Fine. But that isn't where you're going to find the meaning that keeps you sustained through the storms of life. That's going to be, you take care of yourself, you take care of your intimate partner, you take care of your damn family, you don't run off, you take care of your community, you rescue the wisdom from the past, you stand up straight and you be courageous despite the fact that life is tragic and tainted by malevolence. It's like, that's the ancient wisdom. That's what that is.