Jordan Peterson on Unearned Moral Superiority (from Joe Rogan Experience #877)

Hello freak bitches. Why do these patterns repeat themselves? What is it about human beings? Well we like things simple. We like things simple. So often like simple explanation is a good explanation unless it's too simple but distinguishing between simple and too simple is no easy matter. We like we like to know who's our friend and who's our enemy and we like the feeling of unearned moral superiority. Unearned moral superiority. That's the why earn it man. Especially when there's no such thing as earning anyways. So and then I mean there's deeper and darker things that are underneath that. It's like the human proclivity to pull down those who have more than you. It's like these kids on the campuses who are claiming identity with the oppressed. You know it's somewhere like Yale. It's like how in the world you can speak of oppression if you happen to be at Yale is beyond me. I mean first of all you're North American which puts you in the top 1% and then of North Americans you're in the top 1% so you're in the top 1% of 1% but yet you you want that you want to have all the power that goes along with that and you want to have the moral superiority that comes from being a representative of the oppressed. So that's exactly what you want. You want all the power and you want all the victimization at the same time. Well Yale is a great example because Yale was one of what happened with the Halloween costume debacle at Yale was one of the first videos that was released that made people horrified where they couldn't believe how students were communicating with professors. Yeah well the student who screamed up a storm about about that the male professor who was the husband of the woman who wrote the pro Halloween costume letter it turned out she was on the bloody hiring committee that hired him. One of the things she screamed was who hired you? It was like well it turned out it was you because you were on the committee just a few years before. I know and they took it like yeah that was absolutely falling. Explain that to people that don't know what the hell we're talking about. Well. Explain this debacle because it really was about questionable Halloween costumes. Well it was about questioning Halloween costumes. Halloween costumes are part of the whole point of Halloween is to have questionable costumes right you play with death for example and decay and and horror and and it's it's a time when the norms with regards to the expression of things that are outside of our normal behavior are suspended so that everybody can can have a little celebration as it turns out. Well you know campuses have got all upset about things like cultural appropriation at Queen's University in Canada just the other week they were going after students who were dressing up as Viet Cong for example or Mexicans it's like I just don't see what the hell's racist about dressing up like a Mexican. Mexicans have a traditional traditional clothing there's nothing wrong with Mexicans so why is it wrong to dress up like them? If you want to be poncho via for Halloween what's wrong with that? Well you can you can regard that as an homage just as much as a denigration why is that such a problem? But anyways it doesn't matter because nothing's too trivial to be a problem to a social justice warrior and because they don't like to deal with real problems and Yale went after Halloween costume. So this woman wrote a letter saying maybe we should just relax about this stuff and you know not don't put restrictions on what people wear for Halloween but let people decide what is and isn't offensive. Yes and well and many Halloween costumes are offensive that's the point. But her letter wasn't really reasonable. Yeah it was perfectly reasonable it was like it was like an adult wrote it. Yes. Yeah and and you know all hell broke loose. All hell broke loose. And she ended up she ended up quitting. And I think he did. No I don't think I don't think he left I don't think he left but she did. Seeing him bow down to this woman screaming at him swearing in his face was so disturbing it was so humiliating. I felt so humiliated for him because she was screaming this is our home what the fuck are you doing you're not making a safe. And it's not a bloody home. The university is not a home. Right. It's not a safe space. It's not a secure space. None of that. And if that winning a university isn't a home that's not what it is. It's a place to be confronted by I would say often horrible ideas. You want to learn about history you think that's gonna be safe. Do you know what human history is like? It's an endless bloodbath with you know with with a certain amount of hopeful progress underlying it. It's a it's a it's a horror show and great literature is like that and and and biology is terrifying and physics is terrifying and you want to be safe. It's stay home stay home with your mom stay home with your dad don't come to university if you want to be safe. Don't even go outside. No why don't you if you if you're going if the university is going to make you safe then it ceased to be a university. So one of the things I try to do in my class I have this class called maps of meaning which concentrates on atrocity basically on Soviet atrocity and and Nazi atrocity mostly and what I try to do in the class is to teach my students that had they been in Nazi Germany in the 1930s they would have been Nazis and had they been offered the opportunity to be an Auschwitz Auschwitz camp guard then maybe they would have leapt at it and maybe they would have been in the sadistic in the more sadistic proportion of the Auschwitz camp guard population. You think that makes you feel safe? It doesn't make you feel safe to know that Nazis were humans and you happen to be one of them. So I think that educators that tell students that they're offering them a safe space are doing them a profound disservice and you don't I'm a clinical psychologist and here's one of the things you do to make people less afraid. You don't make the world safer. What you do is you people tell you what they're afraid of and then you break it into little bits so that they can go confront them. You know so maybe they're afraid of going to a party and you break that down you say well do you know how to introduce yourself and they say well I don't I don't really even know how to shake someone's hand and so then you practice having them shake their hand and introduce themselves because maybe they weren't taught by that by their half-witted parents when they were when they were young because they were ignored and so then you say well maybe you can go to a party for half an hour and all you have to do is introduce yourself to two people and we'll call that success and you build up their confidence and their confidence one step at a time and what happens the the clinical literature indicates quite clearly is you don't make people less anxious by doing that. You make them braver. It's not the same thing. You don't make the world and its horrors smaller. You make the person and their their capacity to deal with horror larger. You encourage them. You strengthen them. That's what you do at a university. You arm people with arguments. You hone their intellect. You help them learn to write so they can marshal their arguments. You help them learn how to engage in intellectual combat because that's better than engaging in real combat. You make them you make them hard and strong. You don't maul e-coddle them and make them safe unless you're their enemy. Unless you're trying to devour their spirit and that's what we have in the universities. We have we have the reign of the Oedipal mother who's answered everything is oh just come a little closer dear and I'll protect you from the world. It's just like Hansel and Gretel's the you know the witch in the Hansel and Gretel story. Well my house is made of gingerbread just come in here and everything will be fine while she feeds you candy to fatten you up so she can eat you. That's the archetype of a modern university.