On April 20, I attended a talk given at Stanford University by Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson. It started with a one-hour taping of an interview of Peterson by master interviewer Peter Robinson. Then it went to Q&A.
The interview, part of the series “Uncommon Knowledge,” is here.
In a later post, I want to challenge something he said in Q&A that I had thought was in the interview but wasn’t.
Here are some highlights.
On how we got to wokeness so quickly.
14:15: Two streams of thought. First the post-modern stream, which he agrees with, is one part of it.
17:30: This is the part of the post-modern stream he agrees with: “We see the world through a narrative framework.”
Perhaps I missed it, but he didn’t mention the second stream that led to wokeness. Peterson is not that linear and I found it more frustrating than a lot of the audience seemed to. But seeing the video over, I had a very different reaction: I found him charming and lovable. I wanted to hug him numerous times.
19:20: How businesses get diverted by wokesters.
20:55: The weaponization of guilt.
23:00: Science depends on the concept of the divine.
28:20: No difference between free speech and free thought.
41:30: Justin Trudeau is a narcissist. His challenge to Trudeau: What if you don’t know what you’re doing?
42:40: Peterson, as a Canadian, observing U.S. culture and its ability to revive from dark places. You’ve got to watch this. He said it beautifully. I got goose bumps. I whispered to my friend Charley that Peterson had put his finger on why I love my adopted country so much.
43:40: Ray Dalio on China. Yuck!
45:00: Peter Robinson quotes Dostoevsky on why people fear freedom and challenges Peterson to answer it.
45:50: Confronting these challenges is difficult but necessary.
46:50: You need allies, which is what universities are supposed to be giving you.
47:20: Free trade as an eternal verity.
53:45: Peterson has spent time trying to understand what motivated a guard at Auschwitz. He thinks that you can get ordinary people to do those things and even enjoy them. Part of what drives them is envy.
55:00: “Never forget” the holocaust should mean don’t let it happen again.
56:00: Instead of activism put your own house in order.
59:10: In response to Peter’s request for a redemptive sentence to tell 18 and 19 year olds coming into college, Peterson says “Don’t be thinking that your ambition is corrupt.”
1:00:30: “You son of a bitch.” You have to watch this to get it.
1:01:40: In a very emotional ending in which Peterson is on the edge of tears, in talking about what universities are doing with their anti-human messages to young people, he says, “You have no idea how many people that’s killing.”
READER COMMENTS
Kenneth A. Regas
May 5 2022 at 1:40am
Thank you for the video. Dr. Peterson is always inspiring. Where is the Q&A?
Ken
David Henderson
May 5 2022 at 2:08pm
You’re welcome. Q&A was not recorded.
Infovores
May 21 2022 at 4:13pm
I jotted down a Q&A transcript from a different lecture that may be of interest. Also inspiring, and I particularly liked the way he challenged assumptions implicit in the question.
https://infovores.substack.com/p/partial-q-and-a-transcript-from-jordan?s=w
Henri Hein
May 5 2022 at 12:30pm
The ending was moving.
I am confused about the claim that the Judaeo-Christian tradition is necessary for science. I have heard Charles Murray claim something similar. History doesn’t really bear it out. Take math. Up until the Renaissance, the Judaeo-Christians got almost all of it from elsewhere.
David Henderson
May 5 2022 at 2:09pm
Yes, the ending was moving.
I found the claim confusing and unconvincing also.
Infovores
May 21 2022 at 4:19pm
I would be curious to hear your take on how Peterson has managed his profile as a public intellectual recently. In live events like this he’s still quite good, but he often seems to carry himself in a counterproductive fashion on Twitter. Maybe it’s just really difficult to avoid getting sucked into it all with such a massive following on that often toxic platform, but it does give a lot of ammunition to people inclined to dismiss him entirely and/or discredit the best of what he stands for.
Thomas Strenge
May 6 2022 at 3:36pm
The second stream is Marxism, or the idea of power as a guiding organizing principle. I think Peterson and Robinson miss the importance of law schools. Wokism penetrated English Lit. Those undergrads then went to law school. Wokism then took over law schools, and law schools train our political class.
Thomas Strenge
May 6 2022 at 3:50pm
I think Peterson’s comments on the importance of judeo-christian thought on science can be misleading. I think it was Hayek who pointed out that good religions help their followers succeed (I don’t remember if this was in Fatal Conceit or Constitution of Liberty). So, whether by accident or divine intervention, the morality underlying Judeo-Christianity creates the values framework within which the scientific method succeeds and creates progress. This ties back to the narrative framework.
Mactoul
May 9 2022 at 3:15am
The full argument that there was something in the medieval Europe that fostered science and why it was the only culture where science was not stillborn is made in Stanley Jaki’s Savior of Science.
Thomas Strenge
May 6 2022 at 4:19pm
Peterson’s answer to “Do you believe in God” reminds me of Marcus Aurelius and his meditations.
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