my name is Joel in this episode of unplugged I talked to Jordan Peterson. Jordan is a professor at the University of Toronto in the last few years he became one of the most renowned psychologists in the world his book twelve rules for life was one of the best sold books of 2018 with 2 million copies sold earlier this year I didn’t event with Jordan during the break we had time to talk about what it is to be human his writing process and why his life feels as an ongoing miracle right away we delve into a conversation about

the attributes of the mythological hero and the classic attributes of the mythological hero apart from courage are the willingness to speak the truth and the willingness to pay attention to things that other people don’t want to pay attention to and that’s a really old conceptualization you can trace it all the way back to the message you can trace it all the way back to the oldest written stories that we have because the creator god Marduk for example in the Mesopotamian story had eyes all the way

around his head and could speak magic words and that’s because the Mesopotamians figured out that the eternal Savior the eternal Redeemer was the person who paid attention and spoke the truth and that’s who they identified with their Emperor these are ancient ancient ideas and they’re true that’s the thing that’s so interesting and I think that because they’re true we can emerge from this postmodernist swamp where everything is a matter of opinion it’s like no there are biological truths that are allied

with metaphysical truths and they’re true so that’s a good thing to know it’s a good thing to realize and like I’ve tried you I’m a very skeptical person like if an idea manifests itself to me I first developed the idea as much as I can and then I attack it with absolutely everything I have at my disposal to see if I can move it and if I can’t move it then I think ok there’s a brick I can make a wall with that so let’s find another brick and so like with maps of meaning I think I probably wrote every sentence in that

book 50 times and what I mean by that is when I was writing the book I would break the paragraphs and I would take the paragraphs and put them in a separate document and I would separate out all the sentences and then I would rewrite the sentence to see if I could make a better version of it and if I could I’d put that back in there and then I did that I would say probably 50 times and and while I was doing that the idea was can I find something wrong with this idea because if I can I’m not gonna

write it down I’m not gonna publish it I gonna only put ideas in there that I cannot break no matter how hard I hit them and I’d learned at that point from Nietzsche because Nietzsche said that he philosophized with a hammer and he meant that I thought okay well that’s fine but I’m going to try to forge something that I cannot break and so that was the genesis of maps of meaning and like I’ve thought about the claims that I made in that book now well I’ve been thinking about them for 30 30 1985 33 years I

guess non-stop and criticizing them like mad and subjecting them to public evaluation and talking about them and like I can’t I can’t pry underneath them I think they’re correct is the wrong way of thinking about it but I’ve got the pattern right and they think the thing that’s interesting about that too is that when I talk to people about those sorts of things they see the pattern right away and it’s not surprising because it’s everywhere you know like like I take apart fairly frequently popular culture

productions like Pinocchio or The Lion King or Harry Potter it’s like the ideas are there they’re everywhere it’s the same idea everywhere confront the unknown courageously speak truth right develop your character have enough integrity so that you can break the rules when it’s necessary in the service of a higher good find the gold that the dragon hides and distributed in the community it’s like everyone knows that’s right it’s to to know that is to be human because that’s the human story now it

might not be a story that works you know it’s not ever there are all sorts of other animals that don’t go boldly out into the unknown and forage and bring back new information most animals don’t do that we’re the only one that does really in any in any real sense and maybe we’re an evolutionary dead end but I don’t think so I think that if we if we chose to abide by our deepest nature that we could get through anything anything we’re tough man and we’re tougher than we think and we’re worse than we think too by a large margin and

you need to learn that about yourself before you have any respect for yourself you know you have to learn that you’re well that’s the encounter with the shadow you’re the are switz guard right who’s enjoying it that’s you think oh no that’s not me it’s like then you’re too weak to do it you think well that’s not weakness that’s goodness it’s like no it’s not that’s just naivety there’s just nothing to you it’s post monster that’s good not pre monster about your new book was the creative process of writing it’s very different

from episode meaning it was I wouldn’t say it was very different it was shorter it was probably less demanding I mean it was rewriting maps of meaning was really hard it took me right to the edge of my physiological tolerance I had to stop partly it discipline me I mean I had to stop doing all sorts of things I was doing in order to write I had to quit smoking I had to quit drinking I had to start eating properly I had to keep my room clean I had to go to the gym and work out I had to make sure that I kept

my domestic duties in order and was doing well in my career like I had to put myself completely straight so that I could tolerate the strain of writing the book because I was writing it for I wrote for three hours a day for about 15 years and I was thinking about it all the time other than that and and also doing a tremendous amount of reading and all of that and so I’d learned from young at that point because he talked a fair bit about the alchemical transformation which I learned a lot about although

it’s very difficult to explain but one of the things he said was if you were dealing with the Prima Materia which is the it’s it’s what matters outside of what you understand because young kind of thought of the world as being made of what matters outside of what you understand it’s something like potential and which is a nice way of thinking about it if you’re going to deal with unvarnished potential then you better be in shape because it’ll tear you apart if you’re not and so well so lots of times

it was I can either because I could tell – when I was writing lots of times especially as the editing process continued if I wasn’t sharp then when I edited I made it worse rather than better and so that would be hung over well in any state of physiological disarray so I had a lot of that I would say when I was reading this book but not not as much it was and I was looser about it like there’s a lot of humor in twelve rules for life there is no humor in maps of meaning wouldn’t say or if there is it’s there

is no humor in maps of meaning it’s a dead serious and that’s too serious right things should be leavened with some humor but is there more you more in your life nowadays that you were able to write another kind of book there’s always been a lot of humor in my life I would say although I’d be a very serious person i mean i i’m also i’ve had my friends when i was a kid i wrote about this a bit and twelve rules for life i had three friends in particular when i was in high school and then good ways

through my university career who were like they were competitive comedians they were unbelievably funny and most of my friends were like that and we used to sit around and just like amuse ourselves all the time right then the whole point of the conversation was to say the funniest thing possible and that was often insulting although you know playfully so-and-so and i love that i miss it and i don’t have friends who do that they’re they’re not i think because they’re not working class i think is why

but i’m not sure but I’ve been hanging around with comedians like Matt again in the last year which is a weird thing like most of the people that I’ve made contact with on YouTube they’re all comedians you know Rogen’s a stand-up comedian Dave Reubens a stand-up comedian Stephen Crowder’s a stand-up comedian Duncan Trussell Bryan Callen they’re all stand-up comedians and well comedians tell the truth that’s what makes them funny exactly yes you know say the things that no one else dares to say right there the gestures in the

king’s court and that’s why you like hanging around for them mmm-hmm well I like to laugh too and to play you know like I’m actually a very playful person alone you wouldn’t know it over the last year and a half because it’s been intense but but that’s not good like if you get so intense that you’re no longer playing then that’s a bad thing because that means that that’s a bad thing healthy animals play right right there’s a circuit for play and it gets suppressed if you’re stressed yeah so you don’t that means things are out of

balance you have to be able to play even with terrible things so you’d like to play more in the next few years well I’m playing a lot at the moment but yes that’s the plan you know like hopefully I can play a good game I better be able to and when did you win I’m winning now and my life is like I have a ridiculous life I have way more opportunities than I can possibly make use of wherever I go people come up and tell me how happy they are because they’ve watched my videos because their life has changed in positive ways and

like imagine you get to go wherever you want and all that happens is people come up and tell you how happy they are that they’d be listening to you Jesus it’s like it’s hard to imagine how anything could possibly be better than that so grateful for that that you can oh it’s overwhelming since absolutely I just can’t like an ongoing miracle I can’t believe it it’s crazy you know like I’m by no means adjusted to it I don’t think I ever will be [Music]