444. The Collective Unconscious, Christ, and the Covenant | Russell Brand

This episode delves into the deep psychological and philosophical concepts of the collective unconscious, the embodiment of Christ, and their implications in shaping societal values and personal maturity.

1. The collective unconscious can be likened to a web of statistical associations between ideas, reflecting cultural beliefs.
2. Christ's teachings challenge individuals to transcend their immediate desires for a higher form of maturity and societal stability.
3. Sacrifice is essential for community building and personal development, as it requires the foresight to prioritize long-term benefits over immediate gratifications.
4. Language and symbols play pivotal roles in shaping the collective consciousness, influencing how societies perceive and interact with the world.
5. The episode underscores the importance of navigating the balance between power and authority to foster a healthy, productive society.

1. Introduction to Themes

Peterson introduces the topics of collective unconscious and Christ's impact on cultural narratives. Key discussion points include the role of sacrifice in society and the dangers of power. Jordan B. Peterson: "We're diving deep into the collective unconscious and Christ's enduring impact on our cultural narratives."

2. Defining the Collective Unconscious

The hosts discuss how language models help in understanding the collective unconscious by mapping the statistical relationships between ideas. Russell Brand: "Exploring the collective unconscious opens new insights into our cultural psyche."

3. Christ and Cultural Influence

The conversation explores how Christ's teachings challenge modern societal norms and personal identities, advocating for a journey towards greater societal harmony and personal maturity. Jordan B. Peterson: "Christ's legacy is a call to adventure and sacrifice for greater communal and personal growth."

4. The Power of Language and Symbols

This section delves into how language shapes perceptions of authority and governance, emphasizing the power of narrative in societal structures. Russell Brand: "Language is not just communication; it's the blueprint of our collective consciousness."

5. Conclusion and Reflections

The episode wraps up with reflections on how individual transformation through understanding these concepts can lead to societal improvements. Jordan B. Peterson: "Our discussion today reflects a journey towards understanding deep psychological truths and their implications for society."

1. Reflect on personal beliefs and how they are shaped by cultural narratives.
2. Consider the role of sacrifice in personal and professional life.
3. Engage with diverse perspectives to better understand the collective unconscious.
4. Use language thoughtfully to influence and reflect cultural values positively.
5. Challenge conventional power dynamics in personal and societal interactions.

Dr. Jordan B. Peterson sits down with actor and podcaster Russell Brand. They discuss the language of symbols, the collective unconscious, the evolution of theology, and why so many public intellectuals are coming back to Christ.
Russell Brand is an English comedian, actor, podcaster, and commentator. He first established himself as a stand up comedian and radio host before becoming a film actor. He presented for MTV UK and made appearances across media and TV throughout the 2000’s. In 2008, he leapt from British to U.S. film acting, appearing in the hit film “Forgetting Sarah Marshall,” followed by numerous international successes. In 2013, Brand guest-edited an edition of the weekly publication the New Statesman, launching his interest and later career as a political activist and commentator. His current podcast, Stay Free, sees Brand calling out major news, governments, and corporations for affronts to free speech, expression, spirituality, and thought.

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Jordan Peterson
Hey everybody, I've got a chance today to continue my ongoing conversation with Russell Brand. I want to talk to him today about the collective unconscious and about what it is, because I think we now understand what it is. Im talking to him about sacrifice as the basis of community, about the distinction between authority and power and logos and power, about the danger of the use of power, about the necessity of the story, about how all thats played out in his own life, about the proclivity of the modern self to identify itself with its whims and desires and passions, and the inevitability that that identification turns into something that closely approximates worship. The idea that something should supplant has to supplant that for maturation to take place and for society itself to stabilize and remain productive and abundant. We talk about the call to adventure as a variant of the establishment of relationship with God.

We talk about the burden that Christ left on his followers in the aftermath of his death, all of that. So if that's what, what would you say winds your clock? Well, this is the discussion for you. So good to see you, Russell. Thanks for agreeing to talk to me today.

Russell Brand
It is a great joy to be in your company. Thank you for having me. So I want to run some ideas by you, and I want you to tell me how they echo for you personally and also philosophically. So I think I figured out what the collective unconscious is if I want to run that by you. Well, I've been thinking about these large language models a lot and about what they do, because they can obviously mimic human thought at the verbal level quite, quite spectacularly.

Jordan Peterson
Now, of course, the woke ideologues have done everything they could to muck them up spectacularly right from the beginning, and we're going to pay a big price for that. But there's still something there that's very, very telling about how we think. So let me lay out the idea, and you tell me what you think about it. So what these models do is map the statistical relationship between, you might say, markers. And so imagine that you can tell the difference between a word, like imagine a word, b I n t, which isn't a word, but it's kind of a plausible non word.

And it's a plausible non word because the statistical relationship between the letters mimics the likely statistical relationship between letters in a real english word. So it's much more of a word than qnZt. Okay, so now there are statistical regularities between letters that enable us to identify words, and then there are statistical regularities between words in phrases that make sense. And then there are statistical regularities between phrases, in sentences, and sentences in relationship to one another, and then, say, within paragraphs, and then paragraphs in relationship to one another. And the large language models are trained to map all that.

So what that implies, obviously, is something like any given idea is statistically likely to exist in relationship to a certain set of other ideas, and not distal ideas. And so if I throw an idea at you, I'm also throwing a network of associated co ideas at you at the same time. And then out farther in the penumbra are even more distantly associated ideas, and more creative people are going to be able to leap from the center to the distal ideas. We already know that from studying creativity. So the large language models map the statistical association between sets of ideas.

That's a good way of thinking about it. You can imagine the same thing happens with images. So if you bring to mind the image of a witch, you're much more likely to bring to mind the image of a cauldron and a black cat, for example, maybe a spider, maybe a pumpkin.

The collective unconscious would be, take a given culture, the collective unconscious would be the statistical association between ideas, insofar as that culture has represented the ideas, and that's mappable mathematically. And so a symbol would be something like a set of set of statistically associated concepts, right? Especially image laden concepts, in particular, with regards to symbol. So it's a weight. What the collective unconscious seems to be is the system of weights between concepts through which we see the world.

So. And that makes it a real thing. It makes symbols real, because a symbol is a network of ideas with a core idea at the center. So, yes. How beautiful.

Russell Brand
Firstly, I wonder, some of the areas we might, at least, it seems to me, that I ought address as occurring are the difference between signifiers that are, of course, according to post structuralist, and to much of the work done by, within semiotics, arbitrary and potentially universal, natural, or at least practical symbols. I wonder, for example, about the idea that is it a type of language that a barn full of chicks will respond to the silhouette of a bird when it travels above their heads on a wire in one direction, because when traveling from north to south, the silhouette resembles that of a hawk, but when it travels back along the same trajectory, but in reverse, they do not respond, because it no longer resembles the silhouette of a hawk. A hawk does not travel in that formation. That is a type of language. There is language within nature.

This is the first thought. So you're referring to something. Yeah. Okay. So that adds additional dimension to the model.

Jordan Peterson
So then you might say that there are co occurring patterns of regularity with biological significance that exist in some, exist in some real sense outside the merely conceptual. And those are probably marked in the fundamental analysis by death. Because one of the other things I've been thinking about is that people ask me questions like, do you think God is real? And a question like that always begs the question for me is like, well, what the hell do you mean real? What makes something real?

And you could say tangibility, although that's only one dimension of what makes something real. It's like, I think what makes things real in the final analysis is probably death. And in the example you used of the silhouette, which is a very famous example with regard to birds, the silhouette traveling in one direction, that signifies death reliably. Right? Over a very long span of evolutionary history, any creature that didn't respond to that silhouette was at a much higher probability of being picked off.

So then one of the things you might note, and this is where the postmodernists got things like, dreadfully wrong and where the large language models have drifted into insanity. So imagine that there's a statistical relationship between concepts. That's okay. So then you might say, well, what gives that statistical relationship reality? And the postmodern types would say, well, it's just arbitrary cultural construction, but it's not, because there are patterns of relationships between events that are part and parcel of the world per se.

And some of those need to be accurately mapped by the conceptual system or you die. And so I would say the ideas that ring most true to us, that grip us in this sort of archetypal way, are ideas that bear directly on our survival, whether we recognize it or not. They strike a chord within us. Here's a good example. We'll shift sideways for a minute.

Started to understand why. So I'm on a tour right now. We who wrestle with God, and it's focusing on biblical stories, I'm trying to explain, I'm trying to understand what they mean and then talk about that so other people can understand, insofar as I'm able to. And one of the striking meta themes of the biblical library is the necessity of sacrifice. Right?

And so I've been trying to understand, first of all, what it means to sacrifice. It means to give up something that's desirable for something that's more desirable. It's something like that. It's something higher. And it's higher because it extends over a longer period of time.

And it includes more people. And so like sacrifice is the basis of community? Well, why? Well, it's obvious, Russell, as far as I can tell. It's like if you're in a communal relationship, which is any relationship, obviously, then you're giving something up that's immediate to you to establish and maintain the relationship.

Right. So it's a sacrificial gesture. And once you understand that, once you understand that sacrifice is at the basis of community, the question immediately arises which is, well, what's the most effective form of sacrifice? And this biblical story, old and New Testament together is actually an examination of sacrifice per se. It's an attempt to spiral down to the core of what constitutes, well, you might say the sacrifice thats maximally effective, maximally acceptable to God, but its something like what sacrifices by necessity at the core of community.

I also dont think theres any difference between that and cortical maturation, by the way. I think theyre identical concepts, because as you mature from, you know, hedonistic, power mad two year old, what happens is that you integrate modes of attention and action that facilitate your longer term survival, but also your inclusion within more and more complex webs of social community. That's all sacrificial. Good God. Now there's a lot of Jordan Peterson 101.

Russell Brand
There's a lot of hits running simultaneously here, JP, because we've already touched on the idea of chaos and necessary inevitable emergence of patterns within chaos. And it seems that you are positing to a degree that this chaos is analogous to perhaps the collective unconscious. And some of the patterns that are emerging in AI models, even with the biases evident within them, are an indicator of how these patterns emerge within a container. And I suppose to say a container is to indicate that we are acknowledging an absolute. We've moved from this idea of a collective unconscious and patterns emerging within chaos into sacrifice, which obviously another great Jordan Peterson theme, and as you say, perhaps the overarching theme of the Bible.

My contribution to this incredible amount of information that you are relaying, it has to do with where might one's intention carry you in so much as it seems that in this process of maturation and a personal relationship with sacrifice, how that develops and evolves, it seems to me, is when one starts to acknowledge that there is not, when you use the phrase immediately beneficial, that when we're referring to immediacy, we are talking about both spatial and temporal immediacy. And we might have to consider that when dealing with the sublime, as surely the Bible is, that even these categories are called into question the most basic and taken for granted categories of any temporal creature will have to be challenged. This perhaps helps me to understand how the ultimate sacrifice, as rendered in the New Testament, and most, I suppose, would regard as the defining christian image image of sacrifice, can tackle the complex idea of the pact that is made by the sacrifice of the man God. Because as I explore and attempt to understand Christianity more deeply, the nature of the triumvirate, the Father and the Son, and the Holy Spirit and the nature of this pact is something that I'm mulling over. And I feel that the reason I can't reach resolution is because it's irresoluble, because I ask that when there is absolute dominion and omnipotence, with whom might a pact be made?

And I starting to conclude that it must be a kind of cone that, you know, that all is coming from the same source.

Otherwise, how could it be a pact? Well, I can tell you a story about that, and you tell me what you think about it. Everyone's talking about how chat, GPT and artificial intelligence are going to change the world. Big tech companies are investing heavily in AI for search engines, but they're also the same big tech companies that determine your search results. That's why I use ExpressVPN to add a layer of protection between me and big tech.

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Jordan Peterson
That'S a very good question, because the other, the thing you're pointing to, too, which is definitely the case, that the nature of the relationship between man and God in the biblical stories is covenantal, it's contractual and it's relational, right? So there's an insistence that it's all of those it's like the relationship you have with a being. Even though it says explicitly in the biblical stories, in the background, so to speak, that God is beyond all categories of being and non being. But on top of that is overlaid the insistence that, well, insofar as you're concerned, it's still going to be a relationship with something that's a being, or that's the essence of being itself. Okay, so why relationship?

Well, there's two questions. Why relationship and why contract? Okay, well, let's think about work, first of all, and what it means to work. Obviously, work is a sacrificial enterprise. Because when people say they're working, what they mean is they're giving up what they, or something within them would rather have happen right now if they had their druthers for some longer term investment.

So then the question is, well, investment in what? Contract with what? And you could say, well, it's a contract with the community. If I put in, that's what money is. If I put in time and effort, then I'll get something that I can redeem in the future for something for some specified value.

But then that community that you're contracting with is a community that's predicated on a certain ethic. Because otherwise the contract wouldn't stand. Like if the deal was, well, I can work and I can store something up of value, and then some ravaging mob can just come and take it. Well, that's going to take this spirit out of my work pretty damn quickly. And that was probably the fate of most people who ever stored anything of value prior to the emergence of something like a complex, sacrificial civilization, where envy, for example, was regarded as off the table.

You couldn't just take something that someone had because you wanted it. And so the notion of work itself is the notion of a contract with the future. But the viability of that contract depends on an underlying ethos. Okay, so now let me. Let me give you, tell you a story about what that contract, how that contract might be conceptualized.

Can you tell me what you think about this? So I've been studying the story of Abraham. He starts out as Abram, by the way. Abram. So he has a different name, which is actually relevant as the story progresses.

So Abraham has privilege in modern parlance. He's got rich parents, and everything he needs, everything he needs is right at hand for him. I mean, it begs the question, of course, what is it that you actually need? But what Abram has is kind of like the. He's either got he's got the materialist paradise at hand.

There's nothing that he doesn't have at hand, that whose absence would cause privation. So I would say hes a fully satiated infant. And you can think about that as a notion of utopia. Its the notion of utopia that Dostoevsky criticized, by the way. And what happens to Abraham?

Hes like 75. And the spirit of God comes to him. Thats how the story lays itself out and says, look, buddy, you got to get the hell out of your zone of comfort. You have to leave your father's tent. You have to leave your people.

You have to leave everything that's made you comfortable, and you have to journey out into the world. And Abram agrees to this deal, okay? So as soon as he agrees that he's going to forego his infantile comfort, even though he's like 70 by this time. So he's a bit of a late bloomer. God offers him a deal.

This is the covenant. And so I think it's a description of the consequences of the full manifestation of the spirit of adventure. So imagine that there's a spirit within you that calls you to a more profound level of development. It's the spirit that you would encourage if you had any sense, if you had in your children, if you had children. You're launching them into the world.

You're saying, follow the spirit of adventure. Okay, so God offers Abraham a deal. He says, if you do this and you make the necessary sacrifices, then you'll live a life that will be a blessing to you, that will happen in a manner that will redound to your reputation. So you'll become known, but in a way that in the right way to become known, you'll become influential and admirable in the proper manner as a consequence of undertaking the adventure. You'll do that in a way that will establish something permanent, that's a dynasty with innumerable descendants, because of the pattern that you're establishing.

And you'll do all those, all of that in a way that's maximally beneficial to everyone else. So the case is being made in that story that there's no difference between the direction that the spirit of adventure orients you and the provision of plenty psychologically, socially, and over the longest possible span of time. And that's the covenant. And so the notion would be that, and this is what is portrayed to Abraham, is that theres no better possible way of conducting yourself psychologically or socially, all things considered, while in this story, than following this voice that calls you out into the world. Now, when Abraham does go into the world, all hell breaks loose, right?

He encounters famine and tyranny and war that calls on him to become increasingly more than he is. Every time he has a new field of adventure that reveals itself in front of him, he's called upon to make a sacrifice. He has to change. He has to let go. He has to abandon the parts of him that are no longer appropriate to the new situation.

And he does that intensely, so intensely that he is eventually rewarded with a new name, which is Abraham. Instead of Abraham, he becomes a new person. It's a good way of thinking about it. So, and then, well, obviously, Abraham is called upon to make an ultimate sacrifice, which is the sacrifice of his son Isaac. And that's part of.

Part and parcel of the notion that everything that you have is to be offered up to the thing that's highest, that pulls you forward. It's something, and that's what God is. That's part and parcel of the story. It's a definition of what's to be put in the highest place. That's a contract.

Russell Brand
Okay. I like the mirroring of Abraham's sacrifice in the Old Testament and the sacrifice of Christ as the apex event in the New Testament, that there is an inversion of that principle. I enjoy, too, the idea that the endowment of spirit and the spirit of adventure is the maximal principle of a great father. I enjoy this idea very much as well. And I was wondering, Jordan, whilst you were speaking about the values that that may entail, because a little earlier when you were talking about money being sort of one of the establishing principles for community and the way that values can be maintained and community can be maintained.

And you said it's an expression of ethos and a demonstration of ethos. I feel that one of the contemporary arguments that rages, that you often find yourself significantly and visibly placed on one side of, is the idea that this ethos and these values have become co opted over time. Now, I know you often talk about how sort of that conservatism, vast verses progressivism is a necessary cultural tension. And you know that many of your detractors and opponents would easily and definitively use the phrase word patriarchy to describe some of these relationships and what they have culturally endowed, and what perhaps they would argue, we as men are oblivious to some of the components that are packed into that. What I've come to query is the impossibility of the perhaps the equality that it is stated they crave within that framing that is that something that comes from this.

Forgive the literalism, Genesis would always have to be expressed in this manner. And to create a paradigm that represented a true expression of the divine feminine, it would have to be a different paradigm altogether. This is interesting to me, bearing in mind what you've said earlier about AI being a sort of a conglomerate and aggregation that could be mapped onto our understanding of a collective unconscious. That is, archetypes emerge out of patterns observed over time. But what fascinates me also because I feel it might be practical.

For surely, as a theology evolves from the Old Testament into the New Testament, is there a sense, without yielding, what territory might be inferred to Islam here if we were to continue the trajectory to the insisted final prophet, that what we are offered in acts, for example, in the immediate era after Christ's death and resurrection, is that the kind of divinity endowed by the second covenant, God's reversal, inversion and return on Abraham's sacrifice, might become not ubiquitous, but at least accessible, accessible to many that we will perform greater feats than he, that you, my apostles, will perform greater feats that as he has sent me as his apostle, I send you as my apostles. I read acts again recently in some easy, accessible, almost slang version of it, in fact, a man who shares your surname, Eugene Peterson's book. Book the message. And what I was struck by in this version of acts was the vivacity, the lividness and vitality of the book and how the sense of urgency of Christianity that it, you know, think of the critiques are often slung in your direction. Conservatism, it stayed like, you know, this is a very sort of, admittedly it's 2000 years old, but a very sort of a vibrant call to arms, an urgent sense that, oh, my God, we are living in an atrophying and dying ideology.

We must become alive with Christ. We must change the world. And even the accounts that are given in there are accounts of people jailed and on trial, that even though it is literally biblical, they're not. It's very distinct from the Old Testament, with its locusts and its deserts and its tribes and its manor. Now it sort of feels overtly and literally political.

So what Im saying is that somehow between these two sets of books, and I dont know how arbitrary that taxonomy is, even Jordan, obviously, it must be an area of your expertise. By now, having watched the incredible content youve generated around it, has there been a significant reversal of charge? And what is that charge? How are we endowed with that charge? Now, at the point when you have Richard Dawkins saying, I am culturally christian, are people starting to recognize that there is like that.

This is not just a remnant ideology. This is a living thing that has been discarded. I listened to that Bishop Baron who you had on your show the other day talking about ethereal angels, and I thought, yes, the religion that I am interested in is not a precursor and a parallel to psychotherapy. It is a precursor and parallel to quantum physics, helping me to understand what do you mean when you say self? Who is this self?

What do you mean when you say reality? When you say reality, what are you talking about? And is it possible that reality is something that we conjure here as vessels and conduits of the divine if we have the capacity to somehow in the moment, through practice, disavow the strong gravitational, literally pull of the material and the unconscious ethos with which we are continually inculcated by the insidious, nihilistic, albeit glistening culture that attempts to make us all devotees of this new banality.

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Jordan Peterson
When Moses disappears to go find the to be given the Ten Commandments, he leaves his political arm behind, right, Aaron? So there's two forces that lead the lost across the desert. There's the prophetic and the political. And Aaron is the political. And in that part of the story, the prophetic disappears.

The political falls under the sway of something like the immediacy of hedonism. So the Israelites immediately turn to worship of the golden calf. And it's something like money. So a calf is obviously calf is in the class of livestock and livestock, livestock is bodies at hand to consume. It's a form of wealth, obviously.

And golden calf is the first level representation of that. Abstractly. You might say it's halfway to money, a golden calf, but it's still materialistic. Now, when the Israelites start to worship the golden calf and become materialistic, they become concerned with immediate hedonistic self gratification. Okay?

And so then, and it isn't only that they're worshiping the golden calf. They're dancing around naked, drunk. It's a pride parade. I mean, and I'm dead serious about that. I'm dead serious about that.

Is the political descends into a pride parade as soon as the prophetic disappears. Well, why? Well, because everyone falls under the sway of their, of the dominion of their immature instincts. You know, when someone says, I want what I want, right now, what they're failing, what they're failing to understand is that they've, they've, they've come to a conclusion about what constitutes I. And the I that they're allowing to be constituted is actually the dominion of their instincts.

They're reverting to a form of, they're reverting to the same sort of behavior that characterizes Abraham before his adventure takes place. It's mere hedonic, immediate gratification. Now, you might say if you were progressive, it's like, well, what's wrong with that? And the answer is, well, why don't you put 42 year olds out in the forest and see how long they last? And the answer is, not very long.

And the reason for that is because theres nothing in that realm of instinctual self gratification thats going to be able to propagate itself communally over any reasonable amount of time. I mean, thats why we have communal organization. Why we make those sacrifices is because as you mature, you start to understand that mere whim or mere desire, first of all, is a pretty narrow definition of who you are. Especially because it changes moment to moment. Just like gender, apparently, right?

It's this shape shifting.

It's actually, it's actually an a prior decision about what to worship. Like, if you're a pagan, for example, and you're polytheistic, for example, all that it means is that it doesn't mean you worship nothing. It means that you identify yourself with your instinctual desires. You define I as whatever desire rules. At the moment, that's just the kind of possession.

And it's an immature possession. And it can't work because it, there's nothing in it that's productive. It's all mouth and need and no action and sacrifice. And so there's something wrong about it, fundamentally wrong about it, something fundamental. That's the land of Peter Pan, right?

The boy who won't grow up, who thinks that maturity is nothing but like power and corruption that's represented by Captain Hook. Now to give the progressives their due, to give the left its due, of course, that patriarchal structure that is predicated on sacrifice can become corrupted, co opted, gigantic, lumbering, blind, willfully blind. It degenerates in the direction of power, always. So this is a good rule of thumb. You can think about this in the confines of your marriage or even your relationship with yourself.

When the proper integrating spirit isn't at hand and operative, then the relationship degenerates in the direction of power. You start to use compulsion, you start to use force. You exchange angry words with your wife and you attempt to force her to adopt the point of view that you think is appropriate. But the fact that that happens continually does not indicate that that's the basis of the relationship, right? It's not.

Is power the basis of the relationship? Well, the progressives obviously say yes, they say there's nothing other than power. That's what the bloody postmodernists concluded in the, in the 1970s. And if it's not power, what is it? Well, it's, it's the spirit of voluntary self sacrifice that's the antithesis of power.

That's clearly the antithesis of power. And then you mentioned just, I'll just add one thing, because you mentioned this call that you saw in acts, which is Christ's insistence that those he leaves behind will do works greater than his. This is also where I see the insipid element of Protestantism in particular, although not only Protestantism, that says, well, all you have to do is say Lord, Lord, and you'll be saved, right? All you have to do is claim belief in the Christ who's already redeemed us, and then now you're in the kingdom of heaven. And that isn't what the biblical text indicates.

It indicates that those who are left in the aftermath of the resurrection will be called upon to do greater things than Christ himself, which is a hell of a call given the nature of his sacrifice. This is no joke. And what we're called upon to do is to participate in that process, right? Fully or else. Like, and seriously, or else.

And I can feel, everybody can feel that nipping at the edges, including people like Richard Dawkins. I may say that when you reach immediately for pride as your example of hedonism, you do yourself no favors, in my humble opinion, sir, because you could just as easily use an example of hedonism and indulgence that doesn't have such overt and explicit connotations when it comes to a particular expression of human sexuality. That's just one point. Let me go on for ages, if you don't mind. Now, I am aware, of course, of.

Russell Brand
I've lived hedonistically. I've been a drug addict. I've lived indulgently for long periods of time. So I understand the nature of that power and in practice, how it may as well be a God. And how you conceptualize that could be pantheistically.

You could see it as Aphrodite or as Venus. You could see yourself as being devoured by Cupid and certainly by. By Eros, and making yourself the subject of such high humours. Priapus, man. Priapus.

Priapus. Indeed, indeed, indeed. But this is. But I saw some things in what you were saying that struck me as important. That when you were saying that, of course, when we default to making the self our deity, the sovereign being, that which is currently charged, whichever instinct is at the wheel, whichever instinct is in the driving seat, that will become the.

That will become sovereign at that moment, if you have no recourse against that, if you have no principle, if you have no path, if you have no Tao, if you have no Christ, if you have no way of breathing and living God into being, then you will default to the instincts in conjunction with cultural influence. Those will be the two poles that will generate patterns as surely as if they were magnets on iron filings. And for there to be any charge at all, there must be polarity. This refusal of the call, the inability to accept maturation, the inability to throw off infancy and to accept the chalice, to accept the grail, to receive the wound, to know what you must do. There is a tension in this for me, in the maintenance of the necessary innocence that Christ himself insists we must find.

And it seems that when you said for a moment, and I'd love for your take on this, as well as all. Everything that I'm saying, that the self is amorphous, the self is an event. It is not in stasis. The self will be discovered and will evolve in relationship. Then indeed, we do lend some credence to those who say these two categories of maleness and femaleness, or man and woman, do not suit me.

Now, no doubt these ideas, like all ideas, race, distinction, nationality, commerce, have been lent further charged by, I would say, powerful sets that seek to govern and control consciousness itself, that see that as the ultimate terrain, that require for the perpetuation of their control, the continual flinging of rocks into that pool to prevent something glorious coalescing there some new unity. And what I would offer is this, that surely the synthesis that we're requiring out of this thesis, antithesis, war that we're plainly still in, is the ability to acknowledge that there must be some kind of fluidity, there must be some kind of freedom, there must be some kind of acceptance, that tradition cannot become a rod to steer, control, or prod others, that our religious faith, that our spirituality, that our morality and our ethics must be for the marshaling of our own instincts and designs and desire for power. And you're right. And I always love it, Jordan, when you return it to how are you behaving in your marriage? How are you behaving in yourself?

I was thinking about how do I behave in my marriage with my wife? How often do I tend towards power, in irritability, leaning arrogantly into whatever sets of abilities I'll claim for myself in desperation, and God knows I spend significant time there. But because both you and I tend to, as you laid out earlier in our conversation, move from the micro to the macro, to march gladly out to the penumbra to see what might be found there, it leaves us with a kind of one, a duty to demonstrate in our conduct that quality of joy and open heartedness, that quality of good faith. And I feel that perhaps the next marker of our progression might be when we can say, well, what is it that is of value in these ideas that are emerging out of post structuralism, this willingness to cast out even nature, even the body I'm born in, isn't me. Nature itself isn't real.

To hell with the sun, to hell with Jesus, to hell. Even with my own chromosomes, neither the crucifix or the y are of value in the final analysis. And because I've lived there a while, because I've lived continually in indulgence, because I have been so many times humbled, and my humbling continues. Yet what it leaves me with is that there is something, obviously, obviously, there is something in what you have brought into our culture that people were looking for and needed, and I value it, and I appreciate it. That's why I apologize when I'm late, you know, tidy your room, man, arrive on time, stand up straight, you know, like.

But there is also something that I am. Before I was an our Boris, consuming my own self, and now I am more porous, looking for ways to be open to solution. And, you know, and I feel there is something we have to deliver. I think that there is something that we have to deliver. And I think the time, the fissures and fractures are emerging now that the possibility exists now for even, say, your most vehement and vocal detractors to recognize in you what you have brought to the conversation.

That is true. And for us to, to recognize what they have been saying, that is accurate, that is correct. That is worthy of being heard. And I would say that sort of, if you just casually, maybe out of habit, use pride as the example that instead of the many heterosexual and normative ways, that people are equally indulgent and sort of lost and adrift. And I know those worlds because I've lived there.

Then, then I think that we're not affording ourselves a pathway through this. That would be beneficial.

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Jordan Peterson
Okay, so I'm going to. You asked, really, I think, two fundamental questions there. One had to do with the nature of authority and force, and the other had to do with fluidity. Oh, yeah, there was a third one, which is, what did the postmodernists bring to the table? Let's start with that.

Well, here's one thing they got right. We see the world through a story that's true, that's revolutionary, that truth. And I think the science now points extremely strongly in that direction. The AI systems are trained in accordance with that notion. All the great psychologists perception that I've studied and talked to have concluded the same thing.

We see the world through a story. The description of the structure that we see the world through is a story. And we have to weight our perceptions. That goes back to that collective unconscious idea that we started with is that we see the literal things. We see our perceptions themselves are a function of that weighting process.

They're a consequence of a narrative process. And so the postmodernists got that right, and that's why we have a culture war, in part because we're trying to work something out that's very deep. We see the world through a story. Is the story one of power and tyranny? Well, the answer to that is to a large degree, unfortunately, but not fundamentally.

And that's where the postmodern lefties go so terribly wrong, because their insistence is that the world is a battleground of power. And there isn't a more dangerous conclusion than you can possibly, that you can possibly draw than that now, you still have to give the devil his due. So I'm going to consider briefly the story of Moses. Okay. You talked about the rod of authority, right?

It's to be used sparingly. Well, Moses is the archetypal leader and the main figure in the Old Testament, arguably speaking. And he has the flaws of the leader, even the prophetic leader. And the flaw is the proclivity to default to power. And he does that quite regularly.

In some of Moses actions are the kinds of consequences and motivations that someone like Dawkins would point to and say, a God who would produce a motivation that evil is not a God that I'm willing to abide by. Now, he says, at the same time that he is a cultural christian. So the situation is complex, and people are starting to waking up, wake up to that fact. But Moses, his pattern of failure, his Achilles heel, is to use power when he's called upon, to use invitation. And this is actually fatal in the final analysis.

So, in numbers, which is where the story of Exodus basically concludes, Moses has shepherded his people through the desert, which is where you end up with when your tyranny crumbles, right? You end up in the desert, which is why people don't like to let go of their presuppositions anyways, he's shepherded through the desert basically for three generations, and they're on the border of the promised land. And the Israelites run yet again out of water. And they prevail upon Moses to intercede with God, to provide water. And God tells Moses, there's some rocks nearby.

You go tell those rocks to deliver the water. You go speak to those rocks properly, and they'll deliver the water that will save your people. And Moses goes to the rocks, and he hits the rocks twice, not once, but twice with his staff. Now, this staff, this is the rod of Asclepius. This is the flag you plant when you establish new territory.

This is the liana, or vine, that connects heaven and earth. It's the staff that defeats the staff of the court magicians. It's the staff that turns into the serpent that eats all the other serpents. This is a major league staff, right? It's the authority of Moses, and he uses authority when he's called upon to use the logos.

That's his sin. And the consequence of that is dire God. Aaron. So the political arm dies, and Moses is forbidden from entering the promised land. And so what's the rule there?

The rule is to the patriarch. Let's say the rule is do not use force when you could use invitation. Don't fall prey to that temptation. Now, the left looks at the patriarchy and says, nothing but force. It's like, wait a minute, guys, nothing but.

That's a bit too extreme, acclaim. You mean nothing but it's like, okay, why the hell are your lights on? Look around you. You think all of that's a consequence of force? Do you think that's all of that productivity, all of that life more abundant, all of that material wealth?

You think that's a consequence of nothing but force? You think your marriage is nothing but force? You think your family is nothing but force. You think your community, your friends, all business relationships, that's nothing but power. Is it?

And why am I supposed to believe that? You're not saying that just to justify your own use of power? Because that's how the radicals, that's how they operate, as far as I can tell. It's like, well, the world's just a battleground of power, and the only thing important is who has the rod. And thats a big problem because, no, thats not a solution.

And theres a lot of self service in the claim that power rules. Its very, very, very dangerous. Now, if it isnt power, what is it? Well, its the antithesis of power. When Christ is the third temptation thats offered to Christ when hes in the desert and he encounters Satan is the temptation of power.

And so we can, which he refuses. And so we can derive from that the idea that the pattern of Christ's life is the antithesis of power. And what you see in that life is the constant refusal to use force, no matter what. Right. And the roman soldiers make fun of him.

They say, well, if you're the son of God, why don't you come off the cross and lay the landscape to waste? Which is, at least in principle, within the purview of possibility. And the answer is, while you're not, you're not allowed, in the final analysis, you're not allowed to use force no matter what. Right? Invitation, logos, not force.

And that seems to be tangled into this idea of voluntary self sacrifice as the antithesis of power. Perhaps then, Jordan, what we might explore is something that I think I heard Emmett Fox describe, was that were we to be invited to save but one soul or entire material empires, we always choose the soul. And I suppose also in the Bhagavad Gita, choose Krishna, above all the artillery and armoury in the world and the greatest weapons available, choose only Krishna, choose always the divine. That if Christ's power is not materially practised, and yet indeed we find once more at the centre of the discourse, that word, that concept, power, the word and concept upon which the postmodernists arrived, and you say, reductively alighted as conclusive. I wonder, might we consider that where this battlefield ultimately resides is internally?

Russell Brand
For surely Christ's actions indicate that his power is in self sacrifice and in inaction and in the refusal to implement force. Clearly, when you describe the these benefits, if not glory, the practical application and operation of culture and the legacy of the patriarchy of western civilization, the institutions flawed but yet functioning, it's clearly reductive to say that that is not but forced, I suppose. Yet they may say the benefits are inadvertent consequences only afforded in the same way, just to use an example off the top of my head, that the eventual end of slavery ultimately delivers a workforce that gives you the idea of progress, but still allows establishment interests to operate quite comfortably once the. I don't think there's any reason to dispute the reality of the claim that the fundamental landscape, well, I think the fundamental landscape is good and evil, but right on top of that is tyranny and slavery. Right?

Jordan Peterson
So if we go back to the story of the Israelites, if we go back to the Exodus story, you have there the claim that the reality the leader always contends with, always, is the reality of tyranny and slavery at every level. And that's something like a power dynamic. But that doesn't mean that the solution to the problem is that the slaves become the tyrant. In fact, that's a solution that's offered to Moses as a possibility. In fact, the Israelites clamor for it, just like they later clamor for a king.

The slaves want a king. Is the slave tyranny dimension or the slave tyrant dichotomy played out in the capitalist landscape? Well, obviously, like, obviously, I don't see that there needs to be a dispute about that. As an entry player in the capitalist world, you play out the slave tyrant dichotomy. And you might say, well, that means the slaves should overthrow the tyrants, right?

But that doesnt address the fundamental problem. The problem is, think about it this way. How the hell do you stop being a slave? Well, a slave to what? Well, we could start, you know, you already described this to some degree.

How about you stop being a slave to your own goddamn whims? Like, exactly, how is this battle to free yourself from slavery to be undertaken? Well, we're going to restructure the entire economic system. It's like, oh, you are? You're going to do that, are you?

You're going to do that? You can't even make your bed. You're the prisoner of your own whim. You're a slave to your own desires. There's nothing to you.

If you did manage the revolution, the monsters you release would take you out so fast that you wouldn't have time to think, and it wouldn't be pleasant. And we've seen that time and time again. Like the solution to the slave tyrant dichotomy isn't political revolution. So you see that reflected again in the passion story.

The mob that's upset with Christ is upset, at least in part, because he refuses to play the role of political revolutionary. And so because that's not the way out of the slave tyrant dichotomy, the way out is to stop being a bloody slave. Now, how? Well, I think that's partly the pathway of maturation, isn't it? Is that it's voluntary service to a higher good.

It's something like that. This is what God tells Moses to tell the tyrants and the Israelites, and we always get this wrong, we always forget the second half of this. So this is a civil rights shibboleth. Moses tells the tyrant, the pharaoh, let my people go, that's Martin Luther King. But that's not what he says.

He says it ten times just in case you didn't catch it the first time. He says, let my people go so they may worship me in the desert. And that means to establish a particular kind of relationship outside the tyranny in the wilderness that, well, it speaks of the responsibility of each person to take on the existential burden of existence, the burden of existence voluntarily right, to become a locus of authority and responsibility themselves, because otherwise they abdicate that responsibility to the tyrant. And that's not fundamentally a political problem. It has political ramifications.

But your decision to become a father, that's not a political decision. And your ability to be a good father is also, that's not a political choice. It's something far deeper than that. To the degree that you're a good father, which is an abstract role, hence the name father. You're going to be a conduit for the spirit of, for this, for the benevolent spirit of your ancestors.

That's a perfectly reasonable way of thinking about it. You're going to let the spirit of the father pour through you and occupy you, right? And that's a form of worship and subordination. It's not power. As your business grows, the workload can become overwhelming.

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Russell Brand
I love it. I love that often in my wife. We have a young son, as you know, and I see flashes of the archetype. I see how she is governed by what I suppose Richard Dawkins would call natural processes. But I see beyond that.

I see the light that shines. I see behind the behavior, behind the biology. I feel the resonance that she is redolent with the spirit of the ancestors, that she's not just their mother, but she is the mother. How could any woman sacrifice so much? How could any woman continue to provide so unquestioningly and so diligently?

I'm struck by several things. It's plain that there is a negotiation. And it seems to me that what you're saying is that the error of this new progressive, post modern marxist, to use your sort of the language that you would use, even if I would query that language, there is a negotiation. And that negotiation, of course, must involve power. I'm struck that what Moses carries out politically against another king, an alternative king, and the pharaoh, and as the head of a tribe, Christ carries out as an emissary alone.

And in the desert, there are parallels. The desert is a parallel. The adversarial nature of the combat, there is a parallel there. But in these distinctions, I suppose there must be information given that we are operating on the assumption that this is operating. This is your terminal as a library and sort of as a progressive discourse that's deliberately trying to induce a state, and perhaps it's the states that we're describing quite simply in the father, the mother, a role that may be useful to us.

And what I feel is what I feel a hero. A hero. Yes, yes, yes. To be worthy of the term. And what I feel like is important now, certainly what feels important to me is what is it that I am to revive?

How is it that I will continue to incline towards this ancestral greatness? What is the duty? And how might the power of logos impact reality differently than force? And it's okay, so, okay, so let. Me ask you, let me ask you that specifically, like you're quite the wizard of words now.

Jordan Peterson
And so you have that as a gift. Now you've detailed out your subjugation to the. To the land of whim, let's say, and now you have this podcast, you have a public presence, you've been vouchsafed that this is your podcast. I mean, your podcast right now. This is your podcast.

Russell Brand
That, man, that somewhere when it becomes an absolute, amorphous podcast where the father and son don't even know, because the spirit is so abundant and all immersive that we don't even know who's Moses, who's the pharaoh, who's Jesus, who's the serpent. Now we're getting somewhere, baby? Well, so it seems to me. Well, it seems to me the. The.

Jordan Peterson
It's all of our podcasts, Russell. So it seems to me that the simplest place for people to start with regard to finding their pathway forward is to be very careful with their words. And I want to know something personal from you. It's like, I believe that what you're doing on your podcast is attempting to find your way forward carefully. You're investigating and exploring, and that's the answer to the question about amorphous identity.

It's like the people who push forward the notion that identity is fluid. That's the case if you're progressing forward in exploration and trying to expand your domain of responsibility. Let's say it's not true if what you're doing to be fluid in your identity is the abandonment of all responsibility whatsoever. Right. So.

And those can look very. They can look casually very similar. Now, I want to know from you, it's like, what is it that you're doing with your words when you're doing what you should be doing? And what's the consequence? What's been the consequence of that for you and for your reputation?

And for, what would you say for your dynasty and for everyone else? It's the same abrahamic question, if you use your words properly. I mean, first of all, do you. If you do, why, when you do, what happens? How do you know when you deviate from that?

And what do you think your responsibility is in that regard? Thank you. The prayer of Jabez. I think in chronicles two. Oh, that you would bless me indeed, and enlarge my territory, that your hand would be with me, that you would keep me from evil.

Russell Brand
I feel that with words. That's a good one. Yeah. I feel like with words, I'm trying to keep. I'm trying to generate community.

I'm trying to use language to create common unity, to instantiate and realize an inherent and already existing connection, and that we live individually and collectively in a super state of potentiality that is our. He has no hands but ours, but we are here to formulate his kingdom. That, as we have already referenced, that it is we are his apostles, that this is our duty. Now, experientially, how that is is, as you have kindly suggested, it is indeed a gift, and therefore requires no effort, requires only accept, acceptance and a receptive state. When I'm in this receptive state, the communication is effortless.

I'm almost not a participant. It seems to me that what the polarity is, is for precisely as you have described that I am a both carried. I am a vessel for and a vehicle upon my instincts. The flow of my instincts are that we had the senses are that we had the instruments to observe the patterns that might be about us, the endocrinological streams that may yet flow and where they carry me and with what telos and with what purpose in mind, upon these, with my rod, I try to impart Jordan. Yes.

An ancestral inheritance of some value. And the battleground for me, the battleground for me is the inculcation of this ego. It was very, very well done by the culture, the raw material of the appetites was. They did good work with this clay. So easy if you feel a continual lack, as one might if you have not yet been shown a path to God, so easy to worship their herd of golden calves that they lay before you and all of the bounties that are on offer, it seems to me that it isn't.

And this is from what I have learned from other alcoholics and addicts that walk the path ahead of me, that it isn't the external stimulant that must be addressed and overcome. No, it is the receptive pole. It is the coordinate. It is the inner coordinate that must be overcome. And I see what you mean now in the difference between the use of the staff and logos.

And I imagine you're using that word because there is no perfect english interpretation available for it. And this kind of active awareness, this kind of active presence, making ourselves, as I try in the rosary, to imagine the vibrant nothingness, to feel the vibrant nothingness. And here within the vibrant nothingness is the sacred mother. And it is her that I petition that she may convey to her son, the God that she grew in her belly, that I pray, too, to be forgiven. But not me as an individual, but me just as one more sheep, just as one more member of the flock, if I can overcome the appurtenances of my identity that I have been adorned with and self adorned, that I have ornamented endlessly, that with the brush lent to me by the culture, with the lacquer that I've squeezed out of every gland applied to fortify this shibboleth of self, if that.

If I can somehow overcome that. And where might I overcome it but in the present? Where but the present? Where but the. As you say, as you say, the message of Christ.

The absolute refusal to use force. The absolute refusal to use force, that the higher will might be, that the higher will might be engaged, that the higher purpose might find its fulfilment. The challenge, Jordan, that I would offer you inquiry rather, sir, is that, you know, the acceptance that what is happening is God's will, that the suffering is God's will. That to let it go to work on you, that the opposite, as I was taught recently, the opposite of faith is not doubt. The opposite of faith is certainty.

And that to live in this, to live in this, the horror of uncertainty, and to live there with grace, a grace that I cannot self generate, even if the source of all things must include me somehow, is that is the ongoing challenge. And with language, I suppose I hope to illustrate that there are connections in these patterns of differences, in these signifiers that may yet be arbitrary. I do see the markings of some fractal archetype. Perhaps the success of the language that we're currently using is meritocratic, maybe in its jagged consonants and flowing vowels, in its labial fricatives, in its linguistic grace, there is something akin to truth emerging, if we will just allow it. Well, so let me, let me ask you something that's more personal than this, is my observation, and you tell me if it's accurate.

Jordan Peterson
So you've talked about being spectacularly successful in the land of hedonistic whim, let's say. And you've discussed, while you were kind of an icon for that, right. And a model for that even. And so you're emblematic of that, of the success of that approach, but that didn't work for all sorts of reasons. And so it seemed to me that you wandered out of that landscape into a kind of amorphous mysticism.

But that that's became, become more targeted, and it's become more targeted in the christian direction recently, particularly perhaps in the last year. Is all of that accurate? Yes. Is there any. Okay, that is accurate.

Okay, so what do you make of the fact, and you talked about the rosary specifically just now. What do you make, what do you make of the fact that journey out in the desert of mysticism, let's say, is, well, I think the same thing is happening to you in some ways. That's happening to people like Ayan Hirsi Ali and to Neil Ferguson and to Douglas Murray and Tom Holland and also to Richard Dawkins, is that there's a recognition emerging that there's something in the midst of the mystic, let's say, down in the depths of the metaphysical that speaks of something thats much more christian than any of us would have possibly imagined, lets say, 15 years ago or even a year ago, for that matter. And im wondering how thats making itself manifest specifically in your life. How is this mysticism?

Thats obviously part of your nature. That was probably what was pulling you, at least in part, in the hedonistic direction to begin with. That was somewhat desire for communion with the spirit of Dionysius and Bacchus.

There's a call to self transcendence in a kind of radical hedonism, that's for sure. And so it's just not the optimal ground, let's say. It might be better than rank cowardice. However, you know, it was William Blake who said, wisdom through excess. And there's something to be said about that.

And that's also echoed in the tale of the prodigal son, by the way. It's something to wander in the vast wastelands of the hedonistic world successfully and then come home. There's something to be celebrated in that, even though you're going to pay for your bloody sins, that's for sure, even though they may have been necessary and even desirable in some bizarre sense. So in your life at the moment, it looks to me like you've taken a christian tilt. Like, what the hell do you make of that?

And how do you know that that's just not another form of self aggrandizing falsehood? Well, you know, wow. Just when you think you've thrown the. Devil out, there he is again, that's for sure.

Russell Brand
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Russell Brand
Well, you know, I see Joseph Campbell as a kind of deputy to Jung's principle. And I like how Campbell says in the end you might likely explore the native ideology and theology. Now, I know that's sort of somewhat fast and loose, given that I'm in northern Europe and the Nazarene was hardly springing forth from Essex Grays on the Thames side. Right. An important point to make.

Jordan Peterson
An important point to make. Western. It's like, yeah, not exactly. Yes, yes. How it has felt is almost as if something that felt so parochial and prosaic because of the.

Russell Brand
You know, because of the delivery systems of. It's ordinary, it's abundant, it's these grandmas at a bus stop. It's the drab intonations of a vicar in a parish. It's the apologetic Church of England. And I'm not attacking the Church of England, but where you feel that they might almost be afraid to mention God in there for fear of stepping on somebody's toes.

Jordan Peterson
He's in the broom closet. He's underneath the mob. Yes, definitely so. Because it felt so sort of local, like this figure of Christ. What it's felt like is, oh, it's you.

Russell Brand
He's always been there. He's always been there. There is something in this that is not that, as you obviously are exploring, as well as rather beautifully illuminating for us. There's something in these texts that is about inducing states and as whenever ultimately a rational idea issued through language, in poetics, you know, through poetics, when you induce a state beyond what is literally encoded, when you invite somehow that you reach beyond what is presented linguistically, it seemed to me somehow that in returning to this, in returning to the Bible, in returning to Christ, indeed, it does feel like a return, doesn't it? Rather than a novel discovery issued at the shore by a missionary who doesn't know whether he's going to get a pat on the back or a cauldron to swim in at high temperatures, it's felt to me like this has always been here.

This has always been here. I'm, of course, enjoying CS Lewis's approach because I am a product of cultural atheism, materialism, hedonism, and, yes, a child. As much of Jim Morrison as William Blake of like that. This is about the Dionysian, the Bacchanalian. This is about empowerment, sex, magic, the glory of it all, the abundant glory, throwing off the liminal and the limiting.

And, of course, then one arrives one day at the terrible conclusion that there's nothing there. And perhaps only then, indeed, that Jim. Morrison died right at 27, which seems to be the fate of many, many enthusiastic bacchanalian geniuses. For surely there must be a death, for surely there must be a death. Hopefully you don't have to kill the host.

Hopefully the death is merely the idea and what is offered. And one thing I feel, as you know from our previous conversations, that I have at least a kind of experiential authority to speak about, while not representative authority, is the impact of the twelve steps on the psyche of an addict. And its analysis in the ultimately, that what addiction represents is a spiritual problem, is a spiritual quandary, and even embedded in the idioms like get off my face, lose myself, get smashed, is the idea that what the actual impulse is, and indeed think how significant the word craving is within addiction, is a move towards a pulling some force, some source, some calling, some clarion call, some harbinger awaiting some personal rapture. The problem is, of course, living as we do in these context that ultimately offers you as the end goal, through materialist and rational analysis, that you might become just this type of a person. In this type of a society, something important is lost.

And those things are explicit in the texts that undergird twelve step practice and philosophy. It is plain that they are talking primarily about, and I've said to you before, but I'll say again that Jung was a key influence on the founders of that movement along a lot, curiously, along with first century Christianity, that what they are not saying, you know, give up drinking, give up drugs, they are saying, give up self, give up self, give up self. There are phrases like abandon yourself to God completely, like after they get past the rule, it's not going very well, is it? All this drinking and drug use, and even indicated in the earliest literature for these groups, is the idea that there will be behavioral expressions, that there will be sexual behaviors, there will be promiscuity, etcetera, and God alone. And if you maybe even just take that as one thread and consider what the 70 years since this piece of folk philosophy was augured in the world of pornography, something that was once, of course, available, but somewhat abstract, and now is normalized, immersive, immediately available.

It seems that the environment is encroaching. And this reminds me of something sort of important I want to tell you. Of course, anyone that explores it, the reason the prodigal son is important is because, like, if someone goes, if someone's telling you you don't want to be doing any of that, and it seems that it's born in prurience and an inability to attract mates, well, what's the value of that testimony? But someone that's come back from there and says well, give it a try. But it didn't work very well for me, I think, is a more powerful testimony to deliver.

At least it seems to me that certainly that is the testimony that has affected me more. But what is difficult to avoid, I feel, Jordan, is the sense that not only is there this, and it's something you touched upon earlier. You said, no, it's not only force, you know, and I sort of offered you that perhaps the benevolence that this force has issued could be, and this is, of course, reductive, an inadvertent side effect of tyranny. And please be aware that I am apprised of the fact that the forms of tyranny that are emerging now, apparently in opposition to these old school, not to be repeated, let's face it, militaristic, demagogic, populist, strongman forms of tyranny that we're being continually warned of are far more terrifying. The kafkaesque, bureaucratic, banalized, invisible, dreadful.

We're here to help. I'm afraid your inquiry can't be heard. This is diabolical. Huxley's hell terrifies me even more than Orwell's, although plainly we're in some amalgam with beautiful gilding from Kafka in the sort of unknowable quality, where is the judge? What is the trial?

Who's doing all this stuff? And it seems to me that there must be, even if we are to say it's about power, even if we are asking, is it an internal struggle? Is it my power over my instincts? And the expression of those instincts in conjunction with culture that I might call self? Over time, there seems to be some other agent.

There does indeed seem to be a serpent. There do indeed appear to be fallen angels. There do indeed appear to be ulterior forces at work. For I am struck that when I was an emblem of this culture, in my hedonism, I was gloried and made much of. And when I say there is something else, we must move towards God.

This is when the culture comes alive. This is when the spotlight shines. This is when the knock at the door comes. This is when forces are marshaled. It seems to me that something, someone must have been telling lies about Joseph.

Jordan Peterson
K. All right, sir, look, I'm going to close on that. We'll obviously continue this conversation. How could. How can this necessity.

Yeah, yeah. How is your son? He's doing so marvelously well. He's doing so. I mean, it's just beautiful.

What it's. Done to the family dynamic, this child again, to see my wife mother him so beautifully, to reaffirm my connection with my two daughters, to experience the, you know, bloody hell, man. Like I tell you, to see your son on a slab with what appeared to be, they might as well have been sort of mayan priests, these giant anaesthetists, before they carve open his thorax with the happy intention, of course, of saving his life. It feels biblical indeed to be confronted with that to. Oh, it gave me moments to a mother weeping for her child, the hopelessness, the despair.

Russell Brand
And, of course, this was within the tundra. This was within the tundra of what amount to lies. And my God, Jordan. My God. You know, I mean, this might give you an indication why someone might go scurrying somewhat keenly towards Jesus.

Jordan Peterson
Hey, I got a book for you. Yeah, read the sacred and the profane by mature Eliade. Yeah, he was a big influence on Campbell, too. And Iliad is a real genius. He's a real genius.

Very short book, punchy as hell, deadly book. He's got about six or seven that are very much worth reading, but that's probably top of the list, the sacred and the profane. Next time we talk, we can talk about it, all right? That'd be great, man. Hey, I love you.

Nice talking to you, Russell. You hang in there. Yes, sir. My love to Tammy and to your children, and thank you. All right, sir.

To everybody watching and listening, thank you very much for your time and attention to the daily wire, plus people for making this possible. That's much appreciated to the film crew here today in Tulsa, Oklahoma. That's where we are. Thanks for your help, Russell. We'll talk soon.

Thanks for. Thanks for chatting. Today.

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