Jordan Peterson Interview with British GQ - Insights and Takeaways
Who: Jordan Peterson
Where: British GQ
What: Solving the Crisis of Meaning, Do We Live in a Tyrannical Patriarchy, Useful Hierarchies, Corruption of Universities, Why Social Media Encourages Terrible Behavior, and much, much more
When: October 30, 2023
How Long: 1 hour, 42 minutes
How to Access: YouTube, GQ, and wherever you get your podcasts
Jordan Peterson sat down for a long-form interview with British GQ in October 2018. This interview took place about 9 months after his now famous interview with BBC’s Cathy Newman. The interviewer in this case, Helen Lewis, seemed better prepared, asked smarter questions, and mostly responded on-merit to Jordan’s points.
However, one gets a distinct feeling that Helen disliked Jordan’s opinions and utterances just as much as Cathy did. And I don’t seem to be the only one who felt that way, as Jordan was far more combative, and visibly irritated, during this interview.
A Brief Overview of the Conversation
The interview gets contentious almost right off the gate, as Helen opens it by asking Jordan what he was “selling”. After a bit of jostling, Jordan speculates that the one of the reasons people seem to be interested in what he’s saying might be that he discusses the relationship between meaning and responsibility. That discussion, he believes, is non-existent in modern society, because we confuse men’s desire for competence with the desire for tyrannical power.
That response gives us the primary conflict, and the primary theme that runs throughout this conversation - is our society built on foundations of tyrannical patriarchy and hierarchies of power? Jordan explains, through various examples, that modern human hierarchies are based on competence, now power, and that those structures have led to our modern, equitable society.
Helen remains steadfast in her belief that we live in tyrannical, male-dominated power hierarchies.
That belief manifests itself throughout this conversation, which touches upon an impressively wide range of subjects - the peculiar behavior of people on social media, the meaning of multiculturalism, the state of our universities, strategies for dealing with aggression, politicization of the climate debate, and much, much more.
That belief also gives us Jordan at his combative best, as he puts forward his rational arguments, gives practical examples, and cites credible scientific research. Jordan’s warning that evolutionary biology was soon going to be under threat from social constructionists has turned out to be eerily and sadly prophetic.
Mind Map
This conversation touches upon a large number of extremely critical subjects, and as with most conversations of this nature, goes back-and-forth on several of those subjects.
Here’s a mind map of Jordan Peterson’s interview with British GQ.
Click here (or on the mind map itself) to view a high resolution PDF version.
Click here (or scroll to the bottom of this page) to view a simple, text-based version of this map.
Quotes
Love him or hate him, you have to concede that Jordan Peterson is a fabulously skilled orator. He has honed his craft over decades of teaching complex subjects to young students in interesting ways. Contrary to most speakers, Jordan speaks even more eloquently when put under pressure, and his oratory skills are on full display in this combative interview. Here are some of my favorites:
If people are moored shallowly then storms wreck them, and storms come along.
If you hire a plumber, that’s likely to be male, it’s not because there are roving bands of tyrannical plumbers forcing you to make that choice.
If I was someone who took criticism at heart, I’d be in a lot more trouble than I am now.
You’re morally obligated to do things other than that which you like.
I’ve come to understand that the meaning that sustains you in life is mostly to be found through responsibility.
You can’t say that people’s proclivity to identify with their group is identity politics; that’s just tribalism.
I don’t care if they’re on the right or the left. I think that the right wing’s use of identity as a primary marker for human categorization is as reprehensible and dangerous as it is on the left.
He (Jonathan Haidt) is as moderate a person as you could hope to find, and probably less prone to anger than me.
No, no. One woman’s enough trouble!
You want to see what the dark parts of you are attracted to; it helps you keep an eye on where things can go if they go badly sideways.
There’s certainly no shortage of evidence for reprehensible sexual behavior on the part of people who can use power to get away with it.
The presumption of innocence is nothing short of a miracle, and we abandon it at our extreme peril.
I find it very difficult to distinguish valid environmental claims from environmental claims that are made as a secondary anti-capitalist front.
They’ll get concerned about clean air when they get richer.
Read more!
The only reason I haven’t suffered an outrageous amount for my opinions is because I’ve handled the consequences of their utterance exceptionally well.
There was plenty of motivation to take me out; it just didn’t work.
Pop Culture and Other References
Jordan Peterson generally isn’t big on pop culture references in his interviews, and this one is no different. This interview is no different also in the sense that he cites a variety of useful books and research materials.
Books
Research Material
Key Insights
If the mad map is too visually distracting for you, here’s a text-based outline of the key insights from this conversation. This section also contains a couple of bonus topics that aren’t on the mind map.
Crisis of Meaning
Over the past 50 years or so, we’ve concentrated on rights, privileges, freedom and pleasure
Those are useful in their place, but ultimately shallow
People are hungry for a discussion of relationship between responsibility and meaning
People can find meaning and strength by voluntarily adopting responsibility
The tampon king of India
Our culture confuses men’s desire to do so with the patriarchal desire for tyrannical power
Tyrannical Patriarchy
The assertion that our society is male-dominated is misleading
People make that assertion based on a tiny sub-strata of hyper-successful men
This ignores the fact that a huge proportion of disaffected people are men
Most people in prison are men
Most homeless people are men
Most victims of violent crime are men
Most people who commit suicide are men
Most people who die in war are men
Most people who do worse in academics are men
This narrative is leading men to bail out of universities in general, and social sciences in particular
Universities are more focused pushing their ideological agenda than on providing quality eduction
There are asymmetries between genders, but both genders have generally co-operated
Modern society has a patriarchal structure to some degree
The fundamental basis of that structure is not power; it’s competence
When you hire somebody for a job or to perform a service, it’s based on their competence, not on their tyrannical dominance
It is the least patriarchal society in existence
The emancipation of women was brought about by technologies developed by the same hierarchical structures
Birth control pills
Tampons
Sanitary facilities
Household machines
Corruption of Universities
Universities are ratcheting up their prices, while simultaneously degrading their quality
They are more focused pushing their ideological agenda than on providing quality eduction
They espouse the doctrines of identity politics, which are both harmful and untrue
This makes them inhospitable, especially to young men
It was a determining factor in the 2016 US general elections
Hillary Clinton would’ve kept the working class vote and become president if she hadn’t played cozy with the identity politics types
Their ideologies are particularly destroying social sciences and humanities
The physical sciences are safe so far, but not for long
Social Media
Social media has its uses, but people tend to show their worst on social media, especially Twitter
Rewards impulsivity due to constraint on characters
Anonymity heightens the desire to be provocative
People who’re feeling irritable are likelier to respond to provocation
We’re not wired to interact with random strangers
Multiculturalism
Multiculturalism’s idea of putting together multiple cultures without an over-arching structure is faulty
People from different cultures can co-exist in harmony if they all play be a set of common rules
People can retain their own cultural norms and identities, but we also need to operate in a shared framework of values
When this doesn’t happen, it leads to conflict and war
Hierarchies
Most human hierarchies are based on competence, not power
If you want to be successful in life, you need to be competent at something useful
This will move you up the hierarchy, and also make you an attractive mate
Hierarchies are not a social construction
They are prevalent throughout the animal kingdom, even with creatures as primitive as lobsters
This runs contrary to the Marxist proposition that hierarchies are a consequence of capitalism
The demand for equality of outcome is a misguided attempt to flatten hierarchies
Dealing with Violence
It’s not self-evident that we need to overcome violence
Defining violence isn’t that straightforward
Use of force in self-defense is also violence, but necessary
If we overcome violence, we may lose other useful traits along with it
There are better strategies for dealing with aggression
If a child is aggressive, you don’t want to inhibit their aggression
When you repress something, it generally comes back with a vengeance in another form
De-emphasizing competition and rewards in games is not a good strategy
You want to reward people who’re good at doing something necessary
You want to socialize them so that they can become sophisticated in how they use it
Me Too Movement
People in power have used it to get away with reprehensible sexual behavior
Those people should be brought to account
We should not abandon the presumption of innocence
Environmental Issues
It is very difficult to distinguish valid environmental claims from ideologically motivated claims
Modern environmentalist smuggle in their anti-capitalist and anti-human sentiments
People stricken with poverty don’t care about carbon dioxide
Coal-based energy is currently the cheapest form of energy available to us, and it stops people from starving
People get concerned about the environment as they get richer
The supposed crisis of over-population has been blown out of proportion
Projections top out at about 10 billion
The likelier problem in about 100 years is going to be too few people, not too many
More people leads to more ingenuity
Human ingenuity lead to the development of golden rice to tackle hunger
Investing in early-infant care, especially in developing countries, is a more viable solution
Same-Sex Parenting
We don’t know what form of parental modeling is optimal for children
We know for sure that having one parent is worse than having two
It is likely that having two parents is better than having one
We don’t know what type of exposure to role models is necessary for children to learn functional gender roles
Having no one from the other sex around might be a problem for children as they learn to be adults