This podcast is brought to you and made possible by generous financial aid from Peter kanzler K. Ay n z l-- e-- r-- you can buy his Amazon books at your favorite Amazon Branch, for example, the original texts of lock Hobbs and the US Constitution of Pennsylvania put together into one book for only $15. Thanks for listening. I'm Paul Kennedy. This is ideas war and violence have always been with us. The first murder took place between the first humans Cain and Abel and that Legacy of destroying ourselves and each other has come down to us from the very beginning. The creation story reminds us as much about our tragic weakness as it does about our infinite potential as humans. Chaos is transformed into order by the word and you are all speakers of the word and if you want chaos to be transformed into hell then lie. If you want chaos to be transformed into heaven, then tell the truth. It's easy to look at violence and War as anomalies of human nature, but there's clearly something else going on. What's the meaning of the Columbine and Sandy Hook School massacres the bus bombings in Salute the Charlie hebdo' killings. Sometimes we think politics can explain these things or a kind of Madness but what else might be behind such senseless acts acts that achieved no goal, except the universal sadness with The Human Condition. You can sweep underneath your bed. You don't have to go out and way the placard around I'm against poverty. It's like who's for poverty? I think you want to fix the world six your life. It's a lot harder than You think right it says in the New Testament it's harder to rule yourself than to rule the city. But why Well turns out you're more complicated than a city. It also turns out that you're more important in some sense than a city. Jordan Peterson is a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto and a clinical psychologist at the Stratford Festival. He explored some of these questions and in today's program. We'll hear the talk he gave and the conversation I had with him afterwards. Here's a history of violence. if you do a genuine psychological analysis of the human thirst for war you can't entertain a more brutal topic. And part of the reason that people don't understand it is because you really don't want to understand it. So despite that I'm going to use a case history today fundamentally to illustrate the state of mind that you have to occupy in order to be willing and ready to commit. Any atrocity that might be demanded of you under any circumstances whatsoever. the best way to think about the human thirst for war At least at the level of analysis that I'm capable of. His to think about it as a personality lots of the states of mind that possess us can be reasonably thought of as a personality. So if you're angry, for example. You can think of yourself as possessed by Ares or Mars whose the God of War. Or if you're hopelessly in love and making a fool of yourself, well, then you're possessed by Eros or Cupid or Venus and that really is how archaic people pre-scientific people? Viewed the proclivity of people to occupy states of mind that we're quite different than those that were characteristic of their normal personality Freud really capitalized on that idea and modernized it in some sense because Freud viewed the human being as in some sense a Loosely United collection of sub personalities. We don't tend to conceptualize states of mind anymore. As personalities not in the scientific literature, but we do all the time in literature and drama and movies. And that sort of representation is extraordinarily compelling weirdly enough. You'll pay to watch it and it is very strange if you think about it because if the Specter of pure destructiveness is laid out in front of you on a stage, there's no logical reason to assume that you would voluntarily expose yourself to that to that and pay for the privilege of doing so But you do and the reason for that one of the reasons for that. Is that you need to know what that personality is partly so you can recognize elements of it if they manifest themselves in front of you or within you and partly because you really can't understand good. Until you understand evil. And so if you're ever wondering why why good itself seems to be such a limited resource. It's worthwhile remembering that you don't get there without. Going somewhere. You don't want to go first. And so that's where we're going to go today. I'm going to start with a Shakespearean quote. Seems appropriate from Titus andronicus which is a very violent play to play that's essentially about vengeance and one of Shakespeare's characters says why should wrath be mute and fury dumb. I am no baby. I that with base prayers. I should repent the evils I have done. Ten thousand worst that ever yet. I did would I perform if I might have my will? If one good deed in all my life, I did I do repent it from my very Soul. It's not the sort of thing that you want to hear. Someone say to you. we look for reasons why people might be votive ated to commit atrocious Acts. and given our cultural standpoint at present. We're often looking for sociological reasons. Poverty which does not read Violence by the way relative poverty, which does lack of Education ignorants. we very seldom consider intent or voluntary intent because the idea is that people could voluntarily and consciously intend destructiveness is a very frightening thought, especially when you realize that if people could do that to the degree that you're a person you could also do that and understanding that people could do that and that you could means that you might Be morally obliged. To undertake a very thorough examination of the motives for your own behavior. The personality that I want to talk to talk about today. It's composed of a downward spiral tonight. I think that's why people people have always envisioned hell in some sense as a bottomless pit. Hell is the bottomless pit because no matter how bad it is. There's some stupid thing you can do to make it worse. And so the spiraling is indicative of a positive feedback loop where a causes B & B causes C and then C causes a and everything moves out of control. The case study that I want to present to you today. It's one of the more literate of the Columbine killers whose name was Eric Harris people wonder why the mass Shooters do what they do, which in some sense is quite surprising to me because if you read what they say, they tell you why they do what they do. Now why people don't believe that is not clear to me except that I think that if you do take them at their word. raises all sorts of spectres that we would rather have hidden Eric Harris became possessed. I would say of his own free choice. Buy a personality that was composed of ideological rigidity Pride resentment. deception and vengefulness I'm going to read you some of his comments about government systems. Here's Harris his comments with regards to ideological rigidity like the early Nazi government. My brain is like a sponge sucking up everything that sounds cool and leaving out all that is worthless. That's how Nazism was formed and that's how I will be to Hitler and his head boys messed up a few times and it cost them the war but I love their beliefs and who they were what they did and what they wanted. I love the Nazis, too. By the way, I can't get enough of the swastika the SS and the Iron Cross. It's not that he didn't understand the Nazis. He understood them perfectly. Well, whatever else you might say about Eric Harris. He wasn't stupid Pride people parents cops. God teachers telling me what to do thinks a act and everything else just makes me not want to do it. That's why my nickname is Rebel Raab actually. No one is worthy of anything unless I say they are I feel like God. I wish I was having everyone being officially lower than me. I already know that. I'm higher than almost anyone in the world in terms of universal intelligence. I feel ever more confident stronger and more Godlike and I have confidence in my ability to deceive people. I've thought too much realized too much found out too much and I'm too self-aware to just stop what I am thinking and go back to society because what I do and think isn't right or morally accept it. No, no. No, I would sooner die than betray my own thoughts. But before I leave this worthless place, I will kill whoever I deemed unfit for anything at all. This is from Paradise Lost. the great poem by John Milton These are the words that he puts into the mouth of Satan after he's flung from heaven for daring to oppose and attempt to transcend the most high as his desire was not only to be like God but to be superior to God and in some sense, he's a symbol in some very important since he's a symbol or a representation you could say which is more accurate of the ultimate in intellectual Pride, which says everything I know is sufficient. And there's nothing Transcendent beyond that. Milton has Satan say farewell. Happy Fields where Joy forever dwells hail Horrors hail infernal world and thou profoundest he'll receive thy new possessor. One who brings a mind not to be changed by place or time. Resentment I've noticed in my clinical practice that there are two three. Character logical elements from their really do people in and weirdly enough. They're not really listed in the psychiatric list of diagnosis and they're often also not discussed as causal elements in the Genesis of mental illness and suffering even though in my experience. They're actually the primary causes arrogance, which is I already know enough. deceit, which is I can twist the fabric of reality in my favor for my individual wants and I can get away with it which goes along with pride and arrogance and then resentment which is The world is tragic, which is of course true. The world is unjust and tragic which is more debatable and the Injustice and tragedy of the world is aimed at me specifically and unfairly. Well, that's just not true at all. Resentment I hate you people for leaving me out of so many fun things and no don't say well that's your fault because it isn't you people had my phone number and I asked and all but no no, no, don't let the weird-looking Eric kid come along. Oh, no. Few people could have shown more respect treated me better asked for my knowledge or guidance more treated me more like a senior and maybe I wouldn't have been as ready to tear your heads off Milton again Paradise. Lost has Satan say the more I see Pleasures about me so much more. I feel torment within me as from the hateful Siege of contraries all good to me becomes Bane and in heaven much worse would be my But neither here seek, I know nor in heaven to dwell and less by mastering is heaven Supreme nor hope to be myself less miserable. By what I seek but others to make such as I go there by worse to me redound for only in destroying. Do I find he's to my Relentless thoughts. Eric Harris again then again. I have always hated how I looked I make fun of people who look like me sometimes without even thinking sometimes just because I want a rip on myself. That's where lot of hate grows from. This is Richard 3 from Shakespeare Richard the third I shall despair. There is no creature loves me. And if I die no soul. Will Pity Me Not a whit wherefore should they since that I myself find in myself no pity to myself. Deception. You know what? I feel like telling about lies. I lie a lot almost constantly and to everybody just to keep my own ass out of the water. And and by the way, I don't think I'm doing this for attention as some people may think Let's see. What are some big lies. I've told ya I stopped smoking. Yeah, I'm sorry for doing it. Not for getting caught. No, I haven't been making more bombs. No, I wouldn't do that. And of course countless other ones. Yeah, I know that I hate liars and I am one myself. Oh, well, it's okay if I'm a hypocrite but no one else because I'm higher than you people no matter what you say and if you disagree I would shoot you. If you take the personality elements that we've already discussed and you mix them up and you let them run as a process you get the positive feedback loop that I was describing earlier and it goes something like this and I learned this in part from the analysis of the story of Cain and Abel in Genesis. The first story about real human beings is the story about Cain and Abel because Adam and Eve were made by God, right? So, you know, you can't really call them normal humans Cain and Abel or the first humans and Pain is very resentful and deceitful and vengeful. And the reason for that which it's clearly explained in the story is that cane sacrifices aren't accepted by God. Now it's hard for modern people to understand. What a sacrifice is because why would you offer up to God some Bert remnant of an animal for example, but you know people along while back acted things out before they could understand them and they had a more concrete view of the world and they assume God was in the cosmos because if you look up in the night sky, especially if it's dark it overwhelms you you see the Transcendent and the infinite and so it's the sensation and experience of that. Allows for the attribution of God and his dwelling place to the heaven. So that's not so ridiculous because you do see the infinite when you're out under the sky at night in the dark. And if God's up there since smoke Rises if you burn something, well God can tell if what you're offering is of quality or not. Now we have the psychological equivalent, which is I asked my students what sacrifices did your parents make so that you could go to university and of course they can answer that and no time flat and whether that sacrifice work depends on how well the child doesn't University but what that essentially means is that the sacrifice of the parents found favor well with reality, but you can substitute God for that with no loss of meaning and so modern people who obviously believe that You sacrifice properly then reality will shine its benevolent face on you. Otherwise, we wouldn't work. So we're not so different from those archaic people now Kane make sacrifices and God doesn't like them. Now the story's a bit ambivalent about why it might just be the gods arbitrary. I mean, it's there's no shortage of arbitrariness on the part of God in the Old Testament, which is part of the reason that people have modern people have trouble with that book because they say well I could never believe in a god whose that arbitrary or even cruel but the ancient Israelites weren't that foolish. They knew that life could be that arbitrary cruel no matter what you believed so they could be that God just has it in for Kane or it could be the cane is just not really offering up the best quality sacrifices. And so he's trying to pull one over on God and everyone else and in fact, that is what God accuses him. If you read the story very carefully. Kane is mad because Abel's getting everything and everyone loves able. Lots of crops his flocks are flourishing all the girls. Love them. Plus. He's a really good guy. So you can't even hate him with good conscience, which is extremely annoying especially to Kane. So King goes and has a chat with God. He says what kind of stupid place if you made here evenings reality. I'm like working myself to the Bone and you know, all I get is the dregs and then there's old able out there and you know everything he touches turns to gold. What's up with you which is kind of arrogant if you think about it, right because he is talking to God after all it isn't clear that cane understands everything about being and there's always the possibility that it's Keynes fault and not Gods but that isn't a hypothesis that Kane is willing to entertain so God says to him basically sin, which means to miss the Bullseye by the way crouches at your doorstep. Like a predatory and sexually aroused hunting cat and you invited in and let it have its way with you by which he means not only is Kane attacked by sin so to speak but that it's a creative Union sort of attack sin comes in and Cain plays with it and develops it and puts his own twist on it. He produces something new out of it. It's obvious to K in that God isn't willing to take responsibility for the terrible state of being as a consequence of this accusation. And that makes them extremely mad extremely mad. And he kills Abel and then if you follow the story closely, you can see that God tells everyone else to leave Jane alone. Don't don't kill him. And the reason for that is that there's a propensity for that kind of vengeful killing to expand exponentially out into the community which in fact Is what happens in the story of Cain and Abel and the and the last one of Cain's descendants named is actually tubal-cain and he is by tradition. The first person who makes weapons of war. So the idea is that individual resentment manifested as homicidal rage is the precondition for the spread of that mode of being into the broader community and the danger there is that will degenerate into everyone against everyone. Harris morale is just another word and that's it. I think we are all a waste of natural resources and should be killed off and since humans have the ability to choose and I'm human. I think I will choose to kill and damage as much as nature allows me. So take that eat Napalm and led someone's bound to say what were they thinking when we go Natural Born Killers or when we're planning it. So this is what I'm thinking. I have a goal to destroy as much as possible. So I must not be sidetracked by my feelings of sympathy Mercy or any of that keep this in mind. I want to burn the world. Now part of the reason that Cain kills Abel is because Abel is favored by God. And so Kane is actually not only taking resent revenge against table and against his own insufficiency and to get suffering. He's actually taking revenge against God and being itself and that's actually what he wants to do. Hate I'm full of hate and I love it. I want to grab some weak little freshmen and tear them apart like a wolf show them who's God strangle them squash their head bite their temples into the skull rip off their jaw rip off their collarbones break their arms in half and twist them around the lovely sounds of Bones cracking and flesh ripping so much to do in so little chance God I want to torch and level everything in this whole area but bombs of that size are hard to make and plus I would need a fully loaded 810 to get Restore on wodsworth and all the buildings downtown picture half of Denver on fire just for me and vodka who was his partner Napalm on sides of skyscrapers and car garages blowing up from exploded gas tanks. Oh man, that would be beautiful. Yes. The human race is still indeed doomed. It just needs a few kickstarter's like me if I can wipe a few cities off the map then great. If you recall your history, the Nazis came up with a final a solution to the Jewish Problem Kill them all well in case you haven't figured it out yet. I say kill mankind. No one should survive. So I'll close this briefcase history with a quote from Goethe from Faust and in Faust. The figure of Satan is played by Mephistopheles. And Mephistopheles in dirt has formulation is a very arrogant intellect. And he has a CREDO which is the articulated formulation of the values that he lives by. The spirit I that endlessly denies and rightly too for all that comes to birth is fit for overthrow as nothing worth. We're for the world were better sterilized. Thus all that's here is evil recognized is gained to me and downfall. Rude and sin the very element I prosper in. So you can see in that the actuality the actuality is not only what Harris wrote and meant but also what he did and what he was planning to do which was much more destructive than what he actually managed. You see his state of possession by a set of infinitely destructive desires and wishes. And you see the continual representation of that pattern of action and thought in literature. That's Evil versus good. Classically that's what the world is. That's what the cosmos is. It's a place where evil and good continually battle eternally battle and although we don't believe in such things anymore or more accurately. We don't know what we believe we still are inclined to watch that drama present itself on stage in Endless variations. and the reason for that is that it's true. You can't understand the human capacity and desire for atrocity without viewing it through a metaphysical lens. You can't understand someone like Eric Harris or the countless others who are possessed. So to speak in exactly the manner that he was without using dramatic or religious language because You cannot formulate either the question or the answer with enough profundity without that kind of representation. Now I wouldn't say that the motives that I've discussed constitute the only reasons for the human thirst for war, but I can tell you that you'll never understand the desire for atrocity. Without coming to grips with the problem of evil. Thank you. You're listening to ideas in Canada on CBC Radio One on Sirius XM across North America and around the world on cbc.ca. I'm Paul Kennedy. What is it that drives us to violence murder and War these are some of the most puzzling corners of the human personality and with the help of William. Shakespeare and John Milton psychologist, Jordan Pederson has been exploring the mind of murder specifically the mind of Columbine killer Eric Harris. This is a history of violence and time now for my conversation with Jordan Peterson and for some audience questions, I want to begin I guess sort of where you began and I'd never heard the words of Eric Harris before and I have to tell you I found them chillingly frightening. It was interesting though to then here you quote and had the the quotation so opposite and so perfect matching quoting from Milton and quoting from Paradise Lost. I believe my undergraduate memory of studying that Masterpiece is that and I think this is a school of critical thought as well. Milton apparently liked Satan more than he liked any of the other characters in that in that amazing work of modern interpretation. Why would that be modern and what do you mean by that? Well, because Milton was a genius and the way he represented Satan in Paradise Lost was as a rebel and he didn't paint them in black and white so to speak he gave him all the attributes than an admirable Rebel would have and people enjoy identifying with the figure of the admirable Rebel. But what what Satan was rebelling against wasn't An admirable Rebel would rebel against he wasn't rebelling the way Christ say rebelled in his time against the increasing tendency of the religious state to become dogmatic and tyrannical Satan was rebelling against the idea that there was something that exceeded his power and that was Transcendent. Well human beings do that all the time, especially modern human being so the idea that that Satan's and admirable character. I think can't be placed at Milton's feet. He opened the door to That interpretation and that's a good thing because part of for example, the reason that these modes of thinking were so powerful and compelling to Harris was that they I allowed him the possibility of construing himself as an admirable Rebel even though what he was was a momentary embodiment of the Eternal desire to obliterate everything. And those are characters that exist. I mean Eric Harris is not alone there. So he had he had Partners in Columbine. He has Admiral admirers on the web of no small number and not only does he exist out there. He also exists in here like the thing that he represents. The thing that he embodied is not it's a permanent element of the human psyche. It's ineradicable. It's Eternal. It's archetypal. It's structural. So and why it's structural. It's Paris does a good job of explaining everyone knows that life is tragic and everyone knows that to exist is to suffer and one logical and appropriate response to that is to be grateful in spite of your suffering and attempt to make the best of it and perhaps to alleviate that where you can and another is to take the perspective of Just off lease and to say no no. No the whole thing's flawed right from the beginning if this much suffering is the price of being then we should just eradicate the whole mess. and people think like that all the time. I'm curious you work not only as an academic professor of psychology. You also have a practice your view have a clinical practice. Is there any possible use for these great icons of Western or Eastern any literature which all have in them as you say the sort of balance or opposition of Good and Evil? Is there any possible clinical use for that? So if you see people who are really in trouble Like really in trouble. You can't address their problems without using archetypal language. It's not possible. So for example, I had a client who lived in a Web of Lies that was pretty much infinite. I tried for years to get to the bottom of it familial lies. The lie was we love you and we're helping you when the truth was. You should have been born a boy and we've hated you ever since you were born, but we're not going to tell you that and we're not gonna let anyone else know that because we need a facade of benevolence know and for her this person to even begin to understand what was going on in our family. There was no escaping archetypal language. I mean, it was hellish people died in that house and I made very little Headway. Every time I got to the bottom of some absolutely horrendous betrayal. Betrayers were in Dante's Inferno they were right in the center of hell, right. They were the worst of the criminals so to speak I'd get to the bottom of some god-awful decades-long brilliantly played betrayal and there'd be another one at the bottom of that. I was wondering specifically the whether you'd actually used texts in conversation patients. Yeah, so you would talk about Faust or you know, lots of my patients have come from a Backgrounds, I mean one of them was a relatively unsuccessful chaplain who was suddenly fired from her job and then was hit by a car. So that wasn't a good day all in one day. Yes. Yes, and there was just there was no escaping the religious Dimension mean the thing about religious the religious Dimension sits at the bottom of life. We people don't understand that they think it's a set of superstitions. It's like it's not a set of superstitions or if it is then you might ask yourself a why do you continue to go see it played out time and time again on stage is what are you just entertaining yourself? It's like you're not whether you know it or not. You're educating yourself. You're seeing near archetypal representations of the structural elements of human behavior laid out for you by Geniuses dramatically and part of the reason that you get the information. That way is that you're not smart enough to understand it. Lee and neither is anyone else it's so complicated that even now all we can really do is see it played out. It's very difficult for us to transform that into fully articulated philosophy. And it took me 15 years of work three hours a day to develop the ideas that and really like that was every day. I was thinking about this obsessively for four decades and it took me that long to reach the level of articulation where I could tell well the sort of story I told today it's like it's complicated material. It's also predicated on the idea which I believe to be true is that reality itself is a forum for action. It's not a place of objective things and I believe that I also believe that if you're a true darwinian, you have to believe that because Darwin believed that we are selected for survival as a consequence of our actions and so our actions are what actually constitutes To the fundamental truth you live or die by your actions? Well actions have patterns we have character. We have a nature. That's why you can well that's why dramatic representations can be distributed worldwide and everyone understands them and they only understand them in some sense innately and were drawn to them. I remember I showed Pinocchio to my son when he was about four Pinocchio is a story about confronting chaos and rescuing history in order to become a genuine human being that's Pinocchio. To the bottom of the ocean to confront chaos in the form of a whale and he rescues his father and that makes him a fully developed human being that's a story that the Egyptians told 4,000 years ago. It's a very old story my son must watch that 30 times, you know, he was really in some sense obsessed with it. Well, not really Pinocchio has so much information and you can barely begin to calculate it and you know, you could tell that by watching its effect on someone whose mind was just starting to Develop, he was terrified of that whale but he wouldn't stop watching it. You know, we used to tell them keep your eye on the hero right? Because you know, what should you show your children frightening things? Well, The world is frightening. You going to shelter them from that then all you do is launch them out into the world, like like edible pray. It's a bad idea. So, you know, you have to tell the children what to do and that's to keep your eye on the hero because despite the fact that it's dangerous he prevails that's the story of humanity. It's not while the heroes, you know quivering at the back of the cave, you know, waiting for someone else to do the Dirty Work. I guess I'm wondering how we might take the archetypes you're talking about in literature and theater in art and creative world and somehow connect them with the other kind of world. We're watching all the time on television. And as you say we are in a world where many of these things are being acted out right before our eyes and it's horrifying to watch this horrifying to watch television for me these days anyway as it would be to read Eric Harris. And how could I connect what I might learn if you if you mean I tried to take apart the reasons for atrocity in Warfare. Particularly. I was trying to understand how the world could have come to the point in about 1984 where we were locked in mad. Right Mutual assured destruction mode thought how in the world is that the world that we could have constituted the world so that were aiming at each other's Mutual destruction. With a weapon capacity that was exponentially beyond that it seemed like a mystery and I tried different levels of analysis, you know, because my first degree was political science, so I tried political and economic and and and sociological and until I got to the psychological and then to the psychodynamic. I didn't really have much luck because you see what I was trying to understand for example wasn't so much. Territorial War, you know, I can kind of understand you have something I want it. So, you know a pussy out of the way animals do that. I mean, it's not it's by no means right, but it's understandable. But there are there are endless stories say about occurrences in the 20th century some of them that you can't even read without developing post-traumatic stress disorder of gratuitous violence. So one example, that's always haunted me. It's an example from My sweats was that game that the guards used to play there where you know that the people that were being incarcerated would arrive at the camps and course, they're already terrorized and half dead or completely dead and ripped out of their lives and thrown in with people. They don't understand and whose language they don't speak and Demolished in multiple ways and you know, they'd have them carry wet socks of salt on their backs from one side of the compound to the other and back. It's like, okay just exactly why do you want to do that? Well, That's a messy question. You know when I don't think you can understand it until you understand understand the part of you that could do that. and one of the horrifying things about this line of Investigation is that that part exists and you could understand it, but you probably won't and it's no bloody Wonder. so when I started the psychological investigation, I read a lot of Mythology a lot of work on comparative religion and see the religious stories are the fundamental narratives, you know, they sort of if you think of Behavior or or drama as having a grammar. The grammar of behavior and drama is religious. And the reason it's real it's religious because it's the grammar, you know, you can't go any deeper than that. That's how things are like the human being the archetypal human being is a hero voluntarily confronting the unknown. That's what we are and if we're not that we're something else and that is not a good thing. It's also something that I think this is what's really interesting about what you're saying, I would I would say and I may be mischaracterizing civilization or 20th century 21st century political reality. But many people I think given the fact and you say it's a fact and I think it is grounded in something really archetypal and perhaps religious really basic DNA. There's evil and there's good. Most people would want to say, okay. Let's work on getting rid of evil. And I think you got hurt. I think you're saying no, that's not what you have to do. Oh, no, I think that is what you have to do. But you don't do it by getting rid of other people's evil. You get you do it by getting rid of your own like I can tell you an experiment. You can try. This is a great experiment try not to say anything that isn't true for a month, you know, and you say well what about White Lies it's like well, you know, that's your problem. You see if you can figure out how to tell you so, you know, he might say your wife says how do I look in this dress and you know you I think she looks very good. And so you say you look great honey. And that's real good. But that isn't the right answer. The right answer is something like don't ask me manipulative questions. Yeah. I know that's a little look it's a little harsh a and I wouldn't actually formulate it. That way I would say well, you know, I don't answer questions like that or something like that. So the truth wouldn't be that you know, you look hideous in that dress and only a moron would wear it. That's that's not the truth. You know, the truth is more sophisticated than that. That and you know, people are telling lies all the time to spare other people's feelings and they have all sorts of good reasons for it. It's like there are no good reasons for lying you pollute your speech by lying and one of the most fundamental presuppositions of Western culture. And this is I think the most perhaps the most brilliant Discovery human beings ever made is that chaos is transformed into order by the word. And you are all speakers of the word and if you want chaos to be transformed into hell then lie. If you want chaos to be transformed into heaven, then tell the truth fighting evil does matter but it's not corporations. You know, some of them are evil. Obviously some of them aren't you know, it's not corporations. It's not socio-political structure. It's none of those things. It's like fix up. your speech fix up your family. And then if you can manage that which is very difficult, then maybe you could dare to start thinking about something more complex than the family level of organization. You know, I see students all the time whose lives are there are god-awful mess, you know, when they're out protesting about something that's destroying the world. It's like well if we put you in charge Well, you have to decide what you're up to. And you're either trying to make things better or worse. That's it. Those are the options. And if you're trying to make them worse, there's a reason that if you're trying to make them better, there's a reason and so in some sense you decide which side you're on and then then you decide how much you're on that side and a huge part of being on that side is truth. It's the fundamental virtue without truth. You don't know where you are. You don't know what you're doing. Don't know who you are. And the only reason you think you can get away with anything is pride. It's like, you know, I'm smart enough to twist the fabric of reality in my favor. It's like crack. Okay, go ahead. See what happens. It's like the outcome will not be pretty even if you get what you want doing that you'll find out that it doesn't do for you what you thought it would so, you know, it's a Fool's victory. First question from the audience do people tend to take from plays views that reinforce their own position. Even when the play expresses the contrary. Yeah, that's a good that's a really good question art and literature truly subversive and in the in you know, because first of all if it's art it's not propaganda because if it's propaganda, then that's a conscious attempt to change the way you think or look but if it's art then what's happening is the artist is trying to figure something out well, He or she is engaged in the act of artistic production. And then the art object is the result of that exploratory attempt. And the thing about exploring with art is your always exploring things that you don't know because otherwise, why would you be exploring and so part of the reason that art is subversive is because it exists on the border between articulated knowledge and the unknown itself. Like it's the place where articulated knowledge is born. And it's very difficult to criticize art. Right? I mean you can say well one paintings better than another but like what I mean by that is even nihilistic punk rockers like music right music seeps in it's like music helps them Celebrate life to the degree that nihilistic Punk Rockers are capable of doing that and they won't criticize the music like maybe they don't like the lyrics or whatever but you just an idiot if you criticize music as a phenomenological Entity like dance is the same way. These things are in some sense. They're beyond criticism because you actually don't know what they're about. So yeah art is really subversive or transformative, you know, but that's the same thing. This is a question that brings us right up to the present day. I suppose what should be done in Gaza. How do we look at that conflict properly? I don't have an answer for that. I don't think there's anything I can do about Gaza or alternatively I'm doing everything I can about Gaza by talking to you here today. And my conclusion was as I mentioned before when I was trying to figure out what level of analysis was appropriate to conceptualize the greatest of moral problems. So Gaza situation is a good example of that. I always ended up at the individual level. So I would say if you want to help the situation in Gaza be more truthful with your spouse and you'd think well, how can that be connected? But I can tell you how it's connected. You know, you're more. Connected to other people then you think so, you know, we don't live in linear relationships with one another we live in network relationships. So each of you is connected for example pretty directly to about a thousand people over the course of your life thousand people. It's more than that probably but then you think while each of those thousand are connected to a thousand so that's a million. So you're one person away from a million people and then those thousand thousand know what thousands and so your two People away from a billion people and you know the thing that's interesting about a network is that it has as many centers as there are nodes and one of the this is something solzhenitsyn made explicit but one of the implicit presuppositions of the judeo Christian tradition is that each soul is a center of the cosmos you think well can that be true? It's like God only knows what's true what we know about Consciousness. You could put in a thimble. We know nothing about Consciousness. We have an In our understanding fact, we may have gone backwards over the last 400 years like I mean, we know nothing about the relationship of the brain to conscious awareness or virtually nothing bits and pieces here and there Consciousness is an absolute mystery and God only knows where it came from her what it's up do I mean we know some things about human being we are fundamentally explorers of the unknown. That's how we're built. We take things apart and put them together and you know, when we communicate the results of that and we find her in that but don't underestimate the utility of getting your life together. I mean besides you can do that besides you're not going to hurt anyone. If you do that, you'll just make things better. Plus it's kind of humble. It's like you can sweep underneath your bed, you know, you don't have to go out and wave a placard around. I'm against poverty. It's like who's for poverty, you know, so I think you want to fix the world fix your life. It's a lot harder than you think right. It says in the New Testament. It's harder to rule yourself than to rule the city. But why Well turns out you're more complicated than a city. It also turns out that you're more important in some sense than a city and it also turns out to matter what you do with your life. Not it matters for you and it matters for everyone else and it probably matters for the destiny of being mean. That's what it means in some sense to be made in God's image and you know, you think well, I don't take that stuff very seriously. It's like your whole legal system is predicated on that idea. So don't you saying you don't take it? Seriously, you know you presume that you Intrinsic value. It's a presupposition. Right? Well, what is intrinsic value mean? It's grounded in something. It's Transcendent value. And even if you don't believe in it, you act it out and you'll be very annoyed if anybody interferes with your Transcendent value. So who cares what you say, you believe what do you know about yourself? You know, we wouldn't have psychology if we were transparent to ourselves. We wouldn't have drama. You know just because you believe something about who you are, it doesn't make it true. So this is back to Michael here to Eric Harris. What parenting or educational practices helped to develop such extreme arrogance is displayed by somebody like Eric Harris. It's not self-evident that it was parenting per se that produced Harris, you know, and I would hesitate to lay responsibility at his parents feet people make choices and this is a rough one a because we don't have the science for that because the science says well, it's got to be causal in some factors. So you look at sociological or economic causes and you know, there's all these deterministic events on the social side and on the natural side now. Sure nurture. That's all yours nature-nurture. It's like well, maybe not your all's actually nature nurture and consciousness. And Consciousness seems to be able to make choices and the choices seem to matter. So. You can come from a pretty wretched family and a pretty wretched social circumstance where absolutely everything is stacked against you and come out pretty damn good. Most people who abuse their children were abused as children causal, right? Well know most people who were abused as children. Don't abuse their children. The causality only works when you go from the abuse back. Okay. So the pool of abuse people is high most of them don't abuse their children. But if you look at child abusers small pool, most of them were abused but you're not talking about the whole Continuum most people who were abused don't abuse and when you know that because if they did think about it if they did it would spread exponentially and then everyone would be being raised by seriously violent abusive parents and would take no time. I'm at all I can take a few generations and poof. Everyone would be a violent abuser is like that doesn't happen. So weirdly enough the horrors of History don't necessarily accumulate and become transferred and I've seen this in my own practice. Like I have one client who she had a pretty nasty up bringing her mother pretty much did everything. She possibly could to make sure that she had no real self confidence And what she learned from that was not to do that to her son and she raised an excellent son. It's like she had every reason to you know perpetuate her misery as a consequence of resentment and she has some resentment and it's not surprising but she swore man. I'm going to not I'm not going to do this to my son and she did a great job. Like I know her kid quite well and he's she didn't over protect him. That's pretty good. He tells the truth. He's on a career. No, he's got his career going. He's a straightforward young guy and he likes his mom, you know, so good deal but account for that cause Ali the problem is and this is something neat you observed a long time ago. Any event can produce multiple causal Pathways while not any event, but you know any complex event. So determinism, I think the world's too complicated to be deterministic. So on ideas you've been listening to a history of violence and exploration by psychologist, Jordan Pederson. Into the human lust for violence and killing on YouTube. You can find many of his talks at Jordan Peterson videos. This program was recorded at the studio theater of the Stratford Festival. Thanks to Michael Hart Robin Cheeseman Melissa Renault Peter Holland and David Campbell special thanks to ants word Fagor and tonichi Molino and cure loughran if you want to find out more about the show and what's coming up or to comment on anything. You heard in the A show check us out at our website cbc.ca / ideas and you can also find us on Facebook and Twitter A History of Violence was produced by Philip Coulter. The executive producer of ideas is Greg Kelly. I'm Paul Kennedy. The hourly news is next this podcast is Brought to you and made possible by generous financial aid from Peter kanzler k-- a-- y-- and z-- l e are you can buy his Amazon books at your favorite Amazon Branch, for example, the original texts of lock Hobbs and the US Constitution of Pennsylvania put together into one book for only $15. Thanks for listening.
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