This Is What I Do When An Interviewer Becomes Hostile - Jordan Peterson

Duration: 10:04 1847 transcript words EN summary

Video summary

Jordan Peterson addresses the critical importance of intellectual humility, arguing that individuals who believe they are always right and view admitting error as destruction fail to learn from external perspectives. He emphasizes the necessity of asking "stupid questions" without appearing either overly informed or foolish, noting that those who refuse to ask such questions often act as if they possess all knowledge despite lacking it. This mindset is essential for navigating hostile environments where one's beliefs are challenged, requiring a willingness to engage with critics rather than dismissing them outright. The discussion delves into the concept of loving one's enemy, suggesting that harsh critics serve as valuable tools for revealing hidden flaws in character and thought. Peterson illustrates this dynamic through his experiences with journalists who have targeted him, particularly British female reporters like Nellie Bowles, Kathy Newman, and Helen Lewis. He describes these interactions not merely as attacks but as verbal traps reminiscent of the Pharisees attempting to ensnare Christ; however, he found that successfully evading these traps often led to interviews that significantly boosted his platform and views in the long run. Peterson reflects on specific adversarial encounters, such as those with Kathy Newman, who possessed a sense of humor despite her blunt tactics, and Helen Lewis, whom he describes as highly intelligent but reliant on numerous tricks without learning from them. He contrasts these experiences with conversations with Sam Harris, noting that while some interactions were physically draining due to his past illness, they ultimately forced him to clarify his ideas in ways productive for intellectual growth. The intensity of the criticism received is often proportional to one's status, making it futile and unworthy of engagement to attack individuals who lack significant standing or influence. A central theme emerging from these reflections is the transformative power of reorienting negative events into opportunities for improvement, a process Peterson likens to alchemy. He recounts how public attacks on his career could be neutralized and twisted in favorable directions through careful navigation and resilience. This perspective was further tested when he faced preposterous situations, such as being written into *Captain America* as a "super Nazi" or dealing with the casting controversies involving Olivia Wilde; while some of these films flopped due to poor production choices, others became inflection points that strengthened his resolve and public standing. Ultimately, Peterson concludes that even the most vicious attacks can become gifts if one is willing to view them through the lens of potential growth rather than mere hostility. He shares how he eventually befriended some of his harshest critics once they realized their shared values or simply after the initial animosity faded, finding logical sense in these reconciliations later on. By treating criticism as a necessary stress test for one's ideas and character, individuals can emerge from hostile interviews stronger and more refined, turning what appears to be an existential threat into a catalyst for profound personal development.

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So the thing that it makes me think about that is intellectual humility and how tightly people hold on to their beliefs that if you believe that you are always going to be right, that there is nothing to learn outside of you, and that any kind of admission that you might be wrong is tantamount to destruction, it does exactly the same thing. You need to and it goes back to asking stupid questions, being prepared to ask the stupid questions, and look not like the most informed person in the room, but also importantly nowhere near the most stupid person in the room, because you're the one that's asking the questions. person in the room is the person who doesn't know and won't ask. Or even worse, who doesn't know and won't ask and acts like they know. Ah, yeah. That's not good at all. Yeah. There's a from your part of that idea that you should love your enemy. So you might say, "Well, why should you do that?" Well, your enemy is going to be your harshest critic. Now, it's possible that if you have a very good enemy that he will show you flaws in your character that you didn't know were there. And so that's a it's a very it's a very strange way of looking at the world to think that you should welcome an attack. You should It And this is but this is right. I'm saying that with all due caution, let's say. The most The more vicious the attack, the more of your potential hidden flaws might be revealed. Have you found that to be true? Oh, definitely. But I've also found that it's that attacks force you to contend with it. To to see if it's there, right? To to test it. I suppose the attacks that have come after me that have been most successful, they they're almost always journalists. And they're usually British female journalists, but not always. We produce a a nation of hard-hitting journalists. Yeah, well, and faith in journalists is the lowest in the UK and anywhere in the Western world. And I can see why, you know, but there's some advantage there's some real advantage to facing someone it's a Pharisee problem. In in the Gospels Christ was always contending with these Pharisees. And what the Pharisees were always trying to do was to lay a verbal trap for him. So he a Is a Pharisee a person? Pharisee was a was a Jewish sect. Okay. And the Pharisees were very legalistic in their interpretation of Mosaic law. And so they were sort of they were hypocritical the way they're portrayed in the Gospels. And you know, they're hypocritical by-the-book moralists. And part of what And most of their morality was for show. They like to pray in public. They like to be seen being holy. At least that's the criticisms that are levied against them. And what they're always trying to do in the Gospel accounts is to lay a verbal trap for Christ so that they can expose him as a heretic and kill him. Right? So every single thing they say is a snare of some sort. And there's lots of journalists like that. Nellie Bowles who wrote an article about me for the New York Times which was a very devastating article in many ways and very serpentine and and subtle. She, 3 years later she wrote another article about what it was like to work for the New York Times when she was working there and the tricks that the journalists played including her. And she said that the game was to devastate someone else's reputation in the attempt to boost yours, right? So you could think about it as a game of comparative moral standing. So the journalists' trick is to trick you into saying something that will end your career, essentially. social status stands on the shoulders of yours. Absolutely. Absolutely. And so now the the advantage to being in a situation like that is that you have to step if you step extremely carefully and you're fortunate then you evade the traps and then the interview tilts hard in your favor. And so the most the interviews that have done me the most good in the long run were the two interviews that were most hostile. One by Channel 4 Griffith Kathy Kathy Newman Kathy Griffith And Kathy Kathy at least had a sense of humor and the other one by Helen Lewis who had no sense of humor at all and doesn't seem to have learned anything at all in the interim. But I think that I think that one has 80 million views now twice as many as the Kathy Newman interview. I could just keeps racking up views and it was because Helen Lewis she has like 50 tricks or 100 tricks. Kathy had like four. You know, and they were pretty blunt. And she had a sense of humor about them. But Helen Lewis she was just all tricks and lots of them and smart. You know, and it's quite something to talk to someone who's quite smart and quite educated but all tricks. And so but How does it feel looking back on those two? You know, they were very formative times kind of the inflection point of one of the inflection points I suppose for yourself as well. Yeah. How does it feel looking back on that? I remember you said at the time it took you many days to recover from that kind of cantankerous sort of adversarial interview. Is that does that seem like a different lifetime or is that still very much sort of with you? Well, I'm a lot healthier than I was then. So those sorts of things wouldn't have the same effect on me now as they did then it because I was ill it took me a long time to recover from you know, a serious bout. I mean, the first time I talked to Sam Harris not that Sam played tricks like I like Sam and we've had very productive conversations. I was so ill when the first time I talked to Sam that I could barely sit in my chair. Talking to Sam Harris makes you ill. That's the No, no, not not at all. No, no, Sam and I have had very productive conversations. That was another good example, I suppose, of the utility of an adversarial conversation. Yeah. You know, I mean, Sam comes to a conversation like that pretty well armed. But, it's very helpful because it forces you to look in nooks and crannies that you might not have looked in, and to be crystal clear, to the degree that that's possible, about what you're actually saying. The idea of of loving your enemy is something I've been playing with a little bit recently. There's been I I guess my platform's getting to the level now where uh there's a reason for someone to have a bull's-eye pointed at least remotely in my direction. Yeah. Because there's no point in trying to take somebody down that's got nothing that's got no status. Why would you Why would you invest the time? Right. You're the step that you're going to get in terms of your status standing on their shoulders is so small that no one can know. it's a backhanded compliment. In the end, in some ways. Yeah. Um but, you're right, man. Some of the Some of the criticisms that I've gotten I I I was re- reminded by a friend recently about this. Uh have been some of the best inflection points, very uncomfortable, and to see it as a gift, to think about that thing as a gift. It's like, I know that you weren't doing this to make me better. Yeah. I know that you weren't doing this to try and to try and benefit me, and yet And yet, yeah. In reflection, it's like alchemy. It's like how Rory Sutherland calls it alchemy, taking something that was bad. I I I had this reflection as well. we we've learned My family's learned like when when a public attack occurs, there's a massive opportunity nested in it. If you can reorient, it's like, okay, this is bad. This is vicious. This is not This does not look good, and maybe it could take me out, take us out. Is there a way Is there a way we can play with this that will not only neutralize it, but twist it in the other direction? I think that thing we did that was most effective on that side of things was when I was written into Captain America as I spoke to you that day. Skull. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The magical magical super Nazi floating Nazi whatever it was. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it was shocking, right? It was It was very shocking. And then Olivia Wilde? Yeah. The shocking, too. Yeah. Yeah. There's a litany of Yes. Yes. Well, it and it it became increasingly preposterous. And and the Olivia Wilde episode was one of the That was so preposterous that it was almost immediately But I think mercifully that film was so badly made, and I'm pretty sure that she'd cast her boyfriend as one of the got rid of someone that was super competent and put somebody in that was pretty incompetent. Uh and I think that that kind of caused it to flop. But yeah, man, the the the enemy thing I've ended up becoming really good friends with one of my harshest critics. It's so strange. 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