Jordan Peterson and Douglas Murray: Soldiers for Truth

I don’t follow many podcasts, but I always check out Jordan Peterson’s regular long-form interview effort, and I often listen to it as I’m working around the farm.

He recently sat down with another favorite, Douglas Murray, for a wide-ranging discussion which Peterson starts out characterizing as:

…how a misguided purpose leads to abject misery and hopelessness, the cowardice of experts and others who choose silence in the face of malevolence, the psychology of fear, and the necessity of willful exposure to combat that fear.

but ends up reflecting on a conversation which has also covered:

…courage and truth, beauty and language…and manifestations of the divine word…there isn’t anything more powerful and meaningful than that.

It’s a lovely chat.  (At one point, I made myself a cup of tea, got out a few biscuits, sat down and relaxed, simply enjoying listening to two very bright and erudite souls talking about important matters in a humane and very accessible way.  A rarity these days.

It’s on YouTube as a video:

And available as an audio-only podcast via most of the usual venues.

Highly recommended, as long as you’re willing to give long-form a chance.  If you can only process short bursts of information, or if your appreciation or excoriation of Jordan Peterson depends on  what’s available through Twitter with limited or no context–Jordan Peterson thinks young women shouldn’t vote!  Jordan Peterson supports white privilege! Jordan Peterson says women are crazy!— then you’ll probably fail at this.  Because the complexities that emerge in a long-form discussion can’t be encapsulated in such simplistic terms and probably can’t be understood by those with short attention spans or those who suffer from unshakeable prejudice going in.

I find these two totally worth the concentration and the focus.  Please give them a couple of hours of your time.  You might learn something important.  I did.

PS:  Just as Peterson is about to wrap up, he suddenly remembers he wants to talk about Murray’s regular weekly column on Bari Weiss’s The Free Press. It’s one of the best segments of the interview, particularly as it speaks to me, a former English major (we’re like US Marines, there are no “ex” English majors, at least, none worth their salt, YMMV).  Here’s how  Murray introduced the series (which I’ve been reading since the start) on TFP.  The segment about this on the Peterson/Murray interview starts at 1:33:24.