Jordan Peterson & Slavoj Žižek: Defining Left and Right… Reconsidered.

this question of the moral character of
the left P contrasted to the right has been covered by other channels other channels that I really dislike and that I really think simply not intelligent enough to handle it but I've heard various other channels struggle with the fact like well even one of them I know it's conservative this sense of what it is to be a conservative it's kind of mean isn't mean ultimately if conservatism is just defined in terms of a reluctance to accept progress if that's all it is then conservatives would be by that definition the perpetual losers in history that sets up a definition of left and right whereby left the left of the people marching forward and the right of the people dragging their heels I think that's a very unfair way to define left and right but I understand why there what are doing it so I'm gonna play you a clip of a debate between Jordan Peterson and slave voyages Jack and it highlights an interesting question both retrospectively and the present tense about how we distinguish left from right now surprisingly few people know this the distinction between left and right goes back to the French Revolution and specifically to the seating arrangements in the era sets I was a parliament that put together during the French Revolution and in fact there were many other political terms that related to the peculiarities of that room there was a group of politicians called the Milton it's and you see this if you again if you read historical fiction or primary source documents some of these political terms kind of lurked around and the Milton being referred to was literally an imperfection in the woodworking where the seats kind of rose up there was a lump in the floor and Sassoon the seats Rozelle he had those guys who sit over the bed by the mountain in German history too they had one of their Parliament's and different political factions were at first identified by the name of the pub the politicians would meet in mmm anyway so some of these nicknames in politics come and go but the distinction being left in a right has endured for centuries and it's taken on different kinds of frankly symbolic and even psychological significance we're going to talk about the point that Slava g-shock makes and Slovakia jack is not conventionally left-wing himself is that we can't narrowly focus on self-discipline on one's own ethnos on one's own personal purity of conduct or say taking good care of one's own family a nurse note even that idea even rhetoric about the family is considered right-wing it's considered conservative this is already an interesting hint that how we think about left and right today it doesn't doesn't really make sense but that's the the custom of our time um he draws attention to the futility of focusing on one's responsibility for one's own life one's own family and so on if the major problems you're encountering as an individual as a family what have you are problems with the larger society around extremely common sense naive question here but what is in trying to set your house in order you discover that your housing is in this order precisely because the way the society is messed up this is obvious in extreme situation like I hope we agree to say to somebody in in North Korea set your house in order no ha ha but I think in some deeper sense it goes all sorts for our societies I'm just repeating what you are telling you see some kind of a social crisis and I don't see clearly why insist so much on this choice because I will give you an example that I think perfectly does it how do we usually deal with ecology by this false personalization you know they tell you ah what did you do did you put all the coke cans on the side the Doric vehicle old paper and so yes we should do this but you know like I in a way this is also a very easy way to describe yourself or like you say okay I do the recycling show up you know I did my duty let's go on so I would love to say why the choice there okay so the pathway towards adopting individual responsibilities happens to be a very individual one but I do believe that the best bet for most people is to solve the problems that beset them in their own lives the ethical problems that beset them that they know are problems and that they can set themselves together well enough so that they can then become capable of addressing larger scale problems without falling prey at some of the errors that characterize let's say over optimistic and intellectually arrogant ideologue very bleak let me close with one thing one of my favorite quotes from Carl Jung it's actually a quote that I used at the beginning of my first book which was called maps of meaning was that if you take a personal problem seriously enough you will simultaneously solve a social problem and this bears on on your point because it's not like you're a small family even the relationship between you and your wife is immune in some sense to the broader social problems around you and so let's say right now there's tremendous tension between men and women in the West and that's certainly the case given the divorce rate let's say that would be some evidence and the later and later stages that people are waiting to become in - you know enter into permanent relationships there's there's a real tension there and then if you do establish a relationship with a woman or a partner but we'll say a woman in this particular case you are instantly faced with all of the sociological problems in a microcosm in that relationship and then if you work those damn problems out if you can work them out within your relationship then you can get some insight it's not complete insight but you can get some partial insight into what the problem actually and get the diagnosis right and you've moved some small measure forward in addressing what might constitute the broader social concern I think this little anecdotal example of Slava is you Jack and Peterson crossing swords gives you a more meaningful way to reflect on what the differences really are the strengths and the weakness of conservatism the strength and the weakness of the right both is precisely this narrow focus ultimately on self-preservation one's own good one's own obligations one's own family and this ultimately must seem somewhat mean-spirited and uncharitable in contrast to in 2019 the ethos of the left which is we want to have a society and when not in which everybody succeeds everybody flourishes in which the weakest are helped in which you know the poorest are encouraged or given health care given access to education so on and so forth it's only from a deeply right-wing standpoint that it could make sense to cut taxes and destroy the education and health care system so that the rich can pay lower taxes and spend more money on the welfare of their own families that is within my lifetime that has been the major clarion call of conservatism so remember ultimately I come from Ontario specifically lived through the so called common sense revolution of the Mike Harris government and that is that is not an unfair summary of what conservatism came to mean in Ontario during my lifetime and it has short term electoral success but in the long term it's a formula for disaster aside from celebrating the collapse of the Soviet Union like the collapse of communism there's there's really not an inspiring vision of the future there and there also isn't fundamentally an ethos of of being helpful and encouraging and loving towards one's fellow man instead if this is the sort of clothes now that is I think the kind of cultural psychology of what the distinction of left and right is today but that's not what it should be or that's not what it was as as created by the circumstances of the French Revolution how far can we really go if the left defines itself as the as the party that cares about everyone the care is about uplifting the poor and the right defines itself as the party for caring about oneself for carrying a boat an arrow a sense of individualism that includes individual moral responsibility for sure includes charity work and those things it includes take care of your family this is ultimately I mean you know this seems to me like an aesthetic assumption that's gotten out of control this is kind of counterproductive to any kind of meaningful discussion of public policy including for example immigration well immigration policy doesn't make sense for the mainstream left or the mainstream right you get people on the left you take this ethic of helping the poorest among us who say they want completely open borders who say they want an unlimited number of people to be able to immigrate from Cambodia and Mexico or Syrian refugees and so on well I understand how that's a consistent kind of extension of this via you know aesthetic sense of what the left is supposed to be but in every other way it's deeply incoherent and on the other hand I mean the right wing position it's deeply incoherent with the reality of America conquering Afghanistan and Iraq it might be more consistent with isolationism with America finding its own business but a country that's built on genocide and an ever-expanding empire that doesn't just include Guam and the Mariana Islands but includes you know Kabul Afghanistan and so on well you're taking a responsibility so these things this Vegas that expenses is deeply deeply coherent I think for both left and right what I would point out is that the original distinction between left and right created by the French Revolution was instead a distinction between those who believed in reason reason with a capital r versus those who believed in the value of culture and tradition so one of the defining moments for the French Revolution was the creation of the metric system creation the metric system proceeded from purely abstract rational thought they said okay what's the difference between the North Pole and the equator we're gonna divide that into a consistent number of units and we're gonna create a new measure that has nothing to do with any particular historical king or the legend of Jesus and is real it doesn't connect anything this is going to be straight-up abstract rational reasoning and they devised a whole new calendar they created a calendar that had nothing to do with Christianity and nothing to do with the Roman Empire and in this way the the fundamental concept of the left in the French Revolution was that the the dead weight of millennia of cultural accretions could be cast aside and that reason reason with a capital R could create a new and better ordered world for everybody for the rich and the poor alike that we could get rid of crass superstition and the accretion of these things and this put the right over the Conservatives not in the role of opposing progress but in the role of being the people who could appreciate culture who could appreciate tradition and let's be clear culture doesn't necessarily have to be backward looking it can be forward looking it can be creative but can be also based on learning from the experience of others of saying like today hey look at Denmark do you think Denmark maybe has a better health care system do you think Sweden maybe has better prisons do you think taiwan has a better system of referenda you know of voting and direct democracy learning empirically from your own traditions from your own history that's one thing learning from the cultural traditions history and experience of others of being the more empirically based bottom-up motive of thinking as opposed to this abstract procedure from the top down guys we live in an era where political parties are bought and sold by businessmen and that is the reason why mainstream politics has become philosophically bankrupt and it's our job yours and mine to generate a new philosophy a new ethos in politics left right and center right here on the Internet right here on YouTube [Music]