In this video, Dr. Oz and Jordan Peterson discuss the topic of evil. Is it a human construct? Does it exist outside mankind? Jordan Peterson doesn’t believe animals embody evil because evil requires self-consciousness. He connects it to the stories in Genesis, specifically the story about Adam and Eve. In their creation, they learn the distinction between good and evil. Jordan Peterson shares that if you are aware of what hurts you, you know it. This means you also know how it hurts another person. As soon as someone knows that, then they know the difference between good and evil. It’s the exploitation of vulnerability. Jordan Peterson explains that animals on the other hand don’t know or do that.
In addition, Dr. Oz asks Jordan Peterson how we can overcome evil in the world and ourselves. Jordan Peterson thinks you can make a power case that evil is the radical absence of good, but that it doesn’t mean it is not an active force. Dr. Oz wonders how we can reduce evil within our communities. Jordan Peterson feels you have to deal with it yourself. You are not able to deal with a situation unless you face it internally. The battle between good and evil is a spiritual one. Jordan Peterson explains that It is fundamentally an individual issue. It’s the battle of your soul pulled by opposing forces.
In addition, Dr. Oz asks Jordan Peterson how we can overcome evil in the world and ourselves. Jordan Peterson thinks you can make a power case that evil is the radical absence of good, but that it doesn’t mean it is not an active force. Dr. Oz wonders how we can reduce evil within our communities. Jordan Peterson feels you have to deal with it yourself. You are not able to deal with a situation unless you face it internally. The battle between good and evil is a spiritual one. Jordan Peterson explains that It is fundamentally an individual issue. It’s the battle of your soul pulled by opposing forces.
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00:00 Evil. Is evil a human construct? Do animals have evil?
00:06 No, I don't think animals do. I think you need to be self-conscious.
00:10 I thought about that in relationship to the stories in Genesis.
00:14 When Adam and Eve wake up, when their eyes are open, they realize that they're mortal, essentially.
00:18 That's when death, in some sense, comes into the world.
00:21 At the same time, they realize they're naked.
00:24 And naked means vulnerable to the world.
00:28 They also learn the distinction between good and evil.
00:32 Why are those two things juxtaposed?
00:35 If I realize that I'm vulnerable, naked, let's say, before the world,
00:39 I need to put on clothing, for example, which is something God arranges at that point
00:43 to protect this vulnerability from the world.
00:45 I also realize that everyone else is vulnerable, just like me.
00:49 If I know what hurts me, I know it.
00:52 In a way, an animal doesn't. I know it.
00:54 Then I know what hurts you.
00:57 As soon as I know that, then I know the difference between good and evil.
01:01 And evil is exactly that.
01:03 It's the exploitation of your vulnerability.
01:06 Animals don't have that.
01:08 They can be destructive and carnivorous, all of that.
01:11 But a lion doesn't hate you if it eats you. It's just hungry.
01:15 So, no, evil is something that's human.
01:18 How do we overcome evil, first in ourselves, that's where you started as a psychologist,
01:23 but also in the world around us?
01:25 Because I think that's one of the other battles that many struggle with.
01:29 Either the belief that there's not really evil, evil is just the absence of good.
01:35 It's a powerful argument in some sense, because evil is in some sense distance from the highest good.
01:42 But I think practically it doesn't matter.
01:45 It doesn't matter which of those explanations you gravitate towards.
01:50 I think you can make a powerful case that evil is the radical absence of good.
01:55 But that doesn't mean that it's not an active force in and of itself in some sense anyways.
02:01 There's a survival benefit to evil because you can hold back your competitor.
02:05 So how do we reduce evil within our communities,
02:10 even when nations are speaking to each other, because we have different values?
02:14 You have to quell it in yourself to begin with, I think.
02:17 I don't see any other solution to that.
02:20 You're actually not even really contending with the problem until you face it internally, I don't think.
02:24 Because you don't have any sense of how deep the problem is.
02:27 And partly what I did when I wrote my first book was imagine myself as an Auschwitz guard.
02:33 And I don't mean I could be an Auschwitz guard, and that was the end of it.
02:38 I meant imagining it, beating someone who was already three quarters dead
02:43 and who'd been separated from his or her family, let's say her family.
02:48 What would I have to be like to do that?
02:50 Well, it's a horrifying thing to envision.
02:54 You know, when I worked at, briefly, I visited maximum security prison in Edmonton
03:00 under the tutelage of this eccentric psychologist who taught me a course on the psychology of creativity.
03:06 And one of the people I met there, him and a compatriot, one of the prisoners,
03:11 took another prisoner and pulverized his leg with a lead pipe because he was a snitch.
03:18 And that really shocked me. How could someone do that? How could it be possible to do that?
03:22 And I thought about that for two weeks, trying to imagine doing that.
03:27 And then I thought, "Oh, I could do that. I see. I could do that. That would be possible."
03:35 Could I enjoy that? Yes. Okay. Do I want to do that? No. I don't want to do that.
03:46 And that scared me. A lot.
03:51 You know, and I was trying to deal with this underlying problem,
03:53 which was the problem of the Auschwitz guard, essentially,
03:56 which is where I think the whole Nazi problem sort of comes to the focus.
03:59 It's like, there were Auschwitz guards and they were individuals and they were like you.
04:04 They were like me. So what does that mean? That's what we're like.
04:08 Well, do we want to be that way? Well, that is the question, isn't it?
04:12 Do we want to be that way? Are we that way? Yes. Some more than others. Yes, definitely.
04:18 You know, there's some people, I don't think they're temperamentally constructed
04:23 so that they could do what Auschwitz guards do,
04:25 but they'd have their own proclivity towards malevolence.
04:28 It might be overprotection, for example. Right?
04:31 And that would be the devouring mother.
04:34 She's so compassionate that her children cannot escape from her grasp.
04:37 And maybe that would be the root of female totalitarianism,
04:40 something relevant to our current political situation.
04:44 The totalitarian impulse of security at all costs.
04:49 So it's a spiritual battle, the battle between good and evil.
04:56 And what that means to me, at least in part,
04:58 is that it's something that is fundamentally an individual issue.
05:03 It's the battle of your soul, pulled between these opposing forces.
05:07 Well, why would you be tempted towards malevolence?
05:10 Because you're angry and bitter at your undeserved suffering
05:13 and the terrible cataclysm of conscious existence,
05:17 and the exacerbation of that by self-consciousness itself,
05:21 and the broken state of the world, and the catastrophe of history.
05:25 Right? Maybe it should all burn.
05:28 And we are tempted to that.
05:30 Is there a role of evil? I mean, there was evil in the Garden of Eden.
05:34 Okay, so let's think about this.
05:37 Here's something that everybody will know about.
05:39 So, you know, the Disney film Beauty and the Beast.
05:42 Well, Beauty isn't attracted to Gaston,
05:45 who's sort of stereotypically masculine, but very bombastic.
05:49 And, you know, hypothetically, he's not a monster,
05:51 because he's in the town, and he has this persona,
05:54 and everyone loves him. He sings a song about how great he is.
05:56 But she doesn't like him. She likes this monster.
06:00 And Beauty's no fool.
06:02 Why does she like that monster?
06:05 Well, he's tameable.
06:07 Why does she want a tameable monster?
06:09 Well, because sometimes the monster part is necessary, right?
06:12 That's resolve. That's the ability to say no.
06:16 Right? And so there's this...
06:17 And the best men I know are terribly dangerous people.
06:22 They have it under control.
06:24 And so maybe good is better if the possibility for evil exists,
06:28 but not the actuality.
06:30 And maybe it's up to us to not allow the actuality to manifest itself,
06:34 even though we need the possibility.
06:36 It needs... It's a reserve that we need to draw on.
06:39 And then there's also...
06:41 We often make arbitrary distinctions between good and evil,
06:44 which is something the philosopher Nietzsche talked a lot about.
06:46 It's like, well, are you so sure that you don't define evil
06:49 merely as what you're afraid of?
06:52 You know? And so there's this aggressive capacity in men,
06:55 and certainly in women as well.
06:56 And it's very easy to say,
06:58 well, we should just quell all male aggression.
07:00 It's like, oh yeah?
07:02 You really think that's the answer, do you?
07:04 So what do you want? A bunch of, like, children?
07:08 You want men.
07:10 Well, men are dangerous. Really dangerous.
07:12 And women are attracted to dangerous men,
07:15 but wise women are attracted to dangerous men who've mastered it.
07:19 And so maybe the world is a better place
07:23 when the possibility of evil exists.
07:26 So, you know, and that's something you can think about for, like, 50 years.