In this video, Dr. Oz shares that to address the world’s biggest problems we need the right words to describe them. However, it seems we have ceded the power of words to certain groups and that becomes the conditioning of how we think. Suddenly, you’re allowed to think of problems in a certain context. Jordan Peterson thinks the issue with that is that it means it interferes with the mandates of your conscious. You won’t be able to satisfy your conscious with ideological theory of how the world works because it is not particularized enough to you, and it just isn’t sufficient.
Also, Dr. Oz asks Jordan Peterson how people can get clear on their true values. Jordan Peterson feels that the first thing we need to do is see the world through a hierarchy of values. In terms of broken families, schools are teaching values they feel are best for the children. Sometimes, these may be values that parents don’t necessarily want for their kids so a large number of Americans are taking their children out of the public school system. What is the role of the school in society when we can’t tell if parents are paying attention to these issues concerning their children? Should values be taught at home or in schools?
Also, Dr. Oz asks Jordan Peterson how people can get clear on their true values. Jordan Peterson feels that the first thing we need to do is see the world through a hierarchy of values. In terms of broken families, schools are teaching values they feel are best for the children. Sometimes, these may be values that parents don’t necessarily want for their kids so a large number of Americans are taking their children out of the public school system. What is the role of the school in society when we can’t tell if parents are paying attention to these issues concerning their children? Should values be taught at home or in schools?
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00:00 to address society's biggest problems,
00:02 we need the right words to describe them.
00:05 And it seems like we have ceded the power of words
00:10 to certain groups that use those words.
00:14 And all of a sudden that becomes
00:16 the conditioning of how we think.
00:18 - Yeah, that's happening in the universities.
00:20 - So, but walk us through that as you see it,
00:23 because that's such a subtle, seemingly subtle reality,
00:27 but incredibly powerful in that it limits
00:30 what we can think about.
00:32 Suddenly you are only allowed to think of problems
00:35 in a certain context, and you can't say what you see,
00:37 'cause it violates those ideas.
00:40 - The problem with that is that,
00:41 that means it interferes with the mandates
00:44 of your conscience.
00:45 You won't be able to satisfy your conscience
00:48 with an ideological theory about how the world works.
00:51 That'll never work.
00:51 - No.
00:52 - Partly 'cause it's not particularized enough.
00:54 It's not particularized enough to you.
00:58 And partly 'cause it just isn't sufficient.
01:00 But Marxism, for example, it's propositionalized.
01:05 You can really understand it
01:06 if you accept the first few axioms.
01:07 It's logical all the way up.
01:09 Unlike something, say, like Christianity
01:11 or any other religious system,
01:12 which is full of weird irrationalities, in a sense.
01:16 And it's not programmatic, at least not in a simple manner,
01:20 the same way these sorts of theories are.
01:22 So they're very attractive to the intellect.
01:24 And then young people are enticed.
01:26 It's like, well, there's poor people,
01:29 and look at them suffering.
01:30 And then there's rich people,
01:31 and well, maybe they're not suffering the same way.
01:33 Maybe they are, too, but certainly it doesn't appear that way
01:37 and maybe it's unfair.
01:38 It looks unfair.
01:39 It looks unjust.
01:41 Well, here's why, and here's the solution.
01:43 It's like, if you're a good person,
01:44 you'll go along with that.
01:46 Well, it's very attractive, and it's no wonder,
01:49 but it doesn't work.
01:50 And partly it's 'cause it doesn't take the problem
01:52 seriously enough.
01:54 - So tribes historically would have certain value systems.
01:58 They, internally, even without speaking about it, agree,
02:01 and then they use those values to define their tribe,
02:04 and other tribes would have different values.
02:06 In the world we live in now,
02:07 certain values seem to be strongly held
02:09 by some tribes, not others.
02:10 It creates opportunity for conflict.
02:12 Certainly it's true within political parties,
02:14 definitely true across countries.
02:16 If we have to address that at the personal level
02:20 to start with, how do people get clear
02:22 on their true values?
02:24 Because you end up with this dead end
02:27 if you only follow what you're being told
02:29 is what's important to you,
02:30 'cause it doesn't agree with your conscience.
02:31 It won't always, for nobody,
02:33 will it always agree with their conscience,
02:34 'cause we're all different.
02:36 Pushing back on those ideologies
02:37 requires a different level of bravery,
02:41 because you'll get canceled.
02:42 You'll be taken out very quickly.
02:43 And the smarter your ideas are,
02:45 I think it's one of the challenges you face.
02:47 People fear you most because you articulate
02:52 the insult. - Well, it isn't clear
02:53 that it isn't going to kill me.
02:54 - Well, it will.
02:55 - Yeah. - Well, that's,
02:57 we can talk about that. - It's a problem.
02:58 - Yeah, why do you do it?
02:59 - 'Cause the alternative is worse.
03:03 So that's why.
03:04 That's why I do it.
03:06 So, you know, I took the problems I was studying
03:12 when I wrote my first book, "Maps of Meaning,"
03:14 which is this Auschwitz-Gard problem.
03:17 Not only that, but also the solution
03:18 to the Auschwitz-Gard problem, 'cause I didn't,
03:20 I always thought if you could really specify a problem,
03:23 the solution would emerge
03:24 from the specification of the problem.
03:26 And I think it did emerge for me.
03:28 What was the solution?
03:29 Well, don't be evil.
03:30 Okay, what does that mean?
03:32 Well, it means be careful with what you say.
03:34 That really means that.
03:36 And it means pay attention to beauty,
03:38 pay attention to music, listen to other people, right?
03:41 Try to love your enemy, because, you know,
03:45 do you want enemies?
03:45 Do you really need enemies?
03:47 Really?
03:48 You know, your life's probably hard enough.
03:50 And so, in relationship to ideology,
03:54 from whence should we derive our values?
03:56 That's the question.
03:57 Well, that's a very, very complicated question.
03:59 We all need to talk about that.
04:00 The first thing we have to understand
04:02 is that we see the world through a hierarchy of values.
04:05 And, you know, people say, the ideologues, for example,
04:09 who follow, often follow the Marxist line,
04:11 say, follow the science.
04:13 It's like, okay, the science tells us
04:15 we see the world through a structure of values.
04:18 So, what do we do now?
04:20 What does that mean?
04:21 And from where do we derive our values?
04:24 And then that brings up the other questions you asked,
04:26 it's like, well, other people have different values,
04:28 groups, individuals.
04:30 What do we do in the face of that diversity of values?
04:33 Value nothing.
04:34 No.
04:35 First of all, that's impossible,
04:38 because you just can't even see if you do that.
04:40 Literally, I mean that, literally,
04:42 you cannot perceive the world without a hierarchy of values.
04:46 Okay, we're stuck with a hierarchy of values.
04:48 We're stuck with value distinctions.
04:50 Okay, well, what does that mean?
04:52 Well, we're just, that conversation
04:53 is just beginning to happen explicitly,
04:55 because the realization that a hierarchy of values
04:58 is an inescapable precondition for perception and action
05:01 is something that has just recently been discovered,
05:04 and maybe, you know, it started to percolate up
05:06 as a profound problem in the early '60s,
05:09 partly among AI researchers.
05:11 And we don't know what to do with that,
05:14 because it means that we have to take
05:15 the problem of value unbelievably,
05:17 more seriously than anything else,
05:20 which is logical if, you know,
05:21 you need a hierarchy of values,
05:23 and if that proposition is true.
05:24 And that begs the question, what's at the highest point?
05:28 How is that differentiated into a hierarchy,
05:30 a pure mental hierarchy,
05:32 and how does that apply to everyone across cultures
05:35 and across the diversity of individuals?
05:38 Very, very complicated problem,
05:39 but specifying the problem properly
05:42 is the first step towards solving it.
05:44 - Parents have a difficult enough time
05:45 managing their own lives,
05:47 much less teaching their children.
05:49 But that's the scaffolding I think we're charged
05:50 with offering the children, that hierarchy of values.
05:53 But to take the place of the broken family,
05:56 and it is broken,
05:57 schools are taking these tasks on.
06:00 And so now we have schools teaching values
06:02 that they believe are best for the kids,
06:04 which may not be the values the parents want for those kids.
06:07 In some instances-- - No, they also,
06:08 you know, the educators presume that values
06:10 can be taught explicitly in that fashion,
06:12 in a sort of ideological manner.
06:14 Values actually can't be, I don't think.
06:17 Memorizing the structure of the ideology can be,
06:20 but I presume that partly what it'll do
06:23 is foment a tremendous amount of resistance
06:25 among young people to the imposition of this doctrine.
06:28 So that's just not going to work.
06:30 - I'm seeing that from the young people
06:32 who then go talk to their parents
06:33 who have opposite perspectives on those values,
06:35 and that also creates additional schism
06:38 with large numbers of Americans anyway
06:39 taking their kids out of the public school system
06:41 without reason. - Yeah, and that's
06:42 gonna accelerate that.
06:43 That proclivity is going to accelerate, I think.
06:45 - What is the role of the school in society
06:49 when we can't tell if parents are paying attention
06:52 to these issues?
06:52 Forget about, you know, in their own lives,
06:55 specifically with regard to their children.
06:57 - Yeah, well, what I hope is that brilliant educators
07:02 and self-motivated, let's say, get together
07:04 and put together a curriculum for K through 12
07:07 and make it available online
07:09 and just present an alternative to the entire school system
07:13 and just win the argument on the basis of quality alone.
07:15 It's like, think about it.
07:17 We have this technology.
07:18 We could make a curriculum, a full curriculum
07:22 with options, like broader than it needs to be
07:24 by a substantial margin, and say, here.
07:27 - But if it in that setup, and I actually,
07:29 I've been dabbling in that, and I agree it's very doable.
07:32 It definitely will happen in universities.
07:34 But where do values and value hierarchies
07:37 play a role in that?
07:38 Do you offer a smorgasbord of different value options?
07:42 Here's some ideologies that are pretty linear.
07:43 Here's religious, the word,
07:46 which offers a much more robust ecology.
07:49 - Yeah, well, you do that in part, I think,
07:50 is you can offer, you walk through the discussion, right,
07:53 and say, well, here's some conclusions
07:56 that have emerged from that historically.
07:58 And that'll depend on the wisdom of the people
08:00 guiding that conversation.
08:04 And it's very hard to be sophisticated enough
08:06 to have a discussion of values in a manner
08:08 that's actually going to be productive
08:09 rather than counterproductive.
08:10 And many conservative people are very leery
08:13 of schools' attempts to wander into the value domain at all,
08:16 especially when it's driven by an ideology,
08:19 parent ideology, rather than grounded in some tradition.
08:22 So that's a very difficult problem to contend with.
08:26 I mean, I think you improve the school system
08:29 by making better teachers, and you make better teachers
08:32 by making better people.
08:33 And so I'm sort of concentrating
08:34 on the better people end of things,
08:36 and hoping that'll trickle down, so to speak.
08:39 - And maybe our only choice, it's a building block.
08:41 - I don't know what else to do about it.
08:45 I'm very interested in this curriculum development idea,
08:48 but I don't know if I have the energy for it,
08:50 but it's a remarkable, you know, like I know this book,
08:53 "How to Teach Your Child to Read 100 Easy Lessons."
08:56 It's a great book.
08:57 You can take a four-year-old who's ready
08:58 and teach them to read and write in three months.
09:00 They've already laid it all out, it's brilliant.
09:02 Cognitive behavioral principles,
09:04 the parents can read it to their children,
09:06 10-minute lessons, bang, four months, literate.
09:10 You know, at least the beginnings.
09:12 So that's a great example of pedagogy
09:15 that's firmly grounded.
09:18 And that's not grounded in the value tradition precisely,
09:20 but you know, at least people would learn to read.