#2180 - Jordan Peterson

Jordan Peterson (0:16)

Messes up my hair.

Joe Rogan (0:18)

Good to see you.

What's going on your coat today? Every day is a new one.

Jordan Peterson (0:24)

Yeah, well, I've got this suit maker, LGFG., Dimitri, the crazy Russian, and he, you know, pays attention to what I'm doing and makes me the suits that he thinks are suitable, and I wear them.

Joe Rogan (0:38)

You've gotten quite extravagant, though. Like, sometimes, like, one half of the suit is one color.

Like, you're getting bored. You just want to switch it up a lot.

Jordan Peterson (0:47)

He sends me these damn things, and I get them, and I think, there's no way I wear that. There's no way I'll wear that. And then I put it on, I think, huh, I like that.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And Tammy puts up with it, so.

Joe Rogan (0:59)

Is it everyday suits now with you?

Jordan Peterson (1:01)

I'm in a suit pretty much all the time.

Joe Rogan (1:04)

Is there a reason for that?

Jordan Peterson (1:06)

Well, the original reason was because, probably because of my father. He was a teacher, and he always wore a suit, even in the 70s when that started to become, you know, like 1950s thing. And I asked him one time why he did that, and he said it was to show respect for his students.

And then when I was a professor, well, when you start to be a professor, you're not that much different in age from your students to begin with. It's a good way of laying out a demarcation.

And that was helpful. That's useful. You know, people like to know how the hierarchies are delineated.

Professors like to think that they're everybody's buddy, but that's not the right relationship. And so that was helpful. And then when I went on tour in 2018, you know, I realized that I was going to speak live in front of several hundred thousand people over the course of the tour. And I thought, you got to think when you have an opportunity like that, that if you had the least amount of sense, you'd pull out all the stops. So I bought some expensive suits.

And then one of the things that happened in consequence of that was that people started to come to the lectures in suits. And so about, I'd say about 40% of the audience dresses formally. And lots of the young guys who come, they tell me when I meet them afterwards in the meet and greets, for example, that they bought their first suit to come to the lectures. And so, you know, I wouldn't have ever expected that. And then Dimitri showed up about two years ago with this portfolio of suits. He designed one for each of the rules for my first book. And he put the rule underneath the collar at the back and designed the lining, custom lining on all the suits as well. And so I gave him a crack at it because he put so much work into it. And that worked out real well. He's very, very creative. Yeah, that two-colour suit, there's lamb's wool on one side and goat's wool on the other. And it's a heaven and hell suit. So, yeah, no kidding. And this is covered with iconography.

Christian or Catholic and Orthodox, I've got one of each. And that's because I was out on tour with my new book for my new book, which is called We Who Wrestle With God, which we will talk about today. I hope so.

Joe Rogan (3:21)

How does one wrestle with God? Do you wrestle with God?

Jordan Peterson (3:26)

With every word.

So what does that mean? Well, look, man, well, you know, look, what here?

Part of the reason that you're so successful, in my opinion, is because you actually say what you think. Like, you're not putting on a show. Actually, you have no reason to put on a show.

You put on a whole bunch of shows and they've already been successful. You know, and you're actually asking the questions that are genuine questions and people can trust you because of that. And that means that you're letting the words emerge as they come to you. And each of doing that with each word, that's a decision, you know, because you can use your language to manipulate and you can use your language to for your own, say, hedonistic purposes or to gain power, or you can just say what you think.

Every, like all of those different choices are a decision. That's a wrestling. That's a moral decision. And it shines in every word. And so it's super important. That's part of the reason why in the Christian canon, the word is the basis of reality, right? It's the force that, it's the process that generates the order that's good out of possibility and chaos, right? And so that's, and Israel, the word Israel, means we who wrestle with God. So that's the chosen people, right? And so what that means at a deeper level even is that if you're genuinely wrestling with your conscience, then you're someone who's chosen by God. And I think that's right, that's accurate.