The Reason People Lie

"The Reason People Lie" - Jordan Peterson On Why We Lie About Our Prefer...

"In your last um interview with Steven Barrett you um said one very important phrase which is that with Steven Bartlett oh yes okay uh when you said that 

"Bad Things happen when 

Good Men hold their tongue --" 

It really struck me and I think when I've had in an institution such as Oxford where I had the optimism that I would come and be able to uh be very open about my views and thoughts and I had realised that that is not entirely the case 

and the point that I'm getting to 

is that I am very open uh very outspoken 

very outspoken about my stance protecting um anti-Wokeism as it says 

and when I mention your name, for example --"

'' -- Don't do that."

"There are there are people 

who take me aside into the corner 

and says "You cannot say that; 

You cannot bring that --"

"-- yeah, it's like saying 'Voldemort'."

"But I have so many people, 

so many fellow students here 

who then confided in me and 

said, "I am not as brave as you, 

to share these views online; 

I cannot speak freely 

and I don't feel like -- 

I can be cancelled and 

my career can suffer." 

I also fear that every single day; 

but your phrase really inspired me 

and so what my question is,
"How do individuals, who depend on 

building a career in an economy 

such that is driven by Wokeism, 

survive and and still stay True 

to their moral stance...?" 

"So, here's a a definition of Faith :

'Faith is the willingness to assume 

that no matter what happens to you, 

if you Tell The Truth, it's the best thing 

that could possibly happen to you --'

Now this is a very weird thing to understand; 

now, the reason people lie or remain silent;

there's two reasons : one is to gain an undeserved advantage 

and the other is to escape a deserved punishment --

And so people will lie and manipulate 

or remain silent to, you could say, to twist the fabric of reality 

so that it makes itself manifest to their benefit --

But The Question is 

"'Benefit', by what standards? 

and over what time frame? 

And so it's definitely the case that you can gain a temporary advantage by deception but that doesn't mean that you're gaining a medium to long-term advantage right and so then you might say well how do I play things out so that I balance short-term medium-term and long-term advantage optimally and the answer to that is you say what you think right and then there's all sorts of things that might happen including the things that you just described and it's also potentially the case that you might pay a price for in your career but you got to ask yourself :

"Do you want to walk down a career road 

to a destination that requires you 

to hold your tongue --?"

like if you're not popular because of what you say with people who might hire you you might thank your lucky stars that they don't want you around because you don't want to be anywhere near them and if you do say what you have to say and someone comes along and says 

"You're just exactly the sort of person we're looking for," then you get to go and work with those people and that means that you have a life that's actually yours instead of the life of whatever lie you happen to be telling for the sake of convenience 

And so and I would say too you should be afraid 

of saying what you think but you should 

be a lot more afraid of hiding, right --

You start hiding.... I saw this with professors

 and it's still happening now it's like, 

so The Undergraduate says, 

"Well, I have to write 

what The Professor wants 

or I won't get the grade --"

and then which is by the way far less true than you might be than you might fear even among relatively woke and ideologically corrupt professors um and then you're a graduate student and you think well I can't really say what I think because I'm not I haven't got a faculty position yet and then you're a junior faculty member and you think God I'm not tenured and but when I'm tenured I'll say what I think and then you get tenured and you think well I'm not full professor yet and then you're full professor and you're a 35 year-old coward who hasn't said a true word in 20 years and now you think all of a sudden because you're secure you're going to be brave...? 

That's your Theory of Courage....?

 is it the more secure you get the braver you'll be well that's as stupid a theory of courage as you could possibly hope to develop so start now and grow a hide like a thick hide and see what happens like my experience and it's not only my experience but my experience with the people I know is that I know lots of people who paid a price for abiding by their conscience and a lot of them are riding pretty high at the moment right things swung around in a remarkable way which and that tends to happen now it doesn't always happen sometimes you tell the truth and they shoot you and that's the end of that but I I mean Jay Badacheria I I know Jay and Jay was a is an epidemiologist at Stanford and a good one and he wrote the great Bington declaration and got pillaried by his compatriots for doing so but Stanford has a pretty solid tenure uh uh arrangement and also Stanford has the Hoover Institute so people who are more conservative have a bit of protection but Badacheria was dragged through the mud in a pretty major way and now he runs the national institute institute of health right and he's not the only one that such things have happened to and so I would say you know the truth is a long-term and profound game and you got to decide if you're going to play it and there'll be costs just like there are to everything but if you're going to align yourself with anything in your life you might as well align yourself with the truth because then at least you have reality on your side and that's a good deal as you're progressing forward so take your lumps now and learn how to do it and you'll be fortified optimally when you make your way out into the world 

When I applied to graduate school I wrote a very strange letter and I did that on purpose i told my potential advisor as clearly as I could exactly what I was like um for for better or for worse and there's no doubt that many people read that letter and thought there isn't a hope in hell that I'd give that guy an interview but the person I did end up working with read the letter and thought that's just the person I'm looking for and I had a great relationship with him i still work with him it's 45 years later if you lie then the life you have isn't yours the life you have is the life of the spirit of the lie and if that's the life you want then go ahead and lie with silence or with commission but if you want your life then tell the truth your truth your truth is you and the life you have if you tell the truth is your life well what possible threat would be sufficient to entice you to give that up right