So What You're Saying Is --

Cathy Newman:
Jordan Peterson you’ve said that men need to quote “grow the hell up.” Tell me why.

Jordan Peterson: Well because there’s nothing uglier than an old infant. There’s nothing good about it. People who don’t grow up don’t find the sort of meaning in their life that sustains them through difficult times and they are certain to encounter difficult times and they’re left bitter and resentful and without purpose and adrift and hostile and resentful and vengeful and arrogant and deceitful and of no use to themselves and of no use to anyone else and no partner for a woman and there’s nothing in it that’s good.

Newman: So you said… I mean, that sounds pretty bad… you are saying that there’s a crisis of masculinity. I mean, what do you do about it?

Peterson: You tell… you help people understand why it’s necessary and important for them to grow up and adopt responsibilities why that isn’t a shake your finger and get your act together sort of thing why it’s more like but why it’s more like a delineation of the kind of destiny that makes life worth living. I’ve been telling young men… but it’s not I wasn’t specifically aiming this message at young men to begin with it just kind of turned out that way.

Newman: And it’s mostly—you admit—it’s mostly men listening. I mean 90% of your audience is male, right?

Peterson: Well, it’s about 80 percent on YouTube which is a… YouTube is a male domain primarily, so it’s hard to tell how much of it is because YouTube is male and how how much of it is because of what I’m saying, but what I’ve been telling young men is that there’s an actual reason why they need to grow up, which is that they have something to offer, you know, that people have within them this capacity to set the world straight and that’s necessary to manifest in the world and that also doing so is where you find the meaning that sustains you in life.

Newman: So what’s gone wrong then?

Peterson: Oh god, all sorts of things have gone wrong. I think that… I don’t think that young men are here words of encouragement some some of them never in their entire lives as far as I can tell, that’s what they tell me, and the fact that the words that I’ve been speaking, the YouTube lectures that I’ve done and put online for example, have had such a dramatic impact is indication that young men are starving for this sort of message because, like why in the world would they have to derive it from a lecture on YouTube? Now they’re not being taught that it’s important to develop yourself.

Newman: It doesn’t bother you that your audience is predominantly male. Isn’t that a bit divisive?

Peterson: No, I don’t think so. I mean, it’s no more divisive than the fact that YouTube is primarily male and Tumblr is primarily female.

Newman: That’s pretty divisive, isn’t it?

Peterson: Tumblr is primarily female.

Newman: But you’re just saying that’s the way it is.

Peterson: I’m not saying anything. It’s just an observation that that’s the way it is. There’s plenty of women that are watching my lectures and coming to my talks and buy my books it’s just that the majority of them happen to be men.

Newman: What’s in it for the women, though?

Peterson: Well, what sort of partner do you want? Do you want an overgrown child? Or do you want someone to contend with, who is going to help you?

Newman: So you’re saying, that women have some sort of duty to help fix the crisis of masculinity.

Peterson: It depends on what they want. It’s exactly how I laid it out. Women want deeply men who are competent and powerful. And I don’t mean power in that they can exert tyrannical control over others. That’s not power. That’s just corruption. Power is competence. And why in the world would you not want a competent partner? Well, I know why, actually, you can’t dominate a competent partner. So if you want domination—

Newman: So you’re saying women want to dominate, is that what you’re saying?

Peterson: No, I’d say women who have had impaired their relationships with men, impaired and who are afraid of such relationships will settle for a weak partner because they can dominate them. But it’s a suboptimal solution.

Newman: Do you think that’s what a lot of women are doing?

Peterson: I think there’s a substantial minority of women who do that and I think it’s very bad for them. They’re very unhappy, it’s very bad for their partners–although the partners get the advantage of not having to take any responsibility.

Newman: What gives you the right to say that? I mean, maybe that’s how women want their relationships those women. I mean you’re making these vast generalizations.

Peterson: I’m a clinical psychologist.

Newman: Right so you’ve you’re saying you’ve done your research and women are unhappy dominating men.

Peterson: I didn’t say they were unhappy dominating men, I said it was a bad long-term solution

Newman: Okay, you said it was making them miserable.

Peterson: Yes it is. It depends on the time frame. There’s intense pleasure in momentary domination. That’s why people do it all the time. But it’s no formula for a long-term successful long-term relationship. That’s reciprocal. Any long-term relationship is reciprocal, firstly by definition.

Newman: Let me put it quite to you from the book where you say “there are whole disciplines in universities forthrightly hostile towards men. These are the areas of study dominated by the postmodern stroke neo-Marxist claim the Western culture in particular is an oppressive structure created by white men to dominate and exclude women.” But then I want to put you…

Peterson: Minorities too, dominate…

Newman: Okay, sure, but I want to put to you… here in the UK, for example, let’s say that as an example, the gender pay gap stands at just over 9%. You’ve got women at the BBC recently saying that the broadcaster is illegally paying them less than men to do the same job. You’ve got only seven women running the top footsie 100 companies.

Peterson: Hum.

Newman: So it seems to a lot of women that they still being dominated and excluded, to quote your words back to you.

Peterson: It does seem that way. But multivariate analysis of the pay gap indicate that it doesn’t exist.

Newman: But that’s not true, is it? That 9 percent pay gap, that’s a gap between median hourly earnings between men and women. That exists.

Peterson: Yes. But there’s multiple reasons for that. One of them is gender, but that’s not the only reason. If you’re a social scientist worth your salt, you never do a univariate analysis. You say women in aggregate are paid less than men. Okay. Well then we break its down by age; we break it down by occupation; we break it down by interest; we break it down by personality.

Newman: But you’re saying, basically, it doesn’t matter if women aren’t getting to the top, because that’s what is skewing that gender pay gap, isn’t it? You’re saying that’s just a fact of life, women aren’t necessarily going to get to the top.

Peterson: No, I’m not saying it doesn’t matter, either.

Newman: You’re saying that it’s a fact of life…

Peterson: I’m saying there are multiple reasons for it.

Newman: Yeah, but why should women put up with those reasons?

Peterson: I’m not saying that they should put up with it! I’m saying that the claim that the wage gap between men and women is only due to sex is wrong. And it is wrong. There’s no doubt about that. The multivariate analysis have been done. So I can give you an example––

Newman: I’m saying that nine percent pay gap exists. That’s a gap between men and women. I’m not saying why it exists but it exists. Now you’re a woman that seems pretty unfair.

Peterson: You have to say why it exists.

Newman: But do you agree that it’s unfair if you’re a woman…

Peterson: Not necessary

Newman: …and on average you’re getting paid nine percent less than a man that’s not fair, is it?

Peterson: It depends on why it’s happening. I can give you an example. Okay, there’s a personality trait known as agreeableness. Agreeable people are compassionate and polite. And agreeable people get paid less than disagreeable people for the same job. Women are more agreeable than men.

Newman: Again, a vast generalization. Some women are not more agreeable than men.

Peterson: That’s true. And some women get paid more than men.

Newman: So you’re saying by and large women are too agreeable to get the pay raises that they deserve.

Peterson: No, I’m saying that is one component of a multivariate equation that predicts salary. It accounts for maybe 5 percent of the variance, something like that. So you need another 18 factors, one of which is gender. And there is prejudice. There’s no doubt about that. But it accounts for a much smaller portion of the variance in the pay gap than the radical feminists claim.

Newman: Okay, so rather than denying that the pay gap exists, which is what you did at the beginning of this conversation, shouldn’t you say to women, rather than being agreeable and not asking for a pay raise, go ask for a pay raise. Make yourself disagreeable with your boss.

Peterson: Oh, definitely. But also I didn’t deny it existed. I denied that it existed because of gender. See, because I’m very, very, very careful with my words.

Newman: So the pay gap exists. You accept that. But you’re saying… I mean the pay gap between men and women exists—you’re saying it’s not because of gender, it’s because women are too agreeable to ask for pay raises.

Peterson: That’s one of the reasons.

Newman: Okay, one of the reasons… so why not get them to ask for a pay raise? Wouldn’t that be fairer way of proceeding?

Peterson: I’ve done that many, many, many times in my career. So one of the things you do as a clinical psychologist is assertiveness training. So you might say––often you treat people for anxiety, you treat them for depression, and maybe the next most common category after that would be assertiveness training. So I’ve had many, many women, extraordinarily competent women, in my clinical and consulting practice, and we’ve put together strategies for their career development that involved continual pushing, competing, for higher wages. And often tripled their wages within a five-year period.

Newman: And you celebrate that?

Peterson: Of course! Of course!

Newman: So do you do you agree that you would be happy if that pay gap was eliminated completely? Because that’s all the radical feminists are saying.

Peterson: It would depend on how it was eradicated and how the disappearance of it was measured.

Newman: And you’re saying if that’s at a cost of men, that’s a problem.

Peterson: Oh there’s all sorts of things that it could be at the cost of it. It could even be at the cost of women’s own interests.

Newman: Because they might not be happy if they could equal pay.

Peterson: No, because it might interfere with other things that are causing the pay gap that women are choosing to do.

Newman: Like having children.

Peterson: Well, or choosing careers that actually happen to be paid less, which women do a lot of.

Newman: But why shouldn’t women have the right to choose not to have children or the right to choose those demanding careers?

Peterson: They do. They can, yeah, that’s fine.

Newman: But you’re saying that makes them unhappy, by and large.

Peterson: I’m saying that… No, I’m not saying that, and I actually haven’t said that so far in the program…

Newman: You’re saying it makes them miserable, at the beginning.

Peterson: No, I said what was making them miserable was having part was having weak partners. That makes them miserableI would say that many women around the age of I would say between 28 and 32 have a career family crisis that they have to deal with and I think that’s partly because of the for short and timeframe that women have to contend with. Women have to get the major pieces of their life put together faster than men which is also partly why men aren’t under so much pressure to grow up. So because for the typical woman she has to have her career and family in order pretty much by the time she’s 35, because otherwise the options start to run out and so that puts a tremendous amount of stress on women especially at the end of their 20s.

Newman: I think I take issue with the idea of the typical woman because, you know, all women are different. I want to just put another quote to you from the book…

Peterson: No, they are different in some ways and the same same in others…

Newman: Okay, you say “women become more vulnerable when they have children”…

Peterson: Oh yes.

Newman: …and you talked to one of your YouTube interviews about “crazy harpy sisters”. So… simple question: is gender equality a myth in your view? is that something that’s just never gonna happen?

Peterson: It depends on what you mean by equality. If you mean men and women….

Newman: …getting the same opportunities…

Peterson: Fairly people… We could get to a point where people were treated fairly or more fairly. I mean people are treated pretty fairly in Western culture already. But we can improve that.

Newman: They are really not though, are they? I mean otherwise why would there only be seven women running footsie 100 companies in the UK? Why would there still be a pay gap which we’ve discussed? Why are women at the BBC saying that they’re getting paid illegally less the men to do the same job? That’s not fair, is it?

Peterson: Well, let’s go to the first question. They both are complicated questions. Seven women, repeat that one, there’s…

Newman: Seven women running the top footsie 100 companies in the UK. I mean, that’s no fair.

Peterson: Well, the first question might be… why would you want to do that?

Newman: Why would a man want to do it? It’s a lot of money, it’s an interesting job…

Peterson: There’s a certain number of men, although not that many, who are perfectly willing to sacrifice virtually all of their life to the pursuit of a high-end career. So they’ll work… these are men that are very intelligent; they’re usually very very conscientious,; they’re very driven; they’re very high-energy; they’re very healthy; and they’re willing to work 70 or 80 hours a week, non-stop, specialised at one thing to get to the top.

Newman: So you think women are just more sensible. They don’t want that because it’s not a nice level.

Peterson: I’m saying that’s part of it, definitely. And so I worked…

Newman: So you don’t think there are barriers in their way that prevent them getting to the top of those companies.

Peterson: There are some barriers, yeah, like… men for example, I mean, to get to the top of any organisation is an incredibly competitive enterprise and the men that you’re competing with are simply not going to roll over and say “please take the position”. It’s absolutely all-out warfare.

Newman: Let me come back to my question: Is gender equality a myth?

Peterson: I don’t know what you mean by the question. Men and women aren’t the same. And they won’t be the same. That doesn’t mean that they can’t be treated fairly.

Newman: Is gender equality desirable?

Peterson: If it means equality of outcome then it is almost certainly undesirable. That’s already been demonstrated in Scandinavia. Because in Scandinavia…

Newman: What do you mean by that? “Equality of outcome is undesirable.”

Peterson: Men and women won’t sort themselves into the same categories if you leave them to do it of their own accord. In Scandinavia it’s 20 to 1 female nurses to male, something like that–it might not be that extreme. And approximately the same male engineers to female engineers. That’s a consequence of the free choice of men and women in the societies that have gone farther than any other societies to make gender equality the purpose of the law. Those are ineradicable differences––you can eradicate them with tremendous social pressure, and tyranny, but if you leave men and women to make their own choices you will not get equal outcomes.

Newman: Right, so you’re saying that anyone who believes in equality, whether you call them feminists or whatever you want to call them, should basically give up because it ain’t going to happen.

Peterson: Only if they’re aiming at equality of outcome.

Newman: So you’re saying give people equality of opportunity, that’s fine.

Peterson: It’s not only fine, it’s eminently desirable for everyone, for individuals and for societies.

Newman: But still women aren’t going to make it. That’s what you’re really saying.

Peterson: It depends on your measurement techniques they’re doing just fine in medicine. In fact there are far more female physicians than there are male physicians. There are lots of disciplines that are absolutely dominated by women. Many, many disciplines. And they’re doing great. So…

Newman: Let me put something else to you from the book you say “the introduction of the equal pay for equal work argument immediately complicates even salary comparison beyond practicality for one simple reason: who decides what work is equal? It’s not possible”. So the simple question is: do you believe in equal pay?

Peterson: Well, I made the argument there. It’s like it depends on who defines them…

Newman: …so you don’t believe in equal pay…

Peterson: Ahahah! No, I’m not saying that at all!

Newman: Because a lot of people listening to you will just say, are we going back to the dark ages?

Peterson: That’s because you’re actually not listening, you’re just projecting what they think.

Newman: I’m listening very carefully, and I’m hearing you basically saying that women need to just accept that they’re never going to make it on equal terms—equal outcomes is how you defined it.

Peterson: No, I didn’t say that. I said that equal…

Newman: If I was a young woman watching that, I would go, well, I might as well go play with my Cindy dolls and give up trying to go school, because I’m not going to get the top job I want, because there’s someone sitting there saying, it’s not possible, it’s going to make you miserable.

Peterson: I said that equal outcomes aren’t desirable. That’s what I said. It’s a bad social goal. I didn’t say that women shouldn’t be striving for the top, or anything like that. Because I don’t believe that for a second.

Newman: Striving for the top, but you’re going to put all those hurdles in their way, as have been in their way for centuries. And that’s fine, you’re saying. That’s fine. The patriarchal system is just fine.

Peterson: No! I really think that’s silly! I do, I think that’s silly. I really do. I mean, look at your situation. You’re hardly unsuccessful.

Newman: Yeah, and I had to work hard to get where I got to.

Peterson: Exactly! Good for you!

Newman: That’s ok, battling is good. This is all about the fight.

Peterson: It’s inevitable.

Newman: But you talk about man fight. Let me just put another thing to you. You’re saying…

Peterson: Why would you have to battle for a high-quality position?

Newman: Well, I notice in your book you talk about real conversations between men containing, quote, “an underlying threat of physicality.”

Peterson: Oh there’s no doubt about that.

Newman: What about real conversation between women. Is that something… or are we sort of too amenable and reasonable.

Peterson: No, it’s just that the domain of physical conflict is sort of off-limits for you.

Newman: But you just said that I fought to get where I got… what does that make me, some sort of proxy man or something?

Peterson: I don’t imagine that you… Yeah, to some degree I suspect you’re not very agreeable. So that’s the thing. Successful women–

Newman: I’m not very agreeable…

Peterson: Right, I noticed that actually in this conversation! And I’m sure it served your career well.

Newman: Successful women, though, basically have to wear the trousers, in your view. They have to sort of become men to succeed. Is it what you’re saying?

Peterson: Well, if they are going to compete against men, certainly masculine traits are going to be helpful. I mean, one of the things I do in my counseling practice, for example, when I’m consulting with women who are trying to advance their careers, is to teach them how to negotiate and to be able to say no and to not be easily pushed around. And to be formidable. If you’re gonna be successful you need to be smart, conscientious and tough.

Newman: Well, here’s a radical idea. Why don’t the bosses adopt some–male bosses shall we say–adopt some female traits so the women don’t have to fight and get their sharp elbows out for the pay rises. It’s just accepted if they’re doing the same job they get the same pay!

Peterson: Well, I would say partly because it’s not so easy to determine what constitutes the same job and…

Newman: That’s because, arguably, there are still men dominating our industries, our society and therefore they’ve dictated the terms for so long that women have to battle to be like the men.

Peterson: No, it’s not true. It’s not true. So, for example…

Newman: Where is the evidence?

Peterson: I can give you an example very quickly. I worked with women who worked in high-powered law firms in Canada for about 15 years and they were as competent and put together as anybody you would ever meet. And we were trying to figure out how to further their careers. And there was a huge debate in Canadian society at that point that was basically ran along the same lines as your argument. If the law firms didn’t use these masculine criteria then perhaps women would do better. But the market sets the damn game. It’s like…

Newman: And the market is dominated by men.

Peterson: No, it’s not. The market is dominated by women. They make 80 percent of the consumer decisions. That’s not the case at all. 80 percent…

Newman: If you talk about people who stay at home looking after children, by and large they are still women. So they’re going out doing the shopping. But that is changing.

Peterson: They make all the consumer decisions. The market is driven by women, not men.

Newman: Right.

Peterson: Ok, and if you’re a lawyer in Canada…

Newman: And they still pay more for the same sort of goods. That’s been proven. That men, for the… you buy a blue bicycle helmet, it’s gonna cost less than a pink one. Anyway, we’ll come on to that.

Peterson: It’s partly because men are less agreeable. Because they won’t put up with it.

Newman: I want to ask you: is it not desirable to have some of those female traits you’re talking about–I’d say that’s a generalization, but you’ve used the words female traits–is it not desirable to have some of them at the top of business. I mean, maybe they wouldn’t…

Peterson: They don’t predict success in the workplace. The things that predict success in the workplace are intelligence and conscientiousness. Agreeableness negatively predicts success in the workplace. And so does high negative emotion.

Newman: So you are saying that women aren’t intelligent enough to run these top companies?

Peterson: No, I didn’t say that at all.

Newman: You said that female traits don’t predict success.

Peterson: But I didn’t say that intelligence wasn’t. I didn’t say that intelligence and conscientiousness weren’t female traits…

Newman: Well, you were saying that intelligence and conscientiousness by implication are not female traits.

Peterson: No, no. I’m not saying that at all!

Newman: Are women less intelligent than men?

Peterson: No, they’re not. No, that’s pretty clear. The average IQ for a woman and the average IQ for a man is identical. There is some debate about the flatness of the distribution. Which is something that James D’Amore pointed out, for example, in his memo. But there’s no difference at all in general cognitive ability. There’s no difference to speak of in conscientiousness. Women are a bit more orderly than men and men are a little bit more industrious than women. The difference isn’t big.

Newman: Feminine traits. Why are they not desirable at the top?

Peterson: It’s hard to say. I’m just laying out the empirical evidence. We know the traits that predict success.

Newman: But we also know because companies by and large have not been dominated by women over the centuries. We have nothing to compare it to. It’s an experiment.

Peterson: True. And it could be the case that if companies modified their behavior and became more feminine they would be successful. But there’s no evidence for it.

Newman: You seem doubtful about that.

Peterson: I’m not neither doubtful nor non doubtful. There’s no evidence for it.

Newman: So why not give it a go as the radical evidence…

Peterson: Because the evidence suggests… Well, it’s fine. If someone wants to start a company and make it more feminine and compassionate, let’s say, and caring in its overall orientation towards its workers and towards the marketplace, that’s a perfectly reasonable experiment to run. My point is that there is no evidence that those traits predict success in the workplace and there’s evidence…

Newman: Because it’s never been tried.

Peterson: Well, that’s not really the case. Women have been in the workplace for at least–ever since I’ve been around the representation of women in the workplace has been about 50 percent. So we’ve run the experiment for a fairly reasonable period of time. But certainly not for centuries.

Newman: Let me move on to another debate that’s been very controversial for you. You got in trouble for refusing to call trans men and women by their preferred personal pronouns.

Peterson: No, that’s not actually true. I got in trouble because I said I would not follow that compelled speech dictates of the federal and provincial government. I actually never got in trouble for not calling anyone anything.

Newman: Right. You wouldn’t follow the change of law which was designed to outlaw discrimination.

Peterson: No. Well, that’s what it has been said it was design to do.

Newman: Okay. You cited freedom of speech in that. Why should your right to freedom of speech trump a trans person’s right not to be offended?

Peterson: Because in order to be able to think, you have to risk being offensive. I mean, look at the conversation we’re having right now. You’re certainly willing to risk offending me in the pursuit of truth. Why should you have the right to do that? It’s been rather uncomfortable.

Newman: Well, I’m very glad I put you on this part…

Peterson: You get my point. You’re doing what you should do, which is digging a bit to see what the hell is going on. And that is what you should do. But you’re exercising your freedom of speech to certainly risk offending me, and that’s fine. More power to you, as far as I’m concerned.

Newman: So you haven’t sat there and… I’m just… I’m just trying to work that out… I mean… [long pause]

Peterson: Ha! Gotcha!

Newman: You have caught me. You have caught me. I’m trying to work that up through my head… yeah I took a while… it took a while…

Peterson: It did, it did, yeah.

Newman: You have voluntary co… you have voluntarily come into the studio and agreed to be questioned. A trans person in your class has come to your class and said they want to be called “she”.

Peterson: No, that’s never happened. And I would call them “she.”

Newman: So you would. So you’ve kind of changed your tune of line.

Peterson: No. No, no, I said that right from the beginning. What I said at the beginning was that I was not going to cede the linguistic territory to radical leftists, regardless of whether or not it was put in law. That’s what I said. An then the people who came after me said “oh you must be transphobic and you’d mistreat a student in your class.” It’s like, I never mistreated a student in my class, I’m not transphobic and that isn’t what I said.

Newman: Well it said you’ve also called trans campaigners authoritarian. Isn’t that…

Peterson: Only in the broader context of my claims that radical leftist ideologues are authoritarian. Which they are.

Newman: You are saying someone who’s trying to work out their gender identity, who may well have struggled with that, who had quite though time over the years, you’re comparing them with, you know, Chairman Mao, who saw…

Peterson: No, just the activists.

Newman: …the deaths of millions of people. Well, even if the activists, you know, they’re trans people too. They have a right to say these things…

Peterson: Yeah, but they don’t have the right to speak for whole community.

Newman: … to compare them to Chairman Mao, you know, Pinochet, Augusto Pinochet, I mean… you know, this is grossly insensitive.

Peterson: I didn’t compare them to Pinochet…

Newman: Well, he was an autoritarian…

Peterson: …I did compare them to Mao… He’s a right-winger though. I was comparing them to the left-wing totalitarians and I do believe they are left-wing totalitarians…

Newman: Under Mao millions of people die. I mean, there’s no comparison between Mao and a trans activist, is there.

Peterson: Why not?

Newman: Because trans activist aren’t killing millions of people.

Peterson: The philosophy that’s guiding their utterances is the same philosophy.

Newman: The consequences are…

Peterson: Not yet.

Newman: You’re saying that trans activists could lead to the deaths of millions of people?

Peterson: No, I’m saying that the philosophy that drives their utterances is the same philosophy that already has driven us to the deaths of millions of people.

Newman: Okay, tell us how that philosophy is in any way comparable.

Peterson: Sure, that’s no problem. The first thing is that their philosophy presumes that group identity is paramount. That’s the fundamental philosophy that drove the Soviet Union and Mao is China. And it’s the fundamental philosophy of the left-wing activists. It’s identity politics. Doesn’t matter who you are as an individual, it matters who you are in terms of your group identity.

Newman: You’re just saying so to provoke, aren’t you? I mean, you are a provocateur.

Peterson: I never say say anything…

Newman: You’re like the old right that you hate to be compared to. You want to stir things up.

Peterson: I’m only a provocateur insofar as when I say what I believe to be true it’s provocative. I don’t provoke. Maybe for humor.

Newman: You don’t set out to provoke.

Peterson: I’m not interested in provoking.

Newman: What about the thing about, you know, fighting and the lobster. Tell us about the lobster.

Peterson: Ha, well that’s quite a segue! Well, the first chapter I have in my book is called “Stand up straight with your shoulders back” and it’s an injunction to be combative, not least to further your career, let’s say. But also to adopt a stance of ready engagement with the world and to reflect that in your posture. And the reason that I write about lobsters is because there’s this idea that hierarchical structures are a sociological construct of the Western patriarchy. And that is so untrue that it’s almost unbelievable. I use the lobster as an example: We diverged from lobsters evolutionary history about 350 million years ago. Common ancestor. And lobsters exist in hierarchies. They have a nervous system attuned to the hierarchy. And that nervous system runs on serotonin, just like our nervous system do. The nervous system of the lobster and the human being is so similar that anti-depressants work on lobsters. And it’s part of my attempt to demonstrate that the idea of hierarchy has absolutely nothing to do with socio-cultural construction, which it doesn’t.

Newman: Let me get this straight. You’re saying that we should organize our societies along the lines of the lobsters?

Peterson: I’m saying it is inevitable that there will be continuities in the way that animals and human beings organize their structures. It’s absolutely inevitable, and there is one-third of a billion years of evolutionary history behind that … It’s a long time. You have a mechanism in your brain that runs on serotonin that’s similar to the lobster mechanism that tracks your status—and the higher your status, the better your emotions are regulated. So as your serotonin levels increase you feel more positive emotion and less negative emotion.

Newman: So you’re saying like the lobsters, we’re hard-wired as men and women to do certain things, to sort of run along tram lines, and there’s nothing we can do about it.

Peterson: No, I’m not saying there’s nothing we can do about it, because it’s like in a chess game, right, there’s lots of things you can do, although you can’t break the rules of the chess game and continue to play chess. Your biological nature is somewhat like that, it sets the rules of the game, but within those rules you have a lot of leeway. But one thing we can’t do is say that hierarchical organisation is a consequence of the capitalist patriarchy, it’s like that’s patently absurd. It’s wrong. It’s not a matter of opinion, it’s seriously wrong.

Newman: Aren’t you just whipping people up into a state of anger?

Peterson: Not at all.

Newman: Divisions between men and women. You’re stirring things up. Any critics of you online get absolutely lambasted by your followers.

Peterson: And by me generally.

Newman: Sorry, your critics get lambasted by you? I mean, isn’t that irresponsible?

Peterson:
Not at all. If an academic is gonna come after me and tell me that I’m not qualified and that I don’t know what I’m talking about… I can seriously…

Newman:
So you are not going to say to your followers now
“quit the abuse, quit the anger.”

Peterson:
Well, we need some substantial examples of the abuse and the anger before I could detail that question.

Newman:
There’s a lot out there.

Peterson:
Well, let’s take a more general perspective on that. I have had 25,000 letters since June–something like that–from people who told me that I’ve brought them back from the brink of destruction. And so I’m perfectly willing to put that up against the rather vague accusations that my followers are making the lives of people that I’ve targeted miserable.

Newman: Jordan Peterson, thank you.

Peterson: My pleasure nice talking with you.

Rule 1 — I Have Very Bad Posture

Rule #1 :

Stand up straight with your shoulders back

Rule #2 :

Treat yourself like you would someone you are responsible for helping

Rule #3 :

Make friends with people who want the best for you

Rule #4 :

Compare yourself with who you were yesterday, not with who someone else is today

Rule #5 :

Do not let your children do anything that makes you dislike them

Rule #6 :

Set your house in perfect order before you criticise The World

Rule #7 :

Pursue what is meaningful (not what is expedient)

Rule #8 :

Tell The Truth – or, at least, don’t lie.

Rule #9

Assume that the person you are listening to might know something you don’t

Rule #10 :

Be precise in your speech

Rule #11 : 

Do not bother children when they are skate-boarding

Rule #12 :

Pet a cat when you encounter one on the street

I'm on My Time with everyone 

I Have.Very. Bad Posture

— Kurt Cobain, Pennyroyal Tea

“A lobster loser’s brain chemistry differs importantly from that of a lobster winner. This is reflected in their relative postures. 

Whether a lobster is confident or cringing depends on the ratio of two chemicals that modulate communication between lobster neurons: serotonin and octopamine. Winning increases the ratio of the former to the latter.

A lobster with high levels of serotonin and low levels of octopamine is a cocky, strutting sort of shellfish, much less likely to back down when challenged. This is because serotonin helps regulate postural flexion. 

A flexed lobster extends its appendages so that it can look tall and dangerous, like Clint Eastwood in a spaghetti Western. 

When a lobster that has just lost a battle is exposed to serotonin, it will stretch itself out, advance even on former victors, and fight longer and harder.  The drugs prescribed to depressed human beings, which are selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, have much the same chemical and behavioural effect. In one of the more staggering demonstrations of the evolutionary continuity of life on Earth, Prozac even cheers up lobsters.

High serotonin/low octopamine characterizes the victor. The opposite neurochemical configuration, a high ratio of octopamine to serotonin, produces a defeated-looking, scrunched-up, inhibited, drooping, skulking sort of lobster, very likely to hang around street corners, and to vanish at the first hint of trouble. 

Serotonin and octopamine also regulate the tail-flick reflex, which serves to propel a lobster rapidly backwards when it needs to escape. 

Less provocation is necessary to trigger that reflex in a defeated lobster. 

You can see an echo of that in the heightened startle reflex characteristic of the soldier or battered child with post-traumatic stress disorder.”

Excerpt From: 

Jordan B. Peterson. 

“12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos.”

Leader of the Crab People[entirely red] : 

See now where we have been forced to live for a thousand years! But soon we shall rule the land above, and mankind will be gone!

Mr. Garrison :

Gone?? 

["Crab People! Crab People!"]

Crab Man 2 :

Crab people are too small and weak to take over man by force, and so we came up with our perfect plan! 

[another crab person walks over to a closet full of human shells, all of them replicas of the Queer Eye guys. The crab person climbs in a Carson replica and closes the shell behind him. Carson's replica comes to life]

Carson replica :

If you can't beat Man -

[drops down from his hook] 

change Man!!!

Mr. Garrison :

I knew it! 

I knew gay people would never do this to their own kind! 

[some crab people restrain him and Mr. Slave]

Crab Leader :

When all the world is metrosexual, the crab people shall finally reign supreme!! 

[raises his pincers and claps. The other crab people join him and clap]

Crab People :

Crab People! Crab People!

Crab Solo :

Taste like crab, talk like people.

Crab People!

Crab People!

Kyle :

You'll never turn ME into a metrosexual! 

I like being a dirty, filthy little boy!

Crab Man 2 :

[approaches] 

Very well. If we can't make you into metrosexuals, then we will make you into crab people! Take them!! 

[the crab people swarm in and separate the hostages. Some of them take Kyle into Crabwear and select a crab outfit for him to wear. Then they take him to Crab Salon and put antennae on his hat, then they take him to get a facial, then they march him down the underground road]

" Maybe you are a loser. And maybe you’re not—but if you are, you don’t have to continue in that mode. 

Maybe you just have a bad habit. Maybe you’re even just a collection of bad habits. 

Nonetheless, even if you came by your poor posture honestly—even if you were unpopular or bullied at home or in grade school —it’s not necessarily appropriate now. Circumstances change. 

If you slump around, with the same bearing that characterizes a defeated lobster, people will assign you a lower status, and the old counter that you share with crustaceans, sitting at the very base of your brain, will assign you a low dominance number. 

Then your brain will not produce as much serotonin. 

This will make you less happy, and more anxious and sad, and more likely to back down when you should stand up for yourself. It will also decrease the probability that you will get to live in a good neighbourhood, have access to the highest quality resources, and obtain a healthy, desirable mate. It will render you more likely to abuse cocaine and alcohol, as you live for the present in a world full of uncertain futures. It will increase your susceptibility to heart disease, cancer and dementia. All in all, it’s just not good. 

Circumstances change, and so can you. "

Excerpt From: 

Jordan B. Peterson. 

“12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos.”

Reverse Arm-Fold :

The physical inverse of the Badass Arm-Fold, where the arms are folded behind the back. 

The hands may be clasped together just behind the waist (more common in the West and pictured at right), or gripping the opposite forearm higher up (more common in the East). 

This posture generates strong connotations of patience and consideration.

There are four [FIVE] basic character types who use this, for their own reasons:

1) Martial artists, especially the Old Master, who will hold this pose constantly while his hands are not occupied, unless he's a monk, in which case one hand will hold a prayer position in front of his chest.

2) Old people of the Asian persuasion in general, who take the same pose but lean forward as if for balance.

3) The Contemplative Boss. See the picture on that page for an example.

4) Military personnel, while on duty but not actively engaged in some activity (for instance, in formation but not being inspected, waiting for inspection formation, or waiting to be told to form up for inspection). The stance shown in the picture is known as "Parade Rest" in the US military (and possibly elsewhere) and "At Ease" in The Commonwealth.

[ 5) Groucho Marx Impersonators ]

Villains are also fond of the pose, as it allows them to lean forward intimidatingly and not look silly as they would if they just let their arms hang loosely. 

Compare and Contrast Coy, Girlish Flirt Pose.

Charlie Was Dead to Begin With

CHARLIE was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it: and Scrooge's name was good upon 'Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Charlie was as dead as a door-nail.

Mind! I don't mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country's done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Charlie was as dead as a door-nail.

Scrooge knew he was dead? Of course he did.

How could it be otherwise? Scrooge and he were partners for I don't know how many years. Scrooge was his sole executor, his sole administrator, his sole assign, his sole residuary legatee, his sole friend, and sole mourner. And even Scrooge was not so dreadfully cut up by the sad event, but that he was an excellent man of business on the very day of the funeral, and solemnised it with an undoubted bargain.

The mention of Charlie's funeral brings me back to the point I started from. There is no doubt that Charlie was dead. This must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going to relate. If we were not perfectly convinced that Hamlet's Father died before the play began, there would be nothing more remarkable in his taking a stroll at night, in an easterly wind, upon his own ramparts, than there would be in any other middle-aged gentleman rashly turning out after dark in a breezy spot--say Saint Paul's Churchyard for instance-literally to astonish his son's weak mind.

Scrooge never painted out Old Charlie's name. There it stood, years afterwards, above the warehouse door: Scrooge and Charlie.  The firm was known as Scrooge and Charlie.  Sometimes people new to the business called Scrooge Scrooge, and sometimes Charlie, but he answered to both names: it was all the same to him.

Oh!  But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grind- stone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner!  Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster.  The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shriveled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice.  A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin.  He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dogdays; and didn't thaw it one degree at Christmas.

External heat and cold had little influence on Scrooge.  No warmth could warm, no wintry weather chill him.  No wind that blew was bitterer than he, no falling snow was more intent upon its purpose, no pelting rain less open to entreaty.  Foul weather didn't know where to have him.  The heaviest rain, and snow, and hail, and sleet, could boast of the advantage over him in only one respect.  They often "came down" handsomely, and Scrooge never did.

Nobody ever stopped him in the street to say, with gladsome looks, "My dear Scrooge, how are you?  When will you come to see me?"  No beggars implored him to bestow a trifle, no children asked him what it was o'clock, no man or woman ever once in all his life inquired the way to such and such a place, of Scrooge.  Even the blind men's dogs appeared to know him; and when they saw him coming on, would tug their owners into doorways and up courts; and then would wag their tails as though they said, "No eye at all is better than an evil eye, dark master!"

But what did Scrooge care?  It was the very thing he liked.  To edge his way along the crowded paths of life, warning all human sympathy to keep its distance, was what the knowing ones call "nuts" to Scrooge.

Once upon a time -- of all the good days in the year, on Christmas Eve -- old Scrooge sat busy in his counting-house.  It was cold, bleak, biting weather: foggy withal: and he could hear the people in the court outside go wheezing up and down, beating their hands upon their breasts, and stamping their feet upon the pavement stones to warm them.  The city clocks had only just gone three, but it was quite dark already -- it had not been light all day: and candles were flaring in the windows of the neighbouring offices, like ruddy smears upon the palpable brown air.  The fog came pouring in at every chink and keyhole, and was so dense without, that although the court was of the narrowest, the houses opposite were mere phantoms.  To see the dingy cloud come drooping down, obscuring everything, one might have thought that Nature lived hard by, and was brewing on a large scale.

The door of Scrooge's counting-house was open that he might keep his eye upon his clerk, who in a dismal little cell beyond, a sort of tank, was copying letters.  Scrooge had a very small fire, but the clerk's fire was so very much smaller that it looked like one coal.  But he couldn't replenish it, for Scrooge kept the coal-box in his own room; and so surely as the clerk came in with the shovel, the master predicted that it would be necessary for them to part.  Wherefore the clerk put on his white comforter, and tried to warm himself at the candle; in which effort, not being a man of a strong imagination, he failed.

"A merry Christmas, uncle!  God save you!" cried a cheerful voice.  It was the voice of Scrooge's nephew, who came upon him so quickly that this was the first intimation he had of his approach.

"Bah!" said Scrooge, "Humbug!"

He had so heated himself with rapid walking in the fog and frost, this nephew of Scrooge's, that he was all in a glow; his face was ruddy and handsome; his eyes sparkled, and his breath smoked again.

"Christmas a humbug, uncle!" said Scrooge's nephew.  "You don't mean that, I am sure."

"I do," said Scrooge.  "Merry Christmas!  What right have you to be merry?  What reason have you to be merry?  You're poor enough."

"Come, then," returned the nephew gaily.  "What right have you to be dismal?  What reason have you to be morose?  You're rich enough."

Scrooge having no better answer ready on the spur of the moment, said "Bah!" again; and followed it up with "Humbug."

"Don't be cross, uncle!" said the nephew.

"What else can I be," returned the uncle, "when I live in such a world of fools as this?  Merry Christmas!  Out upon merry Christmas!  What's Christmas time to you but a time for paying bills without money; a time for finding yourself a year older, but not an hour richer; a time for balancing your books and having every item in 'em through a round dozen of months presented dead against you?  If I could work my will," said Scrooge indignantly, "every idiot who goes about with 'Merry Christmas' on his lips, should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart.  He should!"

"Uncle!" pleaded the nephew.

"Nephew!" returned the uncle, sternly, "keep Christmas in your own way, and let me keep it in mine."

"Keep it!" repeated Scrooge's nephew.  "But you don't keep it."

"Let me leave it alone, then," said Scrooge.  "Much good may it do you!  Much good it has ever done you!"

"There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say," returned the nephew.  "Christmas among the rest.  But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round -- apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that -- as a good time: a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.  And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!"

The clerk in the tank involuntarily applauded: becoming immediately sensible of the impropriety, he poked the fire, and extinguished the last frail spark for ever.

"Let me hear another sound from you," said Scrooge, "and you'll keep your Christmas by losing your situation.  You're quite a powerful speaker, sir," he added, turning to his nephew.  "I wonder you don't go into Parliament."

"Don't be angry, uncle.  Come!  Dine with us tomorrow."

Scrooge said that he would see him -- yes, indeed he did.  He went the whole length of the expression, and said that he would see him in that extremity first.

"But why?"  cried Scrooge's nephew.  "Why?"

"Why did you get married?"  said Scrooge.

"Because I fell in love."

"Because you fell in love!" growled Scrooge, as if that were the only one thing in the world more ridiculous than a merry Christmas.  "Good afternoon!"

"Nay, uncle, but you never came to see me before that happened.  Why give it as a reason for not coming now?"

"Good afternoon," said Scrooge.

"I want nothing from you; I ask nothing of you; why cannot we be friends?"

"Good afternoon," said Scrooge.

"I am sorry, with all my heart, to find you so resolute.  We have never had any quarrel, to which I have been a party.  But I have made the trial in homage to Christmas, and I'll keep my Christmas humour to the last.  So A Merry Christmas, uncle!"

"Good afternoon," said Scrooge.

"And A Happy New Year!"

"Good afternoon!" said Scrooge.

His nephew left the room without an angry word, notwithstanding.  He stopped at the outer door to bestow the greetings of the season on the clerk, who cold as he was, was warmer than Scrooge; for he returned them cordially.

"There's another fellow," muttered Scrooge; who overheard him: "my clerk, with fifteen shillings a week, and a wife and family, talking about a merry Christmas.  I'll retire to Bedlam."

This lunatic, in letting Scrooge's nephew out, had let two other people in.  They were portly gentlemen, pleasant to behold, and now stood, with their hats off, in Scrooge's office.  They had books and papers in their hands, and bowed to him.

"Scrooge and Charlie's, I believe," said one of the gentlemen, referring to his list.  "Have I the pleasure of addressing Mr. Scrooge, or Mr. Charlie?"

"Mr. Charlie has been dead these seven years," Scrooge replied.  "He died seven years ago, this very night."

"We have no doubt his liberality is well represented by his surviving partner," said the gentleman, presenting his credentials.

It certainly was; for they had been two kindred spirits.  At the ominous word "liberality," Scrooge frowned, and shook his head, and handed the credentials back.

"At this festive season of the year, Mr. Scrooge," said the gentleman, taking up a pen, "it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the Poor and Destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time.  Many thousands are in want of common necessaries; hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts, sir."

"Are there no prisons?" asked Scrooge.

"Plenty of prisons," said the gentleman, laying down the pen again.

"And the Union workhouses?"  demanded Scrooge.  "Are they still in operation?"

"They are.  Still," returned the gentleman, "I wish I could say they were not."

"The Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigour, then?"  said Scrooge.

"Both very busy, sir."

"Oh!  I was afraid, from what you said at first, that something had occurred to stop them in their useful course," said Scrooge.  "I'm very glad to hear it."

"Under the impression that they scarcely furnish Christian cheer of mind or body to the multitude," returned the gentleman, "a few of us are endeavouring to raise a fund to buy the Poor some meat and drink and means of warmth.  We choose this time, because it is a time, of all others, when Want is keenly felt, and Abundance rejoices.  What shall I put you down for?"

"Nothing!" Scrooge replied.

"You wish to be anonymous?"

"I wish to be left alone," said Scrooge.  "Since you ask me what I wish, gentlemen, that is my answer.  I don't make merry myself at Christmas and I can't afford to make idle people merry.  I help to support the establishments I have mentioned -- they cost enough; and those who are badly off must go there."

"Many can't go there; and many would rather die."

"If they would rather die," said Scrooge, "they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.  Besides -- excuse me -- I don't know that."

"But you might know it," observed the gentleman.

"It's not my business," Scrooge returned.  "It's enough for a man to understand his own business, and not to interfere with other people's.  Mine occupies me constantly.  Good afternoon, gentlemen!"

Seeing clearly that it would be useless to pursue their point, the gentlemen withdrew.  Scrooge returned his labours with an improved opinion of himself, and in a more facetious temper than was usual with him.

Meanwhile the fog and darkness thickened so, that people ran about with flaring links, proffering their services to go before horses in carriages, and conduct them on their way.  The ancient tower of a church, whose gruff old bell was always peeping slyly down at Scrooge out of a Gothic window in the wall, became invisible, and struck the hours and quarters in the clouds, with tremulous vibrations afterwards as if its teeth were chattering in its frozen head up there.  The cold became intense.  In the main street at the corner of the court, some labourers were repairing the gas-pipes, and had lighted a great fire in a brazier, round which a party of ragged men and boys were gathered: warming their hands and winking their eyes before the blaze in rapture.  The water-plug being left in solitude, its overflowing sullenly congealed, and turned to misanthropic ice.  The brightness of the shops where holly sprigs and berries crackled in the lamp heat of the windows, made pale faces ruddy as they passed.  Poulterers' and grocers' trades became a splendid joke; a glorious pageant, with which it was next to impossible to believe that such dull principles as bargain and sale had anything to do.  The Lord Mayor, in the stronghold of the mighty Mansion House, gave orders to his fifty cooks and butlers to keep Christmas as a Lord Mayor's household should; and even the little tailor, whom he had fined five shillings on the previous Monday for being drunk and bloodthirsty in the streets, stirred up to-morrow's pudding in his garret, while his lean wife and the baby sallied out to buy the beef.

Foggier yet, and colder!  Piercing, searching, biting cold.  If the good Saint Dunstan had but nipped the Evil Spirit's nose with a touch of such weather as that, instead of using his familiar weapons, then indeed he would have roared to lusty purpose.  The owner of one scant young nose, gnawed and mumbled by the hungry cold as bones are gnawed by dogs, stooped down at Scrooge's keyhole to regale him with a Christmas carol: but at the first sound of --

"God bless you, merry gentleman!

May nothing you dismay!"

Scrooge seized the ruler with such energy of action, that the singer fled in terror, leaving the keyhole to the fog and even more congenial frost.

At length the hour of shutting up the countinghouse arrived.  With an ill-will Scrooge dismounted from his stool, and tacitly admitted the fact to the expectant clerk in the Tank, who instantly snuffed his candle out, and put on his hat.

"You'll want all day to-morrow, I suppose?" said Scrooge.

"If quite convenient, sir."

"It's not convenient," said Scrooge, "and it's not fair.  If I was to stop half-a-crown for it, you'd think yourself ill-used, I'll be bound?"

The clerk smiled faintly.

"And yet," said Scrooge, "you don't think me ill-used, when I pay a day's wages for no work."

The clerk observed that it was only once a year.

"A poor excuse for picking a man's pocket every twenty-fifth of December!" said Scrooge, buttoning his great-coat to the chin.  "But I suppose you must have the whole day.  Be here all the earlier next morning."

The clerk promised that he would; and Scrooge walked out with a growl.  The office was closed in a twinkling, and the clerk, with the long ends of his white comforter dangling below his waist (for he boasted no great-coat), went down a slide on Cornhill, at the end of a lane of boys, twenty times, in honour of its being Christmas Eve, and then ran home to Camden Town as hard as he could pelt, to play at blindman's-buff.

Scrooge took his melancholy dinner in his usual melancholy tavern; and having read all the newspapers, and beguiled the rest of the evening with his banker's-book, went home to bed.  He lived in chambers which had once belonged to his deceased partner.  They were a gloomy suite of rooms, in a lowering pile of building up a yard, where it had so little business to be, that one could scarcely help fancying it must have run there when it was a young house, playing at hide-and-seek with other houses, and forgotten the way out again.  It was old enough now, and dreary enough, for nobody lived in it but Scrooge, the other rooms being all let out as offices.  The yard was so dark that even Scrooge, who knew its every stone, was fain to grope with his hands.  The fog and frost so hung about the black old gateway of the house, that it seemed as if the Genius of the Weather sat in mournful meditation on the threshold.

Now, it is a fact, that there was nothing at all particular about the knocker on the door, except that it was very large.  It is also a fact, that Scrooge had seen it, night and morning, during his whole residence in that place; also that Scrooge had as little of what is called fancy about him as any man in the city of London, even including -- which is a bold word -- the corporation, aldermen, and livery.  Let it also be borne in mind that Scrooge had not bestowed one thought on Charlie, since his last mention of his seven years' dead partner that afternoon.  And then let any man explain to me, if he can, how it happened that Scrooge, having his key in the lock of the door, saw in the knocker, without its undergoing any intermediate process of change -- not a knocker, but Charlie's face.

Charlie's face.  It was not in impenetrable shadow as the other objects in the yard were, but had a dismal light about it, like a bad lobster in a dark cellar.  It was not angry or ferocious, but looked at Scrooge as Charlie used to look: with ghostly spectacles turned up on its ghostly forehead.  The hair was curiously stirred, as if by breath or hot air; and, though the eyes were wide open, they were perfectly motionless.  That, and its livid colour, made it horrible; but its horror seemed to be in spite of the face and beyond its control, rather than a part or its own expression.

As Scrooge looked fixedly at this phenomenon, it was a knocker again.

To say that he was not startled, or that his blood was not conscious of a terrible sensation to which it had been a stranger from infancy, would be untrue.  But he put his hand upon the key he had relinquished, turned it sturdily, walked in, and lighted his candle.

He did pause, with a moment's irresolution, before he shut the door; and he did look cautiously behind it first, as if he half-expected to be terrified with the sight of Charlie's pigtail sticking out into the hall. But there was nothing on the back of the door, except the screws and nuts that held the knocker on, so he said "Pooh, pooh!" and closed it with a bang.

The sound resounded through the house like thunder.  Every room above, and every cask in the wine-merchant's cellars below, appeared to have a separate peal of echoes of its own.  Scrooge was not a man to be frightened by echoes.  He fastened the door, and walked across the hall, and up the stairs; slowly too: trimming his candle as he went.

You may talk vaguely about driving a coach-and-six up a good old flight of stairs, or through a bad young Act of Parliament; but I mean to say you might have got a hearse up that staircase, and taken it broadwise, with the splinter-bar towards the wall and the door towards the balustrades: and done it easy.  There was plenty of width for that, and room to spare; which is perhaps the reason why Scrooge thought he saw a locomotive hearse going on before him in the gloom.  Half a dozen gas-lamps out of the street wouldn't have lighted the entry too well, so you may suppose that it was pretty dark with Scrooge's dip.

Up Scrooge went, not caring a button for that. Darkness is cheap, and Scrooge liked it.  But before he shut his heavy door, he walked through his rooms to see that all was right.  He had just enough recollection of the face to desire to do that.

Sitting-room, bedroom, lumber-room.  All as they should be.  Nobody under the table, nobody under the sofa; a small fire in the grate; spoon and basin ready; and the little saucepan of gruel (Scrooge had a cold in his head) upon the hob.  Nobody under the bed; nobody in the closet; nobody in his dressing-gown, which was hanging up in a suspicious attitude against the wall.  Lumber-room as usual.  Old fire-guards, old shoes, two fish-baskets, washing-stand on three legs, and a poker.

Quite satisfied, he closed his door, and locked himself in; double-locked himself in, which was not his custom.  Thus secured against surprise, he took off his cravat; put on his dressing-gown and slippers, and his nightcap; and sat down before the fire to take his gruel.

It was a very low fire indeed; nothing on such a bitter night.  He was obliged to sit close to it, and brood over it, before he could extract the least sensation of warmth from such a handful of fuel.  The fireplace was an old one, built by some Dutch merchant long ago, and paved all round with quaint Dutch tiles, designed to illustrate the Scriptures.  There were Cains and Abels, Pharaohs' daughters; Queens of Sheba, Angelic messengers descending through the air on clouds like feather-beds, Abrahams, Belshazzars, Apostles putting off to sea in butter-boats, hundreds of figures to attract his thoughts -- and yet that face of Charlie, seven years dead, came like the ancient Prophet's rod, and swallowed up the whole.  If each smooth tile had been a blank at first, with power to shape some picture on its surface from the disjointed fragments of his thoughts, there would have been a copy of old Charlie's head on every one.

"Humbug!" said Scrooge; and walked across the room.

After several turns, he sat down again.  As he threw his head back in the chair, his glance happened to rest upon a bell, a disused bell, that hung in the room, and communicated for some purpose now forgotten with a chamber in the highest story of the building.  It was with great astonishment, and with a strange, inexplicable dread, that as he looked, he saw this bell begin to swing.  It swung so softly in the outset that it scarcely made a sound; but soon it rang out loudly, and so did every bell in the house.

This might have lasted half a minute, or a minute, but it seemed an hour.  The bells ceased as they had begun, together.  They were succeeded by a clanking noise, deep down below; as if some person were dragging a heavy chain over the casks in the wine merchant's cellar.  Scrooge then remembered to have heard that ghosts in haunted houses were described as dragging chains.

The cellar-door flew open with a booming sound, and then he heard the noise much louder, on the floors below; then coming up the stairs; then coming straight towards his door.

"It's humbug still!" said Scrooge.  "I won't believe it."

His colour changed though, when, without a pause, it came on through the heavy door, and passed into the room before his eyes.  Upon its coming in, the dying flame leaped up, as though it cried, "I know him; Charlie's Ghost!" and fell again.

The same face: the very same.  Charlie in his pigtail, usual waistcoat, tights and boots; the tassels on the latter bristling, like his pigtail, and his coat-skirts, and the hair upon his head.  The chain he drew was clasped about his middle.  It was long, and wound about him like a tail; and it was made (for Scrooge observed it closely) of cash-boxes, keys, padlocks, ledgers, deeds, and heavy purses wrought in steel. His body was transparent, so that Scrooge, observing him, and looking through his waistcoat, could see the two buttons on his coat behind.

Scrooge had often heard it said that Charlie had no bowels, but he had never believed it until now.

No, nor did he believe it even now.  Though he looked the phantom through and through, and saw it standing before him; though he felt the chilling influence of its death-cold eyes; and marked the very texture of the folded kerchief bound about its head and chin, which wrapper he had not observed before: he was still incredulous, and fought against his senses.

"How now!" said Scrooge, caustic and cold as ever. "What do you want with me?"

"Much!" -- Charlie's voice, no doubt about it.

"Who are you?"

"Ask me who I was."

"Who were you then?"  said Scrooge, raising his voice.  "You're particular, for a shade." He was going to say "to a shade," but substituted this, as more appropriate.

"In life I was your partner, Jacob Charlie."

"Can you -- can you sit down?"  asked Scrooge, looking doubtfully at him.

"I can."

"Do it then."

Scrooge asked the question, because he didn't know whether a ghost so transparent might find himself in a condition to take a chair; and felt that in the event of its being impossible, it might involve the necessity of an embarrassing explanation.  But the ghost sat down on the opposite side of the fireplace, as if he were quite used to it.

"You don't believe in me," observed the Ghost.

"I don't." said Scrooge.

"What evidence would you have of my reality, beyond that of your senses?"

"I don't know," said Scrooge.

"Why do you doubt your senses?"

"Because," said Scrooge, "a little thing affects them. A slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheats.  You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato.  There's more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!"

Scrooge was not much in the habit of cracking jokes, nor did he feel, in his heart, by any means waggish then.  The truth is, that he tried to be smart, as a means of distracting his own attention, and keeping down his terror; for the spectre's voice disturbed the very marrow in his bones.

To sit, staring at those fixed glazed eyes, in silence for a moment, would play, Scrooge felt, the very deuce with him.  There was something very awful, too, in the spectre's being provided with an infernal atmosphere of its own.  Scrooge could not feel it himself, but this was clearly the case; for though the Ghost sat perfectly motionless, its hair, and skirts, and tassels, were still agitated as by the hot vapour from an oven.

"You see this toothpick?"  said Scrooge, returning quickly to the charge, for the reason just assigned; and wishing, though it were only for a second, to divert the vision's stony gaze from himself.

"I do," replied the Ghost.

"You are not looking at it," said Scrooge.

"But I see it," said the Ghost, "notwithstanding."

"Well!" returned Scrooge, "I have but to swallow this, and be for the rest of my days persecuted by a legion of goblins, all of my own creation.  Humbug, I tell you!  humbug!"

At this the spirit raised a frightful cry, and shook its chain with such a dismal and appalling noise, that Scrooge held on tight to his chair, to save himself from falling in a swoon.  But how much greater was his horror, when the phantom taking off the bandage round its head, as if it were too warm to wear indoors, its lower jaw dropped down upon its breast!

Scrooge fell upon his knees, and clasped his hands before his face.

"Mercy!" he said.  "Dreadful apparition, why do you trouble me?"

"Man of the worldly mind!" replied the Ghost, "do you believe in me or not?"

"I do," said Scrooge.  "I must.  But why do spirits walk the earth, and why do they come to me?"

"It is required of every man," the Ghost returned, "that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellowmen, and travel far and wide; and if that spirit goes not forth in life, it is condemned to do so after death.  It is doomed to wander through the world -- oh, woe is me! -- and witness what it cannot share, but might have shared on earth, and turned to happiness!"

Again the spectre raised a cry, and shook its chain and wrung its shadowy hands.

"You are fettered," said Scrooge, trembling.  "Tell me why?"

"I wear the chain I forged in life," replied the Ghost. "I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it.  Is its pattern strange to you?"

Scrooge trembled more and more.

"Or would you know," pursued the Ghost, "the weight and length of the strong coil you bear yourself?  It was full as heavy and as long as this, seven Christmas Eves ago.  You have laboured on it, since. It is a ponderous chain!"

Scrooge glanced about him on the floor, in the expectation of finding himself surrounded by some fifty or sixty fathoms of iron cable: but he could see nothing.

"Jacob," he said, imploringly.  "Old Jacob Charlie, tell me more.  Speak comfort to me, Jacob!"

"I have none to give," the Ghost replied.  "It comes from other regions, Ebenezer Scrooge, and is conveyed by other ministers, to other kinds of men.  Nor can I tell you what I would.  A very little more, is all permitted to me.  I cannot rest, I cannot stay, I cannot linger anywhere.  My spirit never walked beyond our counting-house -- mark me! -- in life my spirit never roved beyond the narrow limits of our money-changing hole; and weary journeys lie before me!"

It was a habit with Scrooge, whenever he became thoughtful, to put his hands in his breeches pockets.  Pondering on what the Ghost had said, he did so now, but without lifting up his eyes, or getting off his knees.

"You must have been very slow about it, Jacob," Scrooge observed, in a business-like manner, though with humility and deference.

"Slow!" the Ghost repeated.

"Seven years dead," mused Scrooge.  "And travelling all the time!"

"The whole time," said the Ghost.  "No rest, no peace.  Incessant torture of remorse."

"You travel fast?"  said Scrooge.

"On the wings of the wind," replied the Ghost.

"You might have got over a great quantity of ground in seven years," said Scrooge.

The Ghost, on hearing this, set up another cry, and clanked its chain so hideously in the dead silence of the night, that the Ward would have been justified in indicting it for a nuisance.

"Oh!  captive, bound, and double-ironed," cried the phantom, "not to know, that ages of incessant labour, by immortal creatures, for this earth must pass into eternity before the good of which it is susceptible is all developed.  Not to know that any Christian spirit working kindly in its little sphere, whatever it may be, will find its mortal life too short for its vast means of usefulness.  Not to know that no space of regret can make amends for one life's opportunity misused!  Yet such was I!  Oh!  such was I!"

"But you were always a good man of business, Jacob," faltered Scrooge, who now began to apply this to himself.

"Business!" cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again.  "Mankind was my business.  The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business.  The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!"

It held up its chain at arm's length, as if that were the cause of all its unavailing grief, and flung it heavily upon the ground again.

"At this time of the rolling year," the spectre said "I suffer most.  Why did I walk through crowds of fellow-beings with my eyes turned down, and never raise them to that blessed Star which led the Wise Men to a poor abode!  Were there no poor homes to which its light would have conducted me!"

Scrooge was very much dismayed to hear the spectre going on at this rate, and began to quake exceedingly.

"Hear me!" cried the Ghost.  "My time is nearly gone."

"I will," said Scrooge.  "But don't be hard upon me!  Don't be flowery, Jacob!  Pray!"

"How it is that I appear before you in a shape that you can see, I may not tell.  I have sat invisible beside you many and many a day."

[ Because Scrooge, by sitting alone in the dark in a bare, cavernous, hollow, empty house is unwittingly performing a ritual invocation of Pluto, by recreating the conditions and the environment of the throneroom of the King of the Underworld in Hades (which, unlike Christian Hell is always cold, not hot.). 

Thus, he magickally gains the ability to see and talk to dead people via a ritual invocation of Hades. Without having any notion that he might be doing anything of the sort.

Marley, as the wraith of a Christian soul is forbidden from explaining this to him, since the invocation of Pagan Deities is taboo and a forbidden practice, not to ever br discussed or spoken-of openly, even to the invoker who does not actually realise that they are doing it. ]

It was not an agreeable idea.  Scrooge shivered, and wiped the perspiration from his brow.

"That is no light part of my penance," pursued the Ghost.  "I am here to-night to warn you, that you have yet a chance and hope of escaping my fate.  A chance and hope of my procuring, Ebenezer."

"You were always a good friend to me," said Scrooge.  "Thank `ee!"

"You will be haunted," resumed the Ghost, "by Three Spirits."

Scrooge's countenance fell almost as low as the Ghost's had done.

"Is that the chance and hope you mentioned, Jacob?"  he demanded, in a faltering voice.

"It is."

"I -- I think I'd rather not," said Scrooge.

"Without their visits," said the Ghost, "you cannot hope to shun the path I tread.  Expect the first tomorrow, when the bell tolls one."

"Couldn't I take `em all at once, and have it over, Jacob?"  hinted Scrooge.

"Expect the second on the next night at the same hour.  The third upon the next night when the last stroke of twelve has ceased to vibrate.  Look to see me no more; and look that, for your own sake, you remember what has passed between us!"

When it had said these words, the spectre took its wrapper from the table, and bound it round its head, as before.  Scrooge knew this, by the smart sound its teeth made, when the jaws were brought together by the bandage.  He ventured to raise his eyes again, and found his supernatural visitor confronting him in an erect attitude, with its chain wound over and about its arm.

The apparition walked backward from him; and at every step it took, the window raised itself a little, so that when the spectre reached it, it was wide open.  It beckoned Scrooge to approach, which he did.  When they were within two paces of each other, Charlie's Ghost held up its hand, warning him to come no nearer.  Scrooge stopped.

Not so much in obedience, as in surprise and fear: for on the raising of the hand, he became sensible of confused noises in the air; incoherent sounds of lamentation and regret; wailings inexpressibly sorrowful and self-accusatory.  The spectre, after listening for a moment, joined in the mournful dirge; and floated out upon the bleak, dark night.

Scrooge followed to the window: desperate in his curiosity.  He looked out.

The air was filled with phantoms, wandering hither and thither in restless haste, and moaning as they went.  Every one of them wore chains like Charlie's Ghost; some few (they might be guilty governments) were linked together; none were free.  Many had been personally known to Scrooge in their lives.  He had been quite familiar with one old ghost, in a white waistcoat, with a monstrous iron safe attached to its ankle, who cried piteously at being unable to assist a wretched woman with an infant, whom it saw below, upon a door-step.  The misery with them all was, clearly, that they sought to interfere, for good, in human matters, and had lost the power for ever.

Whether these creatures faded into mist, or mist enshrouded them, he could not tell.  But they and their spirit voices faded together; and the night became as it had been when he walked home.

Scrooge closed the window, and examined the door by which the Ghost had entered.  It was double-locked, as he had locked it with his own hands, and the bolts were undisturbed.  He tried to say "Humbug!" but stopped at the first syllable.  And being, from the emotion he had undergone, or the fatigues of the day, or his glimpse of the Invisible World, or the dull conversation of the Ghost, or the lateness of the hour, much in need of repose; went straight to bed, without undressing, and fell asleep upon the instant.