Simone's First Thoughts on Jordan Peterson's The 12 Rules for Life

We discuss the aspects of Jordan Peterson's thinking that resonate with us and where we differ. We cover his reliance on archetypes and narratives, his traditional views on gender, and his appeal to personal responsibility and paternalism. Though we disagree on some areas, we find value in engaging with his perspectives.

Simone: [00:00:00] I think that's kind of what it is with Jordan Peterson that okay, the tendency isn't exactly to be like this paternalistic disciplined ideal, this ordered ideal. But I think many readers would love a vision in which masculine equals order in which masculine is this like calm paternalistic ordered force that makes everything okay.

Simone: I mean, again, it like brings me back to the daddy. Masculinity

Malcolm: create a, a, almost a feminine lens through which masculinity can

Simone: be translated. I wouldn't say, no, I wouldn't say it's feminine. And I wouldn't, and he would find this. An affront because he really hates Infantilism, but I think it's an infantalized version of masculinity.

Would you like to know more?

Simone: So Malcolm, you gave me a little bit of a homework assignment this week, didn't you?

Malcolm: Well, so we were going to do a video on some of Jordan Peterson's ideas. And, and sort of where our ideas contrast with his and where our ideas align with his. And Simone was like, no, no, no, we have to, I have to at least read one of his books before we do that.

Malcolm: Cause that's the [00:01:00] way we read books. Simone reads them. She writes like a book report. She sends it to me and then I review it. And, and that's how we think on knowledge. And then we'll have a conversation every day about it. And recently she started reading her or our first Jordan Peterson book to actually, you know, go through cover to cover and what's it, what's it called?

Simone: Maps of meaning. No, just kidding. That's like a deep cut. 12 rules for life. His, his big, his first big for public consumption book. And so you're about a chapter into it or? I'm probably on chapter four or so.

Malcolm: You're on chapter four. Okay. So what we're going to talk about is your first Thoughts on reading it what, what, what resonates with you, what you think he's actually communicating.

Malcolm: Yeah. Or

Simone: really what seems to differentiate, what more specifically, what seems to differentiate us from Jordan Peterson in his philosophy, because there's a lot that I think we hold in common. And then there's a lot that we really don't and it's really interesting to me. Like I, I read a lot of what he says and I'm [00:02:00] like, yeah, no, absolutely.

Simone: And then he'll say something else and I'll be like, Oh my gosh, and nails on a chalkboard. What are you doing? And it's, it's unusual, I think, to come across an author, especially someone discussing psychology, neuroscience, evolutionary biology, et cetera. Self help broadly that we sometimes really agree with and sometimes don't.

Simone: Usually it's we're 100% on board. We're like, yeah, you're one of us or. We, we, this is I can't even listen to this without having an aneurysm. Even though we will

Malcolm: listen anyway. So let's talk about, I mean, so the first thing that I think really when you were talking to me. You're like this because this is another area that we've been digging into recently.

Malcolm: It seems really influenced by Jungian psychology

Simone: Yeah, yeah I think really what he's done is he's he's dressed up Jungian psychology to make it much more palatable to a modern broadly millennial a little bit Gen Z audience by adding a ton of [00:03:00] evolutionary biology and neuroscience and like discussion of social science studies and things like that to this.

Simone: So he'll mention, for example, go ahead,

Malcolm: Malcolm. I was going to say, you were saying yesterday when you told me about this, but not to the core of his points. The core of his point is typically Jungian psychology, and then he'll add a bunch of anecdotes that might not be directly connected to it that are like about evolutionary psychology or something.

Simone: Not necessarily. I mean, I think it's, it's hard, it's hard for me to articulate really well, but my understanding of. a big thesis that Jordan Peterson holds is, and this is so close to what we, you specifically, have argued in the pragmatist guide to religion, but differently. So in the pragmatist guide to religion, you point out that humans have evolved in concert with culture and religion, that we, our biology.

Simone: is designed to work with culture and religion. And when you strip that away, things fall apart. But then you proceed in, in all of our books to make [00:04:00] very logical arguments and appeals to people about relationships, about sexuality, about life philosophy, about all sorts of things, right? Like it is all, and you know, the people who, who like our books also.

Simone: Like that we are robotic and sociopathic and like very autistic. And then the criticisms

Malcolm: that we get, the new word is hot, autistic, hot, hot, autistic, women, hot, autistic,

Simone: So then the criticisms that we commonly get are, Oh, you're missing the soul. What about love? Like there's, there's this much more like touchy feely thing.

Simone: And every time we get these criticisms, I, I think I literally lack the element or processing or software that is required to understand what they're talking about. Now, Jordan Peterson starts with the same argument. He essentially says that, you know, humans have evolved with stories and religion. This is our bread and butter.

Simone: This is how we function. It is the software on which our hardware is meant to work. But his [00:05:00] conclusion is very different. It is that, you know, science, the scientific method and rationality, these were only introduced Very recently, which I think is a sort of dubious claim because I mean, I think that there's a lot of logic and like very ancient Greek thought, but whatever.

Simone: We're going to throw that aside for a second. But my, my, my very strong impression and what I'm surprised no one's really discussing is he's basically saying no, no, no humans can't understand. logical reasoning. Humans must understand or fix themselves, fix their psychology, make decisions through interactions with religion, through interactions with narratives.

Simone: And so that's the way he does it. And this reminds me a lot of a podcast that Spencer Greenberg did with some kind of psychologist where Spencer, you can tell he's a very rational person like us. I think he's much more like on the autist end of the spectrum. And he, He keeps asking this person that he's interviewing well, is this evidence based?

Simone: Is this psychological [00:06:00] intervention evidence based? You know, what, what is it robustly proven to work? And the, the guy he was interviewing kept saying things like, you know, it doesn't really matter. If it works for someone that it works, like it could be like the stupidest, like Freudian, you know, nonsense.

Simone: It could be, you know, a witch doctor. It could be like anything that's not replicable scientifically, but if it works for a person, then it works and that's what you should do. And, and Spencer's just but it doesn't work. I don't know, like it's not proven or logical or rational. And I think that this, there's this really interesting, like Jordan Peterson is helping me to understand this like parallel universe of people who really do only see the world in these like emotions and stories.

Simone: And narratives and like religious stories like Jordan Peterson for example. Frequently throughout the book so far will refer to biblical stories. He'll refer to do doki, he'll refer to all sorts of fairytales. And I, I I think it's this presumption that humans [00:07:00] need those to, to reason.

Malcolm: So, so my re my second hand read on, on hearing Simone's analysis of this.

Malcolm: And so first let's talk about when I see something is Jungian psychology. Cause I actually think when somebody says Jungian psychology, they're actually using a euphemism, Jungian psychology is just Freudian psychology.

Malcolm: Everyone knows Freud was like, had some wacky ideas and was a bit of a dumb ass at times. And so they, instead of saying I am a Freudian psychologist, they'll say I'm a Jungian psychologist. Well,

Simone: and I think that's probably because like most people have heard Freud's theories and they've also heard Freud's theories like.

Simone: Yeah. Yeah. But then no one, not that many people have been taught about Jung, so it's a lot harder to say.

Malcolm: Well, and Jung didn't say as much obviously stupid stuff, but they both, both of their psychological frameworks are broadly about narratives, but in a different way. So our [00:08:00] psychological framework, you've heard from our episodes.

Malcolm: We very much believe in a narrative driven psychological framework, right? We see the narratives as really instrumental tools to dominance over your mind.

Simone: Yeah. Well, yeah, the problem it's like you agree with Jordan Peterson, but at the same time, rather than you, you still assume that the human is rational.

Simone: You're like, instead of using a narrative to like dumb it down

Malcolm: for the humans. can hijack these systems that they have. I still think at the end of the day, everything in our brains is mechanical and broadly understandable. Yeah. But the way, the tool you use for engaging them can be intentionally constructed narratives.

Malcolm: That's true. However, a, to a Jungian psychologist. The way that they actually structure their logic when thinking about the human mind is in terms of narrative. So, Jungian and Freudian psychology is, is, it, the, the core difference between it and our [00:09:00] psychology, right? Is our system says, yes, narratives are important to restructuring the mind.

Malcolm: But, when you are engaged with a logical thought and trying to figure out how the world should work, you can ignore narratives. Have these logical, these brief moments of actual logical thought, and then use that logical thought to build a narrative tools to begin hacking the rest of the system.

Malcolm: Okay. Whereas for Freud, when he's trying to investigate the mind, when he's trying to determine how the world actually works. They were, they lean really heavily into narratives, into analogies and into stories in a different way of structuring their own mental processes. So, a good example I can give of this is.

Malcolm: Somebody is asking me, like, how do you structure your mind? And I think this is actually a really interesting question because there's a few ways that a person can structure your mind. So I think the way that [00:10:00] the average, like progressive, woke, urban, monocultural person structures their mind is they try to make their mind a democracy of all the various impulses and voices in their mind, you know, whether that's their experiences from childhood.

Malcolm: Their impulses to, or I want to go have sex, their all of the various parts of their mind, they all get a vote and you are mentally healthy when you have satisfied utilitarianly, the maximum number of these voices that make up who you are, you know, we do not structure our brain that way.

Malcolm: We structure our brain as a complete dictatorship. Logic is the only thing that matters. It owns all other parts of the brain and is whipping them and telling them, you do this, you do this, I don't care what emotional output, I don't care what happened to you in the past, I don't care what narratives you say, and if you can't get out of something without another narrative, then fine, I'll make one for you, but you'll eat it.

Malcolm: Oh, you need food? Then I will make you the worst [00:11:00] food possible in your... forced to eat this food. Not exactly. I mean, we try to, you know, create good narratives for ourselves, but at the end of the day, our brains are structured as a dictatorship. In Jungian psychology, Freudian psychology in, in Jordan Peterson mindsets, like the way that he's approaching things, the brain is also structured as a dictatorship, but the person in charge is the internal storyteller.

Malcolm: And not exactly the internal cold logic person. So we have a lot in common and that we understand the importance of the storyteller, but the storyteller is more like for us in like a communist government, the head of PR that's still working under the dictator and still is only putting out PR pieces that the dictator tells them to.

Malcolm: Whereas in Jungian psychology the storyteller. It's sort of in a co partnership with the dictator or the dictator

Simone: themselves. Now, I'm not sure because in one part of the book I've read so far, Jordan Peterson [00:12:00] encourages the reader to have a conversation with oneself, like to admit one's weakness, but then be a kinder, like a lot of his book is sort of written with here's how to become a paternalistic dominant.

Simone: Like father figure in everything, like to your children, to your friends, but also to yourself. And so he describes this scenario in which you notice that you are dragging your feet on washing the dishes. So you would like internally promise yourself like, Oh, well, what if I took you out for an espresso?

Simone: If I washed the dishes and then he like warns the reader to well, you really better take yourself out for the espresso if you wash the dishes. And then you'll discover that this pays dividends over time because you've. Learned how to incentivize yourself. So I don't know what that is. But I'm just saying that's not necessarily

Malcolm: So, so listen to what he's doing there, right?

Malcolm: He is negotiating with the various parts of his brain through

Simone: like encouraging negotiation.

Malcolm: Yeah. Like in the same way that I talked about, you know, to a [00:13:00] progressive, you want this pure democracy among all the voices in your head. And with us, you want a, a, a pure dictatorship well also understanding, I mean, you look at us, right?

Malcolm: Like one of the core aspects of our philosophy is all humans are wretched and fallen and that you should not be surprised that you sin, but you should never glorify the sin. You should never say my sin is actually a virtue. He would say the same way, but the way that he relates to these different voices in his brain is much more appeasing instead of as a dictator who's I guess if I don't give this population what they want, there's probably going to be a revolt.

Malcolm: It's more okay, let's negotiate. All right. You want to get coffee later? Let's do that. You'll see that I'm trustworthy. It's a different way of managing the fractured self. Hmm.

Simone: Yeah. Would you say that they're accurate or like? I guess. Yeah. I think what's different about the way that Jordan [00:14:00] Peterson presents it is he, he, he like does it in stories and in scenarios and examples. And we're more like, here's how it works. So just figure it out yourself. Like here's the system.

Simone: We expect you to do it yourself. Well, I mean, it's a much

Malcolm: kinder system. If you look at him talking and everything like that, he's much more sympathetic towards other people than we are. You can tell he's, he's, he's a person who's deeply affected by sympathy. You know, like him crying what a woman called men incels and he's like, how could you just dehumanize this huge portion of the human population?

Malcolm: And then, you know, somebody's like incels around us and I'm like, well, they're not breeding, so they don't terribly matter. I mean, I realized they might make up a voting block for us, but longterm. They're being removed from the gene pool, and they probably should be. It's a completely different mindset.

Malcolm: It's a sociopathic, ruthless mindset versus this this kind mindset that genuinely cares about other people. I'd love it if you could talk about the things that he has said [00:15:00] where you are like this is nails on a chalkboard to me.

Simone: Huh. Yeah. A lot of it has to do with insisting, like drawing connections that I don't think are there. He has a chapter on why it's really important to take care of yourself and how humans are. Yeah. Are really bad, for example, at taking medication, even if, for example, they get a kidney transplant and having the medication to stop your kidney from getting rejected is so important.

Simone: People are even not that conscientious on that front. And yet it appears, according to him, that the rates of successful drug administration to pets is incredibly high, much higher than it is for humans who really, really, really need to be taking their own meds. So that is evidence that humans know how to administer medications and yet they don't take care of themselves.

Simone: And then he goes into this whole like. Basically humans don't do it because original sin. And, you know, in some ways his take is so, similar to ours. Well, humans are wretched, you know, like we're, we're flawed. We're messed up. He keeps saying [00:16:00] that, you know, you are, you know, like a pathetic person and you can barely do anything.

Simone: And he admits like he definitely is on the humans are wretched camp, but then he'll like, I think because of his whole thesis around humans have to understand everything through stories and religion is super strong, he'll argue things like Oh, well, we hate ourselves because of original sin. And he'll go into like the whole story of the Garden of Eden.

Simone: You told me cringe

Malcolm: when you said that. Yeah, and it's

Simone: just this isn't helping me. And I don't see how this is effective. And I don't even see how this is accurate. And he and then some other part that I just read this morning. He, he, he pointed out how you know, an atheist might say, well, but I'm not religious.

Simone: And so this doesn't apply to me. And he's you're not an atheist. Like you should read crime and punishment and you'll understand. And I'm like, what, what are you even saying? I mean, like I read crime and punishment and sure it's, it's, it's not really a story about. atheism. It's a [00:17:00] story about stupidity and poverty and, and like gross people with yellow teeth.

Simone: I don't know what to say. So a lot of, a lot of it is I guess what, what's rubbing me the wrong way is I feel like there's a certain amount of. intellectual gatekeeping taking place. And maybe what works a lot about Jungian psychology and all this narrative based arguing, and maybe this happens a lot within religious communities, is people just sort of start using these stories and these analogies.

Simone: And like our mind is trained to get like lulled into a sort of sense of calmness and you're kind of following the story and yeah, yeah, yeah. And you sort of like lose yourself in it. And. Everything sort of becomes, yes, Andy. And then you just assume that Oh yeah, it's right. Of course.

Simone: Correct. You sort of stop thinking critically because you're following the story. But I think that's a way to trick people into thinking that you're right without arguing anything substantive. Maybe that's what's rubbing me the wrong way.

Malcolm: I agree exactly is what you're saying. It's, it's, it's the, to the snake, [00:18:00] right?

Malcolm: Like Jungian psychology can soothe parts of your, your mind. You know, it, it can. But it's very similar to mystical thinking in a religious context. And people should know how antagonistic we are to mysticism and thinking. I mean, I think it just intrinsically comes off in like the way that we engage things.

Malcolm: Young Ian ism can almost be thought of as the secular version of mystical thinking. And. I, I agree with what you're saying there and it reminds me, you know, when you talk about him in religion something you said to me on a walk one day where you were comparing me to Jordan Peterson and Andrew Tate in our engagement with religious ideals where you're like, Malcolm, you've got God, like you, by that what you mean is I 100% both believe in a God and I'm like really, really, really dedicated to that.

Malcolm: And it changes like sort of, I [00:19:00] guess you could say the passion was which I pursue life and the look behind my eyes to an extent. And you're like, Jordan Peterson is someone who sees the value in getting God, but that doesn't have God. And, and it sees no path for him to get it and, and because of that you feel a deep sadness from everything he's doing.

Simone: Well, I don't know. I don't know if he doesn't have God. I mean, I do, there is a lot of there's definitely a preachery feel from his book. And there, there is a different type of religious zeal. I think maybe you're just differentiating like what

Malcolm: did you mean when you said this on the walk? Or have you changed your mind

Simone: when I, what, when I said what, that I just didn't feel like

Malcolm: you didn't feel that this was your, your analysis on the walk was he was somebody who understood the value of having it.

Malcolm: But wasn't able to get himself to really believe it. And so he was preaching it without like really engaging himself. And then you contrast it with Andrew [00:20:00] Tate, which is somebody who both understood the value in it and was trying as hard as he could to believe it, but really didn't. Fully, like it hadn't clicked for him yet or something.

Malcolm: And, and so you could see a bit more passion behind what he was doing, but there was an underlying discomfort.

Simone: I think the difference between faith and Jordan Peterson and Andrew Tate is more, I don't think that they necessarily have differing levels of faith. They have different flavors of faith.

Simone: So I think Jordan Peterson is someone who extremely logically. chose to have faith. I don't get the impression that he's felt faith really strongly. Like he's not been like moved. He doesn't act like someone who's been like moved by Jesus or anything. And he sounds like someone who has studied very deeply.

Simone: the Bible and sort of decided for himself that, that Western Christianity, broadly speaking, is sort of the correct way and, and the [00:21:00] way to be. Whereas my impression is that with religion, Andrew Tate takes a much more charismatic and intuitive, like gut sense impression with religion. Like he's less like getting into the weeds with the literature and more here's what resonates with me.

Simone: Here's what I'm going to personally run with but I, I don't think that they necessarily have varying levels of faith. I mean, I think to say like being moved in a very like spiritual or emotional way doesn't necessarily mean that you're more faithful than someone who just engages in a less, like a slightly more dispassionate, but still intellectually very passionate way with a religion.

Malcolm: That makes a lot of sense. Yeah, and I do, I do agree that it's, it's the, the charismatic aspects that are appealing to Andrew Tate, the, the self narrative modifying aspects as well, whereas with Jordan Peterson, I, I do think that he, is very ordered in his thought, maybe, or more ordered. He's just uses a different [00:22:00] hierarchy for how he orders his thought than we use.

Malcolm: Now something else you had mentioned to me was the way he regarded women in the book. You found off

Simone: putting or... Right. Yeah. A really recurrent theme in the book so far, at least, and it's, I'm only assuming it's going to be repeated ad nauseam for the rest of the book. You

Malcolm: said everything's repeated ad nauseam.

Simone: No, no,

Simone: order and chaos. And it's, it's even kind of a little bit, it'll take you away as a reader because he'll refer to in every chapter, even including the like forward or introduction, the difference between order and chaos with order being symbolized by the feminine and chaos being masculine.

Simone: Sorry. Sorry. I mixed that up because to me, they're so interchangeable with. With chaos being represented by the feminine and, and order being represented by the masculine, and chaos is the child who's sick in the night, and order is the, the day that is structured and productive, and like all these sorts of things.

Simone: Like he'll give, he'll give the example, and he'll talk about like the Taoist yin and yang, and then he'll talk [00:23:00] about various examples of order and chaos and it just it's interesting to me and I'm getting this throughout the book that there's this very it's it definitely comes across as extremely patriarchal and I don't say this in any sort of feminist sense but like he just wants he's he's definitely creating this ideal of a a dominant masculine daddy figure like the all like the jokes about him being like the internet's daddy are so spot on because that's he's like the stern father patriarch and he's trying to teach the reader how to be a patriarch to themselves and a patriarch to everyone else.

Simone: But then this, this concept, and it does annoy me of well, chaos is feminine and order is masculine because it's very. Easy to switch that in the other direction, you know, Oh, well, chaos is, is men and violence and war and order is like oppressive female bureaucracy and politicking.

Malcolm: It's funny that you say that because the moment you said that, if I was going to assign a gender to chaos versus order, males would be chaos and females would be order.

Malcolm: But in, [00:24:00] in, in, in, in potentially even a negative way, like you say, the order of bureaucracy is intrinsically feminine. And, and we've talked

Simone: about this. Yeah, I mean, think like Lars versus Athena. You know, I, I just,

Malcolm: well, and this is the way that we've also structured gender within our relationship.

Malcolm: You know,

Simone: you are... Oh yeah, I'm the order and you are the chaos.

Malcolm: That's why I mentioned Shield Hero and Shovel Knight. If we, if we go to the games, I actually prefer Plague Knight and Mona. I think that's my, my OTP in that game. But the idea... And we'll eventually get some art commissioned like this.

Malcolm: Cause I actually really liked the idea of husbands and wives taking on roles and you can choose which role you take on. I don't know if there's an intrinsically feminine or masculine one, but I think that the way that our family structures it is, is you, the woman are holding the shield. You make sure that we have.

Malcolm: Financial stability that our, our kids are basically handled, that our stuff is basically handled, that our taxes are basically handled, everything like that. And whenever we're doing like a risky thrust at the enemy, whenever we are potentially moving ahead, whether [00:25:00] it's press outreach or a new company before it like becomes a stable source of income or a new investment strategy, that's where all that stuff goes to me.

Malcolm: And so our relationship is based on you are the backbone, you are the stability that, that takes all of life's hits for us. And I am the person who's in charge of moving us forwards and, and, and reaching out and, and, and stabbing. And so I often see us in the relationship, it's you are the shield bearer, and I am the, the sword wielder, or the...

Malcolm: Shovel wielder, the sphere wielder depending on how you want to structure this partnership. And that's the opposite

Simone: of order and chaos. Well, beyond that, biologically men and women like to me, I think are the opposite. Like biologically women are, are like bell curve wise, right? Like they're more likely to be closer to the center of the bell curve.

Simone: There are outliers, like they're, they're far more likely to be mediocre. They have to be more conservative in their mating strategy. Whereas like men are more likely to be [00:26:00] all over the place on the bell curve. Only a few historically have gotten to reproduce. So it's kind of go big or go home. You have to be chaotic.

Simone: You have to be innovative. You have to be different and aggressive and crazy. And so like, where is this coming from?

Malcolm: And when women historically, even in a traditional kinship context, they are the managers of the home, they are the rock of the family. You know, the man is the one who is out fighting the wars and taking the risks.

Malcolm: And even if I look at a traditional masculine and feminine role, if people went into our house, they went into your room, it would be perfectly clean and pristine. If they went into my room, it would be a complete mess. And they wouldn't be surprised of this. You know, this is typical masculine and feminine sort of mindsets into how they order their rooms and stuff like that.

Malcolm: If you went into a house and one room was a complete mess and one room was totally pristine, you'd probably assume the pristine room was the woman's and the mess room was the man's.

Simone: But I think what we're getting with Jordan Peterson and what's, again, interesting about his work and the figure he has presented in culture [00:27:00] is That he's, he is to masculinity, what Martha Stewart is slash was to homemaking.

Simone: So Martha Stewart never presented a realistic picture of homemaking. You know, it was never like how to get things done fast and kind of like get the house clean for the kids and make a dinner without them realizing it only took you 15 minutes. You know, it was always like, I'm going to have my chickens.

Simone: I'm going to lay these eggs and then I'm going to hand harvest the wheat from my farm. And then, you know, she'll do something totally insane, but it was, we watched it. We loved this show. I loved the show. It's a kind of obsessive Martha Stewart living because of the ideal it represented. And I wanted a world in which I had a household like that, and I had the chickens, and I, and I did the stuff perfectly, and my house was spotless, and I handmade everything.

Simone: And I think that's kind of what it is with Jordan Peterson that okay, the tendency isn't exactly to be like this paternalistic disciplined ideal, this ordered ideal. But I think many readers would love a vision in which masculine equals order [00:28:00] in which masculine is this like calm paternalistic ordered force that makes everything okay.

Simone: I mean, again, it like brings me back to the daddy. Masculinity

Malcolm: create a, a, almost a feminine lens through which masculinity can

Simone: be translated. I wouldn't say, no, I wouldn't say it's feminine. And I wouldn't, and he would find this. An affront because he really hates Infantilism, but I think it's an infantalized version of masculinity.

Simone: Mm. Where, where again, like all of the jokes about him being a daddy figure are so spot on because what he's really appealing to is a bunch of readers who just want. Like every they just want daddy to fix it. They just want daddy to give me a hug and tell me it's all going to be okay. And fix everything.

Simone: And I wake up the next morning and it's, it's all fine. And I'm protected and I'm safe. Except he's Oh no, don't worry. The daddy's within you. And and you can be the daddy for everyone. And and I think that's, what's going on is, is that he's catering.[00:29:00]

Simone: Yes. Sorry. That's one of my favorite

Malcolm: character lines that I really model our relationship after and we'll probably do a different one after that. If our relationship is similar to any, any character pairing in media it's definitely the Simone and Kamina pairing. Where I see my role as being Kamina and your role as being Simone. Which is actually a male male pairing in the show. They are like brothers to each other. But I actually think that's probably a better way of structuring a married relationship than the modern way that society does it.

Malcolm: But, yeah, believe in the me that believes in you, but you are the diligent worker. You are the sense of stability and, and I just provide the external inspiration, but it means nothing without your rock and, and, and without your shield protecting all of the crazy, stupid, risky things I do. Anyway, I really love that you have engaged with his work we're gonna do more episodes on it, for sure, because I find it really [00:30:00] fascinating, and I want to be clear that in this episode, what we're focusing on, where we are different from him in ideology, that's just because that's what we have the most to talk about on there's less to talk about it, we're like, oh, this is all the areas we agree with him obviously, we agree with him on a lot of things and, and, yeah, we're not like, antagonistic towards his work or anything like that.

Malcolm: We just have more to talk about in the areas we differ.

Simone: Yeah, I think we have a lot more in common than otherwise. So it's interesting. It's fun. I'm glad you gave me, I'm glad you gave

Malcolm: me this homework. Is that, is that the right word? Did I gave it to you as a task item?

Simone: Yeah, you're like, Simone, I need you.

Simone: Well, because we, we have friends who keep, and this isn't, we have friends, people on the internet who constantly refer to Jordan Peterson's work, to his philosophy. And I don't think we can. Engage with their arguments and with their interpretations of it, which I'm finding now a lot of people's interpretations of what his advice is are like, really bad.[00:31:00]

Simone: They're not getting it. They're not remembering it right. They're, they're getting the totally wrong message from it. But yeah, we, we can't really have meaningful debates with people about his philosophy if we haven't actually read the fricking book. So

Malcolm: good. I love you, Simone. I'm so glad you do this for me.

Malcolm: I have the type of work where I'm like, okay, I'm interested in this topic. Read it, summarize it. Let's talk about it.

Simone: I, this is, this just counts how much you do. You've probably watched many more hours of Jordan Peterson speaking than I have read Jordan Peterson, you know, talking through his book. So.

Malcolm: I'm the one who went through all the Andrew Tate content before we did like a series on him and stuff like that.

Malcolm: Really interesting. He's, he's smarter than people give him credit for, but I'm more pessimistic on other people than you are.

Simone: We'll see. Love you.

Malcolm: I love you too.

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