Welcome to the Jordan B. Peterson Podcast.

This is Episode 2, Tragedy vs. Evil.

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When I started working on this problem, or I guess when it started working on me, it was

probably really in the mid-80s, and I found myself suffering from two things.

One was a very lengthy sequence of nightmares about nuclear destruction, and they're very

affecting dreams.

And associated with that was a sense of amazement that a dream that was that awful could reflect

a reality that could be that awful.

And an additional amazement at the fact that, despite the production of thousands and

tens and thousands of weapons of unimaginable destruction and the qualitative change in

human capacity that represented, that people could go about their day-to-day lives without

acting as if anything fundamental whatsoever had changed.

Now, I've never really been able to figure out why that disturbed me so much when it seemed

to not disturb to any profound degree most of the people I knew.

It doesn't really matter.

The abstract of it was that I spent, I probably spent my whole life trying to understand what

evil was, and more importantly, what might be done about it.

It's a strange pursuit in some ways for an academic to undertake, because academics tend

to talk about academic things.

...