People From Edmonton

"Women are attracted to men's ability to generate, to be productive, and to share. These qualities transcend wealth, which can disappear."

"The woman offers the man fruit. Maybe that's how our female ancestors enticed males to join them in caring for offspring: "I'll offer you food, and in response we're going to make a team. That's the deal." And that's the human deal. That's why we're more or less monogamous and why we more or less pair-bond, and why something approximating marriage is a human universal. You can find exceptions, but who cares? Look at the vast pattern. The price we pay for having very large brains is that we're very dependent, and it takes a long time for us to get programmed, and because of that we need relatively stable family bonding, and that's basically what we've evolved. You don't get that without making males self-conscious. Why not impregnate and run? It's not "Why do men abandon their children?" that's the mystery. It's "Why do any men ever stick with them?" Just look at the animal kingdom. The simple and easiest thing is always the most likely thing to occur. It's the exception—the long-term commitment—that needs explanation."

"What do people do that animals don't? Work. What does work mean? It means you sacrifice the present for the future. Why do you do that? Because you know that you're vulnerable, and because you're awake. From here on in, from this point forward, there's no return to unconscious paradise. I don't care how many problems you've solved so that today's okay. You have a lot of problems coming up. No matter how much you work, you're never going to work enough to solve all the problems. All you're going to do from here on in is to be terrified of the future. That's the price of waking up. It's the end of paradise, and that's the beginning of history."

"The selection pressure that women placed on men developed the entire species. There's two things that happened. The men competed for competence, since the male hierarchy is a mechanism that pushes the best men to the top. The effect of that is multiplied by the fact that women who are hypergamous peel from the top. And so the males who are the most competent are much more likely to leave offspring—which seems to have driven cortical expansion."

"If the mother doesn't make the sacrifice, then you get the horrible Oedipal situation in the household, which is its own catastrophic hell. If the maternal sacrifice isn't there, then that doesn't work. If the paternal sacrifice isn't there, if the father isn't willing to put his son out into the world, then that's a non-starter because the kid doesn't grow up. And if the son isn't willing to do that, then who the hell is going to shoulder the responsibility? So if those three things don't happen, it's chaos, it's cataclysmic, it's hell. If they do happen—is it the opposite of that? Well, maybe you could say it depends on the degree to which they happen. And it's a continuum. How thoroughly can they happen? Well, we don't know, because you might say, "How good of a job do you do of encouraging your children to live in truth?" Well, that's part of the answer to this question. And the answer likely is that you don't do as good a job of it as you could. So it works out quite well, but you don't know how well it could work if you did it really well, or spectacularly well, or ultimately well or something like that. You don't know."

"The idea is that you could sacrifice something of value, and that would have transcendent utility. That is by no means an unsophisticated idea. In fact, it might be the greatest idea that human beings ever came up with."

"Of course, my socialist colleagues and I weren’t out to hurt anyone. Quite the reverse. We were out to improve things—but we were going to start with other people. I came to see the temptation in this logic, the obvious flaw, the danger—but could also see that it did not exclusively characterize socialism. Anyone who was out to change the world by changing others was to be regarded with suspicion. The temptations of such a position were too great to be resisted."

"I would say with regard to critical thought, and to some degree with regard to productive thought, an indeterminate proportion of that is dependent on speech. I don't think it's unreasonable to point out that thought is internalized speech. And that the dialectical process that constitutes critical thinking is internalized speech. […] The quality of our thoughts is actually dependent on our ability to speak our minds."

"You should be able to do things that you wouldn't do. That's the definition of a genuinely moral person. They could do it, but they don't."

"The future is the place of all potential monsters."

"And the fact that in the United States [...] the students have been essentially handed a bill of indentured servitude here for their student loans is absolutely beyond comprehension. It seems to me that the bureaucracy has basically conspired to determine how to pick the pockets of the students' future earnings and they do that by offering them an extended adolescence with no quality control."

"The richest province in Canada is poorer than the poorest state in the United States"

"Jordan B. Peterson: The earliest political memory I have, it was when Robert Kennedy was shot. I don't know how old I was, probably four or five. I watched his funeral and I thought, "I'm going to have a funeral like that." [question from off-camera]: What made you think you would have a funeral like that? Jordan B. Peterson: I have no idea—I have no idea why I thought that. [question from off-camera]: What struck you about the funeral? Jordan B. Peterson: That it was—well, that it was a very large public event. That there was a lot of grief that was associated with it. That was the first thing that really, kind of, had an impact on me, I suppose, that was part of the outside political world, but I was pretty young when that happened."

"You might think, "Well, compassion is a virtue." Yes, it's a virtue, but any uni-dimensional virtue immediately becomes a vice, because real virtue is the intermingling of a number of virtues and their integration into a functional identity that can be expressed socially. Compassion can be great if you happen to be the entity towards which it is directed. But compassion tends to divide the world into crying children and predatory snakes. So if you're a crying child—hey, great. But if you happen to be identified as one of the predatory snakes, you better look the hell out. Compassion is what the mother grizzly bear feels for her cubs while she eats you because you got in the way."

"I believe that when these podcasts work properly, the reason they are compelling, to the degree they manage to be compelling, is because what people are observing and participating in is the process by which two people mutually transform one another towards a higher good, so we are both struggling to make things clear and to approach something that we don't have yet, but it's in that struggle that motivation rises."

"Proof itself, of any sort, is impossible, without an axiom (as Gödel proved). Thus faith in God is a prerequisite for all proof."

"First stop lying, then start speaking the truth."

"One of the things that struck me as near miraculous about music, especially in a rather nihilistic and atheistic society, is that it really does fill the void that was left by the death of God. And it's partly because you cannot rationally critique music. It speaks to you, it speaks of meaning, and no matter what you say about it, no matter how cynical you are, you cannot put a crowbar underneath that and lift it up and toss it aside."

"Competence can step in where popularity cannot go."

"We all love animals, but why do we call some ‘pets’ and others ‘dinner’? If you knew how meat was made, you'd probably lose your lunch. I know. I'm from cattle country. That's why I became a vegetarian."

"I think being ‘alternative,’ which most people think holds me back, actually helps [in the music industry]. If I'd been an ordinary singer, I'd still be trying to get noticed in Canada. I'm an alternative in every way. I'm a country singer who's a vegetarian for health reasons and because of compassion for animals. I'm also alternative because of Canada — there's something romantic about being Canadian. I always push the fact that I'm Canadian. I'm not self-righteous enough to think I'm unique and I'm not being overly rebellious. But I've learned that to go your own way and be yourself, which is what I'm trying to do, is alternative to a lot of people."

"Tonight, I also want to say that I'm also thinking about my mother and father. I know my mother would be completely over the moon about this. I think my dad would too. I'm sorry he couldn't see this. This really was his life’s work but I can say this: I know how proud he'd be of the province we all love."

"My parents taught me that an NDPer in Alberta has to work three times harder than any other politician to earn votes. It's a lesson I won't forget."

"Plainly he was one of those rare people who burn with an inner fire—but the inner fire that never failed in James Arm-of-the-Lord was a brand of woe and a torch of terror to the Unrighteous. Nor was it lessened by the fact that the ranks of the Unrighteous, in James’ estimation, included all those whose opinions in any way differed from his own."

"“Exaggeration of confidence,” he said, “is a fault in people who don’t know their business.”"

"It’s a dirty, damn universe, and every once in a while I get a chance to hit back at it. That’s all. If I knew in the morning when I started out that I was going to be killed that day, I’d still go—because I couldn’t die happier than to go down hitting back."

"The immediate teaching of philosophers may be gentle, but the theory behind their teaching is without compunction—and that’s why so much bloodshed and misery has always attended the paths of their followers, who claim to live by those teachings. More blood’s been spilled by the militant adherents of prophets of change than by any other group of people down through the history of man."

"Trouble rather the tiger in his lair than the sage amongst his books. For to you Kingdoms and their armies are things mighty and enduring, but to him they are but toys of the moment, to be overturned by the flicking of a finger..."

"“You don’t quench ambition by feeding it any more than you quench a fire the same way,” said Cletus. “To an ambitious man, what he already has is nothing. It’s what he doesn’t have that counts.”"

"“Good luck to you, too, sir.” “I make it a point not to know the lady,” said Cletus. “I can’t afford to count on her.”"

"With the situation fully and correctly understood, it becomes entirely reasonable that the very small fraction of a second preceding a violent death could be a trigger to speculative thought."

"In a climate of confusion, one of the surest ways of confounding the enemy is to tell him the plain truth."

"Gradually there broke on him the understanding that this was a contest that he perpetuated by the very act of fighting in it. The way to victory here was to deny the enemy. He laughed."

"“I don’t pretend to be anything but a soldier,” growled Galt. “And it’s precisely that that makes you dangerous in negotiations,” replied William. “Politicians and businessmen always feel more at home with someone who they know doesn’t mean what he says. Honest men always have been a curse laid upon the sharpshooter.” “A pity,” put in Anea, “that there aren’t enough honest men, then, to curse them all.”"

"“It’s not often I make mistakes,” he said. “Perhaps I can console myself with the thought that when I do they turn out to be on the same order of magnitude as my successes.”"

"Why should there be some sort of virtue always attributed to a frank admission of vice?"

"The original role of the machine started to get perverted around the time of the industrial revolution. It came to be regarded not as a means to a desired end, but as part of the end in itself. The process accelerated in the nineteenth century, and exploded in the twentieth. Man kept demanding more in the way of service from his technology, and the technology kept giving it—but always at the price of a little more of man’s individual self-contained powers. In the end—in our time—our technology has become second thing to a religion. Now we’re trapped in it. And we’re so enfeebled by our entrapment that we tell ourselves it’s the only possible way to live. That no other way exists."

"Even as she lay dreaming these dreams, however, a sane part of her mind was still on duty. Realistically, she knew that what she was thinking was nonsense."

"Actually, each generation likes to think of itself as at the pivot point in history, that in its time the great decision is made which puts man either on the true road or the false. But things aren’t really that serious. Truthfully, the way of mankind is too massive to be kinked, suddenly; it only changes direction in a long and gradual bend over many generations."

"“And someone that brilliant must be a devil?” queried Galt, dryly. “Not at all,” explained Donal, patiently. “But having such intellectual capabilities, a man must show proportionately greater inclinations toward either good or evil than lesser people. If he tends toward evil, he may mask it in himself—he may even mask its effect on the people with which he surrounds himself. But he has no way of producing the reflections of good which would ordinarily be reflected from his lieutenants and initiates—and which, if he was truly good—he would have no reason to try and hide. And by that lack, you can read him.”"

"Blunt nodded slowly, like an old man. It was not clear whether he had understood and was agreeing, or whether he had given up the attempt to understand and was merely being agreeable."

"Because there are no second chances. Which is the most tragic sentence I think English can form."

"::::And on the surface of the ancient home, they die in scores of wars and by legions of plagues, and against the poets’ and prophets’ promises for unity born in fear of doomsday, they fight like Tyrannosaurs raging and ripping the life from each other’s scaly necks while the comet smote the firmament, and murdered the skies to doom them all."

"The more things change, the more the speed up in changing."

"Pain is too strong and life is too brief, brother, to avoid the pleasures that don’t hurt us."

"The creature with the strongest armour has the softest innards."

"Violence in the air like the stench of gasoline."

"Her weapon is her mouth. And it’s loaded and fully automatic."

"“The Astriarchy gives those people a nice story about how they can meet up with their favourite member of the Five Immortals on the ‘Celestial Path.’ So no, don’t worry how bad things are right now in this universe right in front of us, because your reward’s coming later! Might as well drown them.”"

"The actual world isn’t solidly real for you if you’ve been treading water in an ocean of lies your whole life."