True words of Jordan Peterson wisdom and a moment of tears

In front of a packed Sydney crowd, Jordan Peterson revealed he had to change one of his 12 rules for life. And then he cried.

Jordan Peterson, pictured during a lecture in Auckland this week, advises young men and women to pursue traditional roles. Picture: Nick Reed

Seen any decent shows lately? I ask because it was my good fortune last Saturday to be the “plus one” for a young lad who had tickets to see Jordan Peterson at the Sydney Opera House. The event lasted more than an hour, with Peterson just talking and talking before the standing ovation, which also went for quite a while.

Shuffling toward the exit, I asked the young lad what he’d thought. He said it was one of the best shows he’d seen, and I happen to know that this young man saw his first set of boobs at an AC/DC concert back when he was nine. A girl on somebody’s shoulders lifted up her T-shirt, you know how they do? His bar for event satisfaction was high, that’s all I’m saying.

Anyway, I filed a story about Peterson’s lecture for The Australian, mainly because our readers seem pretty interested in everything he has to say. The piece wasn’t long at 500 words, but it covered such things as the extraordinary security — I’ve been to plenty of shows at the Opera House, one wag told me, but I’ve never seen the bomb squad — and some observations about the make-up of the crowd (men in blazers, women in pearls, pierced teenagers holding hands like it was date night).

I used some of his lines, and in passing I mentioned that JP — that’s what all the cool kids call him, so maybe I won’t do that again — had at one point reduced himself to tears.

Wait, what? About what?!

About 1000 people have since pressed me on that point, like how could I leave the reader hanging? In my defence, he cried at the end of an hour-long lecture, and those lectures he gives, they’re not exactly easy to summarise, but OK already.

Here’s what happened.

Peterson started his Opera House talk by saying that he had over time tweaked one of his “12 Rules For Life” (that is also the name of his book). It used to be “Tell The Truth” but he’s since added “At Least Don’t Lie”.

He changed it, he said, because human beings, being puny and ­ignorant, don’t always know what is true. We might think we do, but we can’t possibly. The world is so big and everything is corrupted, and so at least don’t lie, which ­Peterson defines as “knowing something is not true, and saying it anyway”.

Why not? Not for the reasons you might think. Yes, it’s unethical to deceive people, but that’s not Peterson’s bag so much as this: “The more you lie to yourself and to others, the more corrupt you become.”

He doesn’t mean in business. He means when you lie, you damage yourself psychologically. You create pathways in your brain that are based on falsehoods, and they in turn become the architecture on which you ­depend in times of trouble. “Is that what you want?” he said. “To have lies in your ­corner?”

Of course you don’t, because if you’re depending on lies to save you, inevitably you’ll end up in a “way worse” position than when you started (side note: if you’ve got a teen in the basement who has started using the term “way worse”, he’s a Peterson fan).

From there, Peterson segued into a human being’s need not only for truth, but for forward ­motion. He seemed here to be speaking mainly to young men.

Peterson has on previous occasions acknowledged that women in their late 20s and early 30s have big decisions to make and not much time to make them.

His advice is usually for women to put their careers aside for a bit and have a family, because it’s important as you get older to have a close circle of intimates, by which he means a partner, children and grandchildren. You’re going to live until you’re 90, probably. Careers are fun and friends are good, but the people who knew you when you were young and those who will perhaps help take care of you when you are old? Way better.

Young men are also questioning the way forward: should they still be trying to get married and play the provider role? Because it seems to be going out of fashion.

Peterson say yes.

They should get up and get a job. Marry their girlfriends, take on more responsibility, aim for promotions at work, take them when they come, and generally head in the direction of their potential, because forward motion has a positive psychological effect on people. It directs young men, in particular, away from depression, and suicide.

“And you don’t have to change the world,” Peterson said, “just ­decide on three things that could improve your own life by 6pm today.”

That may be something as simple as picking up your dirty socks and putting them in the wash basket. Now your mum is happy and the household is happier, and you’re responsible, so good for you.

Peterson acknowledged that a lot of people struggle to move forward in life because they are caught up in terrible childhood experiences. “But you are no longer five,” he said. “You can’t fight back at five, but you don’t want to still be fighting those demons at age 58.”

Meaning: yes, your childhood was awful. It’s also over. So, no more excuses. Up you get.

The more people do this — speak truth, confront demons, strive forward — the better the world is for everyone, because what happens when vast numbers of people feel a sense of nihilism, and dismay?

When people get angry and start blaming others for their plight?

You get bullying. You get school shootings. You get acts of terror. You get Nazism, concentration camps, gulags, all of it hell.

“We should be moving away from hell,” said Peterson. “That’s a good thing for all of us to be moving away from hell.”

That’s when he cried.

It wasn’t all super-serious. Towards the end of the show, Peterson took questions from the audience. He was asked about his snappy wardrobe of three-piece suits, and he acknowledged spending “way more that any reasonable person should” on clothes in recent years.

He also talked about cage fighting, and about how many problems have simple solutions, using as an example a client he once had, a young woman, who had complained about being tired and angry all the time. Turns out she was hungry.