 Alright, so Jordan Peterson, we're going to talk about, we're going to look at his video. The video is called The Coast of Creativity. I don't think he named it that way, but you'll see some legitimacy to this. And I think it's interesting. I think you can see Jordan Peterson's instance of life come across here. I think you can see his perspective on human success and human happiness come through here. I've got a second video of Jordan as well where he's talking to somebody about art, which I think is also interesting. If we have time, I'll play you that as well, to show some of the problems which I think Jordan's approach and what it involves. Alright, so I am going to turn this down. So the issue is creativity. And before we start, I just want to tell you what I think creativity is. Creativity is one's ability to, in a sense, reshape the world in front of us. It's one's ability to either do it through art by a selective recreation of the world out there, based on our own values. It could be in any activity one engages in. We want, does things differently, better. So in each activity, better would depend on what the activity happened to be. And in what is called outside the box, in an unconventional, in a different way. So creativity is what is required in order to do things better differently in the world out there. To improve our lot in one way or another. To create, is to rearrange the combination of natural elements. That's an English definition. To create is to rearrange the stuff of existence, the stuff that's out there. In art, it's to rearrange it based on your values. In business, it's to rearrange the factors of productions in ways that produce something new, something different, or something more productive. Now, let's take a look at what Jordan has to say about creativity. Oh, let me switch videos. All right, there we go. Play. So I say, well, everyone's not creative and everybody goes, Oh, that's terrible. No, it's true. Not everybody's creative. I mean, one of the things that I think Jordan is his great appeal results from is the fact that he doesn't be as you. You get a sense that he's telling you what he really thinks. He's not playing games. He's not trying to be PC in any way. He's saying what he thinks, even when what he thinks is controversial, is upsetting, is emotionally unpleasing. Well, of course, not everybody's creative. Now, Jordan and I will probably disagree on why not everybody's creative, of where creativity in a sense comes from. But it's absolutely true that most people today are not creative. Whether they could be is a good question. I think many more people could be creative than all, but most people are not creative. It's like it's not so terrible. It's not self-evident that you would curse someone with high levels of creativity. Now, notice, so for him, having high levels of creativity, now we're talking about high levels of creativity, really exceptional creativity, not just creative, but really the genius creators. He views that as a curse. Now, that's that's Jordan's sense of life. That's Jordan's view of life as a struggle, as difficult, as painful. And it's sad because he has an appreciation for the creative and yet he views it in such negative terms ultimately and much of what he says about the difficulty of creative people is true. But even with all the difficulties of being creative, is it really bad to be creative? I mean, I'm pleasant for you. I doubt it. See, but his stand is not happiness. His standard is just satisfaction. You know, you hear very frequently people say things like everyone's creative. It's like, that's wrong. OK, it's wrong. It's just as wrong as saying that everyone's extroverted. That's true. Not everybody's creative. First of all, you have to be pretty damn smart to be creative because otherwise you're just going to get to where other people have. And that's not creative by definition. I'm not sure that's true. So I don't think that's true. Creativity is not measured based on other people. Creativity is in your sphere, in your world. Can you change things? Can you rearrange things in ways that make that world better? If you're sweeping, if you're cleaning floors, I know nobody today cleans floors, but if you're cleaning floors and you find a different way to do it, that's more productive, that's easier, that's better for you, that gets it done faster. Somebody else might have invented this technique a hundred years ago. People might be using this technique all over the world, but for you, it's new. You created it. You did something more efficiently, differently. Now this is not a genius creative, but it's a little act of creativity. So I think he equivocates between just the act of creativity and the genius creative. For him, creativity is a zero one. You're either creative or you're not. And the fact is that it's not zero one. The fact is that anybody, not everybody, is creative. I suspect, I suspect that everybody is capable of being created. Is capable of being created. It requires a certain mental state. It requires a certain type, a way of thinking. But I think everybody is capable of it at their own level, at whatever capabilities they have. Or whatever IQ, Jordan Peterson loves IQ, whatever IQ they happen to have. So I don't think it's a zero one as he presented. And it's a zero one for reason you'll see in a minute. So being fast and being out there at the front of things really makes a difference. And then you also have to have these divergent thinking capabilities. And that's part of your trait structure. So that's part of your trait structure. Now this is really important in Jordan Peterson's world because this basically what he's saying is you're born with it. You're the born with the ability to be creative or not. It's a trait that you inherit. It's not a method of dealing with reality. It's not an ability to apply reason in a particular way, to apply your mind in a particular way. It is inherent. Some people are creative and some people are not. Some people have the creativity gene and some people do not. And he talks about this, I've seen other interviews where he talks about this as well. He really does think this is inherited. And that's it. Now he also thinks that in many people who have the creativity gene, it is suppressed and he's right about the suppression of creativity. We have an educational system which is built around suppressing creativity. It's built around the whole educational system as it exists today. It's built around training factory workers to follow orders. It's a German educational system created by Bismarck in the 19th century. And the purpose was to train workers to follow orders. It is not geared so you can suppress people's creativity. And we do that regularly all the time in our schools and our institutions, in our homes, parents do that all the time. And he recognizes that you can suppress it. But he doesn't believe you can bring it out of somebody because you're born with it. Oh no, this is the whole problem I have with evolutionary psychologists. Is they don't really understand. First of all, you can't prove that. There's no proof of that. And you can't separate out the habits, the thinking habits, the way in which we think, the conclusions we form, the decisions we make when we're very little, when we're young, and how that shapes our adult life to genes shaping our adult life. But it is a massive, if you think that all this, I'll put it this way, it's this idea that you can take something as complex as creativity. Something as complex as how you use your mind. And that is somehow genetically coded in our genes. I think it's just ludicrous. I think our genes, yeah, I mean there's an element, there's a big element of intelligence that is coded in our genes. Although I think there's huge environmental factors and the most important factor, even with regard to intelligence, is choices we make as young people. I think the same thing is true. Well, in creativity, it's not war host power. Creativity is an approach. It's a way to deal. It's really, creativity is the activation of one's mind. It's thinking things through. It's not accepting things as they are. And this is all based, this is all a product of motivation and ideas. It's a function of will. Now, there are levels of creativity, just like there are levels of intelligence. There are certain areas where I cannot be creative. Aesthetics, for example, art, which is a big area of creativity. I cannot. I'm not creative. I have no creativity when it comes to art. I have no ability and no creativity. I think in terms of articulating ideas, in terms of delivering those ideas particularly verbally, I think I'm creative. Original, creative, do it differently. Somebody says, Chris is talking about daydreaming. Yeah, I mean, daydreaming is not creativity, though Jordan Peterson talks about daydreaming. But daydreaming might be, depending on what it is, might be imagination, using one's imagination. And that might lead to creativity. If that imagination is productive, if that imagination is reorganizing reality in a way that actually moves something forward, actually produces something. But yeah, Chris says creativity requires work, skill, knowledge, absolutely. The void of work, skill, and knowledge, what you get in creativity is modern art, which I think Jordan Peterson is a fan of, because he can't separate the two out. Tim, if it's different, it's creative. No, it has to, in the realm in which it is produced, it has to move things forward. It has to be different, but it has to be something. Like art has to follow a certain prescription. Art is something. So a urinal framed in a museum, I mean, most art critics today would consider that incredibly creative. Nobody else thought of it. But it's not art. So it's not creative. It's just silly. It's just silly, because it doesn't actually manifest itself in anything meaningful. There has to be a meaning to it. And the meaning has to be reflected in the thing. Art has to have meaning. Or there are lots of things that in business people say, oh, let's do it this way. And it's completely original. It's completely different than anybody else has done. But it's useless, because it doesn't enhance productivity. It doesn't create something new or value. But yeah, in a sense, it was creative. But it wasn't. Creativity is not just coming up with something new. Creativity is coming up with something new in the context of its use. It has to fulfill its purpose. And art is not in the eye of the beholder. I mean, there are elements of art that are in the eye of the beholder. But whether something is art or not is not in the eye of the beholder. Whether something is art or not is objective. And art needs to be objectively defined. And Inland does objectively define art. And then the question is, does this piece of work qualify under this definition? And is it creative? Or is it just mimicking other people? Or is it just boring? Or is it just uninteresting? Or is it just a copy? So it has to be new and useful, in a sense. That's what creativity requires. It's not just the newness. And this is why modern art, there's confusion about it, because it's new. Nobody's ever, ever splattered paint on a canvas exactly like this. Of course, if you try splattering paint today on a canvas, they'll say, oh, you're just trying to be like Kandinsky or whoever. No, it wasn't Kandinsky. Whoever the guy who splashed Pollock, I think, is a paint splasher. So definition is important. And understanding what creativity is and in what context it is is crucial. Creative people are really different than non-creative people, partly because, for example, they're highly motivated to do creative things, and to experience novelty, and to chase down aesthetic experiences, and to attend movies, and to read fiction, and to go to museums, and to enjoy poetry, and to enjoy music that's not conventional music, for example. Well, I don't know what conventional music is. I mean, maybe it's noise. But yes, creative people are highly motivated. Creative people are curious. Creative people, and I'd say healthy creative people, explore the arts, are interested in aesthetic experiences. Creative people are hardworking, motivated, and engaged in the world around them. The world around them is important. And they're curious. And I don't know that you can teach curiosity. I don't know where it comes from. It's not a gene, but it's something about how we relate to the world when we're growing up, whether we develop that curiosity or not. Somebody writes, if you're engaged creatively in the arts, I suspect you might feel differently. As someone who has a strong aptitude for music, I can tell you it's not fully cerebral. It's that but more. Yes, of course, I'm not saying, I don't know what fully cerebral is. Art is not fully something you can conceptualize into words. It's not fully logical in that sense. It's not deductive. It's not something you deduce. And your emotions and your sense of life, as Iron Man describes it, are hugely have to be integrated, are integrated into any artistic creation. You have to have the skill. You have to have the knowledge of how music works, what it is, how instruments sound, how the harmonies work, don't work. You have to have all the skill involved. But then you have to have more than that. And indeed, very few people, a genius level creative at the genius level in music. And the problem with music today is that it's the void of skill. That is, today, too much of music is just, just the emotion, just what you feel like. And that skill in developing harmonies and melodies and actually the cerebral part is missing because all you want is creativity. And that's true in so many of the plastic arts, splashing paint on a canvas and so on. That's not art. It has to be the combination of the cerebral and your sense of life. And the cerebral is that attempt that you're making to recreate something in the world out there. And music is trickier because it's not obviously clear what it is we're trying to recreate when we do music. But some music is music and some things that sell as music are actual just noise. And some stuff that is sold as music is just boring and dull and uninteresting. That's most pop music today. And repetitive and non-creative and because it's just repetitive, repetitive, repetitive. So, but there are kinds of levels of creativity. Again, not everybody's a genius. And it's not. Now, your musical aptitude might be something you're born with. I mean, Mozart could hear something and perfectly transcribe it at a very, very young age. And that is probably ability to some extent that you're born with. You have to have more than just be born with it. You have to want it. You have to like it. You have to be motivated on it. But there are certain aptitudes that we are born with. But the aptitude does not create the creativity. You have to be able to use the creativity. For that you need to be motivated. You have to have goals. You have to be willing to work hard. All right, let's listen to George. Trivial differences. And so it's a real misstatement to make the proposition that everyone's creative. It's just simply not the case. It's a matter of wishful thinking. That's true. But the question is, can everybody be creative? Or can a vast number of people that are more creative than they are today be creative? Is it an issue of choices, of education, of emphasis, of motivation, or is it something you're born with? I certainly don't think it's something you're born with. It's like saying that everyone's intelligent. Well, if everyone's intelligent, then the term loses all of its meaning. Because any term that you can apply to every member of a category has absolutely no meaning. Well, that's not true. Everybody is human and everybody is human and the human is still has meaning. So, you know, that's kind of silly. Everybody's intelligent is assuming that everybody, that, you know, that intelligence when he means intelligence is above the mean, is more intelligent. So it's true that everybody cannot be above average. And that's what he's really getting at. But it's not that you can't use a term to describe everybody. So that's just slot. And you know, the other thing you wanna be thinking about here is that don't be thinking that creativity is such a good thing. Yeah, this is his malevolence and this is his attitude towards life coming through. This is really interesting. It's a high-risk, high-return strategy. It's high-risk, high-return strategy in what sense? In a financial sense, yeah, only a few artists. And if you think about creativity as art, only a few artists make it. But is the trying not its own reward? Is the trying and not hitting the home run but only hitting singles, not a reward in and of itself? Is it only the winners, only the billionaires who are rewarded through entrepreneurship? Is it entrepreneurship? Is it entrepreneurship just a reward in and of itself? And aren't lots of entrepreneurs rewarded and happy in spite of the fact that only very few become billionaires? So if you're creative, you just try this. There's creative people in this room, man. You guys are gonna have a hell of a time monetizing your creativity. It's virtually impossible. It's really, really difficult because first of all, let's say you make an original product. You think the world will beat a pathway to your door if you build a better mousetrap. It's like, that's complete rubbish. Well, absolutely, that's wrong. And this goes to the point of hard work. Creativity requires a lot of work and creativity requires to be successfully at creativity. Requires you to think and requires you to think outside not just your little box. The whole point of creativity is to shatter the box and to understand other features and good entrepreneurs, for example, who are creative, understand that there's a role for marketing and a role for other things and also understand that sometimes you fail and sometimes you have to pivot, sometimes you have to change and you have to be open to that. An open mind, a creative mind, is open to change. True, in the least, if you make a good creative product, you've probably solved about 5% of your problem. Exaggeration, if it really is a good problem, then product, then you've sold a lot more than 5%. Most problems, most companies that fail don't fail because of the marketing. They fail because of the product. Some companies fail because of the marketing. But if the product sucks, good marketing's not gonna help you. So the product is a huge percentage of your success. And then you need good marketing, good sales, good everything else, good production. But that'll come because the venture capitalist will see it. Other people in the marketplace will see it. That'll come if you have a good product. So a product is much more than 5%. Then you have marketing, which is insanely difficult and then you have sales and then you have customer support and then you have to build an organization. And if it's really novel, you have to tell people what the hell the thing is. No one knows what that is and that's a real problem. If you write a book, well, then you have the problem that another million people have also written a book. But if you produce something that's completely new and doesn't have a category, people can't search for it online. How are they gonna find it? But the amazing thing is that all innovation, all progress is people devising something that has no category. And they managed to get the word out there. Even the ones that don't have great marketing, they managed to get the word out there. Because we're eager to adopt things that are really great products. Now, some are geniuses at the marketing as well, as Steve Jobs was. But he was he graded marketing from day one? Well, maybe by the time McIntosh came around, he was, if you remember that 1984 ad for the McIntosh, he was pretty cool. So Steve Jobs combined the genius, a product with the genius of marketing. He was creative in multiple realms. And it's rare. So Jordan is absolutely right in terms of articulating the difficulties here of entrepreneurs. Pricing problems and it's really unbelievably difficult to produce something creative and then monetize it. And even worse, if you're the creative person, let's say you have a spectacular invention. You've got no money, right? You've got no customers. Those are big problems. And so maybe you go and you find a venture capitalist, we start with family and friends because that's how it works. You raise money for your product, you raise money from your family and friends. That's assuming you have family and friends that have some money and that they're going to give it to you. And most people aren't in that situation. So it's a terrible barrier right off the bat. And then of course you're putting your family and friends at substantial financial risk because... God, who's gonna wanna be an entrepreneur after hearing this? The probability that your stupid idea is gonna make money is virtually zero, even if it's a really brilliant idea. And so then let's say, well, you get passed. By the way, that's just not true. I mean, yes, most startups fail. But it's also true that you learn a huge amount by doing the startup. You improve your skills, a huge amount by doing it. You learn from the failure. And the second time, you're more likely to succeed. Or you might take those skills and go work for another entrepreneur, not start the company from scratch. But I don't know very many people who have gone the road of entrepreneurship in a place like Silicon Valley, who have worked for startups, who have done startups, who regret that fact, even if they failed. The journey is not only a good in and of itself, but the journey, you learn so much from the journey that it improves your skills for everything else. So for Jordan, it's as if the only thing, I mean, he doesn't believe in happiness in a sense that you work towards happiness. But it's as if, unless you're 100% successful, there's no value here, but that's complete nonsense. There's massive value, even in failure. If you're conscious of that failure, you understand it, you learn from it. And you're constantly learning, which is what's required to be a creative person. Constantly thinking, constantly observing, constantly looking, constantly motivated to do things better, to improve oneself. Then the journey is fantastic. The journey is good. It's not just the end result that has to be perfect. Family and friends and you get venture capitalists involved because that's often the next step. There's steps in building a business. Family and friends, angel investor, that's some rich guy that you've happened to meet, in some way who's into this sort of thing and is willing to provide you with some money to get your product off the ground. Well, how much of your product is that person gonna take? Well, most of it. Oh my God, I mean, not necessarily. And yeah, I mean, again, this is so depressing. Why would anybody wanna be an entrepreneur? Most of it. And no wonder, because you don't have any money. How are you gonna bargain for control over your product? He'll just say, well, do you want the money or not? And if your answer is no, then he'll go and do something else with his money. It's not like there's no shortage of things that you can do with your money. But there is. The world has a massive shortage of great ideas. There's plenty of capital. What's missing are great ideas. And if you have a great idea, you can raise capital for it. It's not easy. Now we'll get to art. Art is different, art is harder. Art, particularly in the culture we live in today is particularly hard. We'll get to that in a minute. Entrepreneurship? No. The shortage here is ideas. Plenty of capital, plenty of money out there. There's a million things you can do with it. So you're not in a great bargaining position. And then if you get venture capitalists involved, they'll take another big chunk. And maybe if they're not very straight with you, they'll just throw you out. Because maybe by that point in the company's development, you're nothing but a pain in the neck. Because that's how venture capitalists succeed by not being honest with you and just throwing you out. Now some founders are thrown out. Sometimes because they deserve to be thrown out. Some founders are demoted because they're not good at doing everything. But if they stick with it, if they're not stupid about it, then even founders that are demoted make a gazillion of dollars and do very, very well for themselves because they recognize that maybe somebody else is better at being a CEO. There's no, there's no advantage. Of being a CEO if you're not good at it. What do you know about marketing and sales and customer service and building an organization and running a business like you don't have a clue. So why do they need you? So even if you're successful at generating a new idea and you put it into a business, the probability that you as the originator of the idea are going to make some money from it is very, very low. So don't be thinking that creativity is such a, is something you would want to curse yourself with. Come on Jordan, curse yourself with. Being creative is to a large extent what makes life fun. Rearranging things in your world, making your world yours, doing things differently, being different, being new, that's part of what makes life fun. Now true, not everybody can do it, not everybody can be happy, not everybody. Because we've crushed, in so many dimensions, we crush people's ability, ability to be creative. But really, the course of creativity? It's not all bad because it opens up avenues of experience for creative people that aren't available to people who aren't creative. But it definitely is a high-risk, high-return strategy. It's a high-risk strategy, but everything in life is high-risk, everything worthwhile in life is high-risk. Survival is high-risk, living is high-risk, happiness is high-risk. Yes, life is risk, but that's not a bad thing. There's always, as Jordan tells us, death around the corner. That's why you should live. That's why you should try to be creative. That's why you should explore. That's why you should do things differently. That's why you shouldn't put yourself in a box because, ooh, it's risky to be creative. I mean, one of the people discouraging creativity right now, unfortunately, in this talk, is Jordan. So the overwhelming probability is that you will fail, but a small proportion of creative people succeed spectacularly. That is not true. That is just not true that most creative people fail. Now, it is true in the arts. It's true in the arts today because there is no conception of arts today. So when people have no definition of art, when people have no respect for art, when people have no respect for talent in the art, for work in the art, when people don't know what art is, because art is super intellectual, art relies completely, art relies completely on our intellectual framework. And the success of an artist depends so much on the critic and the critics today are so corrupt, so corrupt of unthinking morons. I mean, maybe with exception of movies, maybe. And people don't consider movies high art, right? The ignorant, that yes, one of the great tragedies of the world in which we live, one of the great tragedies of the world in which we live is the fact that we don't encourage creativity in art because we have no idea what art is. So we can't encourage creativity in art. So to be an artist today, a good artist, an artist that actually is recreating reality is a losing proposition because the gallery owners, the museums, the collectors, and the critics are second-handed morons who don't buy great art, but buy creativity for the sake of creativity, different for the sake of being different. So yes, being an artist is the most difficult thing to be in the world in which you are today. Because, because, you're dependent on a marketplace that doesn't exist. And it doesn't exist because we've driven the collectors, we've driven the people who value art. They have no idea what to look for because they rely on the intellectuals. They rely on the critics to help them. They rely on education. They rely on teachers. They rely on our professors. They rely on knowledge. And the knowledge doesn't exist. So the collectors don't exist. And if the collectors don't exist, the people buying art don't exist. And people are afraid of art because art is very revealing. And as a consequence of the fear of art and the lack of self-esteem when it comes to art, again, they rely on critics. They rely on authorities. And the authorities are all wrong about art. And in a world where the authorities are all wrong about art, yeah, being an artist is very, very, very difficult. Very difficult. It's the most challenging profession in the world today, I think. All right. So it's like a lottery in some sense. It's not a lottery. It's not gonna lose. It's luck. Lottery is luck. It's not a lottery. But if you don't lose, you could win big. And that keeps a lot of creative people going. But also they don't really have much choice in it. Yeah, it's not what keeps creative people going. It's not winning the lottery. I don't know any creative person in the arts, for example, or as an entrepreneur who is going just because they might be hit a home run. They might be a billionaire. They might get a museum to take their work. If that was a motivation, there'd be no artists. There'd be no entrepreneurs. Because he's right. Billionaires are one in a billion. Well, maybe not, one in several tens of millions. If you're a creative person, you're like a fruit tree that's bearing fruit. You can suppress it, but it's very bad for you. That is all true. That is all true. I think, yes, you cannot, suppressing your creativity is really harmful. The creative people I've worked with is if they're not creative, they're miserable. So they have to do it. There's real joy and pleasure in it and psychological utility. But it's certainly not a conservative strategy for moving forward through life. And whenever I- You shouldn't be a conservative. People who are creative, and you guys should listen to this because I know what I'm talking about. If you happen to be creative, if you're a songwriter or another kind of musician or an artist or any of the other number of things that you might be, find a way to make money and then practice your craft on the side. That is true. Because you will starve to death otherwise. Now, for some of you, that won't be true, but it's a tiny minority. Your best bet is to find a job that will keep body and soul together and parse off some time that you can pursue your creative thing. Because then, well, as a long-term strategy, medium to long-term strategy, it's a better one. But it's got incredibly difficult for musicians, for example. It's incredibly difficult for new musicians to monetize their craft, even if they're really, really good at it. All right. That is Jordan Peterson in creativity. I think that malevolence comes through. I think not being- Whoops. Not being- His definitions are not clear. They're wrong. There's a determinism that's there. You can see all the problems with Jordan Peterson manifest. And a lot of what he says is true. And a lot of what he says is interesting. But the way it's framed is disappointing. And, but it is Jordan. I mean, you can't- He couldn't frame it otherwise. He wouldn't be him himself. He wouldn't be who he is. Using the super chat. And I noticed yesterday, when I appealed for support for the show, many of you stepped forward and actually supported the show for the first time. So I'll do it again. Maybe we'll get some more today. If you like what you're hearing, if you appreciate what I'm doing, then I appreciate your support. Those of you who don't yet support the show, please take this opportunity. Go to uranbrookshow.com slash support or go to subscribestar.com uranbrookshow and make a kind of a monthly contribution to keep this going. I'm not sure when the next-