Interview · moment 17 of 26
Corrupted Institutions: CIA Torture Prisons and Personal Responsibility's Limits
from #249 - Jordan Peterson | The Tim Dillon Show · #249
4 min
Guest
Tim pushes back, citing CIA secret prisons and corrupt institutions like the Catholic Church, asking how personal responsibility alone can counter powerful bad actors who go unchecked.
- Institutions we grew up with—the Catholic Church, the government—were built on reasons we now know were foolhardy or misleading.
- When hierarchies are supposedly based on generosity and cooperation, my generation sees them rotted out by dishonest actors who aren't checked or counterbalanced.
- Hierarchies degenerate because of power and deceit, but functional hierarchies are characterized by productivity and reciprocity.
- The radical left's claim that hierarchical structure itself is tyrannical and predicated on power is simply not true.
- If you want to stop deceit in the world, then stop lying; if you want to stop the arbitrary exercise of power, then stop using it.
- The CIA was running secret torture prisons while I was in community college, which makes it hard to believe that personal responsibility has any real impact on institutional corruption.