A Psychologist and Historian Discuss the End of the World | Dr. Niall Ferguson | EP 404
What this covers
Dr. Jordan B. Peterson sits down with historian and author Niall Ferguson. They discuss the historical and deeply mythological precedent of world-ending narratives, how the global doomsday ethos abdicates local responsibility while empowering the elite class, the out-of-control gigantism plaguing our administrative states today, and how we might strive to deal with genuine tragedy morally, religiously, and with humility.
Niall Ferguson is a Scottish-American historian, author, columnist, TV presenter, and academic. He is the Milbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University, as well as a senior fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University. Ferguson has written many books, such as “Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World,” “Colossus: The Rise and Fall of the American Empire,” “The Square and the Tower,” and most recently, “Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe,” which has been shortlisted for the Lionel Gelber prize.
This episode was filmed on October 12th, 2023
Dr. Peterson's extensive catalog is available now on DailyWire+: https://bit.ly/3KrWbS8
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- Links -
For Niall Ferguson:
Website https://www.niallferguson.com/
Doom (Book) https://www.amazon.com/Doom-Politics-Catastrophe-Niall-Ferguson/dp/0593297377
On X https://twitter.com/nfergus?lang=en
On Youtube https://www.youtube.com/@niallferguson5684/videos
- Chapters -
(0:00) Coming up (0:33) Intro (1:30) All worlds end, the permanence of death (8:23) The duality of cataclysm and adventure (10:41) The Book of Revelation: Spectacular imagery gives justification to the conceptualization of God (11:35) Why science fiction loves dystopian themes and a secular wasteland (15:45) We would break Heaven for the excitement of Hell (21:30) Asceticism: humanities strange tendency for self-harm in preparation for the end times (29:00) Delusions of “the science,” virtue signaling over problem solving (34:13) The Tower of Babel, and how this story reiterates across time (37:59) This is the only “law” in the study of history (39:58) We want to live in a “moral universe” (42:06) Worldviews that outlive their eras and religious roots (45:04) The “sin of Eve,” morality, and the tendency to overreach (49:59) Oppenheimer, ethics and the ability to destroy (54:24) Drinking the snake oil, why Oppenheimer was ineffective as a peace lobbyist (56:53) Henry Kissinger: the cost of preemption and the necessity of action (1:02:42) Every good leader should aspire to this
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Ferguson argues that apocalyptic thinking—whether religious or secular—leads to misguided policy focused on grand catastrophes while governments actually grow worse at handling real, localized disasters, and that this pattern stems from the interplay between ascetic virtue-signaling, scientism as pseudo-religion, and administrative state gigantism.
- Governments have demonstrably worsened at disaster management despite scientific progress, contradicting the assumption that knowledge improves competence
- Apocalyptic narratives motivate ascetic policies that fail on their own terms (e.g., Western green policies increase coal burning in China/Germany rather than reducing emissions)
- The administrative state's size and regulatory sclerosis make it incapable of rational, flexible response to actual problems
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The biblical commandment against taking God's name in vain means not attributing sacred motivations to self-serving instrumental behavior; when apocalyptic concern becomes the excuse for moral virtue, one violates this principle by using divine concern as mask for status-seeking.
“in the Old Testament there's a the second commandment is to not use God's name in vain and what that means as far as I can tell is that you shouldn't claim Divine motivation for doing things that are actually self-serving right you shouldn't attribute sacred motivations to your own to your own instrumental impulsive and self-serving behavior and then that's echoed in the New Testament with the insistence that you shouldn't pray in public”
The proper psychological and spiritual posture is radical humility about one's competence and claims to mastery; staying within local bounds of competence, extending oneself modestly through learning, but not overreaching beyond one's actual capacity, prevents cascading catastrophic errors.
“if you didn't overreach in your life you know if you if you were properly humble in your claims of Mastery if you only dealt what was what was with what was local and that was within your bounds of competence you know maybe extending yourself a bit to learn maybe you wouldn't bring on yourself a continual sequence of relatively apocalyptic catastrophes right”
Decision-making under uncertainty is the hardest task faced by leaders; you cannot have certainty about whether preemptive action averts a larger catastrophe because there are no counterfactual data about what would have happened if you had acted differently.
“decision- making under uncertainty is the hardest thing of all but it has to be done and I think what I've learned from Kissinger is that you will be held responsible and judged very harshly for those actions you take uh even if they they avert disaster you won't get thanked nobody ever will thank Henry Kissinger for avoiding World War III”
The gospel teaching that 'the last will be first and the first will be last' points to the principle that those who regard themselves as the elect and the saved are actually most likely to fail and harm others; those who have power are those who don't presume to have it.
“I presume that's why the gospel en Joiner is that the last will be first right and the first will be last it's pointing to something like that”
The sin of Eve in the Garden is fundamentally one of pride: she encounters Satan (possibility of predation and evil) and presumes she can encompass, listen to, and integrate that evil herself without consequences—this overreach brings the Fall.
“the sin of Eve is one of pride is that she encounters the serpent who turns out to be Satan so it's it's it's it's it's the possibility of predation and natural catastrophe allied with the possibility of evil that's a good way of thinking about it so symbolically and her first presumption is that she can Encompass that and hearken to it and listen to its voice and integrate it and that's what produces the fall”
The biblical concern with apocalyptic reality at both social and individual levels does not counsel denial or flight from catastrophe, but rather insists that the proper response is to welcome it with open arms through continual death and transformation.
“what you do see in the biblical Corpus there's always a wrestling with the apocalyptic reality of existence socially and individually and there is the insistence throughout the text that the appropriate way to deal with that is not to run from it or deny it but to really to the degree that it's possible to welcome it with with open arms”
The Tower of Babel represents the danger of centralized gigantism: a unified, uniform structure reaching too high becomes unable to maintain internal communication and coordination, leading to collapse—a warning against administrative centralization.
“the Tower of Babel is a zigurat right it's a it's a stepped pyramid and at that time the potentates of the Middle East were competing to build the largest ziggurats they were trying to build towers to heaven to glorify themselves and that's the subtext of the Tower of Babel story so what happens is that an the ultimate Tower of Babel is erected to reach to the sky and that's a challenge to the supremacy of God and the consequence of that is that the cosmos the spirit of the cosmos the creative in producer of the cosmos makes all those who inhabit the tower unable to communicate with one another so they start to lose even the ability to share Concepts and this structure collapses and it's because that Tower of Babel is too large it reaches too high it's too uniform and it's destined to failure”
Governments are getting worse at handling disasters despite the accumulation of scientific knowledge, contradicting the assumption that technical progress improves institutional competence
“It's very significant that in our lifetimes governments have got worse at dealing with disasters not better despite the accumulation of scientific knowledge”
In the Book of Revelation, the seven-headed beast carrying the whore of Babylon represents a monstrous centralizing state with multiple heads aligned with disinhibited licentiousness—this is an image of societal apocalypse: monstrous centralization at the state level combined with complete fragmentation/atomization at the individual level.
“one of the central images in the book that I think is very relevant imagine that the Book of Revelation is trying to conceptualize the apocalypse as such the manner in which things deteriorate before the ultimate disaster and so one of the main images is of a seven-headed beast and on the back of the Beast is the of Babylon and what H it what it it's an image of a centralizing state a centralizing mon a monstrous centralizing State that's a good way of thinking about it with multiple heads with something like disin disin disinhibited Lous as its partner that's the image and so the notion there is that when things deteriorate to the point where apocalypse is likely you have the construction of monstrous state likee apparatuses aligned with individual fragmentation down to the point of Lous atomization”
Cain's descendants (not Abel's line) first adopt technology and build cities; the city becomes corrupt and leads to the Tower of Babel; this narrative thread suggests that the impulse to technological mastery and centralized urban control is rooted in pride and resentment, not in virtue.
“you see that Dynamic play out in the opening chapters of Genesis because what you have is the descendants of Cain so Cain makes improper sacrifices and he becomes bitter and resentful and he turns to technology it's Cain's descendants that turn to technology first they build the first cities and then the city becomes corrupt it becomes corrupt in the direction of the Tower of Babel”
Humans have consistently overpredicted the end of the world throughout history, as exemplified by the Beyond The Fringe sketch where millenarians gather to await the apocalypse and nothing happens—yet they say 'same time next week'
“the end of the world has been consistently overpredicted by human beings for Millennia”
Germany shut down nuclear power plants and started burning lignite coal in the name of green energy, exemplifying how focus on asceticism rather than rational problem-solving produces perverse outcomes
“well or increased burning in coal in Germany because that's what's happened with the Green Revolution in Germany ex they shut off the nuclear plants and started up the LI night”
1960s-70s fears of overpopulation motivated drastic population control measures in Asia with harmful unintended consequences, illustrating how apocalyptic fears drive policies that exceed their justification
“this was true when back in the 1960s and70s people persuaded themselves that there was a terrible problem of overpopulation that malus was going to be Vindicated and therefore there had to be drastic population control especially in Asia and that turned out to of all kinds of unintended consequences”
Oppenheimer was a deeply moral individual trained in ethical principles who was drawn toward communism in the 1930s, but his moral self-certainty may have prevented him from fully recognizing the consequences of developing the atomic bomb
“Oppenheimer was a very moral individual at least he felt himself to be uh rooted in in an ethical education that he'd had an at an elite school in New York drawn out of uh those ethical uh those ethnical premises towards uh communism in the 1930s uh but when given the challenge to build an atomic bomb in order to win World War II uh he embraced that challenge and and achieved it with astonishing Brilliance”
Fears of dangerous technological developments and climate change have motivated calls for powerful surveillance states to prevent bad outcomes, but totalitarianism kills far more people than any natural disaster, making surveillance-based governance more dangerous than the threats it claims to prevent
“fears not just of uh climate change but of uh dangerous technological developments have given rise to a view which my friend Nick Bostrom and Oxford exemplifies that we need to have very very powerful surveillance powers to prevent bad things uh from happening whether it's to prevent uh CO2 emissions uh uh in breaching uh the levels of the Net Zero program or whether it's to stop dangerous research being done with artificial intelligence we we need to empower the state to have even greater powers of surveillance than the mid 20th century totalitarian regimes had”
Western asceticism around climate (giving up internal combustion engines, eating less meat, installing solar cells) is self-defeating because the manufacturing of electric vehicles and solar cells in China creates more coal burning there than would be saved by Western emission reductions
“a great delusion is to imagine that we can prevent the rise of average temperatures by large scale asceticism in the west uh we must give up internal combustion engines uh we should give up eating meat and so on if we end up buying electric vehicles and solar cells manufactured in China with electricity generated by burning ever larger quantities of coal the probability of of reducing uh average temperatures is zero”
During the COVID-19 pandemic and in climate debates, there has been spurious invocation of 'the science' that functions like religious appeals to divine authority rather than actual scientific thinking
“during the covid-19 pandemic but I think predates it it was already going on and debates about climate there was a lot of spurious invocation of the science and one might as well have been saying the gods or the the deity because it was in fact uh quite un unscientific thinking that was going on”
Apocalyptic and millenarian movements are often accompanied by ascetic behavior (fasting, self-flagellation) as atonement for the coming end, and contemporary progressivism exhibits similar patterns—veganism, abstention from reproduction—justified by apocalyptic climate fears
“the the end is approaching uh the the apocalypse is nearing and therefore we should fast or perhaps even flog ourselves uh like the flagellant orders at the time of the black death and it seemed to me very interesting uh how many uh similar patterns one one could see in in our time whether you are preoccupied with uh climate change or systemic racism doesn't matter you should engage in some kind kind of atic atonement uh in advance of the great Reckoning uh and and this I think infests a lot of of contemporary progressivism uh the desire to eat uh uh rabbit food uh to be constantly uh trying to eliminate things from one's uh diet the desire to uh engage in uh uh uh abstention from reproduction we mustn't have children because climate change is so cataclysmic”
Science fiction, as a genre born in the early 19th century, provides narrative satisfaction of apocalypse without the religious consolation of God's ultimate reign or paradise, making pure dystopian catastrophe more commercially and psychologically appealing than religious eschatology.
“what's interesting about science fiction is that it really discards Utopia there's some Utopia in science fiction but most of it's dystopian and you gave the example of the Terminator movie series that's part of a long tradition of visualizing an end of the world which is dystopian where an apocalyptic event occurs and all you really left with in the case of the Terminator movies is a a pile of rubble in which a few surviving humans are picked off by Killer Robots the interesting thing to me about science fiction is that from its birth in the early 19th century as a genre it provides the apocalypse without the prospect of some Ultimate Reign uh of God and and the Saints and we find that hugely exciting”
Utopian visions (socialist paradise with unlimited satisfaction) fail because human consciousness requires adventure and engagement; if you achieve satiation (all needs met), organisms fall asleep; consciousness itself demands challenge and the possibility of failure.
“Consciousness demands something like an adventure and the classic vision of Heaven does seem lacking in that it isn't obvious what you would do there”
Oppenheimer was correct to undertake the atomic bomb project to win WWII without requiring a land invasion of Japan, which would have cost untold American soldier lives; the project was justified by the alternative catastrophe it prevented.
“what he got right was to to develop a bomb that could end World War II without the need for a large scale conventional forces in invasion of Japan which would have cost Untold numbers of American uh soldiers lives”
Atheism is a disastrous basis for a society; atheist societies have probably committed more violations of human rights than any others, making atheism unsuitable for either social organization or individual ethical decision-making.
“I'm a lapsed atheist Jordan I go to church every Sunday uh precisely because having been brought up an atheist I came to realize in my career as an historian not only that atheism is a disastrous basis for a society Atheist Societies have probably committed more violations of human rights than any others uh but also because I don't think it can be a basis for individual uh ethical decisionmaking”
Central governments today are much larger, employ far more people, and have vastly more regulatory control than their counterparts 50-70 years ago, creating unwieldy bureaucracies that are very inefficient at achieving intended goals
“if you compare Central governments today with their counterparts of half a century or 70 years ago they've become much larger they bloated in terms of the numbers of people employed uh they intervene in many more ways that an enormous uh there's an enormous Corpus of regulation in all uh Western countries and this administrative State unwieldy uh regulatory is very inefficient it's very bad at achieving intended goals”
Churchill was right to oppose appeasement in the 1930s based on his predictions about Hitler, and his leadership was validated by history—but he received no gratitude for preventing catastrophe and was voted out after winning the war
“it must have ultimately been right for Churchill to speak out against aasman as he did throughout the 1930s to take the helm in 1940 when all his predictions had been fulfilled and Britain had been brought to the brink of catastrophe to lead Britain uh to an ultimate victory in 1945 and then suffer a massive electoral defeat this is a noble story”
The universe is not moral—bad things happen randomly, governed by power laws, and are extremely difficult to predict. Wars, financial crises, wildfires, and earthquakes cannot be thought of in probabilistic terms and often have nothing to do with moral desert
“it's not in fact a moral Universe this the bad news uh it's really not I mean a lot of the bad things that happen are random uh uh they're governed by power laws they're extremely difficult to predict uh Wars are in fact pretty randomly distributed there's no cycle of history that tells you when a war is coming same applies to financial crisis wildfires and earthquakes are not normally distributed they can't really be thought of in probabilistic Terms and so much of the terrible stuff that happens to us has nothing to do uh with uh there being a moral Universe”
One of the reasons that well-intentioned government action produces unintended consequences is the law of unintended consequences—when governments identify a problem and undertake measures to address it, the solutions often have negative effects that were not anticipated
“there's only one law of History I'm I'm a historian uh and that's the law of unintended consequences and so what typically happens is that well-intentioned people come to power identify a problem which they they feel they must address and they undertake measures uh to address the problem which have unintended consequences”
Decision-makers like Turing, cryptographers, and military scientists were crucial to winning WWII; if decision-makers had been humble and refused to participate (saying 'I must not overreach'), the Axis powers might have won, making humility a potentially catastrophic posture.
“if Oppenheimer had said to himself I must be humble and resist the temptation to win this uh this race and of course a number of physicists did take that view and refused to participate in the manhand project it might have been disastrous I constantly try to remind people uh in the work I've done on the second world war that the axess powers the totalitarian Powers nearly won that war and it took tremendous creativity by a whole range of scientists not only Oppenheimer but think of Turing those uh cryptographers who did such crucial job of making sure that uh the Allied pars cracked the axess pars codes”
Ferguson is now a lapsed atheist who attends church every Sunday, having come to believe that atheism is a disastrous basis for society and that Christian frameworks are necessary for both social stability and individual ethical decision-making
“I'm a lapsed atheist Jordan I go to church every Sunday uh precisely because having been brought up an atheist I came to realize in my career as a historian not only that atheism is a disastrous basis for a society Atheist Societies have probably committed more violations of human rights than any others uh but also because I don't think it can be a basis for individual uh ethical decisionmaking uh Churchill was a Christian and I think has to be understood as such so I I am a lapsed atheist and and proud of it”
Churchill was a Christian and must be understood as such; his leadership and principles cannot be understood without reference to his Christian faith.
“Churchill was a Christian and I think has to be understood as such”
When people's lives go seriously astray, the pattern is not that they run off a cliff immediately, but rather make one error, then a more serious error, repeat that pattern thousands of times, and gradually descend into catastrophe through accumulated small failures to address local crises
“when people's lives go seriously astray is that they don't generally people generally don't run off a cliff immediately after doing brilliantly what happens is they make one error and then they make a more serious error and then they repeat that 10,000 times and then they're in hell and they're it was their failure to rectify the mini crisis all along the way that brings upon the Apocalypse in their life”
Humans are fascinated by the end of the world partly because it is consoling—if everyone dies, individual death becomes less personally tragic, and the spectacle is cinematically exciting
“I think it's for a slightly different reason from the one that you hypothesized we have the reality uh that we as individuals end to contend with...and I think we therefore infer the consoling thought that it's all going to go down in flames uh at some uh future date”
Policy failure stems from two root causes: (1) treating 'the science' as settled dogma rather than ongoing inquiry, and (2) the administrative state being bloated, unwieldy, and inefficient at achieving its intended goals
“between the science as a quasi uh religious way of thinking and the administrative State we have a very very dysfunctional approach to nearly all the problems that confront us”
Self-appointed moral elites in academic and intellectual life believe they belong to an elect class and that their behavior should reflect their moral superiority, but this belief in one's moral preeminence empowers the most diabolical acts of cruelty
“I'm always impressed by uh the presence of the self-appointed elect in academic life people who have a sense that they are morally Superior to those around them they they do belong uh to an elite and their behavior uh should be uh as it were fitting to that preeminence uh now I I am a kind of calvinist atheist I come from the west of Scotland where that kind of thinking was very well established now I can see the people who think they belong uh to the elect all around me uh in American academic life and of course the critical idea which Robert L Stevenson gets at in the master of balant tree and uh and James hog gets and the Confessions of a Justified sinner is that the elect are the worst people it's the people who think that they belong uh to the elite who turn out to be capable of the most diabolical acts of Cruelty”
Henry Kissinger's principle of the 'problem of conjecture' states that when making decisions under uncertainty, the cost of preventive action is borne by the decision-maker while the benefit (the averted catastrophe) goes to others, creating a perverse incentive toward inaction
“Kissinger before he entered the realm of power came up with the idea of the problem of conjecture uh it's an extremely important idea that should be communicated to any decision maker whether they're in the private sector or the public sector and the problem of conjecture says that at any given moment when one must take a decision there is a kind of asymmetry and the asymmetry allies arises from the fact that if you act let's say if you had acted in 1938 to prevent uh Hitler's takeover of of Czechoslovakia there would have been a cost the war would have begun earlier and uh even if you had successfully prevented a much larger War the world war that broke out in 1939 you would have got no real gratitude for that you you get no payoffs for the averted catastrophe”
The host suggests that one of the problems with apocalyptic vision is that it allows people to present themselves as virtue-seeking redeemers obsessed with large-scale disaster while actually abdicating responsibility for solving smaller, local, tractable problems they could address
“you can I'm I'm modifying your argument slightly but that you can present yourself as the ultimate virtue seeking Redeemer by claiming to be obsessed by nothing but large-scale disaster you can construe yourself as virtuous because of the depth of your concern and you can abdicate your responsibility to actually deal with less self-dramatizing problems with the less self-dramatizing problems that actually constitute problems you could solve and address if you put your mind to it in the real world”
Most disasters are politically determined—they depend not on the natural event itself but on how societies collectively respond to it, meaning the distinction between 'natural' and 'man-made' disaster is misleading
“the critical argument of the book is that that most disasters shouldn't be thought of as either natural or man-made disasters happen and then we as a species collectively bungle them or not and that's the the critical point disasters are in many ways politically determined even if their Origins are natural”
The mythological identity between the evil king and the wicked queen of nature means that when the state becomes corrupt and fails to maintain infrastructure, natural disasters will be far more devastating—corruption and blindness at the institutional level facilitate the expression of natural catastrophe
“in mythological representations in deep narratives there is an identity between the evil king and the wicked queen of nature they're the same thing and so if the king gets Wicked enough the evil queen of nature arises and that's a representation of the fact that if your state is corrupt natural disaster will definitely make itself shown”
Religious and mythological frameworks persist because they emerged to make sense of an extraordinarily cruel and capricious world with short life expectancy and mysterious natural forces, and this explains their enduring psychological power even in scientific age
“mythology uh of the sort you described in the case of the ancient Egyptian myths uh makes a lot of sense if you imagine yourself uh living in the uh prehistoric or very ancient world life expectancy was very short uh individuals were extraordinary at risk uh from a whole variety of of premature uh forms of mortality and the natural world was deeply mysterious because there was no scientific framework for understanding uh anything the the fluctuations in the level of the River Nile uh the periodic droughts uh that Afflicted uh uh early agricultural societies and so you end up with ways of of making sense of an extraordinar cruel and capricious world uh so I think that's that's an important reason uh why myths uh persist they're deeply rooted in our in our premodern uh experience”
A leader's highest aspiration should be to be judged right by history, to accept that there will be no triumphal processions and possibly ignominy, while having done the right thing to save the nation
“to be right to be right on the basis of historical judgment to accept that there will not necessarily be triumphal processions that there may in fact be ignon at the end of the road but to have done the right thing to save your nation and get no thanks for it that seems to be the most that any leader can aspar to”
Even rational, atheist individuals are susceptible to the intuition that bad things happening to them might be retribution for past sins, suggesting that Christian ways of thinking about moral causation persist in secular culture even among those who reject Christian belief
“we are very strongly inclined to think when bad things happen to us that they may in fact be retribution for sins that we committed in the past and uh even the most rational uh individual is susceptible to this idea I I know this because my parents did the very best their very best to raise me as a product of the Scottish Enlightenment uh an atheist and a devoted believer in the scientific method but when bad things happen I have this uneasy sense that I may have brought it upon myself uh by transgressing in some way illustrating that uh you can't really escape the Christian Legacy unless you uh travel a very long long way away from from uh post-christian civilizations”
Most political choices are between evils, not between good and evil—decision-makers must choose which evil is lesser, and there are frequently no good options available
“most choices in the realm of Power are between evils you just have to decide which is the greater and which is the Lesser there are very frequently no good options”
The host notes that Ferguson's vision of political leadership—correct action without reward or recognition—echoes Christian passion, yet Ferguson claims to be atheist, creating a tension between his stated materialism and his implicit Christian ethics
“those are strange things for someone who also said during the same discussion who proclaimed a kind of central atheism because I can't help seeing echoes in that of while the Christian passion for example is that you're called upon to do right at your own expense even your own ultimate expense with no hope of public Acclaim”
The host proposes that proper action should be motivated by something other than status, power, and reputation, but does not fully specify what that motivation should be—identifying it as central to the question of ethics
“what that has to mean at least in part is that you have to be oriented to act properly despite just fite its reputational advantage or cost right see that's exactly it is that something other than reputation has to motivate your action and then the question is what should motivate your action if it's not status power and reputation right that's exactly right that's where that should Eno PA Eno PA said all political careers end in Failure”
Monotheistic religions have the end of the world as one of their centerpieces (present in Islam and Christianity), and this apocalyptic expectation has ancient roots in religious culture
“the great monotheistic religions have as one of their centerpieces the the end of the world it's it's there in Islam as well as in uh Christianity”
Greta Thunberg is the latest 'prophet of the Millennium' and exemplifies how contemporary secular movements unconsciously replicate religious apocalyptic messaging
“Greta tunberg is just the latest profit of the of the Millenium”